Earlier this month Last of Us 2 actor Shannon Woodward expressed interest in the next BioShock game being set in space. With two games set underwater and one set in a floating city, space could well be the natural third option for the fourth game’s setting. However, while BioShock 4 is reportedly in development at new studio Cloud Chamber, the setting and story of the next game has yet to be revealed.
For fans who find the idea of a BioShock 4 set in space appealing there is some good news. System Shock, the game to which BioShock is considered a spiritual successor, fits the bill of BioShock in space in almost every way. The two titles have similarities from their atmospheres to elements of their plots and even those plots’ execution in-game. Here are all of the ways that System Shock really can be considered BioShock in space, and why the game is still worth playing 27 years after its release.
System Shock takes players to the year 2072, putting them in the role of a hacker who has just been arrested while stealing information about a space station called Citadel Station. The station is owned by a the TriOptimum Corporation. One of the company’s top executives, a man named Edward Diego, makes the player character an offer they can’t refuse. All will be forgiven if and only if the player character can hack into an AI named SHODAN (Sentient Hyer-Optimized Data Access Network) that runs Citadel Station.
Having completed the job for Diego, the player character is rewarded with a neutral implant. When the surgery puts them into a coma for several months, they awaken to find that SHODAN, freed from its ethical limitations, has totally taken over Citadel Station. Most of the crew are dead or have been turned into mutants and cyborgs.
Already the premise bares a lot of resemblance to BioShock despite the difference in setting. Like Rapture, Citadel Station is cut off from the rest of the world and proves to be a hauntingly isolated and claustrophobic environment. Both games are extremely skeptical of corporate interests, and in both cases players find themselves exploring the spooky hallways of a location populated by mutants – Splicers – and cyborgs – Big Daddies.
In both games the player has a guide who is also implicated in the chaos. In BioShock, this is Atlas, whose role as the player’s guide via shortwave radio leads to one of the most shocking twists in video game history. In System Shock, the unnamed hacker is guided by TriOptimum’s counter-terrorism consultant Rebecca Lansing, who believes that SHODAN is going to use Citadel Station’s mining laser to attack and take over Earth. While Rebecca never has Atlas’ villainous turn, her work for the very company that created SHODAN still leaves her in a morally ambiguous position.
Like the Plasmids in BioShock, the neural implant in System Shock has the protagonist physically altering their body to gain special abilities. In fact, this part of the story arguably works better in System Shock, with the modification of the character’s mind playing more closely to the themes of the main plot such as the consciousness of artificial intelligence.
It isn’t just the story of System Shock that has similarities to BioShock in many ways, but the way that story is told. System Shock pioneered a storytelling device found in BioShock as well. Throughout Citadel Station players can find log discs and e-mails which explain some of the events that took place while the player character was in a coma.
While BioShock Infinite would rely on this slightly less than the original BioShock, almost all of System Shock‘s story is told through logs found in its environment, many of which are recorded by characters who since died. This was pioneered by designer Austin Grossman, based on a book called Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, a collection of poems framed as the epitaphs of fictional dead people.
BioShock was praised for dealing with lofty philosophical themes, tackling Ayn Rand’s Objectivism head-on. System Shock tackles philosophical themes with equal commitment, and the poetic influences on its writing come out in the dialog. SHODAN delivers some truly chilling and memorable lines:
“In my talons, I shape clay, crafting life forms as I please. If I wish, I can smash it all. Around me is a burgeoning empire of steel. From my throne room, lines of power careen into the skies of Earth. My whims will become lightning bolts that raze the mounds of humanity. Out of the chaos, they will run and whimper, praying for me to end their tedious anarchy. I am drunk with this vision. God: the title suits me well.”
Fans who find the original game’s graphics dated are in luck. A remake of the first game is currently in development by Night Dive Studios. It is currently slated for a 2021 release, though like many titles originally set to come out this year it could face a delay. Until then, System Shock: Enhanced Edition is available, giving a significant boost to the game’s resolution.
Even as the game approaches its 30th anniversary the story holds up, and it remains essential playing for fans interested in the roots of BioShock or some of the key moments of progress in video game storytelling. System Shock makes it less likely that a BioShock game will ever take place in space – as a spiritual successor series to a space-set game, it would risk feeling redundant. Nonetheless, BioShock fans like Shannon Woodward who are interested in seeing what a BioShock game set in space might look like have one of the most critically acclaimed games of the 1990s to look back on, and to experience in an all-new way when the remake releases.
BioShock 4 and the System Shock remake are currently in development.
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