30 years of "System Shock": You are not welcome here!

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Exactly 30 years ago, a small company from Massachusetts showed with "System Shock" that more is possible from a first-person perspective than shooting demons out of hell: "Looking Glass Technologies" saw itself as a driver of innovation. Many of the games developed by the company, such as "Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss" (1992), "Flight Unlimited" (1995) or "Thief: The Dark Project" (1998), were absolute masterpieces, at least in terms of technology, but mostly also in terms of content.

"System Shock" was no exception, although it had a difficult start: development work began in February 1993 and, according to producer Warren Spector, was almost finished shortly afterward, as the bosses at publisher Origin Systems were not enthusiastic about early prototypes of the game and actually wanted to cancel "System Shock". Only Spector's superhuman powers of persuasion have ensured that we can write about this game today, which was released on nine 3.5" floppy disks in September 1994 after almost two years of very crunchy development.

Look at you, Hacker!

The approximately two-minute-long intro explains what "System Shock" is about to the accompaniment of pounding synth sounds: On April 7, 2072, a hacker is caught trying to penetrate the network of the "TriOptimum Corporation" and retrieve information about the "Citadel" space station in orbit around Saturn. However, he doesn't end up in jail for this offense, but is offered a remarkable deal by TriOptimum employee Edward Diego: if he manages to shut down the ethics protocols of the AI managing the Citadel station called "SHODAN", not only will all charges against him be dropped, he will also receive a state-of-the-art neural interface milled into his brain as a bonus. Everything goes like clockwork, the healing coma after the operation on Citadel lasts six months – and after waking up, the hacker realizes that the space station somehow looks different from it did before his nap.

SHODAN (which stands for "Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network") has gone berserk since she developed her own consciousness and lacks the ethical barriers the player hacked out of her in the intro. Not only has she bred new viruses in the station's bio labs, turning the crew into wild mutants. Like any good crazy AI, it also wants to wipe out humanity.

Fear SHODAN!

To stop SHODAN in her diabolical plans, you have to deactivate the AI on the 9th level of Citadel. Which is anything but a piece of cake: between waking up from the healing coma and the happy ending, the first playthrough easily takes 30 hours of fighting, hacking, sneaking and solving puzzles, always with the omnipresence of SHODAN breathing down your neck.

She is not a cheerful, mad opponent like GLaDOS in the "Portal" games, but an ice-cold, calculating AI that never misses an opportunity to insult the player, put them under pressure and torture them psychologically, block their path and, of course, sic as many enemies as possible on them. And all this, at least in the CD version, with a fantastically unsettling voice that speaks with electronic distortion, stutters, hacks, changes pitch in mid-sentence and leaves no stone unturned to mock the hacker, this "wretched figure of flesh and bone", and to confuse him as lastingly as possible.

SHODAN is just one piece of the puzzle of the narrative we are confronted with. Most of the background information has to be gathered on your own: you'll find emails and logbooks from Citadel employees in every nook and cranny, which you can use to piece together what went wrong here bit by bit –. These messages also give you tips on how to proceed, such as access codes for restricted areas. All of this ensures that you quickly feel part of this world and not just a random player being dragged through the adventure by a story carrot.