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Topic: System Shock 2 /Let's play/LittleDwarf Read 2459 times  

67437e7824a42unn_atropos

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« Last Edit: 17. September 2019, 19:26:25 by unn_atropos »

67437e7824c01LittleDwarf

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Actuallly, it's not finished yet - I just add the videos to the playlist as I go and set them to release later (I have a slow upload so I must upload videos in advance). I'm currently around the part with the >BIG REVEAL< on the Operations deck (which wasn't that big for me, but more on that in my final thoughts in which I will post when I finish the game).

I very much intend to finish the game, though - I've been having a blast with it, it was one of the few games lately that actually made me stay up late to just "find what's around the corner".

67437e7825b94LittleDwarf

67437e7825c0d
I've just finished System Shock 2 (making the above statement about the playthorugh being finished true - although it's still not RELEASED in it's entirety, but it's done and there will be a new episode of SS2 every day until it's done. The final count of episodes is: 24 episodes, and around maybe 20 hours - it showed around 17:something in the saves, but from what I understand they don't count reloaded time).

And man, what an adventure it was! I found System Shock 2 to be a GREAT game and I enjoyed my time with it immensly! It was one of the few games recently that actually made me stay up all night because I wanted to explore „just a little bit more”. It was an OVERWHELMING upgrade over the first game in basically every aspect.


Below you can read my thoughts on the game’s most important/impressive (to me) aspects in a roughly chronological order as the plot developed. Full of SPOILERS and details of the plot, of course.


- I was already pretty pleasently surprised in the tutorial: the game controlled A LOT more smoothly than the first one did, and it introduced a lot of common sense quality of life things that I missed in the first one: reloading and crouching via a single button, easier interaction with items etc.

- I was also very pleasently surprised with a pretty in-depth character development system with all the stats and skills and various levels. I went into the O.S.A. as a psionic user, because it seemed the most exotic and interesting to me from the get-go

- I was, however, pretty baffled by the game’s choice to take away your ability to check your skills during the mission asssignments in the tutorial – it was hard choosing betwen „Neuro-something” and „kinetic-dampening-something” and „psionic-something-something” without having a solid grasp on what EXACTLY these do

- I must say that from the very beginning this game seemed to be much better at dropping interesting story-hooks than the first one. Even after the first hour or two there were already a couple of developing plot-points that I found very mysterious – what exactly happened at Tau Ceti? What’s the deal with the Many and Xerxes and why do they oppose SHODAN (while still trying to kill ME anyway)? And WHY DO THE MONKEYS ACHIEVED SELF-AWARENESS (not to mention PSIONIC POWERS)? I was very keen on founding out the answers to those questions and it kept me invested from the very start – hence the aforementioned staying up late to play just a little more

- the addition of an „xp” mechanic in the form of cybernetic modules made exploration a lot more rewarding, because you could actually get something WORTHWHILE from doing that – it was much better incentive then just plain items. Especially given how over the course of the game, those additional modules amounted to HUNDREDS – so it really DID make a huge difference if you explored or not

- As much as I dislike enemy respawn in general as a game mechanic, I thought it made sense in this one to use it to directly punish players for raising alarms. And what was curious to me was that it seemed it was supposed to be an IN-UNIVERSE thing as well – enemies sometimes appeared BEFORE MY EYES with a graphical effect around them, just like they would be teleporting or something. I found it interesting and weird, but I don’t think the mechanics of that were ever elaborated upon

- The  hacking minigame also was… rather underwhelming. If I understand it correctly, it’s 100% luck based and solely dependent on character skill, rather than player skill. I would prefer it to be 50/50 or something – the sole reliance on luck made it boring and uninspired for me, as there was nothing to really THINK about – you just tried clicking the nodes (avoiding the red ones) until you succeeded. Unless there WAS more to it and I’m just retarded – it could very well be, considering I never quite understood how the hacking worked in the first game either

- the financial „punishment” for using the restoration bays was a good idea in principle, but not that well realized. 10 nanites per resurrection on hard was far too lenient to me and in the  end it didn’t change much – I still felt more or less immortal and even sometimes CONSIDERED killing myself to recover some health if I was on like 1 or 2 points. So overall I’d say the punishments for restoration should be greater, especially seeing how I played on hard (I could understand the leniency on normal and lower, but I sure didn’t choose hard to be coddled)

- TINFOIL HAT TIME: (I’m writing these as I go, so at the moment I have no idea if I’m right – although I will at the time of POSTING): right after the message from the „alien artifact” found on Tau Ceti V I formed the following hypothesis: the signal that made the crew go down on the planet was actually sent by SHODAN, whose remains found themselves there from the crashed Grove jettisoned in 1. The Many hybrids were a result of a progressing mutation of the mutant lifeforms that SHODAN was also practicing on in the first game – they were found in abundance in the Grove itself in particular. If I turn out to be right, then there’s at least that reason for me to have played the first one – I never would’ve formet that hypothesis if I didn’t.

- I definitely noticed the music more this time. I still wouldn’t call it genius or anything like that, but I kinda enjoyed it when it showed up – and some of the themes were kinda spooky, which I guess was the point!

- I however quickly found out that my initial neglect of investing in ANY weapon skills (I invested heavily in psi and hacking at the beginning) made the game quite difficult for me rather fast – already on engineering deck I was kinda having problems dealing with all of the enemies, especially the big security bots

- The Many hybrids were pretty creepy as an enemy – I guess you could call them cliche, but given the age of the game they could be one of the pioneers of the trope of an apologetic attacker – it creeped me out that they seemed to be at least partially aware of what they’re doing („I’m sorry!”) and ASHAMED OF THAT („KILL MEEE!”), but they just WEREN’T IN CONTROL of their own bodies and couldn’t stop them. This idea creeps me out more than just straight up hateful enemies. (But the moment the Cyborg Midwifes showed up, they were probably even more creepy :P)

- A minor point, but I found the addition of the GameBoy-IN-SPAAACE and all the little games for it to be cute. Especially the more „complicated” ones, like the adventure rpg game with xp and gold mechanics and even a little high score table. Like… it’s not like it was brilliant or I spent much time with it, but it was just such a minute detail that somehow made sense (I mean, those crewmen had to do something in their free time, right?) and I found it endearing

- I wasn’t that keen on the idea of „ghosts”. It didn’t really fit that well with the setting for me. Like… I know, it wasn’t ghosts, it was „residue psychic energy” read by your implant and whatnot space-techno-mumbo-jumbo. I didn’t really buy it – and to be honest it didn’t bring that much into the game. You already had the audiologs to inform you of what happened, and if the game really wanted some visual component as well, it should use holograms/3d recordings in my opinion

- TINFOIL HAT TIME 2: (I’m still writing this not knowing if I’m right – though obviously I will at the point of POSTING it). The Many „hallucination” (or was it a psychic message?) at the engineering deck was an „eureka” moment and a major epiphany for me. What struck me in particular was the phrase „why do you fight for our mother” or something to that effect, and the various comparisons and dualities of flesh vs metal and organic vs mechanic in The Many’s speech. So it was then I formed the following, more detailed hypothesis, building on the previous one. The Grove from Citadel station in the first game, that we jettisoned into space, contained both remnants of SHODAN’S bioengineering experiments and a piece of SHODAN herself – and it crashed on Tau Ceti V. The lifeforms engineered by SHODAN evolved into the proto-forms of the annelid and SHODAN sent a distress call that was picked up by the Von Braun & Rickenbacker teams. The Many, however, rebelled against SHODAN for her mistreatment of them (they were made originally to be her slaves, after all, and rather grotesque ones at that) and started infecting the crew members to oppose her. SHODAN contacted one of the crew (as per one of the audiologs) and tried to befriend them and „help them” fight the Many – but in reality just use the humans as pawns to dispose of them, and weaken the humans themselves in the process. Now – I firmly believed at that point that Polito WAS in fact SHODAN and manipulating the player from the start. There were a couple of things that made me think that:
1] Polito’s treatment of cyber modules was totally stupid from the perspective of someone who REALLY wanted you to succeed and help her. She doled them out piece by piece as an incentive for following her orders, rather than forward them all to you at once so that you could buff yourself up. My theory is that SHODAN didn’t want you to become too strong too quickly, so that you couldn’t oppose HER that easily after disposing of The Many.
2] At the very beginning at the Med/Sci Deck Xerxes (later confirmed as working for The Many or at least their mouthpiece) made allusions to „her” and „serving her” even though she „tried to destroy your species once” – a clear reference to SHODAN if one is familiar with the first game. This set up the „The Many vs SHODAN” conflict – and was the first, albeit indirect, accusation of the player serving „her”.
3] There was a pretty weird moment, where Polito repeated the EXACT SAME SENTENCE twice in short order – something about „spending the cyber modules wisely”. It wasn’t a similar message, it was the EXACT SAME message. The same words, the same order. The same voice modulation even, I think. It struck me as weird immediately, because it’s not like a single line of dialogue would be that much of an investment as far as game development goes, so I assumed it must’ve been intentional. And it hinted, to me, at the fact that SHODAN didn’t really think like a human. It’s not like she COULDN’T devise two different sentences, it’s that she COULDN’T BE BOTHERED TO, because it seemed inefficient to her. Same situation – lecturing the player about cyber modules. So why use different words at all?
4] And finally – the aforementioned „The Many hallucination” – particularly the „serving mother” comment, that struck me as a clear reference to SHODAN’S experiments from the first game.

I was quite proud with myself for coming up with that, and I’m sure I’m at least PARTIALLY correct, because it just fits too much to be total bullshit.

- I decided to compliment my psi powers with energy weapons – they seemed a more „innovative” option and thus a cool fit with the overall „feel” of a psi expert character. Plus, it seemed to me that they would synergize nicely with the psi power that lets you recover item energy

- at the point where the fate of Polito was revealed, I felt incredibly validated. I pretty much got the entire plot right up until that point spot-on regarding The Many’s origin, SHODAN,  what happened at Tau Ceti V and Polito’s fate. Not like I’m a GENIUS or anything, it WAS pretty well telegraphed, especially if you knew the story of System Shock 1. But even then – I think it was handled great. Because if you didn’t figure it out, the moment was an effective enough reveal/plot twist, but if you DID, it was – for me – even better, because it made me feel acomplished, attentive and smart for picking up the various clues along the way.

- as my psi powers developed, I noticed that as weak and problematic they were at the start, they quickly became really powerful, versatile and helpful – I started finding a lot of psi hypos, and some of the powers had amazing utility, especially the healing one and the battery-charging one that synergized especially well with my Energy Weapons loadout

- to be honest, I was kinda annoyed by the protagonist’s short-sightedness. To me as a player it was OBVIOUS that SHODAN would betray me the first chance she gets – and I think the game should let me recognize that and prepare for that. Instead, up until the very end it made me do her bidding TO THE LETTER. I would much prefer for the plot to take the route of you trying to play SHODAN, feigning loyality while trying to defeat the Many and – at the same time – already preparing to subvert her

- I’m not sure if it was intentional, but I kinda found Xerxes to be funny and sometimes even borderline hillarious. It was mostly the fact that he seemingly couldn’t decide if he was still an electronic PSA dispenser/manservant or a glorfified propaganda mouthpiece for The Many – so he constatly alternated between the two. One second he was all about „the glory of the mass” „the flesh” and whatnot, and the other second he was talking about a poetry recital being planned for next Thursday. It cracked me up sometimes.

- I was totally caught of guard by the fact that the game introduced SIDEQUESTS all of the sudden – so I never met dr. Delacroix, because I thought I’d „do it eventually” and then progressed the main plot. She died in the end, so… ekhm… my bad?

- Probably the only area where I got a little frustrated was the part where you had to destroy 16 black eggs of the Many – I missed one and then SHODAN ordered me to backtrack to look for it when I wanted to go onto the Rickenbacker. But overall I’d say the game was definitely designed better in terms of level layout and quest progression – and even the egg segment did not end up annoying me THAT much

- The Brain of the Many was a really hard area for me, because I run out of supplies. I kept dying and missing those little stars that protected the Brain for like 30 minutes straight.

- In tandem with the above: that was the moment I finally admited that maybe playing the whole game with 1 ENDURANCE and no armor (I wore the hazard suit) was a bad idea

- Although at some point I started to REALLY regret leaving the Powered Armor behind. I only ever found one, on Hydroponics deck I think. I didn’t have the psionic power of recharing there and I thoguht „eh, I’ll just run out of energy and it’ll be useless.” Probably the biggest mistake of my life, since I ran out of energy only ONCE from there – in the Body of the Many. Aside from that I always had either batteries or – even better – psi hypos with the recharge power. And I feel like having this Powered Armor would’ve made a difference – especially with my squishy, END 1 body.

- The final segment where SHODAN re-created the beginning parts of the Citadel’s Med-bay from System Shock 1 was really cool and kinda nostalgic – although maybe nostalgic isn’t really the right word in my case, as I played System Shock 1 like three months ago at the most. Still – it was a really cool gimmick and nice to see. It really looked pretty much spot on in some areas, to the extent that I wonder if maybe it was pulled directly from 1.

- To be honest, the fight with SHODAN was a little underwhelming compared to the Brain of the Many. The later was much, much harder for me. But then again, I don’t think this game (or it’s first installment) was ever that great with supposed „boss” encounters – be that Diego in the 1st, or Korenchkin in this one. I guess it’s the journey that counts, eh? I’ve definitely enjoyed mine immensly, and the relative simpleness of the final encounter didn’t lessen the experiance for me

- I am, however, uncertain what exactly to think of the ending. Like…I laughed out-loud at the „Naah” part, but when I thought about it… it really felt kinda… out of place? The whole game was pretty serious and dark in tone, and this… this was downright comedic, with the camera panning and zooming onto the protagonist’s face and the music stopping for him to deliver his epic „naah”. I don’t know what to think about it and I don’t know if I really liked it.

- But, on the side note – the Soldier looks like a total freak with those eye implants.

- I was totally caught off guard by the… I guess sequel hook at the end? With the guy’s lover infected with… remnant of SHODAN’s personality or something? I’ve seen that SS3 is in the making now, but when you guys saw that ending those…  what is it now, twenty years ago? You probably didn’t realize you’d have to wait THAT long.

- I would say, however, that for me the 1st part ofthe story was actually the most engaging – right up until „meeting” with Polito. The small breadcrumbs of information, the clues, the forming theories, connecting the dots – and having it all validated in the end felt glorious. After that point the game never really felt that mysterious again

- Overall, I’ve enjoyed my time with System Shock 2 A LOT. It’s a great game and I totally can see how it can deserve all the praise it got and be still relevant today. Because that’s the thing – as much as the first one aged poorly for me, this one didn’t feel dated at all. I played it today, blindly, being more accustomed to the more modern games as a relatively young person… and still I didn’t find it lacking – to the contrary, I had a lot of fun. Even the graphics were kind of impressive to me – I used a bunch of graphic mods and was pretty surprised by the crispyness and sharpness of some of the textures, baffled at the fact that  I could actually run around and read tiny decals on the enviroment about how there’s only 0,9g on the Von Braun or whatever so we’re all 10% lighter and whatnot. It was neat.


So, that was System Shock 2 for me. What are your memories of your first run with SS2? What do you think of my experiances, do you agree or not?
Acknowledged by: ThiefsieFool

67437e7826288voodoo47

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yeah, pretty much.
What are your memories of your first run with SS2
getting killed by the lift in the Cryo area, and jumping off the chair when the wall panel near the first medsci bulkhead explodes.

67437e782691bLittleDwarf

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Quote by voodoo47:
yeah, pretty much.getting killed by the lift in the Cryo area, and jumping off the chair when the wall panel near the first medsci bulkhead explodes.

Hah, it's good to know that I wasn't the only one scared by System Shock 2.

Actually, I did play a little of it when I was a kid, but I never got past the Med-Sci deck because 1] the noises the Hybrids made scared me a lot 2] I at the time didn't understand English well enough to actually know WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO. xD

I'm very glad I returned to the game nowadays, though, because it surely was a great adventure.

67437e7827196Kolya

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Enemies are actually not supposed to spawn in line of sight. It does happen rarely though. And yeah, people came up with an in-universe explanation for that too: The Many brain sends them after the player using telekinetic powers.
This is a little justified since they spawn from a psi effect.

67437e782816aKolya

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Quote by LittleDwarf:
There was a pretty weird moment, where Polito repeated the EXACT SAME SENTENCE twice in short order – something about „spending the cyber modules wisely”.

While your imaginative explanation is appreciated, this is a bug, possibly introduced by SCP. @voodoo47

67437e78282a0Kolya

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The poetry reading is definitely intentional humour, similar to a lot of things the protocol droids say ("Who chose these colors?!").

There's no way to save Delacroix unfortunately.

And yeah, the "Nah!" ending is a stupid and embarrassing joke. We don't talk about it.

67437e78283e7voodoo47

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the fix that prevents visible spawning is only implemented in beta5 (and the GOG/steam base build and a tool patched build, but those aren't active when you play beta4), so beta4 people will witness some spawns occasionally.

the Polito bark is random (about five different barks total?), so there always is a chance of getting the same bark twice in rapid succession.

67437e78289e5LittleDwarf

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Quote by Kolya:
While your imaginative explanation is appreciated, this is a bug, possibly introduced by SCP. @voodoo47

I see. I still like my own rationalization, though - it fitted the plot for me nad actually guided me in the right direction predicting things.

Quote by Kolya:
Enemies are actually not supposed to spawn in line of sight. It does happen rarely though. And yeah, people came up with an in-universe explanation for that too: The Many brain sends them after the player using telekinetic powers.
This is a little justified since they spawn from a psi effect.

Oh, it's not supposed to happen in sight? So why the graphical effect at all, though? What you said actually makes total sense to me - that the Brain of the Many actually coordinated them and sent them after you using their innate psionic powers. In any case - I didn't mind it that much.

Quote by Kolya:
And yeah, the "Nah!" ending is a stupid and embarrassing joke. We don't talk about it.

Yeah, I... don't really think it fit that well with the tone of the game. I mean - I laughed at it at first, because it was so absurd, but the thing is - the game UP UNTIL THAT POINT was rather serious in tone and it just felt very... mmmm... game-y? Almost like the protagonist knew he was in the game and wanted to SHOW OFF or something.

67437e782a027voodoo47

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Quote by LittleDwarf:
why the graphical effect at all
it's generic, everything that gets spawned gets it. if witnessing spawns was intentional, the spawn points would not float way above the ground, and the AIs would not be spawning in the default editor "T" pose.

technical stuff - basically, the spawn points can have a bunch of different flags, one of them is "raycast" which if set, makes the spawnpoint not spawn AIs if in the player's vision cone. another one is "farthest", which is supposed to spawn the AI at the furthest point of a spawn system. however, this flag also makes raycast not work, so every point that has it set has a chance of spawning while in the player's vision. we are very sure this is a bug (currently fixed by stripping the farthest flag away from all affected spawnpoints).

67437e782a249ZylonBane

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Where is the audio about spending your cybermodules wisely repeated? I only heard it once in the second video.

Also, the Raycast spawn flag doesn't care about the player's vision cone. It just tries to draw a line between the player and the spawn point.

67437e782a34dvoodoo47

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*old hdd seek noises* yeah, you're right.

67437e782a6bfLittleDwarf

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Quote by ZylonBane:
Where is the audio about spending your cybermodules wisely repeated? I only heard it once in the second video.

Also, the Raycast spawn flag doesn't care about the player's vision cone. It just tries to draw a line between the player and the spawn point.

You can hear it in episode #5 (I can't post the link as a guest):

at 31:28 "Good work. Here are some more cyber modules. Spend them wisely, they are not easy to locate."
and then again
at 35:00 "Good work. Here are some more cyber modules. Spend them wisely, they are not easy to locate."

It's barely a few minutes apart and that's why I took notice of that - if it was a couple of hours in between or something, I may have not realized.

67437e782a834ZylonBane

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Oh good god. That's just the standard message the game plays when you're awarded cyber modules. There's like three or four of them that get randomly selected from. You didn't notice that?

67437e782ab09LittleDwarf

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Quote by ZylonBane:
Oh good god. That's just the standard message the game plays when you're awarded cyber modules. There's like three or four of them that get randomly selected from. You didn't notice that?

Well, obviously I DID notice that they repeat - that's the thing, after all. I just apparently looked too deep into it. xD But my explaination also kinda works, I think!

67437e782ae6bZylonBane

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I just checked, Polito has five lines for awarding CMs:
  • "Good work. I'm uploading some cybernetic modules. Find an upgrade unit as soon as you can and improve your rig."
  • "Well done. I'm uploading some more modules."
  • "Good work. Here are some more cyber modules. Spend them wisely, they're not easy to locate."
  • "Well done. I'm uploading some cybernetic modules. Find an upgrade unit as soon as you can."
  • "You have not disappointed me. Transmitting cybernetic modules."

And SHODAN has six lines:
  • "You performed well, insect. I've transmitted some cybernetic modules. Choose your upgrades wisely."
  • "I am pleased. Transmitting cybernetic modules. Do not squander them."
  • "You've served me well. Transmitting cybernetic modules."
  • "Your skill surprises me. Transmitting cybernetic modules."
  • "You are a remarkable example of a pathetic species. I'm uploading some more cybernetic modules."
  • "You perform well, for an insect. Transmitting cyber modules."

You probably heard all of these multiple times throughout the game.

So, in your let's play, did you ever realize that there's an automap you can turn on?

67437e782b21bLittleDwarf

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Hi! Sorry for necromancing the thread (I do wonder, though - if I'm not registered, can you ban me? :D), but I'm trying to get in contact with @ZylonBane and he seems to frequent this forum rather regularly.

I sent you a PM on reddit, but you didn't respond so I'm not sure if it reached you. I remembered you specifically, because you got somewhat annoyed when I copied my thoughts onto reddit without editing information about Polito's "repeating lines" without taking into account the discussion we've had here. xD

Some time later, on an unrelated project (I'm doing a series of the relatively unknown secrets/easter eggs/details in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, currently I have just two episodes covering the intro, tutorial and Santa Monica haven and the Santa Monica hub, but I plan to continue to the end), I've come across this post: forums.planetvampire.com/bloodlines-games-general-discussion/the-search-for-jack/

Are you the same ZylonBane there as well? If so, I just wanted to say thank you, because it's very helpful and interesting, and I wanted to ask if I can include your findings in my episode (once I get to the endgame) with proper credits to your name? I'll probably just refer people to your post itself, it's rather well explained there.

-----

Anyway, to avoid going completely off-topic - yeah, I was aware of the existence of the minimap from some point, but I never really enabled it. I'm not even sure why, to be honest. You'd think it would be helpful for someone with such a pathetic skill in pathfinding. Maybe I didn't want to clutter my screen. Anyway, I managed to get through the game just fine looking at the "big" map from time to time, so I don't think it was critical.
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