System Shock Remake Is an Essential History Lesson for BioShock’s Biggest Fans

ign.com:

The quietly humming corridors of Citadel Station are littered with corpses. They are silent, but each tells their own story. Torn bodies lie inches away from an audio log recorded just moments before their final stand. A file from a woman tells of her final days as she succumbs to a spreading sickness. A pile of mangled remains, entangled in their own guts, look up with dead eyes at a graffiti mural that depicts the artificial intelligence that they worshipped like a god.

If this nightmare sounds like a new BioShock game, then you’re only half wrong. These are all moments from System Shock, the game that began the Shock lineage back in 1994. One of history’s most important games, the original is almost unplayable by today’s standards thanks to a fiddy user interface and control scheme that’s practically prehistoric. But a handsome new remake from developer Nightdive Studios has demolished those ancient barriers and highlighted that System Shock, despite its age, was the origin point of so many of the ideas that made its spiritual successor so strong.

If you’ve never explored the corridors of Citadel Station, I think you’ll be surprised at just how much of BioShock’s DNA was drawn directly from System Shock. Like the worlds crafted by Irrational Games’ lead, Ken Levine, Citadel Station is a place gone to hell. The station’s artificial intelligence, SHODAN, has taken over and has plans to decimate humanity. Like Andrew Ryan, she taunts you as you descend deeper into the station’s interconnected levels, seemingly amused at your pathetic attempts to foil her ascent to godhood. The kicker is that SHODAN’s rise to power is your fault. Just like BioShock Infinite and Levine’s upcoming Judas, System Shock is all about fixing