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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 find TFA to be a little melodramatic. "SHODAN is... The Girl Your Mother Warned You About"... "SHODAN IS... the Hand that Wrecks the Cradle"... "SHODAN is... Her Own Impersonal Jesus"... Yes, it's true, SHODAN was an excellent character, but she was only scary because of other good design decisions on the part of the developers. The audio logs in the first game, for instance, were an excellent idea and provided a lot of suspense and incentive to explore.
System Shock 2 was a good game, but honestly it didn't creep me out as much as the original did. Maybe SHODAN's novelty had worn off by that point, or maybe I just got more jaded as a gamer. The idea of being all alone on a monster-infested spacestation has been done to death by now (Doom 3 et al) but it was new and cool back when the original came out.
I wonder if System Shock 3 will be genuinely scary? Here's to hoping...
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Shodan isn't just a evil enemy. She's THE evil enemy. System shock is easily my favorite game. Not System Shock 2, but System Shock the original.
The thing that makes Shodan so truely terrific is that shodan doesn't just talk to you, she talks to everyone. She constantly is in communication with you, not in a way that requires communication, but through emails and data files.
Even above that she doesn't just talk to the user, she will torment any person still alive on her station that isn't helping her. She doesn't just talk about what she is going to do to you, but she shows her AI, and you get a feeling for what is so evil about her and what she has done to the whole station.
She has a matriarch tone to her "children", she has the angry tone for you, the computer tone for normal announcements, the condescending tone for when she springs traps. It's never the same voice. And what's so essential is this is 4 or 5 tones for a computer. This is more acting than most people can evoke and a computer is just filled with emotion.
The fact is that shodan simply is the flawless enemy, the way she interacts with you is well done, she never feels like a "computer" she feels more alive than it. And the terror her voice evokes rivals many current day villians.
Kudos Through the Looking Glass you will sorely be missed.
P.S. SS3 was announced earlier this year I believe, EA was working on it.
While Bioshock may be the spiritual successor to SS2, EA is supposedly working on SS3, according to PC Gamer UK at least.
Have been waiting for Bioshock for a while now, looks to be great, hopefully it can hold the feel of the SS's.
And if EA doesn't f it up (yes, I know, little chance of that), we'll have another SS followup.
(Side note: the linked article keeps changing. Could've sworn I saw a reference to Syndicate in there. And if there's one game franchise other than SS I want to see revived, it's Syndicate.)