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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."

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  1. Re:Melodrama by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.