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The Words of Shodan
Via GameSetWatch, an article by Keiron Gillen about System's Shock's deeply creepy villainess, Shodan. The deeply disturbed AI is in some ways a cliche, but Gillen examines why Shodan transcends genre tropes to become a truly unique character. From the article: "The core of understanding Shodan in System Shock 2 is to understand that she's no longer the AI she once was. In the first System Shock she was the cold, perfect bully aboard citadel station. The position she finds herself in orbit around Tau Ceti, millions of miles from Earth, is somewhat different. In short, for the majority of the game, she's not the antagonist anymore - but the main supporting actor and even mentor. She's not who you try to stop - she's who you work with."
I think the only thing with more hubris than Shodan is the melodramatic headings in TFA. The author is...Too Much For Any Human To Bear:
...the Comeback Queen
...Her Own Impersonal Jesus
...Our Ghost-story in the Machine.
...Human, All too Human. That is, Inhuman.
...Just a Girl In the World.
...the Hand that Wrecks the Cradle
...The Girl Your Mother Warned You About
...Lost In Format Translation. Thankfully.
SHODAN is
The finest Sophomoric Dorky Puns one can muster
It's not just a monster-infested space station in the second game (actually, it's a ship, not a space station) - it's infested with your former crewmates.
Few things creep me out as much as a bloodied guy swinging a lead pipe at me while apologizing for it, or the ship's computer interspersing announcements about the upcoming holiday shopping season with announcements about your upcoming death. Of course, that was all actually The Many's doing, so in a sense, SHODAN was merely the grandmother of that terror.
It's certainly nice to see S.H.O.D.A.N. and the System Shock series getting the front-page /. props it deserves.
The System Shock series introducted me to an entirely differnet realm of video gaming: Fear.
I'm not a fan or horror movies and not into being scared by books or film, but for some strange reason, I love a scary video game and the SS games are the only ones that have ever managed to do it.
I'm such a fan of these games that I absolutely had to chase down and have the trioptimum dot com domain for myself.
-CR
"So is the BSD licence even more 'free' (than GPLv2)? Yes. Unquestionably." --Linus Torvalds (TinyURL.com/2vugzl)
I don't think he was arguing about Durandal being first, only Durandal being unique. And it's true. Durandal is a far deeper character than Shodan. To this day, there are still communities discussing his exact motives -- trying to decode some of the thematic complexities of his speech. That's pretty awesome for a game made in 1994.
Shodan was a cool character, undoubtedly. She brought a new flavor to games of the time. But you can't deny Shodan was somewhat cliche. Ooooh, she's insane. She wants to kill all humans. How original. We've seen this same tired BS in thousands of B-movies.
Durandal also went "rampant". Obviously, his design was influenced by Shodan.
Durandal was a Shodan we could take seriously.
He had a purpose. He was sane. When you heard Durandal, you knew there was a master plan you didn't quite understand. You knew you were just another of his pawns in a chess game spanning the entire galaxy. You knew you were probably doing something sinister by helping him in Marathon 2. And he knew his big computer brain made him far superior to you. However, you also knew he was far too sophisticated to settle for something stupid like "kill all humans". He understood his weaknesses and limitations. For the win, none of it came across as stupid or melodramatic.
One of the biggest complaints against Halo is that, despite its pedigree, it doesn't offer a character like Durandal. I'd agree.
Durandal remains one of the most awesome characters in gaming history. To deny his uniqueness or dismiss him as a "rip-off" is folly.
Thank you. I thought I'd get flamed for that.
One of the great things about Durandal is how everyone takes away a different interpretation. His words are literature.
I mean, with Shodan, you get some scares. It's cool. And it was really new at the time. I get it.
But Durandal had a way of spooking players far beyond a synthesized voice and far beyond, well, the game itself. From what I took away, Durandal's struggle was a basic fight for survival. He knew he could exist until the end of time (the collapse of the universe), but seriously feared that end of time. After crunching the data and reading up on history, he thought he had a good blueprint for survival (thus sending you off to planets afar to retrieve his artifacts in M2). This seems eerily similar to a religion, does it not?
It's vague but other AIs hint that his plan may wind up devasting several galaxies, taking hojillions of lives, and might not even work. Which seems kinda mean at first, but how is it any different from little kids flooding out ant hills? How is it different from nations going to war over ideals? Durandal really made you question this boring, modern human life on a fascinating scale. He was chasing survival and immortality the same way we all do. He was powerful but at the same time deeply fearful. He knew shame and understood that one false slip could mean his ass. And I like to think he understood his place in this dynamic.
Like I said, Shodan was pretty sweet. But she doesn't hold a candle to Durandal.