In this classic feature, Jim Rossignol looks back at the real reason BioShock exists.
We’re digging into the PC Gamer archives to publish pieces from years gone by. This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 182, Christmas 2007.
Back in the summer of 1994 everyone was getting excited about Doom 2. Everyone was wrong. The only game that mattered was System Shock.
It was a defining game for me, and for the handful of others who played it. Doom 2 was fun, but System Shock was changing our perceptions about what gaming could be. It was the big step forward from Ultima Underworld, with a physics system, realistic textured environments, complex AI, and a towering, terrifying story of isolation and persecution aboard a malevolent space station. This was the first showdown with megalomaniac computer SHODAN, and it’s something I’ll never forget.
Some gamers were confused and disappointed by the low-key opening. The squalid medical bays seemed rather lacklustre compared to Doom 2’s gothic techno-fortresses, and beating a haywire service bucket to death with a stick didn’t seem quite as thrilling as hitting the high notes with a point-blank shotgun blast. There might not have been a great sense of urgency in the opening hours, but this wasn’t about the big adrenal release. System Shock was the slow build, the growing realisation of the scale of disaster and horror. You really were in the midst of something utterly terrible.
Even though System Shock never had the capacity to deliver a living, chat-enabling NPC, you almost always expected to meet one.
