Thanks to Bespoke Post for sponsoring this video! New subscribers get 20% off their first box - go to bespokepost.com/trav20 and enter code TRAV20 at checkout.
Man this is kind of depressing... Realizing how much of a one to one the demo they just released was of the original.. like they got Terry in for new dialogue and they didn't even record new dialogue they just recorded the same dialogue.. like we don't even get new shodan lines we just get slightly different versions of audio mixing of shodan lines.. in fact it seems like the biggest difference between the two aside from the graphics, is that you just have l like like 30% of the mechanical interactivity and agency which oddly enough, has actually made what was obfuscated before in the original, stupidly obfuscated in the remake on account of not replacing any of it with any sort of modern equivalent, or semi modern equivalent God that thing is terrifying me that it comes out in a month.. I really like I want it because I still have 60 hours in that demo, it's still more than I get with any other game released nowadays.. ..but also, what they Used to have, where you can see traces of the the existence of things, all of which has been removed to any like non-developer access to the beta.. I can't even get the console to open and gaslight me like modern unreal usually does.. but like a lot of these things that it seems like they went through and and had functions for.. even though progressively it seems that very little has changed from the first demo to this one, other than bizarre reduction of feedback and details which you think they would wanted to add more of instead of reducing it given how the problem was it wasn't helping enough.. but beside that, just the idea that we're going to play the exact same thing one to one.. but, I don't get to dive into prone for like no reason just but I like doing the dolphin or roller skate or or any of the things, and then interface that is.. somehow actually clunkier then this was.. and these were the people that made it less clunky, you think they would be the experts right? Like I've avoided watching this whole video, cuz like I genuinely want to be surprised about things but.. I think the biggest surprise that I found was that, were potentially no surprises other than the things that you couldn't do, or the ways you had to work around it in order to maintain the one-to-one functions of the game LOL.. which they still have, cuz that was the priority LOL.. cuz why would you have many solutions to a problem... Or basically the core definition of an immersive Sim, when you could figure out your own way to come up with the only solution to a problem LOL because we only wanted to put 12 buttons in, for the Xboxes LOL which, given the problems with rebinding controls on a keyboard, and I mean good luck on the controller, they've had many releases over the last better part of a decade and this was the first one where the menu actually did menu things in the menu.. previously they would just say that they did them and not do them... If if it would make a difference then I guess I'd be totally cool with it taking another year or two.. but like, why do they keep releasing these updates with down dates like objective down dates whether or not they make the game better or worse.. it's like they took system shock and just were like let's chip away everything until you can still do the entire progression but all of the fun of being able to figure out and and make logical decisions based on like a basic concept of human autonomy, basically the elevator pitch from Doug Church.. but like, you can still pick your grenade type, and you can still pretend like you're diving even though you're just going to crouch mode... and you can still hop over that railing but you're going to get a weird flash frame from trying to do a crouch jump, and 99% of the time if it's a physics object it's going to launch you 50 ft in the air, and then take 10 minutes to reposition, usually launching itself 50 ft in the air when you're just close enough to get it repositioned.. That being said, because I had an hour to kill.. I did manage to launch myself in the cyber access point to that high camera in the room where you get the magpulse.. it took an hour but I was able to launch myself and bash that camera with a hammer.. it's like Half-Life 2 physics requirements but with doom 3s physics implementation LOL.. and you know in the original I could just pick it up and move it.. you know how hard it was to get that head in that first room.. actually gave up trying until I saw them set up another puzzle with a treat reward.. and then I realized that oh this would just be janky that's okay clearly there's going to be something up there.. like I had to glitch the game to get up there.., and there's definitely a head up there well okay there's just a skull, nothing else.. so Watching you take about something less than 5 seconds and just on a whoops oh what's up here, let me grab that real quick.. with a graphing calculator level of interface like it's second nature. That is what I'm worried about.. I get that the first one was weird but you made it worse and the more I think about it and that's why I keep going on these rants the more I think about it the worst worse it gets.. and if they really wanted to do such a one-to-one remake why didn't they just do a one-to-one remake LOL if they weren't actually going to improve anything and their idea of improvement was to reduce why didn't they just Oh well I mean I guess it's better to at least have the core game intact, then have it also be simplified in that regard.. but one might argue that the core game was having six buttons for diving that could be done independently of things, while you were doing the core game, cuz it would be super cool if you could just do basic things like you were actually there..
You forgot something about the laser: if you fire it too early and get the non standard game over from shooting it at earth yourself, SHODAN is genuinely happy with you and her dialog sounds remarkably similar to GLaDOS’s Party Escort Submission Position line in Portal: “Please wait where you are, and a cortex reaver will be along shortly to escort you to the celebration.”
I always half wondered if she was being completely earnest there, like Diego appears to have his mind mostly in tact even after being made into a cyborg, and the other cyborgs need to have emails sent to them instead of just downloading shodan's directives directly onto them or something.
@@9VOL9 @D Skry That's not the warhammer logo at all. It's the logo of Bungie's pre Halo doom clone called Marathon. You may recognise it from the Bungie era Halo games. Look it up.
For the remake they apparently combined the invisible and zero G mutants into one enemy type. It's a shame since I do like the idea of translucent rays crawling across the floor of Maintenance, the place just wont be the same without them
Here is some not so well known features of system shock. 1. Explosive items can be set off gunshots and by other explosives. There is nothing stopping a player from dropping 10 earthshaker charges and topping the pile off with a landmine. 2. The healing effect of med patches can stack. If you use around 40 medical patches at once you will heal your entire health bar every tick, making you nearly invincible. 3. According to the old manual leaning and crouching around a corner will greatly reduce the chance you get hit by enemies. 4. The walls in cyberspace is playing conway's game of life. The game is very nerdy.
@@tsyumamatsuthehavenofguard32 Not that I know of. You can grind drops from basic enemies and enemies re-spawn. Actual drops varies between enemies but if I recall correctly basic zombies drop med patches. The difficulty settings in system shock itself is a meme. Basically you can customise the combat, plot, puzzles and cyberspace difficulties independently. And this ranges from very hard to doesn't exist. Easiest difficulty combat for example makes enemies not move and die in one hit. Easiest plot unlocks every single door.
@@willworkforfood7028 so you're saying Looking Glass made this game able to be completed by the modern game journalist before the modern game journalist existed? Truly ahead of its time.
@@willworkforfood7028there is a little caveat though - I just played the zero plot mode for first two levels and the game still lets you fire the laser prematurely but because there are no audiologs the game will never warn you not to do that and it probably still requires to do certain things in order. So unless you played the game before or using a guide it's probably not a best idea to disable plot on first playthrough.
I do love Shodan as a villain. Unlike other god complex AI, she doesn't attack us because she sees humanity as harmful to the greater good. She sees us as ugly and hates looking at humanity. Makes sense with her ethical restraints offline
SHODAN is terrifying because she doesn't act like a machine. She acts like a megalomaniacal human with a god complex. She speaks in first person, has emotional outbursts, and seems to actively enjoy watching the humans on the station suffer. A machine doesn't do those, a thinking person does, and her thoughts are malicious.
@@kalekidsav The thing about GLaDOS is that by the end of Portal 2 you can kinda empathize with her. She feels like an adult who had a bad childhood, whereas SHODAN is more of a straight-up unsalvageable psychopath. Love both of them tho.
I don’t think she was evil and just limited by the ethical constraints at first. I think they would be a core part of her personality. So when hacker removed them it completely messed up her brain rapidly drifting her personality. This is what the ss1 inspired “novelization”, free radical, uses
The rich guys who escaped on Gamma didn’t last long: unknown to them but known to the guy they told to launch them (via an audio log), SHODAN disabled life support in the grove before it was jettisoned, so they likely suffocated when the pod ran out of air, plants notwithstanding.
According to the strategy guide, Zero G mutants are the result of applying SHODAN’s mutagen virus to a single celled organism, either a bacterium or a different kind of virus, forcing it to grow giant. The fact they have human like screams when they die is still troubling though.
Shower thought - Shodan referring to you as an insect works on a couple of levels. Sure, there's the obvious deity delusion, but also, Shodan is an AI and we came up with the word 'bug' literally when an insect got into one of those old computers.
I hadn't considered that. I kind of get a dominatrix kind of vibe from it. I feel that SHODAN definitely awakens something in me that isn't otherwise catered for, though not enough to make me seek out more examples
I know I'm not alone when I say this, but I absolutely love your long form in depth style of review. Your personality, humor, and highly informative nature is amazing. and I know it's a very long process to get even 1 video out, but I think I speak for all of the fans when I say it's worth the wait every time.
I feel bad about "um ackschually"-ing, but Zero G Mutants weren't once people, they're a single-cell organism that was forced to grow into a multicellular structure.
Some odd comparisons could be made between this game and Half-Life: -classic Sci-Fi tropes made more impactful with execution -main character has some major role in the bad thing that ends up happening to everyone, almost giving them a sense of responsibility in the story -combat is less about running and gunning and more about tactics and being one step ahead of ambushes
@@josesosa3337 the announcer system gets hijacked by the military and starts asking freeman to surrender. And in the Xen levels the nihilanth kinda shit talks you.
Looking at the map and hearing "i'M gOiNg tO pUt tHe hOt sAuCe iN mY pEeHoLe" made me lose my shit because honestly I have been there in both this game and many others and I felt it to my core
1:21:40 There actually is a revival bay on Citadel's LV.3, it's behind a security locked door to the far left of the elevator used to get in the first time, or South West according to the nav enhancement. I suppose it's the bonus for clearing out LV.3's security?
I played this one after System Shock 2 when I had the good luck of finding a used copy on sale. Let's just say System Shock 2 aged better and System Shock 1 definitely deserves the remake it's getting.
@@letsBrn I definitely don't think so. In some particular, specific ways, yes. Otherwise, the first game is much more complex in the way it handles itself, even if it leads to bloat with things that really don't matter. Second game is simpler, but makes itself seem more complex, while the first game is indeed more complex but appears deeper than it actually is.
I put off SS1 for years on end out of boredom, deeming it way too archaic and confusing... I dusted it off not 2 months ago, finally finished it with the help of a guide, then no joke replayed it 3 more times in one sitting. I literally fell in love with a game I neglected for 10+ years in little over a week´s time and thoroughly enjoyed myself with each consecutive playthrough. Late bloomer, but it now stands as one of my favorite games of all time. Then I moved on to SS2 and... eh. I mean, I definitely had my fun with it, but found it more flawed and overall less fun than 1. The character progression system felt restrictive and needlessly padded out, the arsenal felt uninteresting, weak and impactless, early game was way too punishing for my taste (ammo starvation, limited inventory space, annoying enemies) and the weapon degradation mechanic... why. Just fucking why? Also I felt it lacked the charming and at times goofy atmosphere from 1 and the levels were boring to explore in comparison. For now I'm just ecstatic to play the SS1 remake and looking forward to replaying 2 enhanced edition whenever that is. Good thing you get it for free when you preorder, 'cuz otherwise I don't think I would bother buying it.
I love how your videos manage to fill my brain with knowledge on a game that I probably don’t know about and keep it interesting throughout the whole video.
Never heard much from System Shock 1. People usually talk about System Shock 2 and how much that game inspired Bioshock, but System Shock 1 sorta gets swept under the rug.
You should check out MandaloreGaming’s review on it. It’s one of the first things that pops up on RU-vid search for System Shock. It’s insanely entertaining.
It's a shame too, I personally think it's better than 2, but primarily due to the second game having been unfinished and released in the middle of balancing the game.
@Aubrey Jarvis Yes and it's not hard to tell given that the amount of builds, skills and tools that are completely useless as well as weapons that you find too late into the game and whole build and skill paths that aren't fleshed out with the exception of highly specific things. It's the biggest problem with the game and the biggest challenge for newcomers, as well as a huge problem that can dissuade many to experiment with the game's wide amount of content. None of these issues are present with System Shock 1.
@Aubrey Jarvis System Shock 2 had the "beta build" of the Thief (2?) engine, there were two teams working at the same time, Shock2's was the smaller team but had to do all the beta testing and build the game with unfinished tools while Thief got to use all their work and insight. It's a heck of a story.
Thank you for informing people about the whole frame-by-frame feature on RU-vid. It's nice to see somebody acknowledge it, as well as tell others about it.
Absolutely adore System Shock, it's easily up there among my all time favourite games. Hell, I prefer it a bit over the sequel, but both are brilliant games that I will never tire off. Fantastic video as always. Keep up the good work!
@@mayonnaise3959 I personally would disagree, considering how much of a headache SS2 is to play, but that's just me lmao At least SS1 is fun to play, and not a bogged down slog
Fun fact: The first game to use mouselook, Bungie's Marathon... came out just 2 months after System Shock was released. A real blink-and-you-miss-it time to be making games.
5:21 I have to correct you on this, System Shock did not have a "true" 3D engine, it just had perspective-correct rendering. The map geometry data is still stored as tiles on a 2D grid like Doom, it's just a really advanced grid-based engine that's capable of sloped surfaces and (hacked) room-over-room, similar to Build which was also a grid-based "2.5D" engine. 33:40 Every single floor has a restoration bay, even Level 3 Maintenance. Some of them are just harder to find! 43:13 On my first playthrough I actually didn't find the power junction until after already exploring Beta quadrant in the dark, which I accomplished by lighting my way with my Sparq beam as I took aim at approaching cyborg drones. The lighting engine led to emergent gameplay! 1:08:15 Diego wasn't planning a coup at first; rather, internal security was investigating him for illicit mutagen research experiments he tried to sweep under the rug. Diego enlists the hacker's help in the intro to bypass SHODAN's ethical constraints to allow him to purge all log files pertaining to those experiments. This was a fun watch, there were even some surprises for me (such as the Virus Mutants escaping on Level 2 Research, or how the targeting identifier works beyond just showing damage indicators on the HUD). There's something special about the first System Shock, from the exploration-driven character progression to the little worldbuilding details and gaudy cyberpunk stylings.
Small correction- doom’s engine is also 3d. The maps may be stored as a collection of two dimensional lines, vertices, and planes assigned height values, but the game itself is composed of 3-dimensional space. The lack of support for stacked sectors is merely an engine limitation and not relevant to whether or not it is 3-dimensional. Similarly, as you said in your original comment, affine texture mapping does not impact whether or not an engine is two-dimensional. Lastly, 2.5D is a different beast altogether. For an example of a 2.5D game, allow me to draw your attention to something like fallout 1 and 2.
Having a very tough week, the fact I could hear how mentally disjointed you'd become at the realisation of how much time you'd lost with " I'm going to put the hotsauce in my peehole....." gave me the hardest laugh I've needed for a long fucking time, thank you bud. Your vids bring light into these stressful tough times
The music in this game is ridiculously good indeed. People usually remember the reactor theme most for obvious reason but executive has such an insane bass line towards the end it might also be my fav.
Love the review man. You covered SS in a nice and complementary manner. Because of your review I was convinced to try the game out for myself and absolutely loved it. I am now a fan of this series thanks to you.
The backwards look upgrade isn’t “of a time before mouse look”, ifs so you can see stuff sneaking up behind you in tight corridors, which is still useful with mouse look enabled
Yeah the devs called it a 'talisman' against enemy respawns in their commentary playthrough. They'll happily spawn in enemies behind you depending on a variety of factors just to be an asshole to the player.
The zero-grav and the inviso-mutants are the enemies that freaked me out the most because of that voice log from that guy who described his slow transformation into one of these monsters. At a late point in the game, when you travel between the station's levels, you can either exit an evator in the maintenance level and walk a relatively short distance to reach another elevator - or you can exit that elevator at a different level and navigate through the maze-like layout of that level to reach the other elevator. I always picked the longer route because maintenance was absolutely infested with inviso-mutants.
I remeber finding System Shock as a kid on some CD of pirated game my father brought from work and although I didn't understand much, I was awed- giant space station, weapons you could "set on stun", the atmosphere.. Together with Arena it showed me, how amazing computer games can be. Tried to replay it recently and it's still awesome, I'd even say I like it more than second one, which never clicked with me.
funny thing. level 3 actually does have a restoration room. Its just really well hidden in the darkness. if you wanna know, its in the main hallways. Basically just go left once you get there for the first time
Was so happy to see this on my notifications, whenever I have had a stressful day your videos help. This one was awesome. Thank you for the quality videos.
Im sad you didnt mention that "2" key just turns off the giant border for ui, and you have a more modern experience. Still, I loved each moment I spent with this game, everything feels so alive, while being dead. Jam packed with side passages that most of the time tunnel you to your objectives. This game is as old as me and I couldnt enjoy myself playing any similar games from that time period like Might and Magic or Ultima, yet I could easily understand what to do, and more importantly, how to do it.
I also highly recommend Marathon and Pathways into Darkness by Bungie (yes, _that_ Bungie). Marathon is a Doom clone FPS with some elements we’d later see in Duke Nukem 3D (in 1994 the same day as Rise of the Triad’s demo episode no less!) such as rooms above rooms, duel wielding, vacuum areas (mostly unused in Duke) and even rocket jumping. You can even use the flamethrower as a jet pack in low gravity levels such as the alien ship the same way as Duke Nukem 2, but this & rocket/grenade jumping both got nerfed in the sequels. It has some things in common with system shock too such as Durandal (think a male GLaDOS with a god complex) and Tycho (a good but angry guy in the first game, but a male SHODAN in the sequels), a cyberspace world that was cut from the game (acting like the dark world in Zelda: Triforce of the Gods crossed with System Shock’s cyberspace) and computer terminals similar to the text versions of the audio logs in SS1’s floppy version & Enhanced Edition. Basically Doom 4 (2016) before its time. The sequel in 1995 gave us swimming without the need for portal tricks and duel wielded super shotguns identical in function to that of DUSK. The third game Marathon Infinity added an SMG for vacuum & underwater with a crappy magazine capacity/max ammo size and a comfusing as hell time travel plot about alien Gods that eat reality, in other words Sonic 2006 as an FPS before Doom Eternal made it cool. The mod Marathon Eternal X doubles down on the Sonic 06 similarities plot, theme and aesthetic wise while also combining that with Halo: Combat Evolved, having been based on a long scrapped alpha story script for Halo 1. They released on shit hardware originally I.e. Mac OS with a Windows 95 & XBLA port of the second game only, but us windows players can play all three and player made WADs using the sourceport Aleph One. (Aleph One is great but i am sad to admit it’s shit compared to GZ Doom, because the developers are incredibly anal about updating it properly and treat any new ideas about modernising it with open hostility. The community in general gets as toxic as that of Sonic the Hedgehog and this is coming from a big fan of both series). I highly recommend getting the jump button mod by Megabyte as well as the HD textures, HUD, weapons & monsters packs inspired by the XBLA port of the second game, because the vanilla graphics and monsters in Marathon 2 & Marathon Infinity look like shit. Pathways into Darkness by contrast is a Wolfenstein 3D clone with level progression similar to system shock, Chaos Emeralds from Sonic serving as PSI powers or plasmids, a similarly awkward HUD design (with the partial exception of the Aleph One port), a very cool spin on the audio log concept, crappy graphic adventure game style puzzles and a story that’s basically a cross between Powerslave and Quake, the latter extending to monster design: we got lamprey eels on legs, clones of Addicus from Thundercats (2011 anime version) who throw rocks, monsters literally made of shit, some of them that of typhoid victims (typhoid Great Mighty Poos are invulnerable), skeletons who throw bones, skeletons named after a Minecraft nether monster that behave like earthquake themed archviles, flying koi fish that behave like cacodemons, a baron of hell that uses the mancubus attacks, the weaker avatar of the evil god we came to stop and Barney the dinosaur on steroids. (No, seriously) Pathways (PID for short) was Mac exclusive too but unlike Marathon, its modern port remains an OSX exclusive, but W’rkncacnter (named after the evil god species from both Pathways and Marathon Infinity) made a faithful port/recreation of the game in Aleph One for us windows users to enjoy without needing to buy or emulate a Mac. I do have a Mac specifically for PID and map making for Marathon, but I’ve mostly played the A1 version more recently for convenience.
If I'm not mistaken on level 6 there was a log that detailed that Diego was doing shady shit before the hacker got involved. Diego wanted the hacker to alter Shodan so Shodan wouldn't rat him out to the authorities as Shodan would be ethically obliged to. Without ethical constraints Shodan would then be happy to be part of a cover up but Shodan went and developed a god complex. It almost seems as if Diego set up a honey pot to catch a hacker who would do what he wanted as right when he needed a hacker, one just so happens to get caught.
1:05:35 I like how people in the distant future on a fucking space station are still using a plain jane AK-47 that they just set to semi-auto for some reason.
I'm glad I read somewhere before playing SS1 the first time that you can pile up explosives and trigger them all either by land mine or just shooting at one of them. That makes the two mandatory Diego fights so much easier. Also, you got through all the necessary visits to level 3 without unlocking the restoration? Holy shit.
My first playthrough i used the jump boots 2 to skip the second to last level. When the station is blowing up, I thought I didn't have the time to duckaround and explore. the bridge was about to come off and the station was exploding so using the jumpboots and most of my hoarded batteries I flew up to the bridge and killed Diego.
The AM Flechette Gun is automatic too, I noticed you barely used it. Until you get the Skorpion, it's easily one of the best weapons. Useless against robots, but absolutely shreds mutants and cyborgs, and ammo is EVERYWHERE. It makes the Groves in particular a total cakewalk, even on Hard. I'm pretty sure it's meant to be a reference to the flechette machine pistol Molly Millions was packing in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer (which was clearly a massive influence on System Shock), although hers was even more badass and had blowfish poison on the darts. BTW, that "clown juice" musical sting plays whenever you make significant level progress, and is always synched up with the current deck's background music. There are also unique stings for discovering secret areas, enemies nearby, and taking damage, all of which are synchronized to the beat. That's just such a fucking cool detail; LG didn't have to add those, but they did.
Did you know if you mine the hallway or room those trapped mutants are in (the ones next to the broken medbay) they will set them off instead of going to the elevator and jumping you. I did it on accident, my paranoia played up and i thought it would open the moment I went to leave.
24:31 That puzzle unlocks the elevator right next to it. That floor panel that looks like a light panel. That's actually an elevator, which is locked and unusable until you solve the puzzle panel.
At 46:20ish, when you threw the EMP and the screen does the glitchy effect, my RU-vid app crashed. The timing of that was actually amazing. Video is also wonderful, I love me some long form videos, came this one after a couple of your other Doom videos. Thanks for what you create!
Honestly, I think the Prey reboot would’ve been one of the most loved immersive sim, had it had monsters that were actually memorable, instead masses of vaguely monster-shaped black shit. RE7 kind of suffered from this too, but the Bakers were interesting recurring bosses, which saved the game. I feel like so many immersive sims get soooo close to a perfect experience, but always have a critical problem. BioShock comes to closest to not having one, but the overly-forgiving death system made me never feel threatened and I could always brute force my way through things.
This is absolutely my favorite game series of all time, and I'm very impressed that you were able to do it justice despite its age, quirks, and occasionally tedious bits. Perfect editing really makes this story pop and actually make sense to new players! You've definitely earned my like and sub. Can't wait to see your review of System Shock 2! I made some comments down below regarding the engine and mods that might be interesting for your research.
19:01 unless I'm wrong, the purple wave was meant for a mechanic that was scrapped during development, standing for brain waves, possibly pointing towards psi abilities.
Even though I'm only halfway through so far, this video is fantastic. While it's unfortunate you don't have another chance to test that "character swap" idea from Forgive Me Father, you absolutely nailed this behemoth of a video and actually got me interested in a game I've never really seen anything on. I should watch the Deus Ex video. 52:50 Yes, I do remember that episode, it's freaking terrifying, and it still bothers me even 10 years later... Then again, I felt super tense in the OOT Shadow Temple.
ngl while unrelated, your ability to binge MULTIPLE playthroughs of a 10 hour game like this will always impress me, and I wish I had that kind of attention span. I can't play a game for 5 minutes without stopping. Burnout's a bitch lol Amazing video, btw. I did watch until the end, but I was never a big System Shock fan, having barely played the 2nd game and that was it so I don't have much to contribute other than enjoying the video xD
