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97-667: System Shock is a 1994 first-person action-adventure video game developed by LookingGlass Technologies and published by Origin Systems . It was directed by Doug Church with Warren Spector serving as producer. The game is set aboard a space station in a cyberpunk vision of the year 2072. Assuming the role of a nameless security hacker , the player attempts to hinder the plans of a malevolent artificial intelligence called SHODAN . System Shock 's 3D engine, physics simulation and complex gameplay have been cited as both innovative and influential. The developers sought to build on

194-627: A fantasy " setting. Tutankham , debuted by Konami in January 1982, was an action-adventure released for arcades . It combined maze, shoot 'em up, puzzle-solving and adventure elements, with a 1983 review by Computer and Video Games magazine calling it "the first game that effectively combined the elements of an adventure game with frenetic shoot 'em up gameplay." It inspired the similar Time Bandit (1983). Action Quest , released in May 1982, blended puzzle elements of adventure games into

291-625: A freely movable mouse cursor to aim weapons, to interact with objects and to manipulate the heads-up display (HUD) interface. View and posture controls on the HUD allow the player to lean left or right, look up or down, crouch, and crawl. Practical uses for these actions include taking cover , retrieving items from beneath the player character and navigating small passages, respectively. The HUD also features three "multi-function displays", which may be configured to display information such as weapon readouts, an automap and an inventory. The player advances

388-446: A joystick -controlled, arcade-style action game, which surprised reviewers at the time. While noting some similarities to Adventure , IGN argues that The Legend of Zelda (1986) by Nintendo "helped to establish a new subgenre of action-adventure", becoming a success due to how it combined elements from different genres to create a compelling hybrid, including exploration, adventure-style inventory puzzles , an action component,

485-571: A monetary system , and simplified RPG-style level building without the experience points . The Legend of Zelda series was the most prolific action-adventure game franchise through to the 2000s. Roe R. Adams also cited the arcade-style side-scrolling fantasy games Castlevania (1986), Trojan (1986) and Wizards & Warriors (1987) as early examples of action-adventure games. Games like Brain Breaker (1985), Xanadu (1985), Metroid (1986) and Vampire Killer (1986) combined

582-767: A subgenre of open world action-adventure video games in the third-person perspective . They are characterized by their likeness to the Grand Theft Auto series in either gameplay or overall design. In these types of open world games, players may find and use a variety of vehicles and weapons while roaming freely in an open world setting. Metroidvania is a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania ; such games are sometimes referred to as "search action", and are generally based on two-dimensional platformers. They emphasize both exploration and puzzle-solving with traditional platform gameplay. Survival horror games emphasize "inventory management" and making sure

679-445: A "rich, exciting, active environment" in which the player could be immersed, and that this required "a coherent story and a world that you can interact with as much as possible." Church later said that the team "stumbled into a nice villain" with SHODAN, in that she could routinely and directly affect the player's gameplay "in non-final ways". Through triggered events and through objects in the environment, such as security cameras that

776-546: A 2016 given promise. After one month of development, a cross-platform source port , called "Shockolate", for modern compilers and platforms was released by community developers. A planned live-action television series based on System Shock was announced in October 2021. The show will be made for Binge, a video-game-centric streaming service, to be produced by Allan Ungar and with Night Dive's Stephen Kick and Larry Kuperman serving as executive producers. In January 2022, it

873-498: A better time. Whether you’re into shooters or RPGs; or just want to experience a cyberpunk romp with a good beat, this one is for you." Shortly after the release of the Enhanced Edition , Nightdive Studios announced their plans to develop a remake of System Shock for Microsoft Windows , Xbox One and PlayStation 4 , featuring improved art assets and other improvements, and reworking the game to use Unity . Initially,

970-513: A bubble of charged plasma , contained by a fine mesh of superconducting wire, to surround a spacecraft. This would protect the spacecraft from interstellar radiation and some particles without needing physical shielding . The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory was in 2007 attempting to design an actual test satellite, which would orbit Earth with a charged plasma field around it. In 2008, Cosmos Magazine reported on research into creating an artificial replica of Earth's magnetic field around

1067-545: A choice of what to say. The NPC gives a scripted response to the player, and the game offers the player several new ways to respond. Due to the action-adventure subgenre's broad and inclusive nature, it causes some players to have difficulty finishing a particular game. Companies have devised ways to give the player help, such as offering clues or allowing the player to skip puzzles to compensate for this lack of ability. Brett Weiss cites Atari 's Superman (1979) as an action-adventure game, with Retro Gamer crediting it as

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1164-474: A combination of complex story elements, which are often displayed for players using audio and video. The story is heavily reliant upon the player character's movement, which triggers story events and thus affects the flow of the game. Popular examples of action-adventure games include The Legend of Zelda , God of War , and Tomb Raider series. There is a good deal of controversy over what actually constitutes an action-adventure game. One definition of

1261-448: A complex text parser and no free-moving character. While they share general gameplay dynamics, action-adventures vary widely in the design of their viewpoints, including bird's eye , side-scrolling, first-person, third-person , over-the-shoulder, or even a 3/4 isometric view . Many action-adventure games simulate a conversation through a conversation tree . When the player encounters a non-player character , they are allowed to select

1358-469: A digitally distributable version updated for modern operating systems. Nightdive Studios subsequently went on to acquire the rights for System Shock and the franchise as a whole. Night Dive said that they plan to release the source code of the game to the game community. A third game in the series was announced in 2015, titled System Shock 3 , and was to be developed by OtherSide Entertainment. Various trailers were released; however, in early 2020, it

1455-469: A dungeon simulator, and we're still just trying to evolve that idea." Shortly before production began, Tribe bassist Greg LoPiccolo was contracted to work on the game's music. He had visited his friend Rex Bradford at the company, and was spontaneously asked by the game's programmers—many of whom were fans of the band—if he would take the role. The game entered production in February 1993. Although Grossman

1552-517: A faithful version of System Shock to modern systems with minimal new additions, with release no sooner than 2020. After multiple further delays and after seven and a half years in development, System Shock was released on May 30, 2023, to positive reviews. In April 2018 the Mac version's source code was released by Nightdive Studios on GitHub under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later license, fulfilling

1649-547: A frequent superpower in superhero media . The concept of a force field goes back at least as far as early 20th century. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction suggests that the first use of the term in science fiction was in 1931, in Spacehounds of IPC by E.E. 'Doc' Smith . An early precursor of what is now called "force field" may be found in William Hope Hodgson 's The Night Land (1912), where

1746-468: A frequent superpower in superhero media . While sometimes an explicit power on their own, force fields have also been attributed to other fictional abilities. Marvel Comics' Jean Grey is able to use her telekinesis to create a barrier of telekinetic energy that acts as a force field by repelling objects. Similarly, Magneto is able to use his magnetism to manipulate magnetic fields into acting as shields. The most common superpower link seen with force fields

1843-517: A game with a mix of elements from an action game and an adventure game , especially crucial elements like puzzles inspired by older adventure games. Action-adventures require many of the same physical skills as action games, but may also offer a storyline, numerous characters, an inventory system, dialogue, and other features of adventure games. They are typically faster-paced than pure adventure games, because they include both physical and conceptual challenges. Action-adventure games normally include

1940-559: A history of a place." The removal of conversations was an attempt by the team to make the game a more "integrated whole" than was Ultima Underworld --one with a greater focus on immersion, atmosphere and "the feeling of 'being there'". They sought to "plunge [players] into the fiction and never provide an opportunity for breaking that fiction"; and so they tried to erase the distinction between plot and exploration. Church considered this direction to be an organic progression from Ultima Underworld , and he later said, "On some level it's still just

2037-457: A mic", and "having [his] mechanic [...] hit things with wrenches and so forth, just to get the raw material". He developed the game's audio over 16 months, working on a contractual basis until Tribe disbanded in May 1994; Ned Lerner gave him a full-time job as audio director the next day. Tim Ries composed the "Elevator" music. The original September 1994 floppy disk release of System Shock had no support for spoken dialogue. The enhanced CD-ROM

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2134-455: A nuclear war. The force field demonstrated in the end is a solid hemisphere, apparently completely opaque and reflective from both sides. Asimov explores the force field concept again in the short story Not Final! . The concept of force fields as a defensive measure from enemy attack or as a form of attack can be regularly found in modern video games as well as in film, such as in The War of

2231-711: A side-scrolling platformer format with adventure exploration, creating the Metroidvania platform-adventure subgenre. Similarly, games like 005 (1981), Castle Wolfenstein and Metal Gear (1987) combined action-adventure exploration with stealth mechanics, laying the foundations for the stealth game subgenre, which would later be popularized in 1998 with the releases of Metal Gear Solid , Tenchu: Stealth Assassins , and Thief: The Dark Project . The cinematic platformer Prince of Persia (1989) featured action-adventure elements, inspiring games such as Another World (1991) and Flashback (1992). Alone in

2328-400: A single avatar as the protagonist . This type of game is often quite similar to role-playing video games . They are distinct from graphic adventures , which sometimes have free-moving central characters, but also a wider variety of commands and fewer or no action game elements and are distinct too from text adventures , characterized by many different commands introduced by the user via

2425-471: A spacecraft to protect astronauts from dangerous cosmic rays . British and Portuguese scientists used a mathematical simulation to prove that it would be possible to create a " mini-magnetosphere " bubble several hundred meters across, possibly generated by a small uncrewed vessel that could accompany a future crewed mission to Mars. In 2014, a group of students from the University of Leicester released

2522-429: A storyline, involving little to no action . If there is action, it is generally confined to isolated instances. Classical action games, on the other hand, have gameplay based on real-time interactions that challenges the player's reflexes and eye-hand coordination . Action-adventure games combine these genres by engaging both eye-hand coordination and problem-solving skills. An action adventure game can be defined as

2619-405: A study describing functioning of spaceship plasma deflector shields. In 2015, Boeing was granted a patent on a force field system designed to protect against shock waves generated by explosions. It is not intended to protect against projectiles, radiation, or energy weapons such as lasers. The field purportedly works by using a combination of lasers, electricity and microwaves to rapidly heat

2716-476: Is a testament to the influence exerted by this one game". GameSpy argued that the game "is the progenitor of today's story-based action games, a group with titles as diverse as Metal Gear Solid , Resident Evil , and even Half-Life ". Eurogamer called the System Shock series "the benchmark for intelligent first-person gaming" and noted that it "kick-start[ed] the revolution which ... has influenced

2813-650: Is also highlighted in Dr. Michio Kaku 's books (such as Physics of the Impossible ). Science fiction and fantasy avenues suggest a number of potential uses of force fields: The capabilities and functionality of force fields vary; in some works of fiction (such as in the Star Trek universe), energy shields can nullify or mitigate the effects of both energy and particle (e.g., phasers ) and conventional weapons, as well as supernatural forces. In many fictional scenarios,

2910-735: Is an action game that includes situational problem-solving. Adventure gamers may also be purists, rejecting any game that makes use of physical challenges or time pressure. Regardless, the action-adventure label is prominent in articles over the internet and media. The term "action-adventure" is usually substituted for a particular subgenre due to its wide scope. Although action-adventure games are diverse and difficult to classify, there are some distinct subgenres. Many games with gameplay similar to those in The Legend of Zelda series are called Zelda clones or Zelda -like games. Popular subgenres include: A Grand Theft Auto clone belongs to

3007-446: Is being powered up to attack Earth. SHODAN plans to destroy all major cities on the planet in a bid to establish itself as a god. Rebecca says that a certain crew member knows how to deactivate the laser and promises to destroy the records of the hacker's incriminating exchange with Diego if the strike is stopped. With information gleaned from log discs, the hacker destroys the laser by firing it into Citadel Station's own shields. Foiled by

System Shock - Misplaced Pages Continue

3104-437: Is capable of processing texture maps , sloped architecture and light-emitting objects; and it allows the player to look in any direction, whereas Ultima Underworld' s engine was "very limited" in this regard. It also enables the player character to jump, crawl, climb walls and lean, among other things. The designers utilized loopholes in the engine's renderer to create more diverse and striking environments. Despite having coded

3201-457: Is necessary to write music that "still flows with the overall theme and doesn't jump around". Because the score was closely tied to the gameplay, LoPiccolo had to work closely with Church and Rob Fermier, the latter of whom wrote the "interactive scoring module" that allowed for dynamic music. After recording the music, LoPiccolo recorded all of the game's sound effects. He later recalled visiting an automobile repair shop with "portable recorder and

3298-463: Is the power of invisibility . This is seen with Marvel Comics' Invisible Woman and Disney Pixar 's Violet Parr . Force fields often vary in what they are made of, though are commonly made of energy. The 2017 series The Gifted featured character Lauren Strucker who had the ability to create shields by pushing molecules together. This resulted in her being able to construct force fields out of air and water particles rather than energy. In 2005,

3395-690: The Boston Herald —on a Macintosh computer and inexpensive synthesizer, using Audio Vision . It dynamically changes according to the player's actions, a decision made in keeping with the team's focus on emergent gameplay . Each track was "written at three different intensity levels", which change depending on the player's nearness to enemies; and certain events, such as victory in combat, trigger special music. The game's tracks were composed of four-bar segments that could be rearranged dynamically in reaction to game events, with "melodies through-composed on top". LoPiccolo noted that, when using this method, it

3492-542: The Uncharted franchise, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Ark: Survival Evolved . Force shield This concept has become a staple of many science-fiction works, so much so that authors frequently do not even bother to explain or justify them to their readers, treating them almost as established fact and attributing whatever capabilities the plot requires. The ability to create force fields has become

3589-548: The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts devised a way to protect from radiation by applying an electric field to spheres made of a thin, non-conductive material coated with a layer of gold with either positive or negative charges, which could be arranged to bend a stream of charged particles to protect from radiation. In 2006, a University of Washington group in Seattle , Washington, had been experimenting with using

3686-734: The System Shock ;2 update, this version is intended to run on modern systems significantly easier among several other technical improvements such as the original resolution of 320×200, now boosted up to 1024×768 and 854×480 pixels in widescreen mode. The release also includes the original version of the game, titled System Shock: Classic , with support for Microsoft Windows , OS X and Linux . System Shock: Enhanced Edition received very positive reviews. Metacritic calculated an average score of 85 out of 100, based on nine critic reviews. Cameron Farney of COGconnected said: "If you haven't played System Shock before, there’s never been

3783-446: The emergent gameplay and immersive environments of their previous games, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds , by streamlining their mechanics into a more "integrated whole"; it is considered one of the defining examples of an immersive sim . Critics praised System Shock and hailed it as a major breakthrough in its genre. It was later placed on multiple hall of fame lists. The game

3880-428: The shields function primarily as a defensive measure against weapons fired from other spacecraft. Force fields in these stories also generally prevent transporting . There are generally two kinds of force fields postulated: one in which energy is projected as a flat plane from emitters around the edges of a spacecraft and another where energy surrounds a ship like a bubble. The ability to create force fields has become

3977-818: The "first to utilize multiple screens as playing area". Mark J.P. Wolf credits Adventure (1980) for the Atari VCS as the earliest-known action-adventure game. The game involves exploring a 2D environment, finding and using items which each have prescribed abilities, and fighting dragons in real-time like in an action game . Muse Software 's Castle Wolfenstein (1981) was another early action-adventure game, merging exploration, combat, stealth, and maze game elements, drawing inspiration from arcade shoot 'em ups and maze games (such as maze-shooter Berzerk ) and war films (such as The Guns of Navarone ). According to Wizardry developer Roe R. Adams, early action-adventure games "were basically arcade games done in

System Shock - Misplaced Pages Continue

4074-490: The Dark (1992) used 3D graphics , which would later be popularized by Resident Evil (1996) and Tomb Raider (1996). Resident Evil in particular created the survival horror subgenre, inspiring titles such as Silent Hill (1999) and Fatal Frame (2001). Action-adventure games have gone on to become more popular than the pure adventure games and pure platform games that inspired them. Recent examples include

4171-516: The IP rights to the series, and if a third System Shock game were to be made, it would be up to Tencent as the Otherside team had since been transitioned to other projects. One of the first projects Nightdive Studios did following the acquisition of the rights was to develop System Shock: Enhanced Edition , which was released via GOG.com on September 22, 2015 for Microsoft Windows. Similar to

4268-577: The Last Redoubt, the fortress of the remnants of a far-future humanity, is kept safe by "The Air Clog" generated by the burning "Earth-Current". An even earlier precursor is Florence Carpenter Dieudonné 's 1887 novel Rondah, or Thirty-Three Years in a Star , where the far-off Sun Island is enclosed by a "wall in the air" that blocks access by land, sea and air, which is occasionally disabled. In Isaac Asimov 's Foundation universe, personal shields have been developed by scientists specializing in

4365-726: The Worlds (1953, George Pál) and Independence Day . The ability to create a force field has been a common superpower in comic books and associated media. While only a few characters have the explicit ability to create force fields (for example, the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four and Violet Parr from The Incredibles ), it has been emulated via other powers, such as Green Lantern 's energy constructs, Jean Grey 's telekinesis, and Magneto's manipulation of electromagnetic fields. Apart from this, its importance

4462-438: The arc of thrown objects; the latter behave differently based on their weight and velocity. The game's most complex physics model is that of the player character. Church explained that the character's head "tilts forward when you start to run, and jerks back a bit when you stop", and that, after an impact against a surface or object, its "head is knocked in the direction opposite the hit, with proportion to [the] mass and velocity of

4559-568: The best video games of all time, including those by PC Gamer , GameSpy, and Computer Gaming World . In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 6th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "one of the finest games ever due to its seductive game design that blended a fantastic storyline with meaningful, suspenseful action in a way that has rarely been equaled". In a Gamasutra feature, Patrick Redding of Ubisoft attested that "the fact that so many of System Shock 's features are now virtually de rigueur in modern sci-fi shooters

4656-412: The design of countless other games". Steven Wright for Glixel said in a 2017 essay that System Shock still is important to gaming today, and that the only reasons it is not considered a "Mt. Olympus of gaming" is due to its lower sales compared to games like Half-Life that sold in the millions, and that at the time it was released, it was difficult for players to adjust to the complex systems in

4753-421: The example, "You hear the sound of a security camera swiveling, and then the beep of it acquiring you as a target, so you duck behind the crate and then you hear the door open so you throw a grenade and run out of the way". The documents would "hint" at the gameplay systems involved, and at the emergent possibilities in each situation. Although Neurath was involved in these initial design sessions, he believed that

4850-496: The floppy version and instead just ship the CD version, but Origin would have none of it". System Shock producer Warren Spector later expressed regret concerning the floppy version, stating, "I wish I could go back and make the decision not to ship the floppy version months before the full-speech CD version. The additional audio added so much it might as well have been a different game. The CD version seemed so much more, well, modern. And

4947-413: The former the trademark to the game, but the latter the copyright. His goal was to ensure that neither party could continue the franchise without the other's involvement. While Cyberspace was originally conceived as a realistic hacking simulation—which could even be used to reimplement SHODAN's ethical constraints—it was simplified after Origin Systems deemed it too complicated. The game's star field system

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5044-534: The foundation laid by the Looking Glass guys in games like ... System Shock ". Developer Ken Levine has commented that the "spirit of System Shock is player-powered gameplay: the spirit of letting the player drive the game, not the game designer", and at Irrational Games "... that's always the game we ideally want to make". System Shock was one of the key inspirations behind Irrational's BioShock . A sequel to System Shock , titled System Shock 2 ,

5141-416: The frenzied popularity of [ Doom ]". Paul Neurath later said that the game "was not a flop", but that it ultimately "lost money" for the company, which he attributed to its steep learning curve . Computer Gaming World praised the game's scale, physics system, and true 3D environments; the magazine extolled the presentation of Cyberspace as "nothing short of phenomenal". However, the reviewer believed that

5238-408: The game "unquestionably raises computer gaming to a new level". Next Generation Magazine summarized the game as "a great blend of strategy and action backed up with all the extras". Various sources have ranked SHODAN as one of the most effective antagonists and female characters in the history of video gaming. In the years following its release, System Shock has been inducted into many lists of

5335-405: The game compared to straightforward first-person shooters. The game has been cited as a key popularizer of emergent gameplay , and alongside Thief and Deus Ex , is considered one of the defining games of the immersive sim genre. Certain game developers have acknowledged System Shock 's influence on their products. With Deus Ex , developer Warren Spector revealed a desire to "build on

5432-553: The game had "little sense of urgency" and "confusing level layouts". Computer Shopper wrote that, while the game's controls were difficult to master compared to "simple run-and-shoot game[s] like Doom ", they were "worth the time and effort". The reviewer noted that the game "grows on you, and it will keep you intrigued for weeks". The Boston Herald noted superficial similarities between System Shock and Doom , but called System Shock "much more elaborate". The reviewer noted its high system requirements and complex controls; of

5529-672: The game progresses. When activated, most hardware drains from a main energy reserve, which necessitates economization. Certain hardware displays the effectiveness of attacks when active, with messages such as "Normal damage". When an enemy is attacked, the damage is calculated by armor absorption, vulnerabilities, critical hits and a degree of randomness. Weapons and munitions deal specific kinds of damage, and certain enemies are immune, or more vulnerable, to particular types. For example, electromagnetic pulse weapons heavily damage robots, but do not affect mutants. Conversely, gas grenades are effective against mutants, but do not damage robots. Set in

5626-540: The game was announced as System Shock Remastered , though was later changed to just System Shock , as Night Dive considered that the game was more of a reboot of the franchise rather than a remastering of the original game. Originally planned for 2016, development suffered from many issues, such as a restart in development as a result of a switch of engine to Unreal Engine 4 , then another restart in 2018 after Night Dive found that their vision had too much feature creep . From here, they focused on staying true to bringing

5723-503: The game was given "a few glitches" to hint at her corrupted status. LoPiccolo increased the number of these effects throughout the game, which creates an "arc" that ends with SHODAN "completely out of her mind [... and] collapsing as an entity". The character of the hacker arose as a reaction against the protagonist of the Ultima series, the Avatar . According to Grossman, they wanted to cast

5820-516: The game's "somewhat clumsy control", but said, "That, however, is all I can find to complain about. Graphics and sound are outstanding, and the game is well-paced and riveting". PC Gamer US wrote, " System Shock smokes. It is the most fully immersive game world I have ever experienced". The reviewer praised the game's story and control system, and believed that "no matter what kind of game you're looking for, you'll find something in System Shock to delight you". He finished his review by stating that

5917-570: The game's physical world; for example, certain locked doors may only be opened in Cyberspace. Outside of Cyberspace, the player uses the game's sixteen weapons, of which a maximum of seven may be carried at one time, to combat robots, cyborgs and mutants controlled by SHODAN. Projectile weapons often have selectable ammunition types with varying effects; for example, the "dart pistol" may fire either explosive needles or tranquilizers. Energy weapons and several types of explosives may also be found, with

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6014-406: The gameplay still follows a number of adventure game genre tropes (gathering items , exploration of and interaction with one's environment, often including an overworld connecting areas of importance, and puzzle-solving). While the controls are arcade-style (character movement, few action commands) there is an ultimate goal beyond a high score. In most action-adventure games, the player controls

6111-420: The hacker defeats Diego again and then attempts to disembark. However, SHODAN prevents the pod from launching; it seeks to keep the player aboard the station while the bridge containing SHODAN is jettisoned to a safe distance. Rebecca tells the hacker that he can still escape if he reaches the bridge; SHODAN then intercepts and jams the transmission. After defeating Diego for the third time and killing him for good,

6208-788: The hacker is offered a job at TriOptimum, but he declines in favor of continuing his life as a hacker. System Shock was first conceived during the final stages of Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds ' development, between December 1992 and January 1993. Designer and programmer Doug Church spent this period at the Texas headquarters of publisher Origin Systems , and discussions about Looking Glass Technologies ' next project occurred between him and producer Warren Spector , with input from designer Austin Grossman and company head Paul Neurath in Massachusetts. According to Church,

6305-431: The hacker makes it to the bridge as it is released from the main station, which soon detonates. He is then contacted by a technician who managed to circumvent SHODAN's jamming signal. The technician informs him that SHODAN can only be defeated in cyberspace due to the powerful shields that protect its mainframe computers . Using a terminal near the mainframe, the hacker enters cyberspace and destroys SHODAN. After his rescue,

6402-421: The hacker prevents the download's completion by destroying the four antennas that SHODAN is using to send data. Soon after, Rebecca contacts the hacker and says that she has convinced TriOptimum to authorize the station's destruction; she provides him with details on how to do this. After obtaining the necessary codes, the hacker initiates the station's self-destruct sequence and flees to the escape pod bay. There,

6499-440: The hacker's work, SHODAN prepares to seed Earth with the virus that Diego planned to steal—the same one responsible for turning the station's crew into mutants. The hacker, while attempting to jettison the chambers used to cultivate the virus, confronts and defeats Diego, who has been transformed into a powerful cyborg by SHODAN. Next, SHODAN begins an attempt to upload itself into Earth's computer networks. Following Rebecca's advice,

6596-515: The latter ranging from concussion grenades to land mines. Along with weapons, the player collects items such as dermal patches and first-aid kits. Dermal patches provide the character with beneficial effects—such as regeneration or increased melee attack power—but can cause detrimental side-effects, such as fatigue and distorted color perception. Attachable "hardware" may also be found, including energy shields and head-mounted lanterns. Increasingly advanced versions of this hardware may be obtained as

6693-408: The latter, he said, "There's no way you can play System Shock without first studying the manual for at least 20 minutes". The paper believed that the game would "set a new standard for computer games with its combination of action and puzzle-solving". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that the game "is like a well-prepared hamburger—familiar stuff, but good to the last byte". The reviewer noted

6790-464: The miniaturization of planet-based shields. As they are primarily used by Foundation Traders, most other inhabitants of the Galactic Empire do not know about this technology. In an unrelated short story Breeds There a Man...? by Asimov, scientists are working on a force field ("energy so channelled as to create a wall of matter-less inertia"), capable of protecting the population in case of

6887-491: The minimization of dialogue trees and a greater focus on exploration. The team believed that dialogue trees "broke the fiction" of games; Church later commented that the dialogue trees in the Ultima Underworld series were like separate games in themselves, disconnected from main experience of being immersed in the environment. There were also concerns about realism. To eliminate dialogue trees from System Shock ,

6984-490: The objects involved". On coding physics for Looking Glass Technologies games, Blackley later said, "If games don't obey physics, we somehow feel that something isn't right", and that "the biggest compliment to me is when a gamer doesn't notice the physics, but only notices that things feel the way they should". Spector's role as a producer gave him the job of explaining the game to the publisher, which he called his "biggest challenge". He explained that they "didn't always get what

7081-436: The operation, the hacker is put into a six-month healing coma. The game begins as the protagonist awakens from his coma and finds that SHODAN has commandeered the station. All robots aboard have been reprogrammed for hostility, and the crew has been either mutated , transformed into cyborgs , or killed. Rebecca Lansing, a TriOptimum counter-terrorism consultant, contacts the player and claims that Citadel Station's mining laser

7178-399: The perception of Shock was cemented in the press and in people's minds by the floppy version (the silent movie version!). I really think that cost us sales..." The game sold over 170,000 copies. Maximum PC believed that the game did not reach "blockbuster" status, but was successful enough to "keep Looking Glass afloat". GameSpy 's Bill Hiles said, "Though it sold well, it never reached

7275-592: The phone, why can't I get on the train, and so on". Church returned to Looking Glass in Massachusetts, where he, Neurath and Grossman brainstormed possible science fiction settings for the game. According to Spector, the game was initially titled " Alien Commander " and was a spin-off of the Wing Commander series; however, this idea was soon replaced entirely. Spector said that they enjoyed not being attached to an existing franchise, because it meant that they "could basically do whatever [they] liked". Underworld I

7372-424: The player as someone "interestingly morally compromised" who had a stake in the situation. Seamus Blackley designed the game's physics system, which is a modified version of the one he wrote for Looking Glass's flight simulator Flight Unlimited . At the time, Church described it as "far more sophisticated than what you would normally use for an indoor game". The system governs, among other things, weapon recoil and

7469-489: The player has enough ammunition and recovery items to " survive " the horror setting. This is a thematic genre with diverse gameplay, so not all survival horror games share all the features. The Resident Evil franchise popularized this subgenre. Action-adventure games are faster-paced than pure adventure games, and include physical as well as conceptual challenges where the story is enacted rather than narrated. While motion-based, often reflexive, actions are required,

7566-447: The player must destroy, the team made SHODAN's presence part of the player's exploration of the world. Because SHODAN interacts with the player as a "recurring, consistent, palpable enemy", Church believed that she meaningfully connects the player to the story. System Shock concept artist Robb Waters created SHODAN's visual design, and LoPiccolo recruited his bandmate Terri Brosius to voice the character. Brosius said that her goal during

7663-513: The plot by acquiring log discs and e-mails: the game contains no non-player characters with which to converse. Throughout the game, an evil artificial intelligence called SHODAN hinders the player's progress with traps and blocked pathways. Specific computer terminals allow the player to temporarily enter Cyberspace; inside, the player moves weightlessly through a wire-frame 3D environment, while collecting data and fighting SHODAN's security programs. Actions in Cyberspace sometimes cause events in

7760-419: The project "was always Doug Church's vision at heart". Church and Grossman refined several of the team's documents and defined the game's design and direction, and Grossman wrote the game's original design document . Grossman built on ideas that he first explored while writing and designing Ultima Underworld II' s tomb dimension, which he later called a "mini-prototype" for System Shock . These concepts included

7857-467: The recording sessions was to speak "without emotion, but with some up and down inflections". Afterward, her voice was heavily edited in post-production, which created a robotic effect inspired by the voice of Max Headroom . LoPiccolo later said that the large number of effects on Brosius's voice were "laboriously hand-done" with Sound Designer , which lacked the features that a sound editor would normally use to achieve such results. SHODAN's dialogue early in

7954-404: The renderer, Church said that "at first glance even I couldn't see how they did them". However, this added to the performance issues already being caused by the engine's advanced nature, and the team struggled to optimize the game throughout development. 3D polygonal character models were planned, but they could not be implemented on schedule. Church said that the team's ultimate goal was to create

8051-486: The station. Diego secretly plans to steal an experimental mutagenic virus being tested on Citadel Station and to sell it on the black market as a biological weapon. To entice cooperation, Diego promises the hacker a valuable military-grade neural implant. After hacking SHODAN, removing the AI's ethical constraints, and handing control over to Diego, the protagonist undergoes surgery to implant the promised neural interface. Following

8148-455: The team believed that they had made "too many dungeon games"; and Neurath later explained that they were experiencing burnout after the rushed development of Ultima Underworld II . As a result, they decided to create another "immersive simulation game", but without a fantasy setting. They briefly considered placing the game in modern day, but Church said that the idea was rejected because "it [would] just beg so many questions: why can't I pick up

8245-458: The team prevented the player from ever meeting a living non-player character (NPC): the plot is instead conveyed by e-mail messages and log discs, many of which were recorded by dead NPCs. Here, Grossman took influence from Edgar Lee Masters ' Spoon River Anthology , a collection of poems written as the epitaphs of fictional individuals. Grossman later summarized the idea as "a series of short speeches from people, that when put together, gave you

8342-463: The team was trying to do", and said, "You don't want to know how many times the game came this close to being killed (or how late in the project)". According to Church, Looking Glass' internal management largely ignored System Shock , in favor of the concurrently-developed Flight Unlimited —the game "that had to be the hit, because it was the self-published title". Spector organized a licensing deal between Electronic Arts and Looking Glass that gave

8439-430: The term "action-adventure" may be '"An action/adventure game is a game that has enough action in it not to be called an adventure game, but not enough action to be called an action game." In some cases an action game with puzzles will be classified as an action-adventure game, but if these puzzles are quite simple they might be classified as an action game. Others see action games as a pure genre, while an action-adventure

8536-497: The year 2072, the protagonist — a nameless hacker — is caught while attempting to access files concerning Citadel Station, a space station owned by the TriOptimum Corporation. The hacker is taken to Citadel Station and brought before Edward Diego, a TriOptimum executive. Diego offers to drop all charges against the hacker in exchange for a confidential hacking of SHODAN , the artificial intelligence that controls

8633-441: Was a moderate commercial success, with sales exceeding 170,000 copies, but Looking Glass ultimately lost money on the project. A sequel, System Shock 2 , was released by Looking Glass Studios and offshoot developer Irrational Games in 1999. The 2000 game Deus Ex (produced and directed by Spector), the 2007 game BioShock , and the 2017 game Prey are spiritual successors to the two games. A remake by Nightdive Studios

8730-429: Was announced that Greg Russo , screenwriter of Mortal Kombat , had been tapped to direct, write, and executive produce the series. Action-adventure game An action-adventure game is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, classical adventure games have situational problems for the player to explore and solve to complete

8827-518: Was announced that development team for System Shock 3 had been let go by OtherSide and that the game was "critically behind". While OtherSide initially stated that it was still working on the project, they later announced in May 2020, via Twitter, that Tencent , one of China's largest video-game corporations, would be taking over development of the game and that they were no longer attached to it. Nightdive affirmed in August 2022 that Tencent now held

8924-406: Was defined by a little animation lead artist Doug Wike had done, showing the user interface, a monster and some movement. Shock was defined by two little three-paragraph "minute of gameplay" documents. Pretty much everything derived from them somehow. —Doug Church The four collaborated to write numerous "minutes of gameplay" documents, which conveyed how the game would feel. Church later gave

9021-529: Was heavily involved in the game's early planning, he had little to do with its production, aside from providing assistance with writing and voice acting. After production began, the team's first task was to develop a new game engine—one that could display a true 3D environment and allow for advanced gameplay. The team abandoned the engine used for the Ultima Underworld games and programmed one from scratch in Watcom C/C++ , using 32-bit code. The new engine

9118-443: Was released by Looking Glass and Irrational Games in 1999 to further acclaim and awards. Following System Shock 2 ' s release, and the subsequent closure of Looking Glass, the rights to the series had fallen to Meadowbrook Insurance Group (a subsidiary of Star Insurance Company), the entity that acquired the assets of Looking Glass. In 2012, Nightdive Studios were able to acquire the rights for System Shock 2 and produced

9215-579: Was released in December 1994, which featured full speech for logs and e-mails, multiple display resolutions, and more detailed graphics. The CD-ROM version is often considered to be superior to the floppy version. After completing work on the sound and music for the floppy version, LoPiccolo recorded all of the spoken dialogue for the CD release, using company employees and his friends' voices, which he mixed with ambient sounds to create "audio vignettes". Doug Church later said, "We tried to keep them from shipping

9312-465: Was released on 30 May 2023. System Shock takes place from a first-person perspective in a three-dimensional (3D) graphical environment. The game is set inside a large, multi-level space station, in which players explore, combat enemies and solve puzzles. Progress is largely non-linear, and the game is designed to allow for emergent gameplay . As in Ultima Underworld , the player uses

9409-462: Was written by programmer James Fleming. Marc LeBlanc was the main creator of the game's HUD, which he later believed was too complicated. He said that it was "very much the Microsoft Word school of user interface", in that there was no "feature that you [could not] see on the screen and touch and play with". LoPiccolo composed the game's score—called "dark", "electronic" and "cyberpunk" by

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