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Topic Summary

Posted by: xdiesp
« on: 14. February 2014, 19:26:14 »

I took the year of SHODAN's birth from this timeline's, for my mod.

It isn't exactly explained why SHODAN could shut you down in Ops during the big reveal, and later lose against you in her own realm. I actually took this as a hint that no, you weren't besting her at all.
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 14. February 2014, 19:10:07 »

I wonder what the Q-Grade cyber rig is like?  Does it have little ponies in the HUD or something?  How is the R-Grade version more badass and illegal exactly?  Why are HAMburgers always made of beef?  So many big questions needing answers....
Posted by: Julie
« on: 14. February 2014, 03:03:38 »

Thanks for the welcome, RocketMan.  That's sweet of you.:-)

@kolya - I remember the "backup" being mentioned and Grassing bitching about "I just work here".. I guess I missed the Shodan quote bragging about surgically altering Goggles. i appreciate you reposting that bit for me.  B-)
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 13. February 2014, 22:15:55 »

Quote by SHODAN:
I thought Polito would be my avatar, but Polito was weak. It was I who chose you and I who had a robotic servant render your form unconscious. I then completed you with cybernetic grace.

Quote by Grassi:
Hey, doc... a security bot showed up with orders from you to place this grunt into the recovery freezer. I'm no cyberdoc, but I know a plant job when I see one. I suppose you know they outlawed R-grade cyber-goodies after that fiasco back on Citadel Station... but, hey, I just work here, right?

SHODAN gave Goggles an unrestricted "R-grade" interface. So yeah, you might call it an upgrade.
Posted by: voodoo47
« on: 13. February 2014, 21:17:26 »

that was slightly random. and yeah, Goggles is Shodan's backup plan - one that worked a bit too well, one can say. but no matter, as she already had a backup backup plan.
Posted by: RocketMan
« on: 13. February 2014, 20:55:08 »

Welcome to the forums XD
Posted by: Julie
« on: 13. February 2014, 19:55:08 »

It was Shodan wasn't it? Isn't this confirmed in-game? Hmm.

I agree with you about Shodan. I guess it was the short time table that bothered me.
Posted by: Join2
« on: 13. February 2014, 19:22:19 »

So, given that, my best guess is that Shodan ordered the "upgrade" to Goggles' rig as insurance so that she could use him to further her goals. It would also follow that an upgrade would require less healing than a full, fresh, implant would.

It was Shodan wasn't it? Isn't this confirmed in-game? Hmm.
Posted by: Julie
« on: 13. February 2014, 18:38:00 »

There is one question that's been on my mind lately... Why was Goggles placed into a healing coma at Tau Ceti? As a UNN military officer, one would think that he already had a cyber-rig /interface installed because of the training offered at Ramses. There is no other mention of it until June 10th, 2114 when Sho-Lito orders an interruption of Goggles memory restoration.

So, given that, my best guess is that Shodan ordered the "upgrade" to Goggles' rig as insurance so that she could use him to further her goals. It would also follow that an upgrade would require less healing than a full, fresh, implant would.

I'm trying to make sense of the events in this seemingly short section of the time-line.

Thoughts?

Posted by: Lambda 00
« on: 22. February 2013, 03:06:32 »

The citation notes are amazing for finding the specific log transcripts.  Thanks for that!
Posted by: Rebus
« on: 16. February 2013, 21:47:08 »

FYI I just finished the process of comparing Z's timeline against that on the wiki. I stopped just before SS2 as I haven't finished that game yet.

I preferred not to duplicate the information, but the process enabled me to notice some mistakes and omissions, discover information reveled in cut content/logs, and furthermore, decide to add citations. As of now, the result is still not perfect, as when I begun working there, the wiki already had some mistakes which haven't been checked and corrected (yet). The citations will help me/us to discover the duplicate entries put in wrong dates and remove them.

Feel free to check the composite timeline and have a nice reading :)
Posted by: Zygo
« on: 15. February 2013, 22:25:56 »

So far as I am concerned permission is granted (nice surprise that it was even asked), it's all publicly available stuff and redoing it would just be duplication.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 15. February 2013, 20:38:28 »

As stated in the first post this timeline is not my work. For all I care, do as you will.
Posted by: Lambda 00
« on: 15. February 2013, 18:27:24 »

Kolya, do you mind if I incorporate your timeline into the wiki at http://shodan.wikia.com/wiki/Storyline ? That way your interpretations can be further corrected and analyzed while your original text remains here.

If you agree, are there any conditions? Eg. do you allow me to copy/paste your entries verbatim on the wiki (temporarily, as eventually alterations will be made to the article) or would you prefer your work to be used only as a reference? (eg. write the entries in my own words using your information)

Honestly, it probably wouldn't be a big deal, as long as you use citations to the thread where it originated from.  (alternatively, put it on the talk page with a link back here until Kolya replies)
Posted by: Rebus
« on: 08. February 2013, 12:09:50 »

Kolya, do you mind if I incorporate your timeline into the wiki at http://shodan.wikia.com/wiki/Storyline ? That way your interpretations can be further corrected and analyzed while your original text remains here.

If you agree, are there any conditions? Eg. do you allow me to copy/paste your entries verbatim on the wiki (temporarily, as eventually alterations will be made to the article) or would you prefer your work to be used only as a reference? (eg. write the entries in my own words using your information)
Posted by: OmegaDeath
« on: 24. March 2012, 13:38:19 »

For example ss1  "tron"
Posted by: OmegaDeath
« on: 24. March 2012, 13:35:31 »

Yes you can see the deep inspiration these theme's had on the developers.

Leading to clever ripoffs like portal's  "GlaDOS", dead space, dead space 2...
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 24. March 2012, 10:32:40 »

Think of the Many's eggs, the way the Von Braun is lured towards Tau Ceti, the parasitic worms...
Of course there are other influences present too: The player is being transformed by his implants, becoming more of a machine, as SHODAN likes to point out. This theme reaches back to SS1 where it was the main theme and to the books by William Gibson. Of course the question "What is human?" is also one of the great questions of science fiction (eg Blade Runner). Then the Von Braun's inner design is actually a Star Trek ship after an attack.

Interestingly SHODAN is the closest thing to a human being you'll come in contact with in the System Shock series. All her hubris, her narcissism and her hatred are bad but genuine human emotions. And strangely this makes her believable as a techno goddess. We probably couldn't relate to an actual AI at all.
The player on the other hand is an efficient silent killing force. Compare this with Homer's epics where the human heroes have godlike qualities (Achilles, Hector, etc) while the gods act a lot like humans. They get angry and jealous, they bitch at each other and they mingle with humans in every possible way.
Posted by: OmegaDeath
« on: 24. March 2012, 06:00:09 »

Ahh. yes The alien movies...
Looks at ss2 sketches... yes it makes sense.

BTW... i am reading everything on this site.
Like every damn page, fiction or not..
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 23. March 2012, 22:59:19 »

Event Horizon (1997) was released before SS2 (1999). However SS2 and Event Horizon both have a lot in common with the Alien film which was released even earlier in 1979.
Posted by: OmegaDeath
« on: 23. March 2012, 20:16:04 »

please do explain..
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 23. March 2012, 18:23:54 »

They sent a team to a asteroid to collect a piece of a artifact..

That bring to question.. was SS2 released first or.. the movie event horizon? 
Pretty sure that Alien came first.
Posted by: OmegaDeath
« on: 23. March 2012, 17:16:49 »

Sorry for double post... each fragment held a perfect copy..... -_-
Posted by: OmegaDeath
« on: 23. March 2012, 17:11:05 »

Wow.. awesome work.
Cleared up a few things for me. O_O

"
When SHODAN ejects the garden beta grove from Citadel Station, where she had experimented with mutagens on humans, there is a copy of herself on board, stored in a fractal memory device (called "datawafer" or "artefact" in the game).
It becomes clear through the logs, that you find scattered on the VB in System Shock 2, that a crew member named Bayliss, finds the datawafer on Tau Ceti V.
"
OMG.. just realized that dead space is such a rip off.
They sent a team to a asteroid to collect a piece of a artifact..

That bring to question.. was SS2 released first or.. the movie event horizon? 
Posted by: oupastilli
« on: 11. March 2012, 11:19:03 »

Thanks. I have to check that. I have never used that command on items...
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 11. March 2012, 11:01:00 »

It's in the description of the soda cans. You can Ctrl-CLick on a can or use the question mark symbol to read it.
Objlook is the equivalent shocked command.
Posted by: oupastilli
« on: 11. March 2012, 10:21:39 »

2023 The first two megacorporations employ mercenaries to destroy each other's offshore soda bottling facilities. (SS2 soda objlook)

Hey, can I ask what's the source of this information? What does "SS2 soda objlook" mean?
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 10. February 2011, 13:13:39 »

Longer explanation (since Atropos beat me to it):

When SHODAN ejects the garden beta grove from Citadel Station, where she had experimented with mutagens on humans, there is a copy of herself on board, stored in a fractal memory device (called "datawafer" or "artefact" in the game).
It becomes clear through the logs, that you find scattered on the VB in System Shock 2, that a crew member named Bayliss, finds the datawafer on Tau Ceti V.

Quote by Bayliss, 27. Juni 2114:
For some reason, they couldn't get a hold of my mind they way they could the rest. So when I found the remains of the data wafer near the crater back on Tau Ceti, I didn't say a word. I just slipped it into my belt and thought, 'Dr. Polito will know what to do with this...'

Quote by Janice Polito, 25. June. 2114:
Marie... I'm sorry I've been out of touch, but I've been working on that artifact Bayliss brought back from Tau Ceti 5. I've done a level 3 analysis on it... I think it's some kind of Artificial Intelligence. I've managed to pull an audio tag file out of its memory... I'll let you be the judge... Marie... I think it's speaking English...
Posted by: unn_atropos
« on: 10. February 2011, 12:58:42 »

A data fragment was found on Tau Ceti 5 and the landing team brought it to the von Braun.
Posted by: nickprax
« on: 10. February 2011, 06:17:31 »

ehhh i know that everyone is going to call me a newb :p, but I was wondering how did SHODAN get onto the VB? I'm new to this universe and hadn't found out the answer
Posted by: Ampersand
« on: 09. August 2010, 21:40:02 »

...and, wasn't this the entire point of the Many "absorbing" so many of the VB's crew?
I believe that was a combination of their own twisted altruism, and not being able to do all that much with worms alone.
Posted by: Enchantermon
« on: 09. August 2010, 05:23:39 »

In System Shock 1, the player character's bogus employee number is #2-4601. This could possibly be a reference to the musical Les Miserables, where the main character's prisoner ID was 24601, a plot point that's referred to repeatedly.
Yeah, that's a known reference. For the life of me, though, I can't remember where I read about it.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 08. August 2010, 19:53:49 »

Nice catch! :D I added the possible reference into the timeline.
Posted by: Accoch63
« on: 08. August 2010, 17:22:10 »

Fair point about the evolution process creating a more streamlined infection pattern; however, this would require the Many to birth new eggs at a rapid rate in order to spawn the new generation of ultrafast worms.
Which is one area that having a simulator would certainly come in handy.  It doesn't exactly clear up the naming of the three sim units, but presumably the Many could use them to rapidly simulate generational changes and, on finding one they like, figure out what the genetic code is, and somehow apply that to new eggs.


...and, wasn't this the entire point of the Many "absorbing" so many of the VB's crew?

Oh, by the way; I just noticed something interesting.

In System Shock 1, the player character's bogus employee number is #2-4601. This could possibly be a reference to the musical Les Miserables, where the main character's prisoner ID was 24601, a plot point that's referred to repeatedly.
Posted by: Ampersand
« on: 31. July 2010, 19:44:05 »

Fair point about the evolution process creating a more streamlined infection pattern; however, this would require the Many to birth new eggs at a rapid rate in order to spawn the new generation of ultrafast worms.
Which is one area that having a simulator would certainly come in handy.  It doesn't exactly clear up the naming of the three sim units, but presumably the Many could use them to rapidly simulate generational changes and, on finding one they like, figure out what the genetic code is, and somehow apply that to new eggs.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 31. July 2010, 08:24:23 »

We already established that fact on the previous page, but thanks.
Posted by: randy
« on: 31. July 2010, 05:38:37 »

the person Sara is the real deal. Sara is listed as part of Looking glass quality assurance in the system shock 1 manual. I don't know where but i found it by installing the cd-rom version of the game and trying to run it. Thought you'd like to know.
Posted by: Nameless Voice
« on: 17. July 2010, 21:47:02 »

Those aren't canon, so no, they don't belong in the timeline.
Posted by: Brett B (Batt Spacenik)
« on: 17. July 2010, 08:17:22 »

I guess some of the newest SS2 MODs (which actually track a progression of ships and facilities/colonies infected by the Many) will have inspired some smart folks to continue detailing a timeline beyond 2116 (time of the Von Braun). By the way, what "happened" after SHODAN was destroyed at the end of SS2? I guess the audiologs\etc of Christine Z's Ponterbee Station continue the story (the recovery of the escape pod and SHODAN's reemergence). What happens to our hero Soldier G65434-2 after he destroys SHODAN on the empty Von Braun? Does the UNN send out a ship of Grunts to clear remaining hybrids and eggs from the ship? If TriOp and the UNN invested a ton of money in the VB I bet they would like to use it again if it were "disinfected". (Like the company rep arguing against exploding the colony power facility in ALIENS).   
Posted by: Enchantermon
« on: 26. June 2010, 02:51:39 »

Sure they tell him that, they tend to lie.
Do they?
Posted by: Drew
« on: 26. June 2010, 01:28:14 »

Sure they tell him that, they tend to lie. And it's entirely possible they planned it then changed their minds later. Anyway, as you say, complete conjecture on my part, I just like the image of Diego as a rumbler while he's hulking out on the logs.
Posted by: Enchantermon
« on: 25. June 2010, 06:59:45 »

. . . Diego is in fact in the process of turning into a rumbler, when he's at his most unbalanced, and not a psi rever.
Whether or not the Rumblers are the last step before the Reavers is certainly up for interpretation (though I doubt it), but Diego's was ultimately heading for Reaver-hood. One of his e-mails to Korenchkin mentions that the Many told him that he will "float through the air" and kill people "with [his] mind." Certainly sounds like a Reaver, and certainly does not sound like a Rumbler.
Posted by: Drew
« on: 25. June 2010, 06:49:58 »

Thank you for editing all three of those posts together, hah. Also for the TLLG thread, some interesting theories there. I do understand what you're saying about it being meant to be  taken more as a thematic work than as a straight story, this stuff just really bugs me is all. To that end: "Simulation just *went* offline again; it took the 4 of us 12 hours *to get it up* the last time." If they were just dormant, it wouldn't explain either why they had installed giant computer cores on the ship without actually needing them, or why the log clearly makes reference to them being on at some point. Unless you're saying they just had a tendency to fritz up and down, which is fine. Only if they are, as seems to be the conventional wisdom, what does the chief numbercrunching for the FTD (somewhat explaining the outer growth of the many's biomass for the BOTM mission) you'd then have to wonder exactly what would happen to the ship if one or, God help them, all three went offline in the middle of a drive burn. Actually, this very possibility would explain the last line of "Christ, who would want to sabotage the sim units?" It doesn't answer his question, though. If the many's intention was to return to earth, one would think they wanted them functioning at peak efficiency for the trip home.

Fair point about the evolution process creating a more streamlined infection pattern; however, this would require the Many to birth new eggs at a rapid rate in order to spawn the new generation of ultrafast worms. Not that that isn't entirely conceivable, it just puts another wrinkle in the many's plans. As for Korenchkin, I'm fairly certain he is at that point a hybrid much like all the others on the 28th and around the time he's running around with a shotgun popping heads; it isn't until the 10th (?) that he becomes a rever. By the way, just as food for thought: I like to believe, and some SS2 literature hints at this, that the rumblers are unevolved psirevers and that Diego is in fact in the process of turning into a rumbler, when he's at his most unbalanced, and not a psi rever. As the Military commander, it would seem to fit him better, and I can absolutely see the many punishing him this way for fighting their influence so much.
Posted by: Enchantermon
« on: 24. June 2010, 12:15:00 »

Fair enough. Sorry, thought I'd made sure to get them all right, guess I missed a few.
It's cool.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 24. June 2010, 10:39:49 »

TTLG: I never understood "sim units"
The reason they were offline before is probably just that the ship "wasn't ready for prime time", ie not properly tested.

You might need to take into account that the Many are a rapidly evolving species and given the new experimentation material on the VB this process could speed up even more. So while the first mutations might have taken days to complete, later ones could go considerably faster.
Regarding Korenchkin: He is transformed into a late highly evolved form, which takes more resources and possibly more time to finish.


Ultimately though this story was never written to stand such scrutiny. It's pretty good for a game plot, but it's not Stanisław Lem. Don't get me wrong, it has a lot of food for thought, but the themes it explores (transhumanism, individual vs group, technology as a religion, to name a few) are much more interesting than picking through the dates and details.
Posted by: Drew
« on: 24. June 2010, 05:31:45 »

Fair enough. Sorry, thought I'd made sure to get them all right, guess I missed a few. In a bit of a rush at the end, I basically wrote the things that occurred to me as I read then tried to edit the divergent thoughts into a cohesive narrative before slapping it up there.

Oh, yeah, since I can't edit my posts: the "they" in the sentence where I talk about Malick hacking the sim units was supposed to refer to the turrets. Sorry. That's what I get for moving sentences around and not checking for context afterwords.

While I'm on the subject, I still have no idea at all what a "sim unit" is supposed to do. Is it a giant Xerxes backup, or something? Like a 22nd century RAID aray? They're apparently really friggin' important as the many, Xerxes, the tech staff, a great deal of the fighting, Shodan, and you all spend a lot of effort in being the one controlling them, so you'd think that somewhere there'd be some sort of technobabbly explanation for what they do. Shodan mentions that the many's purpose for them is to "transform the meat of your dead coleegs into hunter-killer hybrids," and somehow overriding them with Malick's cards gives Shodan control over something, but that's about all the information I see on them anywhere.
Posted by: Enchantermon
« on: 24. June 2010, 04:14:15 »

FYI, I went through and fixed several spelling errors, mostly in the names, to make it easier to read.
Interesting observations. You may be on to something, though I don't have the time to pick through this very well. I'm sure others will chime in, though.
Posted by: Drew
« on: 24. June 2010, 02:45:01 »

Okay, so after trawling through the logs and their order, a few things jump out at me as being, for lack of a better word, odd. (Yes, I'm fully aware that this is just a game; I find it very compelling and a great deal more detailed than the plot of most games, so I look at it with a sharper eye. That's all it is. What? Stop looking at me like that. I SAID STOP! :()

The Bayliss-Polito log asking about your memory restoration is, in fact, on the sixth. This would mean that Goggles has been unconscious for some time already, else Bayliss wouldn't have any idea who Polito was even talking about. The only evidence of Shodan's influence up to that point is the Polito log on the 4th, and that only because the log is abruptly cut off. It's possible, in fact quite likely, that Shodan's control at that point only extended to Polito's local terminal, as I kind of doubt an AI expert who already doesn't trust them would start playing around with an alien one without putting some pretty serious security precautions up. The first contact Shodan makes to anyone is to Marie, on the 11th, and I can't see her influence on the plot at any other point until then. I like to believe that this means Polito waited until the 10th to release Shodan, out of desperation, then realized that either she wouldn't succeed, or she would and that would be worse. Hence the suicide. It makes a bit more sense than the idea that Shodan, who is not known for her patience, would hang about quietly preparing to make her presence known for almost a week while the Many grow more and more powerful and start subverting control of Xerxes for their own. Shodan needs the sim units reprogrammed so it makes little sense to me that she'd quietly sit around waiting while Malick brings them out of her reach. Also, the Many themselves don't seem to be aware of her presence until after the 11th.
Bloom was taken on the third, Loesser noted the disappearance on the 5th and saw the first midwife working on the eggs on the 8th. Murdoch mentions the swarm eggs on the 9th and the biomass/worms are first mentioned by Delacroix on the same day. According to Rebecca, people started disappearing since deck 3 was cleared, so we can assume the first hybrids started showing up soon after. What's interesting is that according to Watts's log, Watson had been infected "since returning from the surface of Tau Ceti Five" yet dies on the 7th; meanwhile Turnbull's infection takes just a few hours. I don't understand why. It's possible the transformations all take a great deal of time as the break between the two logs from her are about 4 days, and Korenchkin kept calling for more victims at least up until the 7th. Korenchkin himself spends a lot of time doing nothing; the first log you here from him where he's acting like an annelid slave is the 28th, though he has obviously been infected since, at least, the 20th. This would go a great deal to explain why it took so long for things to erupt into violence, yet how quickly the Many aserted control once it started.
Malick hacks into the sim units on the 6th, a day after they start shooting people. However, the Yount log makes mention to it having taken "12 hours to get it online the last time." So it's possible someone else had been enslaved the day before, which would explain what caused the turrets to go nuts--but not why, really.
A lot of people seem to be very much out of the loop; almost everyone who's not involved directly in either helping or hindering the Many's takeover seem to not even be aware that it's happening. Sanger is warned of the danger she's in on the 5th and appears to take it to heart, as you don't see anything from her until the 10th. By contrast she seems to have been one of the smarter ones; though Rebecca mentions "a kind of gloom hanging over everybody" on the second, apparently a few people didn't get the memo. Watts is still acting like nothing's wrong, despite his own patient's unexplainable death, and expecting to chill out with his pals on the Rec deck after his ill-fated autopsy. Bronson's martial law notice goes out on the 8th, but apparently not everyone got the memo as Yount isn't killed until the 9th and Rosenberg is still hanging around making a nuisance of himself. Even on the 10th, when Watts, Watson, Bronson, Polito, three Malones, Cortez and his staff, Malick, the Younts, and probably Sanger and Miller and Bloom as well as several unnamed extras have all been killed, Rosenberg is still acting like nothing is particularly out of the ordinary. Either information really has a terrible time traveling on this ship, even with the modern conveniences of video email, or he's the most oblivious person ever. Then again, so is Rebecca, as she doesnt' seem to know anything more than people are shooting each other by the 11th, and doesn't kill her first spider until the 12th.
Posted by: Drew
« on: 24. June 2010, 01:09:30 »

A lot of the dates in SS2 seem kind of unlikely to me. So the shuttle stays on a strange alien planet, carrying the captains of both starships, for five days, then it takes a full eight days to unload "hundreds" of eggs into hydro, and no one seems to know anything about it until the 6th of July, at which point everything goes completely to hell in less than a week, whereupon the universe is saved by you and no one else in the space of less than a day? That seems very off to me in several ways. I can't find fault in the timeline itself, these are all based on the dates in the logs, it just looks improbable. There might be a little space for wiggle room if you factor in things like when certain key figures were turned (miller, Maloc, Turnbull to a lesser extent), when the monkeys first started reacting to the infestation, and when the first appearances of hybrids and other creatures were noticed. I can do the legwork on these things and post the findings later as I have no life to speak of.

Oh, by the way: the SS1 log about the drug traficer was in fact voiced. It's log114. I can upload it somewhere if people can't find it on their own.
Posted by: Kolya
« on: 29. March 2010, 08:06:52 »

Ah-ha, thanks for clearing that up, Zygo.
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