This was a less haggard concept in 1999, as were the audio logs that System Shock 2 uses to tell its story. You don’t belong here, and suddenly you feel like you’re not fighting a single enemy but instead an entire immune system bent on eradicating the virus you represent. “Out of place.” And it dawns on you that it is talking about you. Something wrong, twistedly familiar but repellently alien. You look down a long, dim hallway just as that unnaturally-elongated human form rounds a corner, with its oddly hooked elbows and jerking gait, and you aren’t looking at that character model anymore but instead you’re seeing something completely different. In the game, you hear the hiss of a door opening and then irregular, meaty footfalls on a polished metal deck. But that’s not how they were in the game, not really. If you look at still frames of those zombie-like enemies, then the models and textures are incredibly crude and ugly. Take the game’s most bog-standard enemy, the Hybrid. Within some severe constraints, the artists, sound engineers, level designers, and writers at Irrational made a game that has been under my skin and inside my head ever since I first played it. I think there was something about those limitations themselves that helped it achieve a deeper resonance. Don’t think that I’m saying System Shock 2’s achievement is transcending its limitations.
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