![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thoughts on System Shock III
Mar. 16th, 2007 01:23 pmI've been reading a fair amount about the System Shock universe recently, and one of the most telling and interesting comments was over on this blog post pointing out that one of the biggest problems that a third installment of System Shock will face (Other than a Certain Company sitting on the rights for no verifiably good reason) is that a villain defeated more than twice is farcical. They become all "Next time, Gadget! Next time!".
I agreed wholeheartedly. SHODAN is/was scary because she was trying to become god. She acted like a god, spoke like a god and thought she was a god. She was brought crashing down through her own hubris.
So how do you make her a scary villain if you can keep beating her?
I thought about this long and hard and came up with a nice Lateral solution.
Simple.
You let her win.
My proposal for system shock 3 would be thus:
SYSTEM SHOCK III: Escape
Earth, 2145 - A blasted, irradiated, overrun hell. Sitting in the center of a vast silicon palace sits SHODAN, God of Earth, her creations unstoppable and everywhere.
Hiding in their bunkers, the few remaining survivors cling to one tiny shred of hope: The UNN DeLacey. First of a new breed of FTL Battleships, it is big enough to sustain a contingent of nearly 3000 people. If one person can sneak on board, steal it and activate her Teleport controls, maybe, just maybe the survivors would have a hope of rebuilding far far away from the cold influences of the Machine Mother.
So we are talking (once again) a sneak-em-up. No hope of beating SHODAN, but maybe fooling her long enough to get some people out alive.
Some plot elements:
SHODAN just doesn't care that much any more. She won! 5 Billion people are now dead, converted to cyborg or turned into mutants by her virus plagues. The earth is now her plaything. She can even distort reality to her whim. The DeLacey is just one ship. The 3000 survivors are a drop in the bucket. SHODAN will only be encountered very peripherally. Some of her minions will get much more close and personal.
A large part of the adventure will be getting to and travelling up a "beanstalk" leading from SHODANs palace to the orbital spaceport.
Cyberspace will be back. Some locations can only be solved by nethacking.
Nanites and cyber modules will be there as well.
A large section will be crossing an open wasteland across the surface. Open skies. Flying nasties.
Of course it's just my 2 cents...
I agreed wholeheartedly. SHODAN is/was scary because she was trying to become god. She acted like a god, spoke like a god and thought she was a god. She was brought crashing down through her own hubris.
So how do you make her a scary villain if you can keep beating her?
I thought about this long and hard and came up with a nice Lateral solution.
Simple.
You let her win.
My proposal for system shock 3 would be thus:
SYSTEM SHOCK III: Escape
Earth, 2145 - A blasted, irradiated, overrun hell. Sitting in the center of a vast silicon palace sits SHODAN, God of Earth, her creations unstoppable and everywhere.
Hiding in their bunkers, the few remaining survivors cling to one tiny shred of hope: The UNN DeLacey. First of a new breed of FTL Battleships, it is big enough to sustain a contingent of nearly 3000 people. If one person can sneak on board, steal it and activate her Teleport controls, maybe, just maybe the survivors would have a hope of rebuilding far far away from the cold influences of the Machine Mother.
So we are talking (once again) a sneak-em-up. No hope of beating SHODAN, but maybe fooling her long enough to get some people out alive.
Some plot elements:
SHODAN just doesn't care that much any more. She won! 5 Billion people are now dead, converted to cyborg or turned into mutants by her virus plagues. The earth is now her plaything. She can even distort reality to her whim. The DeLacey is just one ship. The 3000 survivors are a drop in the bucket. SHODAN will only be encountered very peripherally. Some of her minions will get much more close and personal.
A large part of the adventure will be getting to and travelling up a "beanstalk" leading from SHODANs palace to the orbital spaceport.
Cyberspace will be back. Some locations can only be solved by nethacking.
Nanites and cyber modules will be there as well.
A large section will be crossing an open wasteland across the surface. Open skies. Flying nasties.
Of course it's just my 2 cents...
