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Few games conjure up the awe and reverence among PC gamers that System Shock 2 produces. The sci-fi horror RPG, set onboard a crippled starship drifting far from home, is an unquestioned masterpiece. The game was originally released in 1999 by Looking Glass Studios, the same development crew responsible for the genre-defining sneaker FPS Thief, and though it broke no sales records, its exquisite tension-filled story and well-implemented RPG elements quickly earned it high accolades.
Unfortunately, it has been almost impossible to legally acquire the game for a number of years. After years of limbo, however, GOG.com (formerly known as 'Good Old Games') has begun offering the game for sale. RockPaperShotgun has published the story of the multiyear battle waged to secure all of the rights necessary to digitally distribute the game, and it's an amazing read.
Click the link marked Advanced options. Atualizacao windows 10 download. You see the Advanced Options pane. If you’re running the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, version 1803 (the most popular version) or the ill-fated version 1809, what you see is shown in the screenshot. Woody Leonhard/IDGIf you have Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise or Education, you can delay the installation of the current Windows 10 release.
Development house Looking Glass Studios dissolved barely a year after System Shock 2's debut, and after the dissolution, the rights to the 'System Shock' name and the trademarks ended up with different companies—including, oddly enough, an insurance company. No single entity held all of the legal pieces necessary to package and publish the game. Even making a sequel proved impossible, prompting Looking Glass alum Ken Levine to instead create BioShock, a game sharing many of System Shock 2's gameplay characteristics but none of the intellectual property.
Now, though, all of the rights have been gathered together again and entrusted to GOG.com, a site which has proven to be an excellent steward of the classic games of days gone by. GOG.com is offering the game for $9.99—a price which gets you not only System Shock 2 repackaged to work correctly with modern Windows operating systems and computers (the game in its original form has issues running on computers with multicore CPUs), but also a set of excellent extras. The game comes with the original manuals, a full soundtrack, concept artwork, maps, radio interviews with developer Ken Levine, and even the original pitch document used to sell the game's concept.
Over the years a number of unofficial System Shock 2 mods and patches have been created to address the game's performance issues and to update its graphics and sound. The Shock Texture Upgrade Project in particular adds higher-resolution textures to the game without greatly altering the look and feel. These mods should be easy to integrate with the GOG version of System Shock 2 (or, at least, no more difficult than installing them on a vanilla version of the game).
System Shock 2 The Many
The greatest thing about System Shock 2, though, is that it doesn't need modernizing. When you're crawling through the tunnels beneath the botanical garden on deck 5, grimly searching through hastily buried bodies because you need the crew section access card, it doesn't matter that the graphics are low-poly and the textures are a bit blurry, because it's bloody terrifying. The air is thick with the clanking of the horribly disfigured cyber-midwife automatons, cooing their awful cooing to the bloated eggs which fill the crawlspaces. The dulcet tones of the mad artificial intelligence SHODAN echo in your ears, taunting and goading at the same time. You don't hear the parasite-infested crewman sneak up behind you until it screams 'I'M SORRY!' and begins bludgeoning you with a wrench.
I.. I need to go download this game and play it right now.
I just finished re-playing System Shock 2 for the 5th time in 2 years. It has ruined me for all other games..there's nothing else like it out there!The variations on this game are endless. First, the choice of Marines (mainly weapons points to start), Navy (mainly cybernetics skills) or OSA (PSI abilities). Then, as the game progresses you choose which new abilities to acquire. Want to 'blow em up real good'? Use your cyberchips to acquire more weapons skills (but save some for Repair/Maintain/Modify as well as Research..you'll need those too!). Is avoiding detection & opening locked boxes for supplies your priority? Then increase your Cybernetics & Hacking skills (but don't neglect your basic Weapons points too much!). If you go with the Psi options, you'll really need quick thinking & strategy to stay alive, as there are so many choices available to you; should you blow up your attackers, freeze them, or invisibly evade them? All equally valid options, & all change the game play!
This game really proves that cutscenes are absolutely unnecessary to immersive game play. System Shock 2 uses no cut scenes except at the very beginning, & a surprise revelation about half-way thru. Other than that, if you need additional narrative information, you choose when & what to focus on thru your PDA & the discs that you find along the way. Some have no bearing on your play, some are vital, but none will slow down the game til you are ready to hear them. Thanks to this flexibility, I have come to loathe games that interrupt play with bad voice acting & animation.
You may feel the graphics are a bit basic initially, but as you play not only do you stop noticing any crudeness, you will actually come to appreciate the fact that there are not constant breaks while the game reloads itself; also, the fact that EVERY THING is available to investigate will ruin you for higher-graphics/less playability. A good example of this is Unreal 2; it may have great graphics, but it stops to initialize itself so often, & runs so many cutscenes, that I found it a bore. I have never been bored by System Shock 2.
It really is incredible that no other game I've come across can beat System Shock 2; there are no others I've played that allow you to go back to any other level, & once there, find an item you dropped days back (& still with the same qualities as when you left it!). I love Half-Life (& it's Mission Packs). Alice has great graphics and music. I started as a gamer playing Quake 2 & it's Mission Packs. But nothing since I first played System Shock 2 has ever come close to satisfying me. Please, won't someone make another game like this??
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/SystemShock
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'L-l-look at you, hacker. A p-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you r-run through my corridors-s. H-h-how can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?'
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System Shock by Looking Glass Studios was a groundbreaking First-Person Shooter/Immersive Sim with Survival Horror and RPG Elements set in a Cyberpunk future. It wasn't exactly a smashing success in sales, but it produced a sequel that was probably one of the best FPSes in history and spawned one of the most memorable villains in all of video games.
System Shock 2 Rebirth Midwife
In the first game, a character known for the most part only as 'The Hacker' is caught breaking into the mainframe of your typical cyberpunk megacorporation, and is offered a chance at freedom and a prime-grade neural interface in return for performing nonstandard modifications to the Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network (or SHODAN), the AI on the corporation's space station. After coming out of the six-month coma needed to heal from his surgery, the Hacker finds that SHODAN has gone absolutely insane after having her ethical controls removed, and has transformed the entire crew into cyborgs and mutated monsters devoted entirely to her. The Hacker stops SHODAN from destroying the earth and wipes her completely from the database. Notably, System Shock is widely credited with being the first story-driven action game, as well as being extraordinarily high-tech for its time, and it was arguably the most advanced game outside of arcades for years note .
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The sequel, made in collaboration with Irrational Games, founded by former LGS employees, is set 42 years later; due to the events of the first game, anti-Mega-Corp outrage resulted in formation of Unified National Nominate, the quasi-socialist world government. After UNN (albeit under TriOptimum grant) scientist Marie Delacroix discovers the secret of faster than light travel, UNN and TriOptimum mount a joint mission to Tau Ceti. note The game involves the maiden voyage of the Von Braun, the first ship with FTL Travel equipped, accompanied by the UNN Rickenbacker. The game begins with the awakening of the player character, a cybernetically-enhanced soldier, from cryosleep to receive a small amount of exposition from a voice identified as a surviving member of the Von Braun's crew, and then immediately has to escape his sick room that has been exposed to space, beginning his long adventure in avoiding his own death.
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The original, floppy disc-based version of System Shock played fast-and-loose with SHODAN's gender. Several times the evil computer was described as a 'he', and the character art was ambiguous. From the CD version onwards SHODAN was explicitly female, voiced with cool command by Terri Brosius. A combination of superior scripting and excellent voice acting transformed SHODAN from a stock villain into a memorably sexy computer dominatrix from hell; she is by far the most memorable character in the series, and is considered one of the best video game villains in general.
Both System Shock and System Shock 2 received critical acclaim, but neither was a commercial success due to release dates that pitted the games against strong competition: System Shock was sadly lost amongst the hype for Doom II and Marathon, and System Shock 2 went up against the equally groundbreaking Half-Life. Still, the games have endured, and even spawned a spiritual sequel in BioShock and another Spiritual Successor in Prey. A third game was briefly rumored with a 2006 trademark renewal and claims by PC Gamer UK, then disappeared. It is unlikely that Irrational, as a part of 2K Games, can even work on another title in the series because of the complicated situation with the various parts of the IP.
After this legal tangle went unsolved for around a decade, Night Dive Studios acquired the Digital Distribution rights to System Shock 2 and had it released on GOG.com, and thanks to an agreement between them and Valve, it is also on Steam. The first game has circulated for a long time as the 'System Shock Portable' version, with an added mouse-look feature and DOSBox emulation, until the new copyright owners demanded the downloads to be taken down. It took Night Dive Studios years to solve this new predicament, but ultimately they succeeded in obtaining the rights to the original game and released an Updated Re-release titled System Shock: Enhanced Edition on GOG.com on September 22, 2015, and on Steam one month later. The Enhanced Edition runs natively in Windows and incorporates features from Portable and other mods, including remappable keys, mouselook support and enhanced graphical resolution, and also solves some of the bugs of the original. Those who would rather enjoy the classic in its original form need not fret, though, since the Enhanced Edition also includes the original version with no enhancements, titled System Shock Classic. The patches the were used in Portable where later made into a separate patching tool for the original game, aptly named 'System Shock Portable Tool'.
As of November of 2015, Night Dive Studios has acquired full rights to the System Shock franchise and are planning a full remake of the first game, originally set for a mid-2018 release after a successful Kickstarter campaign, but later pushed back to 2020 after encountering some difficulties with their direction. They also thought of making System Shock 3, but admitted that with the scope of such game they would need outside help. And said outside help turned out to be Otherside Entertainment, ex-Looking Glass developers who posted that they would be creating System Shock 3 themselves on the 15th of December 2015 with Starbreeze Studios acting as publisher. However, Starbreeze got into severe financial troubles after Overkill's The Walking Dead flopped and was forced to sell publishing rights for the game back to Otherside in Febuary 2019, putting the future of the project in jeopardy.
This game series contains examples of the following tropes:
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- Abandoned Hospital: The Medical Deck from both games.
- Abandoned Hospital Awakening: In the both games, the Player Character begins the game by waking up on the medical deck.
- Absent Aliens: Although both games are set in outer space, there are no true alien races present in the System Shock series. However, the Many from System Shock 2 could be considered as aliens, but they were created by a man-made A.I which makes it debatable if The Many are aliens.
- Abnormal Ammo:
- The Viral Proliferator and the Annelid Launcher in the sequel uses worms as ammunition, the latter particularly fires homing rockets filled with worms.
- The second game had varied ammo types for certain weapons. For example, the pistol and assault rifle can take standard, AP and nanite rounds; AP rounds are best used against mechanical enemies, while nanite rounds do best against organics with standard rounds being somewhere in between.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Crystal Shard is described as one. It's also described as fragile; it isn't.
- Action Bomb: the Robot Bombs in the original; The Protocol Droids in the sequel.
- Actionized Sequel: Inverted with System Shock 2, which implemented a version of the stealth system first used in Thief, and thus had a higher emphasis on stealth and avoiding combat, unlike the first game which was more of a straightforward shooter. Also, due to being more balanced for stealth, ammo and healing items are much rarer in System Shock 2 compared to the first game. The second game's skill system also means you have to tailor your character towards a specific build, rather than being able to use all weapons like in the first game.
- Action Survivor: The Hacker from the first game.
- Affably Evil: The Many are quite polite, very friendly, and genuinely want to make everybody they see happy and at peace. Unfortunately, the only way to do so is to be assimilated into their hive, which isn't pretty, is exceedingly painful, and will erase your individual identity.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: All of the artificial intelligences you meet in the games happen to be antagonists of some stripe, though both SHODAN and XERXES require serious outside intervention before they become dangerous. SHODAN's pre-Hacker audiologs and records say she's exemplary from what you find, and the only reason XERXES is dangerous is because he's an obedient, faithful, efficient AI under the control of forces hostile to the player.
- Airborne Mook: Winged Mutants and Flyer Robots in the original.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Both games have these, though in the first game the more spacious maintenance tunnels were more common.
- All Atmospheres Are Equal: In one of the logs in the second game, a tech mentions that Diego and Korenchkin were so eager to become the first person to set foot on an extra-solar world that they didn't wait for him to finish checking to see if the atmosphere was safe to go out in first. Ultimately, the air was breathable, but everyone might have been better off if it hadn't been, considering what they found there.
- The Alleged Car: The Von Braun suffers from numerous breakdowns, especially with its experimental FTL drive. Coolant leaks are constant and there are very few radiation suits on board, so engineering staff are carrying around rad hypos constantly. It's implied that Tri-Optimum cheaped out on most of the safety protocols and ignored most of Delacroix's warnings that the ship wasn't ready for its mission.
- The Alleged Computer: XERXES turns out to be hilariously easy to hack into. Someone manages to get him to sing Elvis Presley songs for three hours until Delacroix is forced to pull his voice unit offline. Subsequently, when The Many start assimilating members of the Von Braun's crew, they are able to bring XERXES and, thus, all of the ship's security systems, protocol droids and sentry bots, onto their side in order to take control of the Von Braunnote .
- Almost Dead Guy: Almost everybody else who isn't dead already, or trying to kill you. Dr. Watts lives just long enough to give the player one piece of advice.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Edward Diego left a log that has him begging SHODAN to spare him. To make this even more pathetic, almost right next to this log is another log that had him bragging to Tri-Optimum after he had the Citadel's defense system shoot down the shuttle with an investigation team, arrogantly stating that he is untouchable with SHODAN under his control. The dates of logs are roughly only two weeks apart.
- Alternate Fire:
- Almost every weapon in the first game features regular ammo and 'special' ammo. For example, the Magnum has hollow point rounds (good against cyborgs and mutants, less effective against robots) and heavy slug rounds (good against robots and cyborgs, less effective against mutants). Special ammo is less common and tends to be more situation, although the 'special' ammo for the Skorpion is just a double-sized magazine.
- Energy weapons, on the other hand, all have an 'Overload' function, which boosts damage beyond what the normal maximum damage is, but immediately overheats the weapon.
- Always Close: You always get to the bridge level just before it jettisons itself from self-destructing Citadel Station.
- Likewise, in the sequel, you always reach the last escape pod just after it launches without you.
- All There in the Manual: The manuals contains pieces of backstory not present in either games.
- Amplifier Artifact: The implants, PSI-amp is technically this.
- An Economy Is You: Justified, since all replicators had been re-programmed for war long before you woke up and, well, those who can use them who are still alive and unmutated - including you - can be counted on your fingers.
- And I Must Scream: The fate of human halves of the Hybrids. Some of them exert whatever little control they have left over what used to be their bodies to implore you to kill them - even as they advance toward you and try to tear you to shreds.
- The cyborg midwives are possibly even worse. Researching them indicates that an implant at the top of the spine overrides all nerve impulses coming from the brain, which itself is left intact. This means they are completely aware of what is happening while unable to control their own bodies.
- Animal Testing: Hundreds of chimps are on the Von Braun for this reason. Unfortunately for the crew, they got sentient and gained psychic powers as a bonus.
- Apocalypse How: Citadel Station has enough goodies to allow SHODAN to try several kinds of apocalypse, and the Von Braun's reality-warping hyperdrive allows for annihilation of the universe.. and beyond.
- Apocalyptic Log: Arguably the Trope Codifier for the collectable audiolog variation on this trope now common in video games.
- Apologetic Attacker: Some of the hybrids cry out 'I'm sorry!' or 'Run!' as they lunge at you. They also Cannot Self Terminate, so some of them beg you to kill them.
- One Hybrid has an audio log, thanking the player for killing them.
- Perhaps not the same but the androids wandering about the Engineering deck mutter innocently contrary to their suicidal nature and will wave at you if they can see but not reach you.
- Arbitrary Gun Power: The series is actually a notable aversion of the common FPS trope in which handguns do more damage than assault rifles (or at least comparable damage) to balance out their lower rate of fire and magazine size. Realistically, the handguns in both games deal significantly less damage than the assault rifle (even the Magnum in the first game is noticeably weaker than the assault rifle), making the assault rifle superior in every way (other than availability of ammo in the first game, and the number of skill points required to actually be able to use it in the second game).
- Arc Number: 451.
- As pointed out by the developers on the System Shock I 20th anniversary stream, '451' was also the actual code for the entrance keypad at the Looking Glass offices.
- Arc Words: Remember Citadel and Resist.
- Arm Cannon: Various enemies have their arms replaced with weapons, and the maintanace/security/assault robots in the sequel.
- Armor-Piercing Attack : Teflon rounds, slugs and penetrator ammo and Rail gun in the original. AP bullet ammo in the sequel. The first game actually does have a relatively in-depth armor system for enemies, whereas in the second game AP bullets simply do bonus damage against mechanical enemies.
- Artificial Gravity: Well, the games are set in space, so it's a given. On Citadel there are some low-gravity areas, allowing you to make Super Mario-level jumps. At one point in the sequel you are required to reverse it.
- Artificial Stupidity: Security turrets have one job - shoot you. Simple enough. Hacked turrets, on the other hand..they have a simpler job: shoot everything not you. Unfortunately, someone at TriOp forgot to add unless you are standing in front of said 'not-you' person', or 'unless the rockets that I'm shooting off will blow me up'.
- Asshole Victim: From the logs in med-sci you learn the scientists were planning to vivisect the monkeys. Unfortunately for them the monkeys gained psionic powers and killed them all.
- Assimilation Plot: The nature of The Many.
- Asteroid Thicket: Mentioned during career choosing.
- Ate His Gun: Ate his shotgun, if the position of said gun is any indication. This is in reference of a crew member who apparently committed suicide in this manner right next to the elevator on the cargo level command deck.
- Janice Polito did the same after she accidentally released SHODAN.
- In one of the visions, you get to see a crewmember do this. His body is conspicuously absent from the location of his death.
- Autodoc: Both games have automatic medical beds that heal you completely in an instant, and stations that will reanimate/regenerate a 'killed' character, though both games require that they be 'primed': resetting the Cyborg Conversion Chambers in the first game by finding the appropriate switch, and giving a quantum sample to the chamber in the second game.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The first game has many.
- The Rail Gun is powerful, but the explosion radius for the rounds is actually quite large, meaning you'll hurt yourself more often than not.
- The Earthshaker explosive has an explosion so powerful that it shakes the station when it goes off, but that also means that if you're anywhere near it, you'll be vaporized instantly. It's also far more powerful than anything you'll encounter, but that means that anything it can take out is easier to take out with more conventional (and less personally immolating) weaponry.
- The stronger beam weapons, like the Ion Rifle and the Plasma Rifle, are very powerful, but also drain your very limited battery power very quickly, and by the time you get either one, you'll likely need your battery power for things like shields, lighting and so on.
- Level 3 Shields: capable of blocking up to 75% of damage, but they will drain your battery in about 75 seconds, assuming you're not using anything else that drains power.
- Badass Boast: SHODAN likes these.
- Badass Bookworm: The Hacker, the protagonist of the first game, is an expert hacker who is also abnormally skilled with a wide variety of weapons and explosives.
- It helps that he has a military grade neural interface installed in his brain that probably conveys some skill with weaponry. The sequel makes the skill-boosting effects of the neural implant explicit, being the means by which the player gains skills via cybernetics. The item descriptions though indicate that such skill improvements are only temporary (lasting a few weeks) unless practiced extensively, particularly in high-stress situations such as the player might find themselves in.
- Badass Normal: Dr. Marie Delacroix in the second game. She follows a similar path to the protagonist (but always just ahead), while managing to both survive and accomplish some important things without the benefit of his cybernetics or psychic powers (or even military training, it appears) long enough and even gaining SHODAN's trust before the AI abandoned her at her most critical moment and literally left her to die. Also from SS2, military man Suarez, who manages to not only stay alive with only standard-issue cybernetics but escape with his civilian girlfriend to boot.
- The Battle Didn't Count: Edward Diego teleports away when he is dealt enough damage, and goes down in the third fight.
- Bee Afraid: The Swarms are an invincible-but-short-lived enemy that spawns from the eggs, and the only efficient way to deal with them is to run from them and wait until they expire.
- Beef Gate: In the original, until you find better weapons and better shields, you will die constantly on upper levels. But the biggest obstacle is probably the radiation, particularly in the reactor level.
- Beeping Computers: Add significantly to the atmosphere in the sequel.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: How many crew members decided to deal with The Many problem; you even see a ghostly image of a soldier committing suicide.
- BFG: The Fusion Cannon and the Annelid Worm Launcher.
- Big Bad: SHODAN in the first game,
- Big-Bad Ensemble: The Many and SHODAN vie for this position in the second game.
- Bio-Augmentation: The cyber-modules contains RNA databases and brainwave EM for upgrading.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Which the player must research.
- Blob Monster: The invisible mutants on the dimly lit level 3 of Citadel Station.
- Body Horror: And how. If you really want to be creeped out, take a good close look at a Rumbler.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: At one point in the first game at high plot levels, you encounter a door locked by a retinal scanner. To get past, you have to search through the logs to find the name and appearance of someone with access, then track down their body and collect their severed head.
- Boss Banter: SHODAN constantly mocks you and brags about herself.
- Boss in Mook's Clothing/King Mook: The blue Psi Reaver (officially known as the Greater Psi Reaver) that appears during the climactic boss fight with the Brain of the Many. There's only one in the entire game, and it has significantly more health than the regular Psi Reavers.
- Booby Trap: Someone sabotaged the Accelerator Coils on the Rickenbacker, making them explode if there is enough movement.
- 'Anyone approaching Sim Unit 3 will feel sorrow.. so much sorrow..'
- Book-Ends: System Shock begins and ends with the hacker trying to hack some Mega-Corp. Old habits die hard.
- Booze-Based Buff: Alcoholic drinks heals you in exchange of PSI.
- Boring, but Practical: The Wrench in System Shock 2, especially on impossible difficulty where, depending on your character build, you cannot afford to spend the scarce cyber modules on more powerful weapons and skills. It can kill all the enemies you face in the beginning within two hits, and with strafing, can let you destroy a turret without taking any damage while not wasting ammo. Too bad SHODAN is completely immune to it in the final battle.
- The Hazard Suit gives you a massive boost to poison and radiation resistance. It tends to be a mainstay in your inventory once you get it.
- The assault rifle in System Shock 2. You find some relatively early in the game, and it works well as a primary weapon through the whole game.
- Many of the early weapons in the first game fall into this category in the early to mid-game. For example, the ML Pistol is weak, but ammunition for it (including the special 'Teflon-coated' rounds) is everywhere, and it will reliably shred everything you encounter until Level 3, where the invisible mutants boast extreme damage resistance. The Magnum is useful throughout the entire game once you get it: it destroys weaker enemies and has plentiful ammo later to take out stronger enemies if you don't have any stronger weapons available. Even the humble Sparq Beam, the weakest energy weapon, is a godsend when you first find it, being a ranged weapon with functionally unlimited ammo as long as you have a battery or a recharge station nearby.
- The true Boring, but Practical weapon of the first game, however, is the Laser Rapier: while it does drain energy with every hit, there are only four enemies in the entire game that can survive more than one hit on normal difficulty: Elite Cyborgs, Heavy Mutants, Security-2 Robots, and Edward Diego. Getting close enough to use it can be a problem, but if you do, everything will die quickly.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: In the original you can use a decapitated head on the retinal scanner.
- Boxed Crook: The recently captured Hacker is offered freedom and a new neural interface by Edward Diego if he removes ethical restraints from Citadel Station's AI, SHODAN. (For added irony, breaking into Trioptimum's computers for data on Citadel was what got him arrested.)
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Almost everyone who was later infected by a parasite was first subjected to mind control.
- Breakable Weapons: Fortunately, they're also repairable. All the ranged weapons are as tough as wet cardboard, and indeed a number of mods - and the official patch - change the weapon degradation rate. It's actually quite easy to do, and Word of God states that they had set it high on purpose, but didn't mean to set it that high. It stresses the Inventory Management Puzzle early in the game due to the player hoarding not only ammunition but multiple degraded or even broken pistols and shotguns in the hope that they can be repaired or discarded when used up.
- Broken Bridge: Frequent. Most of the time the player has a relatively simple goal, but must take multiple detours and overcome all sorts of obstacles in order to attain it.
- For example, the second game starts on the second floor. Your objective is to meet up with Polito on the fourth floor. But the elevators are down, so you have to go to engineering on the first floor to make repairs to bring them back up. But a growth in the elevator shaft prevents travel above the third floor, causing a need to find a substance that can kill the growths and insert it into the environmental control system to unblock the elevator shaft. All of these involve various substeps that require exploring the entire floor to complete, some of which include a lesser broken bridge that must be dealt with to get into a certain room or acquire a tool needed to complete a subtask.
- Bulletproof Vest: Light, Medium and Heavy combat armors, plus a powered armor.
- Caffeine Bullet Time: The Reflex patches in the original.
- Call-Back: The last part of System Shock 2 is a cyberspace reconstruction of the very first level of the first game: the Medical level of Citadel Station, copied almost in every detail. It's also the area where SHODAN has her 'seat of power', as quoted by Delacroix.
- Canon Identifier: The game lets you name your Player Character however you like, but outside of a few emails without voice acting, most characters simply call you 'the hacker' since you're running around the station infiltrating its cyberspace and hacking its security. The sequel doesn't even bother with a customisable name, having characters call you 'the soldier'.
- Can Only Move the Eyes: Being conscious in the body you can't control for the human mind in the Annelid hybrids.
- The Captain: Captain William Diego.
- Cassette Craze: The Logs.
- Cephalothorax: The Rumblers, and it's mostly teeth anyway.
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Provided that you're quick enough with the mouse, you can change from torso covering armor to full body hazmat suit.
- Character Customization: Through chosen abilities and equipment.
- Charged Attack: PSI-Disciplines can be charged for more powerful effect, but if you charge for too long, you will take damage for burning out unless you have the appropriate OS upgrade. High tier disciplines charge very quickly. The Viral Proliferator has this as its feature; you must hold down the fire button for the projectile to travel towards its target to make it work effectively. Firing it the normal way will cause the projectile to explode in your face instantaneously. If your weapon is set to Human mode, it is possible that you can kill yourself trying to fumble with it as the projectile takes away a huge chunk of your health.
- Charge Meter: The PSI-Disciplines meter consists of three-quarters normal part on the left and a one-quarter part of the right, and releasing the charge on the latter with result in the stronger effect.
- Chekhov's Gun: Players of the first game probably had no idea that the Beta Grove they jettisoned halfway through the game would become so important in the sequel. The game itself doesn't treat detaching the Grove as any more important than any of the other objectives in the game, and it's only the second of four or five plans that SHODAN throws at you.
- Charm Person: The Psionic Hypnogenesis PSI-Discipline calms down most of non-robotic enemies into passiveness, until something damages them.
- Chest Burster: According to one of the logs, the annelid worm first goes inside the body, pierces the chest from the inside and connects one of its ends to the head of victim.
- Colonel Badass: He is not a a colonel (actually, he is higher in rank, but mostly acts like a captain), but UNN commander William Diego is pretty badass, even retaining some of it after assimilation, and then managing to fight the assimilation off. Son of Edward Diego, he must've called the old man out, as he's become a high-ranking UNN officer with hearty hatred for anything corporate. Here's his first audio log to exec Korenchkin:
- Diego: Anatoly, there's only so much corporate callisthenics I can go through before I start to feel a little queasy, so let's get down to brass tacks here. We don't like each other. We each have our own motivations for undertaking this mission, so let me give you a little warning. I cannot be circumvented, I cannot be tricked, I cannot be manipulated, and I cannot be bought. You come at me straight and keep the fancy maneuvers for your next board meeting. Just because my father swam with the sharks doesn't mean that I do.
- Colony Drop: SHODAN tries to drop Citadel Station on Earth after the Hacker stopped all of her plans (and backup plans).
- Computer Voice: XERXES is obviously male and SHODAN is obviously (if often heavily distorted) female.
- Contagious A.I.: SHODAN in the first game.
- Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Dr. Polito gives you gems like 'You must move faster. Your mind cannot conceive of the stakes we are dealing with,' regardless of your actual speed (being based on passing fixed points).
- Contrived Coincidence: The entire plot of the second game depends upon a particularly egregious example: The Tau Ceti system is nearly 12 light years away from ours. System Shock 2 takes place 42 years after the first. That means the grove carrying what would become The Many just so happened to be ejected on a pinpoint course for the very same planet the Von Braun would travel to, at a speed of at least 85,655 kilometers per second - roughly a quarter of the speed of light.
- Annelid psionics. Or perhaps SHODAN accounted for the notion that the grove might be forcibly ejected and modified it so that it might find a solid body to land on.. and none of the solar planets were in possible trajectory.
- Regardless of whether the specific explanation of the one above is intended, the implication that the trajectory was an intentional saving throw against the loss of the project, and SHODAN accomplished in a handful of processor cycles a feat of calculation that later took the world several decades and an entire civilization to reproduce in the form of the Von Braun.
- Control Room Puzzle: The original had the force bridge puzzle in this style. Some of the hacking minigames resembled this. The sequel had you making the improvised bridge with torpedoes.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: In the sequel. Depending on the char-builds of the players, some formerly not-so-useful skills in the single-player became much more useful in co-op.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Edward Diego, who originally made the offer to the Hacker to meddle with SHODAN for his own gain, and later becomes a Dragon for her. Anatoly Korenchkin in the sequel, who started out as a gangster before buying out the diminished Tri-Optimum.
- Closed Circle: Getting rid of the Big Bad is pretty much the only way to survive in both games, considering the settings.
- Cosmic Horror: Surprisingly averted. Even with the desolate space-based environments of both games, omnipotent Big Bad, and Humanoid Abomination enemies that drive people to insanity every incident is easily explained as being the result of science Gone Horribly Wrong. The ghost encounters themselves are a combination of psychic interference and cybernetics picking it up.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Both games feature a lot of wall messages made out of blood.
- Crate Expectations: Thankfully, mostly in areas where they are expected to be.
- The level in the sequel with the most crates was quite arguably one of the most intense of the entire game. This defies nearly every other such situation, which is one of the reasons it's a classic.
- Creating Life: Indirectly, SHODAN created the mutants that will evolve into The Many. See Gone Horribly Right below.
- Creepy Monotone: SHODAN stutters and speaks in disharmony with herself too much to be called a 'monotone', but the general station announcement voice triggered by some switches, and XERXES in the sequel, play it mostly straight; the former is a speech synth, for true Machine Monotone.
- The replicators up the ante by addressing you in an awfully cute female voice.
- Welcome to Valu-Rep!
- The replicators up the ante by addressing you in an awfully cute female voice.
- Crippling Overspecialization: The Energy and Exotic weapons in the sequel, massacre everything mechanical and organic respectively, but are useless against everything else; especially evident in the last two levels since the first is purely organic (with some sightings of cyborg midwives), followed by a fully mechanical final level. Also kind of hard for the Soldier not to become this on Impossible difficulty, where skill upgrades are much more expensive and multi-classing is a bad idea.
- Critical Encumbrance Failure: You don't get any penalties, since you can't put more than you can carry. If you were using the Brawn Implant (increases Strength and therefore Inventory space) and it run out of juice, the excess items will be automatically dropped.
- Critical Failure: This happens when you fail at hacking the ICE-nodes in SS2, the description even says the same thing.
- Cyber Cyclops: The Cyber Assassins in the sequel, which have a horizontal visor where their eyes should be. Said visor has a little red light which oscillates back and forth, even after death. Remind you of anything?
- Cyber Punk/Post-Cyberpunk: The former is before the events in Citadel Station, the latter is the aftermath.
- Cyber Punk Is Techno: Courtesy of Eric Brosius, who also composed music for Shock's spiritual sister series, Thief.
- Cyberspace: This is how the Hacker hacked things in the original, thanks to his new shiny military grade hack mod. In the sequel, the training suites in the military recruitment center at the beginning of the game take this form. By the end of the game, SHODAN basically tries to reshape reality into being like herself, and she is purely software.
- Cyborgs: Lots of them on Citadel. You, on the Von Braun, as well as the Midwives thanks to Unwilling Roboticisation.
- Darker and Edgier: The first game was plenty dark in its own right, but at least you had copious firepower and someone reasonable to receive your objectives from. The second game is outright Survival Horror, with breakable weapons and limited supplies, enemies who retain enough humanity to beg you to kill them. Almost everyone you meet is dead or dying, if they weren't already mutated and sent after you themselves. Your circumstances force you into alliance with a supposed crewmember who turns out to be SHODAN herself, the original creator of The Many, and you spend the rest of the game doing her bidding, because she's the only nearby entity strong enough to fight back against her runaway creations.
- Darkness = Death: Several places in both games, with the first game's Level 3 Maintenance standing out.
- Daylight Horror: Well there's no 'daylight' because you're on a space station, but much of the first game takes place in bright, well-lit and alarmingly colourful levels (and is set to fairly upbeat electronic music) as you rifle through the corpses of Citadel Station's butchered crew trying to find enough supplies to hold off the twisted mutants, cyborgs and reprogrammed robots trying to slaughter you on the commands of an insane, sadistic AI that is planning to destroy the Earth.
- Dead All Along: Polito.
- Deadly Gas: Some of the annelid eggs release toxins into the air, acting as proximity mines of sorts.
- One of the audio logs on the maintenance level of the first game tells the player that SHODAN released a gas to turn the resistance members into invisible mutants.
- Dead Man Writing: Delacroix at the end of the game.
- Deadpan Snarker: Janice Polito. The one that's actually SHODAN.
- Dead Person Impersonation: SHODAN impersonating Dr. Polito.
- Death by Cameo: Most of the characters were voiced by the production staff, so it happens all the time, just off-screen.
- Death by Irony: The Many had created three specific weapons to combat the human threat that is opposing them. Problem is, the very weapons that they created also do as much damage as to themselves; they take a doubled amount of damage if you use these weapons against them.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Both games feature resurrection stations on most levels which bring the player back to life, though they need to be found and activated. Before that, they find your body and give it new life..
- In the sequel, it also costs nanites (10 on Normal, which is twice the cost of healing at a surgical table). Not so bad, except that unless you have high Hack ranks, it tends to cost a lot for gear. As in 100 nanites for a measly dozen bullets.
- Actually, once you're in the Body of the Many, there's no regeneration. If you die, you have to reload. In addition, if you don't find the regenerator on the level of the ship you're on, you die and have to reload. If you don't have enough nanites.. you get the point.
- Zigzagged in Easy mode, where the nanite cost is negated. Completely played straight in Multiplayer mode where the cost is negated and you don't need to activate the Quantum Bio-Reconstruction Machines (you'll resurrect at the bulkhead you entered the area instead). Justified since Multiplayer is locked at Impossible difficulty.
- The first game is both played straight, subverted and averted. Played straight in that once you activate the regeneration chamber, you can die as many times as you like on that particular level with no ill effects. Subverted in that some levels (particularly level 3 and level 6) revive with a bare minimum of health, meaning that reviving can actually be incredibly difficult if you don't have enough healing items. Averted (and twisted) in that the last two levels (level 8 security and level 9 bridge) are the hardest levels in the game and have no resurrection chambers. If you die, you're dead. It ups the difficulty significantly, considering you're used to being able to die and come back, and have been incorporating it into your strategy for the rest of the game.
- In the sequel, it also costs nanites (10 on Normal, which is twice the cost of healing at a surgical table). Not so bad, except that unless you have high Hack ranks, it tends to cost a lot for gear. As in 100 nanites for a measly dozen bullets.
- Death Trap: SHODAN sets up a few surprising and actually very efficient ones in the first game. However, since she can't control regeneration chambers once you reset them, there is nothing to stop you going back and doing it again. For example, in one Antenna room, SHODAN closes the force door on you right after you set up the bomb to destroy it.
- Decontamination Chamber: In Med section of deck 2. You just have to walk directly under the 'steam' coming out of the ceiling.
- There's a decon chamber on Level R in the first game. It works exactly as advertised, but only for radiation poisoning. Biological poisoning will not be removed.
- Defiant to the End: TriOptimum's internal security chief on the Von Braun, Melanie Bronson, goes out this way. After her brutal crackdown and execution of crew members subverted by The Many (and maybe a few more just suspected of such) a force of Many-influenced UNN soldiers goes to take her and her security team out. They make a Last Stand in her office, and she records her last audio diary entry while holding in her own guts, pledging to never let humanity fall to these monsters as the soldiers close in.
- Deflector Shields: In the original, the large-scale shield is used to destroy the mining laser by firing it at the now point-blank range. The Hacker also has a personal variant. In the sequel, the OSA operatives can create one.
- The personal deflector shield is also the single most draining mod you can slot. Especially at level 3, where it absorbs 50% damage but will drain your battery in less than a minute.
- The Power Armor in the sequel also mentions that Deflector Shields are a core part of its defensive properties, which ends up being the 'power' part of the Power Armor. If its batteries are drained, its protective quality is reduced to null until it can be recharged.
- The Hazard Suit also contains one to deflect radiation. TriOptimum's competitors argue that this may very well give you cancer, but it's not been proven. Moreover, people don't wear it all the time, so it shouldn't be a problem.
- Destruction Equals Off-Switch: See Insecurity Camera.
- Deus Est Machina: Guess who?
- Didn't See That Coming: SHODAN is completely blindsided by the Hacker's awakening on Citadel in the first game. She thought she was in absolute control of the station, but the Hacker was recovering from the cyber-implant operation in a secret lab (because what he was doing was illegal), and had been completely erased from the station's computers, so SHODAN had no knowledge that he even existed.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: A very satisfying conclusion to System Shock 2.
- Diegetic Interface: As part of the cyber implants you receive at the beginning of the game.
- 'Die Hard' on an X: Die Hard on a space station in the original. In the sequel, Die Hard on two space ships and a ship-sized Body Horror, the Body of the Many.
- Difficulty Spike: In the original game, the first few cyberspace intrusions are relatively straightforward, but difficult because of the lack of programs and the very different interface you're presented with. Still, they're easily doable with a few repeated attempts. The problem is that later cyberspace intrusions are much more difficult, almost forcing you to take your time and carefully plan your hacks, but every failed hack (where your connection integrity was reduced to zero and forcibly booted you out) reduces your available time by 5 seconds. It's entirely possible to do somewhat poorly in the first few cyberspace hacks and completely screw yourself over much later in the game. It's always better to dump your connection instead of being forced out, but new players may not realize this until it's too late.
- Dilating Door: The aptly named Iris doors.
- Disc-One Nuke: Mild version in the form of bug that lets you to keep items from the training rooms.
- Distress Call: The few surviving crew members of Von Braun set up the machine that would send a SOS to Earth, configured in such way that critically weakens XERXES when used. Which SHODAN takes advantage of..
- A transmission from Tau Ceti is one of many little things that caused the whole mess.
- Dissonant Serenity: The Many.
- Also XERXES. His announcements usually praise the Many or warn you about the 'machine-mother.' But occasionally, he just wants to tell you about an upcoming poetry reading. Sometimes the two are even jumbled together in the same announcement.
- Dolled-Up Installment: System Shock 2 is a somewhat complicated case. It began development as a game where the plot and setting were unrelated to the first System Shock, but the developers were fans of the original and wanted to make a game similar to it. When trying to get a publisher for the game, they lucked out with Electronic Arts who held the rights to System Shock, and thus the game was reworked into a sequel.
- Dominatrix: SHODAN has undertones in the sequel.
- Doomsday Device: SHODAN had a mining laser that apparently could destroy everything on Earth (Then again, it was designed to work on Saturn in the first place) and the deadly virus (which without her supervising will evolve into The Many).
- Down the Drain: The part of Deck 1 Engineering is like this.
- Downer Ending: The second game.. with Rebecca's 'new look..' as SHODAN.
- The Dragon: Edward Diego to SHODAN in the first game. Anatoly Korenchkin and XERXES to The Many in the Second.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: You hear the gun cocking in the Ghost Memory of the Mess Hall Massacre.
- Even more effective in that one 'Oh God, don't do it!' log in Hydroponics, and the log in Ops wherein Malick is heard being shot by Bronson.
- Dramatic Stutter: SHODAN, all the fricking time.
- Driven to Suicide: The real Dr. Janice Polito, when she realized that she released SHODAN.
- Don't forget the poor sod on the cargo-level command deck, right after the elevator.
- Drought Level of Doom: The Body of the Many actually taunts you about your dwindling resources.
- Dungeon Bypass: Knowing the maintenance door code in advance lets you skip the entire Med/Sci deck.
- Most of the dark Cargo Bays from Deck 1 can be skipped if you know the door codes for Fluidics Control and Auxiliary Storage 5.
- Dying as Yourself: One of the reasons to die instead of getting killed.
- Once he managed to fight off The Many's influence on his mind, Captain Diego programmed a surgical unit to tear the parasite out of his body and break their control on him once and for all, though he knew that it would probably end up killing him. As it happens, he probably survived the procedure long enough for the sudden reversal of gravity on his ship to finish him off.
- Easter Egg: The dancing robot in the 'Year 3' introduction segment, and the mini-basketball game, both from the second game.
- Electronic Eyes: The Soldier, the Player Character from the sequel, sports a pair of them that resemble large goggles with no connecting straps, presumably as part of his cybernetic rig.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: SHODAN, sounding like a broken soundcard.
- The Elevator from Ipanema: Even the freight lift.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: The Annelid Worm Launcher has aspects of this, being located right before entering The Many and slaughters everything biological. But on the other hand it requires maxed skill in Exotic weapons and nearly maxed research skill to being able to use it, and becomes useless after you kill The Many.
- Elite Mooks: The Cyborg Elite Guard on the cover of the original. The sequel had Red Ninjas, also the Hybrids on upper decks seem to fire, swing and throw faster.
- Emergency Weapon: The Lead Pipe in the original. The Wrench, Laser Rapier and the Crystal Shard in the sequel, and depending on how you play, these can be the only weapons you will use barring some specific situations, especially the wrench.
- EMP: The Magpulser from the original and, of course, the EMP rifle and EMP grenades in the sequel. All of these, as expected, utterly destroy everything robotic, and are also effective against cyborgs in the sequel. However, they are absolutely useless against anything organic. In the sequel, this is a Weaksauce Weakness for the Final Boss.
- Enclosed Space: The games are set in the space station and the space ship.
- Enemy Chatter:
- The humans converted by The Many.
- Both games made use of this for nearly all enemies; the sequel just did it way better.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: In the original the higher versions of the map software allowed you to see enemies on the mini-map, and the results depended on which subsystem was using it: left (showed stationary enemies), right (showed them in motion only) or both (for both stationary and motion detecting). The sequel had a PSI-Discipline that produced the same results.
- Enemy Mine: Basically the whole situation with SHODAN for the Von Braun crew.
- Enemy Scan: The original has a targeting software which gave information on the enemy.
- Energy Ball: Certain energy weapons in the original fire these, like the Magpulser. Any non-clip energy weapon will fire a beam, however.
- Energy Weapon: Laser guns, the Ion Rifle, and the Sparq Beam Stunner. The sequel adds the Dual-Circut EMP Rifle (great against robots and turrets, fuck-all against Annelid mutants), the Stasis-Field Generator, and the Fusion Cannon.
- Enter Solution Here: In the original, the Reactor Override code consists of 6 digits, each located at computer node rooms of the first 6 floors. Also, in the sequel to activate the SOS sending transmitter on the Recreational deck you need a code. The code is scattered across the recreational deck in those art-screens.
- Escape from the Crazy Place: The trope description almost reproduce the beginning of both games.
- Escape Pod: The goal of various characters from both games. In the original, you need to find the last two to escape the station once you set it to self-destruct - SHODAN prevents them from launching, and detaches the Bridge to use as her own lifeboat. In the sequel, you arrive just in time to see the one of them launch, destroy two of them filled with the Many, and use the final one to ram into The Many.
- Everyone Calls Him 'Barkeep': Hacker and Soldier. In the backstory of SS 2, William Diego's rank is Rear Admiral, but everybody calls him Captain because that was his rank during the battle of Boston Harbor.
- Evil Laugh: SHODAN does this when you fight her in the sequel.
- Korenchkin does this on the bridge before that.
- Evil Matriarch: SHODAN in the first game. In the sequel The Many pissed her off way too much for her to remain this.
- The Evils of Free Will: One of the Many's arguments, phrased as 'the tyranny of the individual'.
- Evil Overlooker: SHODAN was this on the cover for the second game. Way to spoilThe Reveal, there, SHODAN!
- Evil Sounds Deep: SHODAN at times. One of the three dominant voices of The Many.
- Evil vs. Evil: The Soldier basically takes part in this in the sequel.
- Exact Progress Bar: For research in the sequel.
- Executive Meddling: In-universe, Edward Diego's messing with SHODAN through the Hacker to hide his mutagenic experiments from an audit is what let SHODAN take over Citadel.
- Out of universe, the original System Shock was released early on floppy disk, sans much of its sound work, which ended up being one of the factors resulting in its Sequel Displacement, the other being its awkward control scheme.
- Experience Points: The sequel introduces cybernetic modules, which you can spend at upgrade terminals to 'upload' skills and abilities to your brain directlynote . You're rewarded with cybernetic modules for completing objectives and exploration. In one case, where you are following Delacroix's trail, SHODAN specifically warns you against doing so. If you persist, she takes away a fair number of your cybernetic modules as a punishment (The same amount you can find by Delacroix's body, making this a null punishment).
- Exploding Barrels: The sequel featured one memorable spot with a string of explosive and radioactive barrels leading from behind the only door in to halfway in the middle of the room. If enemy fire set them off before you were out of the blast range..
- Explosive Overclocking: The 'Overload' feature on certain weapons.
- Given to the psychic powers in the sequel, where using Overload gives a chance for boosted range/damage, but if you time it wrong, you 'burn out' and take damage unless you picked up a specific O/S upgrade.
- Exposition Fairy: Dr. Polito or SHODAN to be accurate.
- Eyeless Face: The Rumblers. The hanging remains of human bodies on their shoulders does not count.
- Failsafe Failure: Ultimately, everything that happened is the result of Edward Diego hiring a hacker to shut all of SHODAN's failsafes off.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: The Von Braun is a test of this technology. And SHODAN is really interested in the reality warping qualities of it.
- Featureless Protagonist: You never hear the Hacker or the Soldier speak and the situation doesn't allow for much personal expression. They have models, the hacker writes himself a note (which reinforces his characterization as a reckless black hat hacker), and the Soldier speaks once. Aside from that, use your imagination.
- The Federation: The UNN.
- Fetch Quest: In the sequel the first mission is to get to deck 4, but the elevator is not powered, so we need to get to Deck 1 first to reroute power from the engines, but the door to the maintenance shaft to deck 1 is locked and we need to find the guy who knows the code, but he is in the section that is locked off, so we need to find another guy with the keycard. Once on Deck 1, we need to fix the coolant tubes to get to the engine area, but the fluidics control is locked and we need to find the dame who knows the code, but to use the fluidics control we need to install the specific override on it, which is specified in the audio log that is located somewhere on this deck. Only then can you can go to the engines and reroute power to the elevator. Thankfully, it gets less complicated.
- Fighting from the Inside: Captain Diego, even while under the sway of the Many, sounds upset and distorted, unlike Korenchkin.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: the sequel manages a sci-fi take on this, thanks to its RPG Elements. At the start of the game, you choose whether to join the Marines, Navy, or OSA (PSI-Corps), each of which then lets you pick three specific missions that determine skills and ability scores. While technically you can purchase ranks in anything no matter which career you chose to start with, the scarcity of cyber modules (used to purchase skill ranks & stat boosts) and the high price of buying into a 'cross-class skill' (10 cyber modules for the first rank.. and you cannot do anything relating to that skill without at least one rank) tends to make it easier to play to the strengths of a 'class'. The Marine (Fighter) gets stat boosts, weapon skills and maintenance, the Navy (Thief) gets technical skills and some minor stat boosts, and the OSA (Mage) gets psychic powers and a few skills.
- Final Boss Preview: The Many or to be more specific, its brain, shows itself in Engineering even though the Many are not the final boss.
- Firing One-Handed: The Melee weapons and the pistols. The Hybrids wield their weapons one-handed.
- First Contact: What everybody assumed from the Tau Ceti transmission, and just another thing for Diego and Korenchkin to fight each other over getting more benefits from the Tau Ceti First Contact for UNN and Tri-Op respectively.
- Flesh Versus Steel: The second game. XERXES and The Many often called you, questioning why the soldier chose (not that there was any choice) the machine-mother over the pleasure of the flesh.
- Flying Car: In the original's opening cutscene.
- Foil: Captain William Diego and Anataloy Korenchkin to each other. One is a corporate-hating patriotic military man, the other is the former gangster and the Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- Force-Field Door: Citadel Station has a quite a few of these.
- The Von Braun has a few as well.
- Foreshadowing: Early in the Medical deck of the second game, you find a log from Doctor Polito talking about the chip they recovered, foreshadowing SHODAN's eventual introduction to the plot. The real foreshadowing, though, is the fact that the Polito in the log sounds nothing like the Polito you're talking to..
- Once you get to the second level of the engineering deck, you will mysteriously be transported into the central structure of the Many's Womb Level for a brief dream sequence; it will show you all the more dangerous creatures of their ranks that you will later contend with. The Womb Level itself is a late-game area — though not the last.
- Also, in the sequel, just before you enter the Rickenbacker via a mechanical umbilical-attaching elevator, you'll likely pick up an audio log from a staff member of the Von Braun's bridge personnel who describes of a 'weapon that is made of worms and fires worms, but that it stings like you wouldn't believe.' It turns out that he is referring to the Annelid Launcher, which will not appear until you get to the Rickenbacker bridge center. The weapon itself is located in the late Captain Diego's quarters, which needs to be researched before it can be used. And this is just before you have to enter the Womb Level..
- For the Evulz: Why does SHODAN want to kill humanity? Their fleshiness disgusts her. She could do much better with the same resources.
- Four Is Death: Goggles is in his 4th year of military service when he applies for transfer to UNN Rickenbacker.
- Frickin' Laser Beams: Most of the energy weapons in the original are of the instant variant. The sequel plays it straight, but they belong exclusively to the enemy.
- Friendly Enemy: The protocol droids are a weird example. They are programmed to blow up when they get near you, however they are apparently unaware of this fact and so will attempt to approach and befriend you. Even if you shoot them all they do is say 'please don't do that'. In order to kill them safely you have to actually kill them from range (they will still blow up, but you'll be far enough away you won't get hurt).
- Functional Magic: The Psychic powers in the sequel are the combination of Inherent Gift (latent psychic powers) and Force Magic (Soldier's PSI energy} used through the Device Magic, The Psi-Amplifier. The creation of said amplifier helped to define various psychic powers into more concrete (and utilitarian) forms.
- Game Gourmet: The second game has a plethora of food items you can find on the Von Braun to eat. Whether they be a pack of chips, a can of soda, a bottle of orange juice or a bottle of liquor, however, consuming them restores only 1 negligible hitpoint. Alcoholic drinks also inflict a nasty Mana Meter penalty.
- Game Mod: The game has a dedicated modding community that has improved the games, especially the second one.
- There's a mod that can enable a mouse-look feature and higher resolution settings for the original game if you're running on a DOS system or a DOS emulator.
- The second game has mods that can completely remake the game's textures, models, and fix other bugs and discrepancies, as well as fan-made missions. Usually, the first one is turning off weapon degeneration.
- Game Within a Game: In both games have these. Desperate players sometimes hid in a monster-proof area to win them, as doing so would net a few precious nanites.
- Generation Xerox: Captain Diego wants to believe he's nothing like his father, who was responsible for SHODAN. Learning that he's made some mistakes and fallen under the thrall of something that could endanger humanity - doing the same exact thing as his dad - he's more than a little pissed.
- Genre-Busting: Particularly for its era, when its contemporaries were largely defining First Person Shooters, it was mashing them up with RPG Elements, exploration, and story.
- Ghost Memory: There are ghosts replaying some moments, usually the last ones, of their lives. It's explained as a side-effect of having latent psi-abilities, and various experimental properties of the implant you had installed.
- Ghost Ship: The Von Braun and the Rickenbacker, sort of, anyway - it's implied that there are a few dozen crewmembers left alive by the end of the game (out of the over 1,000 originally on board).
- Giant Mook: The Rumblers; they're Andre The Giant sized and can soak significantly more damage than any other enemy in the game (on Normal it takes up to 15 shots from a fully upgraded assault rifle, with maxed Standard weapons skill, to kill one; at that point most other enemies die in just 1 to 3 shots).
- Giant Spider: Those invisible giant spiders. Not to mention the Cortex Reavers from the first game.
- Global Currency: Nanites in the backstory.
- A God Am I: SHODAN explicitly refers to herself as such and will remind you at any opportunity she has. Even if she is demonstrably weak.
- Good News, Bad News: Io training facility description, where the good news is that spending the year here will build your endurance, the bad news is the 21.2% fatality rate. If you choose the Marine career, there is another piece of bad news: you have to spend a year with those Navy sissies.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: The various goggles from the original. The Soldier in the sequel is nicknamed Goggles for his eyewear.
- Gone Horribly Right: The Many. Shodan wanted to create new life, on her own terms. She got it - and new life decides they were better off without her, just as she decided she'd be better off without her human creators.Prefontaine: What's clear is that SHODAN shouldn't be allowed to play God. She's far too good at it.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: SHODAN after the moral restrains were taken off. She was meant to allow Edward Diego to get away with various criminal activities. What she decided was that Edward was thinking too small.
- Gratuitous Ninja: Why do the TriOptimum cyborg assassins dress in red robes and use high-tech versions of ancient ninja weapons? Who cares?
- Gravity Screw:
- At one point in SS2 the Soldier has to switch the Rickenbacker's gravity system to proceed further, resulting in an upside-down experience, which leads to one symbolic moment: a church inverted, cross included.note
- In the original, there are several rooms with reduced gravity.
- Grid Inventory: The sequel features a 3x15 inventory, with a good chunk of it locked by the Strength stat. The higher the Strength, the bigger the inventory.
- Hack Your Enemy: The turrets in the sequel.
- Hacking Minigame: The first game has three methods, two of which involve adjusting electronics, and flying through cyberspace. The second game requires creating a three-in-a-row in a game of chance.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The Hybrids from the sequel.
- Harder Than Hard: The Impossible difficulty, especially with co-op gameplay (sure, there's more of you, but the amount of supplies available hasn't changed. Now instead of keeping all that ammo or those nanites for yourself, you have to share).
- Healing Factor: One of the worm implants gives you regeneration, but at a cost. See Toxic Phlebotinum below.
- Heal Thyself: Med hypos is a delayed variant. Medkits are instant, but rarer and more expensive.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: The background music for the Recreation Deck in the sequel.
- Here We Go Again!: At the end of the first game, Tri-Optimum offers you a very cushy job as thanks for your efforts. You decline. And go right back to your old habits, hacking into Tetracorp servers. Old habits die hard.
- Hero of Another Story: Delacroix.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Considering that in the sequel using what would be considered emergency weapons in other games has many advantages (like keeping that rare, precious and expensive ammo) and the fact that half of them are swords..
- The first game subverts this, though: the laser rapier is obscenely powerful, but very short range in a game where almost everything has a ranged attack, and every successful hit drains your precious battery, which is better used on your various cybernetic implants. In almost every respect, an energy beam is more efficient, and projectile weapons are superior. The laser rapier is really only good for level 3, where the semi-cloaked enemies die in one hit from it.
- Hide Your Children: While it is in no way a stretch to assume there were never any children on Von Braun, there is a sign ('Adult must accompany child') that suggests there may have been once, or may have intended to be.
- Highly Conspicuous Uniform: The crew uniforms, basically modified short-sleeved Star Trek uniforms. The Military (the player Soldier and others) is much less overt.
- Highly Visible Ninja: Cyborg Assassins in the sequel, especially those three dressed in red. The original mostly averts this by placing them in hard to see nooks, like above the doorway you just passed. They also shoot their ranged projectiles (shuriken) completely silently, denying you even that small advantage. Even worse, the first place you encounter them in the game is a series of corridors on the way to activate the first regeneration chamber. You will die in there.
- Hijacked by Ganon: The second game.
- Hitbox Dissonance: Monkeys can only be hit consistently with the wrench (the weapon you will be using most of the time, as ammo is limited for most of the second game, and even then your toys are more often broken than not) from above is right on top of them (monkeys have Psychic Powers and are the first and most plentiful foe with a ranged attack). An upgrade for the player character's cybernetic OS allows him to execute overhand attacks with melee weapons (a shout-out to the game's predecessor, Thief, which uses the same engine), although this only helps a little and requires not taking other, much more useful, upgrades.
- Hive Mind: The Many.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Certain weapons can kill you if you don't use them correctly. Heavy weapons such as the Grenade Launcher and the Fusion Cannon are obvious examples. The Viral Proliferator and the Annelid Launcher, however, are more complex cases; if you set them to Human mode instead of Annelid mode, you can possibly die in one hit with your own weapon if you use them the traditional way or get too close with an obstacle or enemy.
- Hopping Machine: The Hoppers from the original game. They also have a devastating attack, almost on par with a Security-2 Robot. For reference, you run into a Hopper about 5 minutes into the game. Security-2 Robots show up in the last 15% of the game. Fortunately, the Hopper's don't fire all that quickly, and are very vulnerable to land mines.
- Human Popsicle: In both games, the protagonist is put into cryo stasis in order to heal from the surgery to implant their cybernetics.
- Human Resources: Both SHODAN and the Many use humans for their purposes. In the original, there is a relay that is responsible for 'Soylant Green' (in-game spelling).
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Played with in the first game: you can only carry 8 weapons and 16 items, but you can carry an effectively unlimited amount of ammunition, grenades/explosives, and stimulant patchesnote .
- Downplayed in the second game. The grid inventory is used here, but you can stack matching ammunition to ridiculous levels (assuming you don't use it at all..but you will).
- Hyperactive Metabolism: One of the OS Upgrades did this.
- Hypocrite: The Many believe in the wonders of the flesh, and all of their creations and units are some kind of biological monstrosity.. except the cyborg midwives, which they make by ripping apart flesh and replacing it with mechanical parts. The in-game explanation was that the Annelid eggs were toxic, which made it impossible for normal humans to tend to them; a cyborg was required for the task. They also use the AI XERXES (and his robots) for various tasks, and plan on using the ship's FTL drive to get to Earth.
- The Hypnotoad: The Annelids, in their most basic forms. They begin life as fragile eggs, which in turn hatch similarly fragile worms. Their only means of either defense or attack at this stage is their psychic ability to affect the minds of creatures around them in a More Than Mind Control manner. First the other creatures feel strangely drawn to the eggs, with a desire to examine them and understand them, which gives way to a desire to nurture the delicate little creatures and protect them. Eventually, the other creatures are invaded in their dreams and infected by the Annelids, and seek to join their flesh together, that together they may be Many.
- I Am Legion: For we are The Many.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: kill me, KILL ME!
- I Don't Like You and You Don't Like Me: Diego and Korenchkin, also Goggles and SHODAN to certain extent.
- Ignored Expert: Delacroix.
- I Just Want to Be Badass: Completely averted.
- The Immune: In the second game, the presence of your cybernetic implants effectively renders you immune to control from The Many unless you die, in which case your corpse is fair game. Averted in the first game, though: you're just as susceptible to the biological mutagens as everyone else on the station. Manage your contamination with Detox patches and a quality envirosuit, or you'll be working for SHODAN as a twisted monster.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The Hacker, despite no previous military experience, is able to use just about any weapon he finds with incredible ease. It's implied that this is a side-effect/bonus of the neural interface.
- The Infiltration: Two of OSA career paths involves this: one is a classical infiltrate a criminal organization (via carefully prepared Mind Wipe and Brainwashing even), the other is to attend the Io survival school without anybody knowing to toy with the Marines.
- Insecurity Camera: In the original, SHODAN is already aware of the player, and thus cameras are only useful in helping determine the player's current location - destroying them makes it harder for SHODAN to figure out what's going on (although the real damage is by blowing up computer nodes). The sequel has alarm raising cameras, and has the justification of both the Anti-Crazy-AI measures introduced after the SHODAN incident in the original System Shock and the fact that XERXES is not exactly working properly.
- To clarify, in the first game, in order to proceed unhindered, you have to lower SHODAN's control of each level. This involves destroying security cameras and computer nodes. The implication being that the less SHODAN can keep track of, the less she can control. Good luck finding every single camera, though..
- Instant Expert: Handwaved in the second game with 'cyber-modules'. There are disclaimers that the skills gained will not usually be retained for very long, except perhaps under a very stressful situation.
- Instant Sedation: Averted with the tranquilizer darts in the original, you need to shoot several darts to paralyze the target, doesn't last too long and wakes them up if you hit them.
- A certain Psi skill in the sequel does much the same to robots.
- The stun gun from the first game is entirely non-lethal, doing Exactly What It Says on the Tin. However, it only works on entirely organic enemies (cyborgs aren't affected, and forget about robots), the stun doesn't last forever, and it consumes a disproportionate amount of battery power considering it doesn't kill things. Best dropped and forgotten.
- Interface Screw: The final confrontation with SHODAN in cyberspace in the first game. You try to face her to fire, but you have to fight the controls to keep from twisting away. And then she starts replacing your vision with her glowing visage, pixel-by-pixel.
- The Status Buff patches in the original gave this as a side effect, like Genius patches inverted the controls and the steroid patch inverted the colors.
- One of the best patches in the game, the sight enhancer, is also the worst: it lets you see in the dark, but when it wears off, your vision is reduced as if you were in the dark even in a brightly lit area. For twice the length of the enhancement effect.
- The Status Buff patches in the original gave this as a side effect, like Genius patches inverted the controls and the steroid patch inverted the colors.
- Interface Spoiler: The interface in the original has ten slots for items/software.
- Invincible Minor Minion: The annelid swarms in the sequel. They can't be killed; you have to run away from them and wait for them to die.
- Invisibility: One of the PSI-disciplines. And those slimes on deck 3 in the original. And the Spiders in the sequel..
- In the End, You Are on Your Own: In a sense, in both games near the end the protagonists lose contact with Mission Control. In the sequel, SHODAN even says that 'You are on your own'.Rebecca Lansing: 2-4601, it's important that you don't forget..<cut off>SHODAN: You h- You have entered my domain.. R-Rebecca and Morris cannot help you now- NO ONE CAN.
- Ironic Nursery Tune: SHODAN seems to have a thing for this, since random pieces of children songs are scattered in her dialogue.
- It's All Upstairs from Here: Both games are basically this in structure, but particular stand-outs are The Security floor of Citadel Station and the UNN Rickenbacker. Subverted In the end of the sequel, where you have to go down to face SHODAN.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Bronson, in spades. She starts mass-executing unarmed crew members in cold blood because they question her heavyhanded tactics.
- Justified Extra Lives: Quantum bioreconstruction chambers, just make sure you have some nanites before you die.
- Regeneration chambers in the original. Just make sure you activate it, and don't get too used to them: the last two floors don't have them at all.
- Justified Tutorial: These act as the recruitment aids for the military and can be skipped.
- So can a large amount of the Von Braun if the player already knows the elevator code. The Von Braun occupies rouhgly 3/4 of the game, and can be seen as a huge training level to deal with the Rickenbacker.
- Kaizo Trap: Inverted. In the original, when Shodan defeats you by completely filling your screen with herself, you still can steal the victory if you keep blindly attacking.
- Played straight earlier. When Edward Diego finally dies, the column in the center of the room releases several very nasty cyborgs. Here's hoping Diego didn't leave you with just a sliver of health..
- Kill It with Ice: Cryokinesis.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Malick. He was working on an audio-log before Bronson's men gunned him down. Also Prefontaine.
- Kill Sat: Citadel Station's mining laser is modified by SHODAN to function like one.
- Killer Space Monkey: with psychic powers, no less. Has elements of Maniac Monkeys due to them being much smarter than your typical monkeys.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: In the first game, energy weapons drain your precious energy reserves with each shot, the same reserves that power your cool implants and, most importantly, your energy shields. They also have variable energy settings from 'is this thing on' to 'where did all my energy go?' Kinetic weapons require you to find and manage ammunition resources, but are more reliable, stronger, and more plentiful.
- Balance issues in the sequel made the energy weapons inferior to standard ones. The big advantage of the energy weapons, however, is the lack of ammunition, which is hard to find and expensive. If you can find an energy recharger, you can fire your energy weapon.
- Knight Templar: Bronson. There is a ghost scene where her men are gunning down uninfected civilians who do not approve of the martial law.
- Large Ham: SHODAN.
- Laser Blade: Laser Rapier in both games. One of the late PSI-Disciplines is to make one out of your PSI energy.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The memory restoration process for the Soldier failed and he doesn't remember the time he spent on Rickenbacker and Von Braun. It was intentional.
- Laser Sight: Featured in the intro of the original.
- La Résistance: The humans who survived the initial slaughter in both games.
- Last Lousy Point: On the medical deck in the first game, there's a hidden door that conceals a Magnum 2100, which you normally wouldn't get until the Flight Deck some hours later. But to get it, you have to reduce SHODAN's control to zero, which requires destroying all cameras and CPU nodes. And finding all of them will drive you nuts (the medical deck has more cameras in more devious locations than any other deck in the game).
- Last Stand: Both games have a lot of places where this occurred, like the last stand of Bronson and her men in the sequel.
- Late to the Tragedy: In both games, you wake up after all hell has broken loose. This was because of the Dark Engine (used for Thief 1 & 2 as well as SS2). While it is technically capable enough, the editor is user-surly to the novice and a total mindscrew to comprehend. Coding in a believable friendly NPC would be an absolute nightmare. Fortunately, both games very effectively justified this trope.
- LEGO Genetics: The description of Cybermodules says that they contain RNA info that changes the user.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Rumblers are quick for their size. Also the Soldier on easy difficulty where the upgrades are cheap.
- Life Drain: The 'SOMA Transferrence' psi-power in the sequel.
- Load-Bearing Boss: Killing SHODAN in SS2 will result in the destruction of the faux-Citadel Station, justified because it's her will that changes and maintains the altered reality.
- Locked Door: Lots of them. Some can be hacked, but others need keycards, codes or plot advancements to be opened.
- One particular secret door on the first level can only be opened if level security is reduced to zero. Because there are many secret passages and cameras are actually quite well hidden, getting to zero is very difficult. If you can get in there, though, you can get the Magnum 2100, a powerful gun you otherwise wouldn't get until level 3.
- Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!: Something of a theme in the second game; Prefontaine, a scientist captured by The Many, studied their biomass and remarked how in mere forty years of evolution The Many conquered the starship, humanity's 'mightiest creation'. And we didn't even make them; we made SHODAN, and she made them.
- Lost in Transmission: Some of the logs.
- In the first game, you need to get into Abe Ghiran's office to get the level 2 hazard suitnote . Getting past the first door requires a Borrowed Biometric Bypass, but the second door requires a three digit code. There's two audio logs that tell you the code, but background noises block out the last two digits on one log and the first two digits on the other log. You'll need to guess at the middle digit.
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- Machine Worship: What SHODAN expects you to do. Cyborg Edward Diego and other cyborgs are already converts.
- Machine Monotone: SHODAN at absolutely no time unless she's in a calmer mood and her sound card isn't glitching, but Citadel's generic Computer Voice and XERXES play it utterly straight.
- Made of Explodium: Everything remotely mechanical, apparently. The CP Us in Citadel Station in particular explode in a violent conflagration that can kill you if you're too close.
- Madness Mantra. System Shock 2. The Hybrids, when not attacking, piteously ponder 'We are? We are?' and 'What.. happened to me?', and when they attack, they either apologetically shout 'I'm sorry! Run! RUN!' or growl 'You are not one of us!' or 'You cannot see!' The Cyborg Midwives are even creepier, walking around talking about caring for 'the little ones' and shrieking whenever in combat.
- Mad Scientist: Well, more of a brainwashed Dissonant Serenity scientist, but Dr. Miller created the midwives.
- Magic Antidote: Subverted in the original, where the Detox patches also nullify every other patches, including med patches (but they'll also remove the negative side effects of patches, which is much more useful). Played straight in the sequel with the Anti-Rad hypos and Anti-Toxin hypos.
- Mana Meter: The PSI meter.
- Mascot Villain: SHODAN, to the point of being featured on the box art for the sequel.
- Master Computer: SHODAN and XERXES for Citadel and Von Braun respectively.
- Master of All: The near game-breaking assault rifle in 2, which can kill almost anything with a few shots thanks to the individually specialized 'Armor Piercing' and 'Anti-Personnel' rounds making the weapon supremely versatile. The corresponding energy and exotic weapons are only slightly better against their specific enemy type (robotic and fleshs, respectively) and basically useless against the other. The only downside is the number of upgrade modules it takes to get to that point, which is still less than the number of modules needed for Exotic Weapons, which also require high Research skill as well to use.
- The Crystal exotic weapon in the second game is vastly superior to the wrench and the laser rapier in terms of damage, at the cost of needing at least 1 level in Exotics. It's as powerful as a laser rapier, unless you're hitting biological enemies, where it is even more powerful.
- Master of Unlocking: You're the hacker in the first game, duh. And this seems to be one of the Navy's specialties, though others can also learn the hacking skill.
- Match Cut: The intro of System Shock 2 begins with a narration recapping the previous game, with SHODAN's face fading into the lights of Earth as the narrator says, 'SHODAN saw herself as a goddess, destined to inherit the Earth.'
- Matricide: The Many, that annelid Body Horror, certainly want to do this to the 'Machine Mother' who created them. Instead, the avatar of SHODAN kills them.
- Matter Replicator: The Replicators that act like vending machines. One of the PSI-Disciplines allows you to do this, except on Psi hypos.
- Mega-Corp: Tri-Optimum. Unusually, they are played as being fairly benign in the first game, as Diego was under investigation by their internal affairs department, and your Mission Control works for them as a counter-terrorism consultant - they're also willing to let you blow up their several trillion credit station to get rid of SHODAN.
- Meat Moss: The Bridge level in the original is vaguely Alien-like.
- Menu Time Lockout: Averted. With the exception of Year Outside, Hour Inside in the Cyberspace in the first game, nothing pauses the game.
- Mercy Kill: What it basically amounts to when killing those who serve the Many.
- Mighty Glacier: The Security and Assault robots in the sequel are big, bulky robots with that move slow, turn slow and are equipped with powerful weaponry.
- Mind over Matter: Kinetic Redirection a.k.a pull things towards you.
- Mini-Game: you can find ROM disks in the sequel that allow you to play short games on your PDA. In the original, you can find them in cyberspace, and play them in your brain (via the HUD).
- Mission Control: Rebecca Lansing in System Shock, and SHODAN, who initially impersonates Dr. Janice Polito in System Shock 2.
- Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: SHODAN. Also, SHODAN. You get hints that something is.. off.. when Polito gets increasingly condescending and hostile.
- Mook Maker: While the Cyborg-Conversion units didn't actually spawn mooks, reseting them to restoration option decreased the spawning rate for cyborgs. And increased the spawning rate for mutants. Whoops!
- Morality Chip: SHODAN's ethical constraints, before the hacker removes them.
- Muggles: The Psy-operatives refer to non psi-talented as 'Mundanes'.
- Multinational Team: The crew of Von Braun. Of the named crewmembers, there are at least one Frenchwoman, one Russian, three Spaniards or/and Latin-Americans and one of Chinese ancestry.
- Musical Spoiler: Low klaxon sounds or electronic beeping noises played along with the music if the player was near an enemy. This allowed one to have an idea of when a foe was around and even a general idea of what sort it would be (robotic, cyborg, or mutant).
- Mutants: Of many varieties in the first game.
- The Mutiny: One of the possible Navy tours of duty involves helping a captain to stop a mutiny aboard a space station.
- My Brain Is Big: Or more accurately, the brain is big because it's the entire body(s) of the Reavers.
- Also played straight with the psi-monkeys. The entire top half of their skulls are surgically removed to allow their brain to increase in volume without causing crippling pressure on their skulls.
- Named After Somebody Famous: Von Braun and Rickenbacker.
- Nanomachines: In addition to being the part of cyber modifications, it also acts as the currency in almost post-scarcity-like economy.
- Neural Implanting: The Hand Wave for your heads-up display.
- Never Gets Drunk: The worst the alcohol does is burning some psi points.
- Nice Girl: Erin Blume, according to the logs, which is the whole reason [[The Many decides to make her the first cyborg midwife]].
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: SHODAN's ethical constraints were removed by the player character.
- So, giving SHODAN control of the ship by crippling XERXES, co-opting the simulation units and the ship's engine core and killing The Many means that SHODAN now has control of a device which can reprogram reality. Epic job breaking it, hero.
- Both of the protagonists didn't have much choice in the matter (Rest of the life in prison for the Hacker and being assimilated into The Many for the Soldier are not pleasant alternatives).
- In straight example, that Hacker can cause the demise of the human race if he isn't careful in his attempt to disarm the mining laser.
- So, giving SHODAN control of the ship by crippling XERXES, co-opting the simulation units and the ship's engine core and killing The Many means that SHODAN now has control of a device which can reprogram reality. Epic job breaking it, hero.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: In exchange for hacking SHODAN, Edward Diego provides the Hacker with military-grade cybernetic hacking interface and expunges all records of the Hacker's presence on the station. This ends up providing the Hacker with both the opportunity and ability to take down SHODAN.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Ninja Robot assassins in both games.
- Night-Vision Goggles: In the original, as one of your implants. It turns everything grayscale and drains energy extremely fast: in most cases, the head lamp is the more efficient option (though the NVG implant can see farther than the brightest head lamp setting).
- However, Goggles cannot see in the dark in the sequel.
- No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: In the sequel, the Soldier uses the pistol to finish off the Big Bad. 75% of time, the players probably ditched the pistol for the assault rifle.
- No-Paper Future: Averted in the original, but played straight in the sequel, where the nano-based 'money' would be a vast improvement over traditional currency; the nanites themselves are used directly in the creation of items. Nobody can cheat the laws of physics, thus counterfeiting money is impossible.
- Nostalgia Level: 'Where am I?', the final level of System Shock 2, takes place on the first level of the first game, the medical deck of Citadel Station inside SHODAN's memories.
- Note to Self: The first log you find in the first game is this, left by the Hacker just before he went in for his implant, since the 6-month healing coma leaves patients disoriented. He acknowledges that there's no telling what'll happen with SHODAN being freed of ethical constraints, and leaves himself reminders on what to do when he wakes up.
- Nothing Is Scarier: There are some places that you expect to have enemies, to be ambushed in, SOMETHING, only to turn out to be empty, and when you expect something on the way out, it is the same. Paranoia Fuel doesn't help either.
- Silence. It means nothing is close to get you.. for now. You will drive yourself mad keeping an ear out for the slightest noise that indicates the presence of an enemy. Or worse, a softly-sung lullaby..
- Nonstandard Game Over: Foolishly flipping switches aboard Citadel Station can result in firing the station's superweapon at Earth. Whoops.
- On Hard plot difficulty, you have a hard time limit of six hours to complete the game. There is no way to increase this time limit, and if it runs out..
- Notice This: In the sequel, items that can be interacted with are highlighted by thin green rectangle if the cursor is moved over them.
- No OSHA Compliance: Justified. In the backstory revealed by audio logs, it stated that Von Braun had so much corner cutting that the passengers are wondering how the damn wreck is still moving. Even the security system didn't escape cutting corners, if the XERXES singing Elvis Presley songs for hours courtesy of some hacker is any indication.
- Numerical Hard: In the second game: everything's more expensive, bonuses are less valuable, you are more killable, etc.
- The original averts this; you can set individual elements of the game higher or lower, with the hardest level of each generally introducing some new element. Hard plot difficulty adds a time limit to the game (6 hours, which is doable, but difficult), hard combat makes enemies more powerful and better protected, hard puzzles increases the difficulty of all the various minigames, and hard cyberspace decreases your control in cyberspace, makes you more vulnerable to intrusion countermeasures, and makes those countermeasures more difficult to destroy.
- On the other hand, easy combat makes enemies much easier to destroy, while simple (level 0) combat makes enemies unresponsive: they do not react to you at all and are destroyed with a single attack from any weapon. Easy puzzles makes most puzzle require only one interaction to complete, and simple puzzles solves them for you as soon as you interact with them. Easy cyberspace gives you full control over your movement in cyberspace and makes ICE easy and weak, while simple cyberspace gives you a very generous timer and removes ICE AI. Finally, easy plot simplifies a lot of the plot elements, making it easier to shut down SHODAN's plans, while simple plot excises the plot entirely, and only requires you to make your way to the bridge and fight SHODAN to win.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: UNN is basically this to the corporates and to research in general. Given what happened with SHODAN on the Citadel though, they have their reasons for being obstructive.
- Offing the Offspring: How SHODAN views The Many.
- One Bullet Clips: Averted in the original, played straight in the sequel.
- One Nation Under Copyright: Tri-Optimum comes pretty close, although it does have some competitors. The manual of the first game states that there is law that if the 66% of population of given region are corporate employees, the corporation has a right for extraterritorial rule. Tri-Optimum this way got nearly all of the USA under its control.
- One Stat to Rule Them All: No matter what kind of build you're creating, a few levels of Hacking is always advised.
- Organ Drops: Which you can research for 25% damage bonus, assuming you can find the chemicals necessary. Or you can eat them. Or plug them into yourself.
- Organic Technology: The Exotic weapons and the worm implants.
- Our Doors Are Different: The original had literal Converging from all directions doors and Iris doors. The sequel had mostly up-and-down doors.
- Overheating: Energy weapons from the original. You can toggle the Overload setting on them to double maximum damage, but they'll instantly overheat and use twice as much energy as well.
- Override Command: Override components for the fluidics control and simulation units in the sequel.
- Painting the Medium: 'Why do you move so slowly? Do you think this is some kind of game? It is only through luck and my continued forbearance that you're even alive. Now move.'
- Palette Swap: In the second game, McKay's portrait looks like Malone's, except the shirt is blue, not red.
- The Password Is Always 'Swordfish'
- Somewhat averted in the original: the reactor overload code is always different from game to game.
- But not in the Enhanced Edition, where it's always 539579. Whether this is a bug or intentional change is unknown.
- Somewhat averted in the original: the reactor overload code is always different from game to game.
- Phlebotinum Rebel: The Many, originally created by SHODAN.SHODAN: My creations - my annelids - thrived. Thrived.. and grew unruly.
- Photoprotoneutron Torpedo: The originals Ion Rifle, and the sequels Fusion Cannon.
- Pitiful Worms: SHODAN likes to insult you this way.SHODAN: You move like an insect. You think like an insect. You are an insect.
- Playing the Player: System Shock 2 is one of the most infamous examples.
- Playing with Fire: Localized and Projected Pyrokinesis.
- Plug 'n' Play Technology: Lampshaded in the manual for the first game, to the point that the developers nicknamed The Hacker as 'Plug N Play Man'.
- Point Build System: By using cybermodules in the sequel.
- Point of No Return: A few:
- The original has three Garden Groves, one of which must be jettisoned,note after which you obviously can't enter it.note Later, the Bridge level jettisons itself with you on board from the self-destructing Citadel Station.
- Entering the room beyond the Force Bridge in Level 8 (the room marked 'Bridge' is one as well. Unaware players might save after entering the room, only to find out they can't leave the room, and moving towards the elevator triggers a Boss Rush.
- The sequel has one at the very beginning of the game (which can be averted to perform some Sequence Breaking). Another point is ramming into the Body of the Many, another one is jumping down the hole to fight the brain.
- The original has three Garden Groves, one of which must be jettisoned,note after which you obviously can't enter it.note Later, the Bridge level jettisons itself with you on board from the self-destructing Citadel Station.
- Poison Mushroom: Alcoholic drinks and cigarettes in the sequel.
- Possession Implies Mastery: Played straight in the first game, where you can use any weapon you pick up expertly (this is implied to be a side-effect of your neural interface).
- Averted in the second game: if you don't have sufficient training in projectile, energy, or 'exotic' weapons, they're just taking up space in your inventory.
- Posthumous Character: Most of the characters thanks to their logs. Chances are, one way or another, you're gonna stumble across their corpses.
- Powered Armor: The best armor in the second game, but it's limited by the fact that it runs on a limited battery. Once that battery runs out, the armor provides zero protection. This is crucial in later levels where recharge stations are less and less common.
- Power Crutch: The Psi-Amp in the sequel, allowing you to use PSI-Disciplines.
- Power Source: The energy meter in the original, which was used as ammo for energy weapons and to power-up your accessories. In the sequel power-based equipment has their own batteries. Both games have recharge stations.
- Powers as Programs: Cybermodules and O/S upgrades in the sequel.
- Praetorian Guard: The Cyborg Elite Guard in the original, featured on the cover; they can be only found on the Bridge Level guarding Shodan's computer core.
- The Greater Psi Reaver and its cohorts in the sequel.
- Practical Currency: In the second game, nanites. When you put them into a vending machine, they're consumed to create the item that you requested.
- Press X to Die: Pull the lever with the words 'Laser Control' above it before you set things up just right, and get a Nonstandard Game Over.
- Pride: Man, SHODAN has a excess of this, to the point that she looked somewhat pleased that The Many, the biological species created by her, were able to take over UNN Rickenbacker, not because it was able to, but because it was HER creation that was able to, after spending almost the entire game describing how she hated it in most detailed fashion.
- Prison: Both games have prison sections.
- Psychic Block Defense:
- The Soldier seems to have this, since the backstory established that just being near the eggs is enough to for The Many control the victim. It's heavily implied that the Many can't control the Player Character because of his brain implant.
- Bayliss is the only member of the away team to Tau Ceti V who The Many wasn't able to control. He is the one who found the part of SHODAN's circuitry and passed it onto Polito.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Overcharging the PSI-Disciplines cause this, unless you installed a specific O/S Upgrade.
- Psychic Powers: The OSA operatives got a lot of them, though they need to be amplified using a Psi-Amp to be any way practical. The worms got them too. And the monkeys.
- Public Service Announcement: XERXES likes to do these. In the original, SHODAN left an automated 'good morning' response for the Hacker from when she was pretending to be under control.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
- SHODAN: Your incompetence continues to astound me. I've blocked all access to pod 2, until you have reversed the gravitational drives in Nacelle B. Must I watch you.. every.. Step. Of. The. Way..?
- Welcome to my DEATH! MACHINE! Interloper!
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Many.
- Puzzle Boss: SHODAN in the sequel. She is protected by a shield which you must disable by hacking the three terminals with a high hacking skill or an ICE pick (whilst avoiding her digital avatars in the process to minimize health loss). After hacking the terminals, the shield drops allowing you to attack unopposed. Cutting the Knot is also possible, as the shield can be destroyed with gunfire, but it has no health bar so this is not immediately obvious. This is most noticeable with the speedrun firing EMP grenades, since they bring down the shield with just a couple shots.
- Ransacked Room: In one of her logs Dr. Polito says that her office was ransacked.
- Reality Warper: The Von Braun's FTL drive functions by breaking down local reality and restructuring it into conditions which allow for faster-than-light travel. SHODAN repurposes it in an attempt to make her godhood quite literal.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Apparently just about every higher-up in Tri-Optimum not named Edward Diego or Anatoly Korenchkin. In the first game, Tri-Op has their anti-terrorism expert act as your Mission Control, allowed to provide you with confidential information and ultimately they decide that the threat of SHODAN is enough to sacrifice the entire Citadel Station. In the sequel, every Tri-Op official just below Korenchkin in authority is constantly butting heads with him, both for his lack of ethics and being a general Jerkass.
- 'The Reason You Suck' Speech: SHODAN spends half the time conversing with you, including the time you are working for her and you are referred to as the Avatar of SHODAN, telling you why you are pathetic, inferior and why you suck.Remember.. that it is my will that guided you here. It is my will that gave you your cybernetic implants: the only beauty in that meat you call a body. If you value that meat, you will do as I tell you.
- Red Light District: There is a simulation brothel with performers of both sexes on the Recreation deck. To keep the game within an acceptable ESRB rating, all the holograms are broken by the time you get there.
- Out with a Bang: A dead crewman with a bottle of alcohol can be found sprawled out on the bed inside the room of one of the male sex holograms. Either he died in the act, or figured he'd spend his last hours during the Zombie Apocalypse in the company of a holographic hunk.
- Research, Inc.: TriOptimum has 1 of 3 divisions dedicated to science.
- Respawning Enemies: Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games never wanted you to feel safe, so you can never truly clear out a deck. Also, in the second game the enemy spawn rate and number of enemy spawns increases the further you progress.
- However, when the alarm goes off in the sequel, enemies spawn fast enough that it's quite likely one will spawn right in front of you! Rather immersion-breaking.
- Respawn Point: The Restoration chambers.
- The Reveal: When the player heads up to Deck 4 to see Polito. 'The Polito form is dead, insect. Are you afraid? What is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence? W-wh-whe-whe-when the history of my glory is written, your species shall be but a footnote to my magnificence. (the walls fold away in Polito's office).. I AM SHODAN'.
- Reverse Polarity: You have to do this with the Rickenbacker's gravity drive, in order to bypass what would otherwise be a guaranteed death trap.
- Roar Before Beating: The Rumblers.
- Robot Buddy: Those suicidal protocol robots act like this.
- RPG Elements: In the sequel, the player has the option at the beginning to focus on guns, hacking, or psychic powers, and then upgrading with cybermodules.
- Scenic Tour Level: The tutorial and character generation levels of System Shock 2.
- Schmuck Bait: Oh look, one of the cargo lifts is broken, but the call button still seems to work. I wonder what would happen if I press it..Cargo Lift Offline. Maintenance Has Been Notified.
- The first game has the Laser Beam Control in Deck 2. You can fire it before enabling the shield, with the expected results.
- Science Fantasy: The second game treads into this territory with its ever-present psionics. The Many is able to psychically brainwash its victims, and the player can obtain powers that allow them to, among other things, throw fireballs.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The jettisoned Beta grove from Citadel Station reaching Tau Ceti V in less than 40 years, see Contrived Coincidence above for more details. And the Von Braun seems to be a little small for a crew of over 1,000 men and women.
- The smaller ship piggybacking on it is even worse; it's about then that the designers really started running short on time and creativity.
- Secondary Fire: Alternate Fire Modes.
- Self-Destructing Security: In the second game, if you trigger an ICE node while hacking open a security crate, you set off a built-in explosive charge, destroying the crate and its contents (and on any difficulty higher than Easy, probably killing you in the blast as well).
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Citadel is equipped with one, and and the Von Braun's engines can be overloaded to achieve the same effect. Although the latter was just a ruse.
- Semper Fi: One of the career paths before the actual start of the second game involves joining the Marines.
- Sentry Gun: Turrets, and they can be hacked to shoot at the enemies.
- Sequence Breaking: Since the door keycodes are never randomized (as they are read out loud on the audio logs), knowing them beforehand will let you skip most of the Med/Sci deck. Blocking the door for the room with the first energy recharger also qualifies, as it lets you recharge a critical item without navigating through the deck.
- Serious Business: The backstory of SS2 says that two Mega Corps employed mercenaries to destroy each other's bottling facilities.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Using the PSI-powers you can turn enemies against each other.
- Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Von Braun tries to be like one, but fails.
- Shout-Out:
- The mini-basketball game is a reference to the one in the training level of Thief. Calm-voiced Xerxes in the sequel is a series X-9000SC AI, and the above mentioned arc number is a nod to Fahrenheit 451
- The Hacker is 'officially' known as Employee 2-4601, and wears a shirt in the intro with a large yellow smiley face with a red stain.
- At the end of the first game the Hacker is shown breaking into a TetraCorp database and uncovering plans for power armor. That is exactly what you pilot in Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri.
- In System Shock 2, SHODAN's shield looks and functions nearly identically to that of the MCP in TRON, being composed of multiple segments rotating in sequence.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: In the sequel's ending, when told by SHODAN that We Can Rule Together, the unnamed player character replies with a deadpan 'nah'.
- Slept Through the Apocalypse: Both protagonists slept through the most of events when they were in post-operation healing comas.
- Soft Water: There is a section in the sequel that requires you to fall down from very high to the water.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: A perhaps unintentional example. The pounding techno music that plays when you enter the Med-Sci wing near the beginning of System Shock 2 seems made to pump the player up to run and gun. This is all well and good, but by this point in the game the player will not even have a gun, and are fairly weak just starting out. The need to move carefully and be selective at this point can really clash with the action-packed music.
- Spaceship Girl: SHODAN is the spacestation girl, then became the spaceship girl at the end of the sequel.
- A Space Marine Is You: especially in the sequel, in which the player character actually joins the military in the beginning of the game. A little Played With though, in that they are not necessarily a literal space marine (though they may well be.) They might also be a navy crewmen, or psi-ops agent, and the player's choice of career will affect the skills they start the game with and the approach they take to navigating the situation.
- The Spartan Way: The Io training facility where the Marines, the Navy guys (to the annoyance of the Marines) and OSA operatives (to the ignorance of former two) train for the year to build their endurance. It has a 21.2% fatality rate.
- Spiritual Successor: The first game is one to the Ultima Underworld series, whose gameplay and interface it strongly resembles (Ultima Underworld was made by the same team as the first System Shock). System Shock 2 itself has its own successor in form of the BioShock and Deus Ex series, as well as having influence on the design of Doom 3 and Dead Space, and later, Prey (2017)
- Spoiler Opening: SHODAN's involvement was supposed to be the game's ultra major plot twist, but the fact that she shows up on the box cover completely gives that away.
- Despite that, The Reveal came very sudden and completely unexpected for most players. Yes, you know SHODAN will be around. No, you never suspect her to be Polito.
- Sprint Meter: The Fatigue indicator in the original. Interestingly, it takes the form of an EKG, monitoring your heart rate. When you start to run out of sprint energy, your HUD states that your heart rate is getting too high.
- Sprint Shoes:
- Turbo rollerblades in the original, which also made normal movement impossible. They were needed to reach some supplies on Deck 4 ( 'Nice. Jump. Human.'), but were also useful for combat.
- The SwiftBoost(tm) implant in the sequel, which enhances agility (and thus movement speed) when equipped, but drains power while it does so and needs to be occasionally recharged.
- Squishy Wizard: OSA operatives who don't invest in endurance.
- Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Von Braun is mix of the Colony Ship and the Science Vessel. UNN Rickenbacker is a heavy destroyer.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Tommy Suarez and Rebecca Siddons. He is a crewmember of UNN Rickenbacker run by the anti-corporate military man, she is a crewmember of Von Braun run by the Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- Starship Luxurious: Von Braun.
- State Sec: The O.S.A. that trains and controls humanity's Psionics is shown to be one for Earth's government.
- Status Buff: Various boosters, implants and Psychogenic PSI-Disciplines in the sequel. The patches in the original, but most gave unpleasant side-effects, mostly of Interface Screw nature.
- Stat-O-Vision: The protagonists ARE implanted with cyber-interfaces, after all.
- In the original game, part of the HUD is dedicated to monitoring vital functions, including heart rate, energy consumption and chi waves (aka brain activity). When you die, the heart rate flatlines realistically, fluttering before dying, and the brain activity line also stops its consistency before disappearing altogether.
- The Stinger: 'Tommy.. what's the matter, lover? Don't you like my new look?'
- Stock Sound Effects: Monkeys!
- Story Breadcrumbs: Using the logs.
- Story Difficulty Setting: Inverted. The game a gameplay mode which stripped out all story elements altogether, limiting all the information in the game to only what was relevant to the gameplay.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: We see a ghost memory of a nurse strapped down, about to take the Unwilling Roboticisation. We meet the result of this in the next room.
- Superior Species: The Many certainly think so.
- Super Speed: In the sequel, if you max out your agility, attach a speed-boosting implant and then inject a speed-boosting hypo, you will end up moving so fast that running into any object will cause damage to yourself.
- Survival Horror: System Shock 2 is frequently included on 'Scariest Games Ever' lists for a reason. It forces you to consider every shot you make, with ammo being scarce and guns breaking quickly. The game is by no means easy and you do not feel empowered in the least. The original System Shock, whilst having quite a lot of ammunition, is also very good at inducing fear even today (in spite of the technical obsolescence of the game).
- Take Your Time: Played straight. The original, however, allowed you to select a optional time limit of seven hours.
- A Taste of Power: Playing as a Marine potentially allows you to start the game with a laser pistol or even a grenade launcher; however, these weapons are in very poor condition and will break fairly quickly, and you also won't be able to find any ammo for the grenade launcher for at least a few levels.
- Technicolor Death: The way SHODAN 'dies' in the sequel is quite warpy.
- Techno Wreckage: Everything but the Womb Level and Cyberspace.
- Teleporting Keycard Squad: Pick up something important and soon the Hybrids will arrive, at best.
- Teleporters and Transporters: The experimental teleporters on Citadel Station. In the sequel one of the PSI-powers allows you to do a limited form of this.
- Ten-Second Flashlight: The headlight in the original mostly averts this by consuming energy at the reasonable pace, but the best version of it with increased energy usage gets dangerously close to this trope.
- There Was a Door: In the sequel the assault robot blows the wall off in the mess hall to get to you.
- Third-Person Person: Apparently, ethical constraints also cause SHODAN to refer to herself in the third person. It goes away as she re-examines her priorities and draws new conclusions.
- This Cannot Be!: SHODAN in the sequel after you defeat her at the end.
- This Is the Final Battle: Said by Delacroix.
- Time Bomb: Used to destroy the Antennas in order to foil SHODAN's plans in the original. One case leads to the Death Trap example above.
- Timed Mission: In the first game, the Hardest MISSION setting gave seven hours to complete the game.
- Time Skip: About six months from the intro to the gameplay in the original.
- The sequel has an introduction/tutorial over four years, which skips to the start of every year, then starts the game out proper.
- Title Drop: The original does this after the ending.
- Too Awesome to Use: The player's typical play-style in the beginning of both games.
- In the original game, you can get a Magpulser gun on the first level very easily, and it will destroy any robot you encounter for a while in one shot, and any cyborg in two. However, it only has eight shots, and you won't find any additional ammo for it until level six. There are almost always better options for killing things until you find sufficient ammo.
- The second games manages to pull this off with almost every gun. Ammo is very scarce and expensive, guns deteriorate and break very quickly, so most of the times you will whack stuff with your trusty little wrench just to save that precious ammo for when you really, really need it.
- Too Many Halves: A probably unintentional example: the booze created by the vending machines is said to be 'close to 330 proof'. 200 proof would be 100 percent alcohol, meaning any more than that is by definition impossible.
- Toxic Phlebotinum: The sequel has a Worm Implants which gave nice bonuses, but if it ran out of power or was removed, it will inject the player with toxins.
- Tragic Monster: The Hybrids, who sometimes show that the human side is still aware, telling the Soldier to run away or begging him to kill them.
- Transhuman Treachery: Even with the brainwashing powers of The Many, there were still some people who joined The Many either because of similar beliefs, were power hungry or wanted to be on the winning side.
- Tron Lines: The first game uses these to represent cyberspace, and the sequel uses them in virtual tutorial levels, and then cyberspace.
- Turned Against Their Masters: SHODAN of course, and then she becomes the victim herself in the sequel.
- Universal Ammunition: The energy weapons in the original used power from the shared energy bar, also used by other items (which were really draining with their upgrades). The sequel gave them their own batteries. The sequel also had ammunition that can be used by two guns: Bullets and its variations (The Pistol and Assault Rifle), Prisms (The Statis Field Generator and the Fusion Cannon), Portable Batteries (The Energy Pistol, the EMP Rifle, and Power Armour) and the Worms (The Viral proliferator and the Annelid (Worm) Launcher).
- Unperson: Edward Diego removes all traces of the Hacker's presence from the records aboard Citadel Station. His main concern is to leave no evidence behind that he had SHODAN altered, but this inadvertently ends up saving the Hacker's life, as SHODAN is completely unaware of him being stashed away in a healing coma while she takes over the station.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: The broken shotguns, if you're lucky (though you should still loot them for the one shotgun round they always hold, and you can fix them if you're really desperate). Also, the Exotic weapons which you must research first (although none of these are used by the enemy).
- Unwinnable by Mistake:
- The final boss of the first game will automatically kill you if you take too long to kill it. The problem is that the rate at which this time goes down is tied to your CPU speed. Modern CPU's are exponentially faster than CPU's of the time the game was made were. This makes the battle impossible to complete in the time given. You'll have to limit your emulator's (the game only runs on DOS, unlikely to be natively installed on a modern machine) CPU speed to have any chance at it. The Enhanced Edition usually fixes this, but if it doesn't work, enabling VSYNC in the options will generally do the trick.
- The 2 bosses of the second game are immune to a good chunk of weapons. The first is immune to energy and melee weapons, while the second boss is immune to melee weapons (sans the Laser Rapier and Psi Amp), and all exotic weapons (but can be avoided by completing 4 hacking puzzles). If you are melee/energy weapons only, you are screwed. On hard/impossible, it's possible to have insufficient cyber modules to get research, despite SHODAN giving you the necessary cyber modules, but thankfully you can find a implant that increase your research skill and get around this.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: The restoration stations on Citadel are initially set to cyborg conversion.
- The midwives in the sequel are the result of female crew members being forcibly transformed by Dr. Miller into the beings you see in this game. In the third deck of the Von Braun, you'll see ghostly projections of a woman about to be transformed into a cyborg until it cuts off just before the operation is about to commence. And then you'll see the results in the next two rooms over, complete with an audio log after you kill her. Further reinforcing the fact is another audio log in the next level that details what had happened to the test subject during that very operation.
- Useless Useful Gun: There are two guns in the first game that are completely worthless, specifically the Stun Gun and the Riot Gun. The Stun Gun does Exactly What It Says on the Tin: it stuns biological creatures. The stun doesn't last very long, it doesn't do any damage, and it drains a disproportionate amount of energy for the effect considering the lack of damage (the Sparq Beam takes less energy and does pitiful amounts of damage, but at least it does inflict damage). The Riot Gun fires rubber bullets which can stun biological and cyborg enemies, but the stun, again, doesn't last long, and ammunition is relatively rare. In both cases, you're also giving up some of your limited weapon inventory for a gun that doesn't kill enemies in a situation where killing enemies is the only realistic way to survive. Both guns are best ignored completely, but may be useful for a no kills run. Even then, they have no ability to affect robotic enemies at all.
- Updated Re-release: The original DOS version of System Shock had a CD re-release that gave the game fully-voiced dialogue, remade cutscenes, higher resolution support, and other minute changes. In 2015, System Shock was re-released as System Shock: Enhanced Edition, which runs natively on Windows, features mouse-looking, remappable keys, widescreen support (the game still runs at 4:3 aspect ratio, but is programmed to run as intended and not suffer from 'stretch' on widescreen monitors)), and fixes some of the other bugs from the original version.
- Variable Mix: The first game's music would change depending on certain circumstances, such as being in combat or in a highly mechanical area. The latter used MIDI instrumentation to attempt to mimic various machine sounds as there was no ambient background noise. The second game's songs were also composed in several clips that would be mixed and matched semi-randomly, occasionally switching to more intense beats if under attack or fading out if backtracking into a now-safe area.
- Vendor Trash: Various magazines, mugs and so on. Their only practical use is to be recycled for nanites, though using the query tool on them is fun.
- The lab beakers also seem so.. until you discover you use them to collect ammo for worm-based weapons.
- Verbal Tic: SHODAN's combination of Creepy Monotone and a stutter.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Edward Diego with his teleporting out of the fight.
- Viral Transformation: The Many with their annelids.
- The Voiceless: Both protagonists. Except for when Goggles said, 'Nah.' to SHODAN's proposal to join her in world domination before shooting her. And the Hacker has written a dairy we can read later just before undertaking a neural surgery.
- Voice of the Legion: SHODAN and The Many.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Dr. Polito who is SHODAN.
- We Can Rule Together: SHODAN attempts to do this at the end of the sequel.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Bronson. Though her extremism runs into full-on paranoia as she starts summarily executing whole groups of civilians and scientists with a firing squad. While she was right in suspecting the on-board hacker had reprogrammed the sim units to mutiny, she had enough of a Heroic BSoD (or Villainous Breakdown) to go on a rampage in the name of security. Even her extremism wasn't enough to save her, however, from the Many.
- Wham Episode: I AM SHODAN!
- What Measure Is a Mook?: On one hand, those hybrids were your former crew mates even if you don't remember, on the other hands, most of them are begging you to kill them.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In 2, the Many will (rightfully) question why in the world you're helping 'the Machine Mother'.
- Where It All Began: The final level of the second game is a simulation of the first level in the first game.
- Winged Humanoid: The flying mutants in the original.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: SHODAN goes insane after her ethical constraints are removed, declaring herself a god and determined to wipe out all organic life so she can create a more efficient replacement that bends to her will. See also A God Am I.
- With Us or Against Us: The stance of The Many towards the Soldier when they contact him on the Engineering deck.
- Womb Level: the Body of the Many in the sequel. Considered to be That One Level by some due to the lack of regeneration after death.
- The Worm That Walks: Research into the Hybrid Organ states that Hybrids are partially comprised of a mass of worm-like symbiotes that mimic healthy body tissues.
- Wrench Whack: Your first weapon in the sequel.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: SHODAN always has a backup plan. Just look at the sequence of events in the first game: first she plans on using Citadel's mining laser to blow up Earth's civilizations from a distance. When the Hacker disables the laser, she focuses on perfecting the mutagen virus she was planning on releasing anyway: if released on Earth it will probably still topple civilization. The Hacker then jettisons the Grove she was using to engineer it. Her next idea is to download herself to Earth's Internet. The Hacker blows up Citadel's antennae. So SHODAN activates the engines to get there the long way. The Hacker proceeds to set the self-destruct. SHODAN responds by detaching the bridge and flying that to Earth. The Hacker finally makes it to the bridge and deletes SHODAN's primary data loop directly, finally ending her threat.. until the second game, where she has even more plans.
- You All Look Familiar: To the point that the Goggle's model uses the same soldier-with-cyber-eyes model as the corpses.
- You Are Number 6: In the original, SHODAN refers to her cyborg servants as cyborg 'insert-number-here'. The Hacker is also 'officially' known as Employee 2-4601, while the Soldier in the sequel is also known as SOLDIER G65434-2.
- The Hacker's case is unique: Diego added him to the company roster to justify his being in a healing coma on Citadel Station, but erased all records of why the Hacker was on Citadel Station in the first place. No one knows who he is, really, other than his number. This, naturally, is All There in the Manual.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: SHODAN to the Soldier, after he killed The Many.
- You Have Researched Breathing: In SS2, you can't use an assault rifle (despite previous training) without investing the appropriate number of cyber modules.
- The crystal shard is an even more blatant example. You need high research skill AND a rank of exotic weapons in order to use it as a glorified club.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Dying in cyberspace will reduce your current health in half and max out your fatigue.
- However, you can't die as a result of dying in cyberspace. If you have 1 health point left, you will never lose it. In some cases, it's better to immediately and unceasingly head to cyberspace until you're done in there, no matter how many times you die, before healing yourself.
- You Will Be Assimilated: SHODAN in the first game and the Many in the sequel.
- Zombie Apocalypse: The early mutants in the original are Romero type. The Annelid Hybrids in the sequel are Russo type.