by Esmeralda Draic

Created on: July 20, 2009

This is the sequel to the classic 1994 FPS/RPG game System Shock. This 1999 game is one of my top ten favourites of all time. Created by a development team headed by Warren Spector who was also responsible for bringing us such quality classics as Deus Ex and the Thief series, and written by Ken Levine who also wrote Bioshock and Thief: The Dark Project, it is a must for anyone who has enjoyed any of those games.

System Shock 2 picks up some years after where its predecessor, System Shock, left off. We have a new hero and a new spaceship, but again have to deal with the same situation as in the original game: the artificial intelligence construct, named SHODAN, that controls the workings of the spaceship, has again gone berserk and committed mayhem aboard ship; but there is a new twist this time..

As you start up the game for the first time, you are greeted with a creepy introductory taunting from SHODAN in her scary distorted-electronics voice: 'Look at you, Hacker! A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?' This then segues into an explanatory voiceover: 'In 2072, a rogue artificial intelligence named SHODAN lost her mind. In her limitless imagination, SHODAN saw herself as a goddess, destined to inherit the Earth. That image was snuffed out by the hacker who created her.'

We cut to images of a space ship, with a cheery male announcer telling us that the highly-advanced new spaceship Von Braun is about to undertake its maiden voyage. 'Imagine being able to travel to distant star systems in a period of weeks! It's all due to Trioptimum's commitment to the future.' He goes on to explain that the Von Braun will be accompanied by a sister ship, The Rickenbacker, to provide security, and that this will be captained by William Bedford Diego, who we can assume is the descendant of Captain Edward Diego who we had to deal with in the first game. We then fall into a black screen and can just barely hear a faint, static-filled communication from a Lieutenant Marie Delacroix: 'The U.N.N. Von Braun has been hijacked by an unknown force. Ship security has been compromised. Do not allow the ship to land, under any circumstances. ' The rest fades out unintelligibly.

Well, of course, as luck would have it, the next thing we see is that we, the player, are on the Von Braun and are just coming out of cryogenic sleep. As soon as you get out of your sleep chamber, you are rudely

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