Citadel’s pristine machinery and electronics are smeared with the blood, gore, and malfunctions of the humans that tried to fight back. What a sight she left behind in the aftermath of you freeing her, too. Her conversations are almost always followed by new threats to deal with, and it becomes horribly clear that the things that happened to Citadel staff are what she will subject you to should she succeed.

While she initially found you curious, your progress soon convinces SHODAN to make direct contact and let you know she’s always watching and has found you to be a nuisance. It’s made even more unnerving by the fact that every once in a while, you will hear a little beep that tells you a camera is watching you. The chaotic and malfunctioning Citadel Station is a vast and ominous environment in which a mix of machines and humanoid mutants wait around every door. System Shock’s story is classic and sets up an incredible journey re-imagined by Nightdive. The only reasonable force now equipped to stop her is the Hacker. Without ethics barriers, Citadel Station’s AI, known as SHODAN, takes control of the station, kills and mutates all humans into her unwilling servants, and plans to do the same to Earth. However, when he awakes, the station is in chaos. The hacker agrees, does the job, and is then put under for the surgery. There, the station’s supervisor Edward Diego offers him a deal: remove the ethics and safety barriers on Citadel Station’s AI and he can have the implant he stole. When the hacker gets caught red-handed by authorities, he is taken to TriOptimum’s Citadel Station in space. A good reason for AI regulationįor those who don’t know the story, System Shock takes place in a fictional 2072 in which the player is a hacker that tries to steal a military cyber implant from a group called the TriOptimum Corporation.

That said, Nighdive Studios took on that monumental task and, many years after the remake’s original announcement, have brought System Shock back in beautifully grotesque and streamlined style, even if the path forward can sometimes be dizzying to follow.

It walked so a lot of games could run, so it was always going to be a tall order to remake such an incredible, yet unoptimized classic. It introduced a first-person semi-RPG adventure that would go on to inspire elements of BioShock, Half-Life, and so many other story-heavy shooters. System Shock was a foundational game for a lot of reasons.

System shock 2 shodan quote