I'm very happy with the warm reception of this video, glad to see the internet has some love for System Shock.

there is a playthrough with the original developers and they said they regret no having mouse look

Back then I played this game without knowing what it was about and I loved every second of it. Discovering the events little by little was fantastic and the progress of the story felt like a real showdown with the rogue AI. First person survival scifi-horror at its finest.

In most games you have levels with enemies in them. What makes System Shock so great is the feeling that the level ITSELF is an enemy.

A "masterclass" game indeed !!! I only recently begun to familiarise myself with the "System Shock"-franchise , and I was stunned when I noticed that the fist "System Shock" was created back in 1994 !!! After seeing a walkthrough (*and I also bought the game from GOG as well ) i was left speechless !!! , and I realised that this 1994 game surpasses in immersion most of the new games. Truly a masterpiece.

if you ask me that ending of him still doing his old ways, he most likely now live on earth now and have money now to not worry about rent for the next 40 years or so. but what makes him put punk in cyberpunk is that ending alone of him not wanting to become a part of something his not.

I still own my cd:rom of system shock also got the enhanced edition and backed £150 on the kickstarter page for the remake, it's one of the best games I've played ever.

Call me a filthy casual but I think I am gonna have to play the enhanced version. I tried with the original controls and it messed me up, lol. Fantastic video man, definitely gave me the desire to jump into this game.

For a 1994 game when I played for the first time in the dead of night, I got chills running up my spine and got scared a lot before I knew what I was doing. The sound track and sound effects still make my hair stand on end sometimes in fear despite being alone on the floor. I really did feel like I was there in person as much as I could be and that's saying a lot because a lot of more modern games can't even do that and this is 1994 we're talking about. I always felt like I was really reloading my gun and constantly having my eyes dart across my HUD every few seconds, in combat, while traveling, etc. to make sure I was ok and ready for another encounter. Even after I got the stronger guns I'd still peer around corners to minimize damage and try not to rambo since you're very fragile as expected. I sweat while I play this game and I feel my heartbeat rise as I run and kite enemies, peer around corners, frantically navigate my hud to reload my gun or switch weapons or throw a frag or heal myself, juggling it all is so much fun and pulling it off is so gratifying.

some nerdy references just popped out to me while watching this review: 1) In the intro when we are first introduced to the hacker, they are wearing a shirt with a smiley face that has been shot in the forehead and is bleeding. Watchmen reference? 2) When Rebecca first talks to us at the beginning of the game she refers to us as "Employee 2-4601", I guess someone at Looking Glass was a Les Miserables fan

I downloaded the GOG version and the added mouselook made a big difference. When I played this back in the day it was really hard to get into. Once you put the time in it is a super rewarding game.

One of my favorite games. Hoping the two new games are worth the wait.

This is the best system shock 1 video on this site. Thank you so much for this.

Awesome video man, stepping up your editing / general video craftsmanship game while selling me on System Shock more than anyone else ever has. And that dissection of the silent protagonist was really enlightening.

Good video. It is actually amazing how deep and well-thought the story and world building of older games were. You would think a much more gradual transition from "pacman" to "system shock"... but some people were just ahead of their time and these amazingly deep games came about in a rush - as if they were just waiting to bust out actually - which is scary within itself!

Great video man.

How on earth do you have so few subs?! So happy KZfaq randomly put one of your vids in my suggested! :)

This kind of analysis will help me greatly as I begin attempting to make mediocre spin-off games! Thank you; I will take your general tips to The Heart.

Great work.

This is beautiful.

I played (not finished) as a kid. Now Im going to give another try to the source version. Nice video!!

I ran across this video because I recently actually played and finished SS2, and wanted to know more about it and it´s predecessor! This, in general, makes me want to actually play SS1 as well! But, there´s one thing I noticed, however... Jeg get lett heira að þú ert frá Ísland, og ekkið bara þessvegna að þú hefur "Iceland" i youtube profilin þín, bara fýrir hreim þín! Jeg ér ekkið frá Íslands sjálvan mér, pabbi min er, svo jeg skil nokkurð vel tungumálið! Frábarð video, heyrðu! Not trying to flex, I just don't get the opportunity to actually write in it often enough :)

Gotta love unconventional game design. I wish this kind of approach were a little bit more used these days. Most things now seems to rely in that which the eye can see and that can make it all feel like a template sometimes. I can really appreciate when the first time I play through a game the sum of its elements makes it hard for me to decipher its logical patterns so the gameplay ends up feeling a lot more organic and real. First time I played SS I was completely amazed about how it portrayed the game world and how it made me fear the unexpected while making me feel stalked by an mostly invisible presence. If this would had been a modern game I know that from the beginning I would had understood most of its logical structure and would had been able to predict things, which would had hurt the immersion factor for me.

You forgot to mention the cool game over scene where they take the body of the hacker and turns them into a robotic slave as well

Nice video ! :) 5:33 - Like someone else in the comments already said, I also don't agree with what is said here. What is being praised as a purposely artistic choice in formulating a visual language actually comes from a very different place: technical limitations. 8:10 - I never heard people "gushing over the brillance of Gordon Freeman", as his character can be summed up in 1 sentence -- if people actually remember the sparce background information about him that is presented in Half-Life during the intro. And while comparing Freeman with Employee 2-4601, Freeman for sure also had an active role in what triggered the events in Black Mesa. One of the first things the player/Gordon does is causing the resonance cascade catastrophe. 8:31 - 9:11 - I'm afraid this whole segment is also a bit of a stretch. What could have made 2-4601 more interesting for example would be to discover information about him in logs or even in messages he left behind for himself. Sadly, we only find 1 of those messages in the game. 10:35 - The way this is summed up sounds a bit confusing. The laser is not "reprogrammed to destroy the station's shield", but the shields are activated so that the laser would fire into the shield instead of Earth, which would also overload and destroy the laser. 16:50 - Please note that there is a video series where the developers are playing through the game together, talking about the game's developement and sharing interesting anecdotes -- some were even unknown among the different people (like Conway's Game of Life happening in Cyberspace). 17:37 - If you are interested in unique and unorthodox game design, maybe consider exploring the games of the Commodore 64. :) Many ideas and concepts for video games were tried out here, which is also thanks to the fact that programming on the C64 was relatively easy, so many people could just try out their own ideas before genres were so clearly defined like nowadays, which also lead to a more free-minded approach for developing and just testing ideas. "Salt the Fries"!

5:33 I don't think I entirely agree with you here. High-resolution graphics aren't always "unnecessary clutter". If a game features high-resolution graphics, that doesn't instantly mean it's gaudy and superficial. Likewise, games that feature low-resolution graphics can't be instantly qualified as enigmatic masterpieces. I think the visual quality of a game is often more of a reflection of the technology it was made for at the time. I'm not sure if Looking Glass Studios originally _intended_ for players to undergo a process of learning the visual language of System Shock; I believe that is more of an action that players inherently perform when learning how to play a game in general. For instance, if one were to play Super Metroid for the first time, they would naturally have to learn the control scheme, which can be quite intricate when the game is played at high levels. A more extreme example would be mastering the control scheme when playing as Richter in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Likewise, when one begins to play another classic first person roleplaying game such as Daggerfall, they would have to learn the visual language of that game as well (i.e. learning what objects in the environment can be interacted with, how to detect hidden doorways, etc.). So in my opinion, it's not fair to single out and praise this quality of System Shock as an aspect totally unique to it. Many games force players to do this, whether the developers intended it or not, and in this case, I'm not sure if they did. If System Shock were made today, I think it would certainly feature an art style and atmosphere akin to Dead Space or Alien: Isolation. Other than that though, I agree with this analysis and would like to see more quality content like this on KZfaq.

This is amazing

@AesirAesthetics Rewatching this in 2023 can’t wait for System Shock remake release in March! Keep up the good work.

Look out gamer guys, set your System to Shock, have plenty of popcorn, and plug in the painful cyberlink into your brainstem, lets get in to it!

Rad video. Thank you.

It's sad that everyone shits on the original controls but it was 1994 and they used Ultima Underworld controls for reference. I just beat the game for the first time using the default control scheme and it's not that bad.

thanks for the video

If anyone see this and wants to make an immersive game, remember this rule "Never take any control out of the player's hands" Nothing irritates me more when I'm playing a game like the new Deus Exes and suddenly having my control over Adam taken away to be put on a rail. They make certain parts of the game take away control and only let you look around while you're on a track and the NPCs ramble on...to be honest, games would be more fun if I could beat up or kill everyone, and not be restricted in any way at anytime. I used to joke with a friend that we should make a joke game in response that would open a cutscene for every single action you take.

I disagree with some aspects of this analysis when it comes to tension The devs regret not having mouse look and the game benefits from mouse look It wasn’t designed without mouselook on purpose, it simple didn’t have it cause it didn’t exists yet So mouselook is probably how the game would have been meant to play according to devs Mouselook doesn’t ruin the game, if anything it enhances it. The controls just aren’t great otherwise and is less fun Mouselook doesn’t really ruin tension, but to be honest I never felt much tension when playing SS1, original or EE So I don’t think tension is needed to enjoy system shock. But still very unique video with some interesting points

@AesirAesthetics I always love rewatching your old analysis and I wanted to ask do you think you’ll stream a play through of System Shock or Silent Hill like you did Ratchet and Clank? Thanks and keep up the good work.

You say it was metroidvania before metroidvania, but it was after Super Metroid which was biggest archetype for the genre. First game kinda counts but eeeeh.

I would love see an episode on Turok 2, Clive Barker's Undying, No One Lives Forever.

"If you updated the game it could compete with any game on the market today." *eagerly awaits SS3 and SS1 Remaster* Finally free from the bounds of technological constraints, the game can truly shine and refine its more clunky gameplay aspects into what they were supposed to feel like, natural/fluid, like modern games. (Although, some of the more clunky aspects of the game such as fondling around your HUD trying to find the thing you want and how you're going to use it is what the game was going for and something I wouldn't want to see taken away for "convenience" by modern standards.) And finally, over three years later from the first announcement (cause I just noticed this video was released in 2016), we have very VERY promising teasers. I'm so happy to see they made it out of development hell and the rights/studio transfer didn't hurt the game at all as far as we can tell besides prolonging the game's release.

Have you played Observer with rutger hauer? If so, what do you think?

I've wanted to see this game through till the end for years (despite knowing how it ends) But I have very little time and this is a pretty slow game. I've been trying to find a let's play/playthrough of it, but sadly; there doesn't seem to be a single one that plays it till the end.

so GLaDOS is basically Shodan?

Regarding the visual fidelity; At it's time, System Shock's visual were VERY advanced (It uses a voxel system which, most computers today still have a bit of trouble with. Yet it still makes it an advantage in regards to this game)

Regarding your comments on Characterization, I never felt the hacker was a silent protagonist and I was learning to think and see the world like him. No. He didn't exist. There was only me. I am the hacker. Diego, Rebecca, SHODAN,... they were all talking to Me. Every decision in the game past the intro wasn't made by some character or by a forced narrative, it was made by me. I lived SS1. So did many others. That's how good it was.

I still think system shock 1 is the best out of all the shock games even ss2(edit) I alwase wondered what the cover was it's deago transformed isent it

"Metroidvania before metroidvania was a thing" Metroid 1 & 2 would like a word😜

System Shock VR

How do you not get more views for actual analysis????

Drop the white background bro The video is impossible to watch at night

This is getting a remaster? I knew we were getting a new game in 2020 but have seen nothing about a remaster of the original..

Original metroid was released in 1984 10 years before the first system shock making your point that system shock invented metroidvania void. Its also kind of a strange statement that a genre named after the series/game that created it is actually a successor to something that came after its successor.

Add some ambient music for future episodes.

Awesome video. I just saw an update that happened to the Enhanced Edition and I'm not a fan.

I believe that bioshock is a direct prequel to System Shock

This video feels oddly similar to Super Bunnyhop's, down to the structure of some sentences

Please don't use white background. My room is dark and it's blinding

I'd have to disagree with some points mentioned in this video. Nowadays, video games have moved forward from this style of game play, and often I find myself detached from the game when it becomes a chore to move around. The atmosphere is there, but System Shock 2 did it better altogether. I don't play this game to immerse myself in a fantastical sci-fi world, as for that I'd rely on it's spiritual successor Bioshock, however as a fun, classic, and intense 3d old school shooter? I'd come back to this game more often. Now if only the enhanced edition had better keyboard controls... We need a better, updated version that changes with the times.

Man, star wars really do suck. We need a Chinese AI post apocalyptic movie.

Silent protagonist are a plauge

Good retroanalysis but I don't know why you needed to spoil the plot. Many people, like me, discover this game for first time thanks to the Enhanced Edition

It's a true shame the HD remake fell through

You reviewed a console engrish game, then a hella old arcade game made in japan, you have 0 credentials or credibility now to review system shock....