Another title that will certainly feature multiple times in this series, the often over-looked 1999 PC horror, System Shock 2, is largely regarded by those who were fortunate enough to experience it at the time to be one of the most abiding and powerful horror games ever created. When console markets were still largely predominated by derivatives of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, System Shock 2 demonstrated that there were alternatives to be had, alternatives that might even prove themselves superior to what we knew.
A sequel to the original System Shock, the game is a cyberpunk affair set aboard the starship Von Braun, the most ambitious -not to mention expensive- endeavour ever carried out by humanity. Effectively a giant, intergalactic city, the Von Braun is a functioning eco-system and civilisation, designed to traverse the stars and claim intergalactic territories in the name of humanity (or, more specifically, the company Tri-Optimum, which is responsible for its construction and owns more or less everything on Earth, at this point).
Beginning with the anonymous player character awakening with amnesia aboard the vessel (apparently after a protracted and unpleasant period of involuntary surgery), we find the Von Braun in a state of advanced disrepair, warning sirens flashing, monitors streaming data from various failing systems, the ship's on-board computer, Xerxes, spouting an almost non-stop stream of warnings, saftey announcements and curious snippets of what sound like quasi-religious insanity.
Guided to safety by voice-mails from Doctor Janice Polito, it is our task to explore the ship, find out what has gone wrong and deal with the various muttering, hissing, chittering abominations that haunt the darkened corridors.
The game is nigh-legendary for its use of sound, shadow and voice-work to create a sense of unparalleled tension: unlike many of its contemporaries, the game boasts enemies that follow no particular route or pattern and often spawn randomly. Furthermore, the various creatures infesting the Von Braun react to sound in a way that was rarely seen at the time, meaning that every step or action might potentially draw their attention, especially if they happen to be lurking just around the next corner...
A sequel to the original System Shock, the game is a cyberpunk affair set aboard the starship Von Braun, the most ambitious -not to mention expensive- endeavour ever carried out by humanity. Effectively a giant, intergalactic city, the Von Braun is a functioning eco-system and civilisation, designed to traverse the stars and claim intergalactic territories in the name of humanity (or, more specifically, the company Tri-Optimum, which is responsible for its construction and owns more or less everything on Earth, at this point).
Beginning with the anonymous player character awakening with amnesia aboard the vessel (apparently after a protracted and unpleasant period of involuntary surgery), we find the Von Braun in a state of advanced disrepair, warning sirens flashing, monitors streaming data from various failing systems, the ship's on-board computer, Xerxes, spouting an almost non-stop stream of warnings, saftey announcements and curious snippets of what sound like quasi-religious insanity.
Guided to safety by voice-mails from Doctor Janice Polito, it is our task to explore the ship, find out what has gone wrong and deal with the various muttering, hissing, chittering abominations that haunt the darkened corridors.
The game is nigh-legendary for its use of sound, shadow and voice-work to create a sense of unparalleled tension: unlike many of its contemporaries, the game boasts enemies that follow no particular route or pattern and often spawn randomly. Furthermore, the various creatures infesting the Von Braun react to sound in a way that was rarely seen at the time, meaning that every step or action might potentially draw their attention, especially if they happen to be lurking just around the next corner...
As you might expect, the game is absolutely bursting at the stitches with moments of the most sublime horror, from the emergence of the truly terrifying Cyborg Midwives to an encounter with chittering, alien spiders in a cramped ventilation shaft (some of which we'll be exploring later), but the one that never fails to send a shiver up my spine, that remains so prominent in my memory, is the first time the player is directly addressed by the collective intelligence that calls itself The Many.
What makes the encounter so effective is that it occurs very early on, when the player still only has fragments of explanation for what is happening aboard the Von Braun, and before The Many itself has crystallised as a concept:
Walking through the sputtering, sparking corridors of the engineering deck, the player suddenly pauses involuntarily, a white light erupting, sweeping them away from the Von Braun to a disembodied condition in which they float through a cavern of flesh and bone, the pulsing ground below infested with entities that they've yet to encounter in game, but know that they will, eventually. Carried around the surreal chamber by some invisible force, the player is subject to the whims of The Many, which has clearly made contact as much to demonstrate its influence as anything else.
Then, the entity speaks, not with one voice, but, as its self-given name suggests, with many, offering seductions as readily as it does threats, promising the player a place in its symphony, its collective, making what are, at that point, cryptic references to “...the Machine Mother,” serving not only to disturb and intimidate, but also provide clues as to what's occurring aboard the Von Braun and beyond.
Whilst the encounter itself is framed in such a manner as to be powerfully disturbing, what it implies is more unsettling still:
The Many makes psychic contact with the player directly, infesting their minds seemingly without a great deal of effort, allowing them to see what it intends, the merest portion of what it truly is. Moreover, the fleshy cavern and its interconnecting corridors suggest something far more hideous: that somewhere is an entity of truly gargantuan proportions, giving birth to and orchestrating those that have infested the Von Braun and its crew.
What makes the encounter so effective is that it occurs very early on, when the player still only has fragments of explanation for what is happening aboard the Von Braun, and before The Many itself has crystallised as a concept:
Walking through the sputtering, sparking corridors of the engineering deck, the player suddenly pauses involuntarily, a white light erupting, sweeping them away from the Von Braun to a disembodied condition in which they float through a cavern of flesh and bone, the pulsing ground below infested with entities that they've yet to encounter in game, but know that they will, eventually. Carried around the surreal chamber by some invisible force, the player is subject to the whims of The Many, which has clearly made contact as much to demonstrate its influence as anything else.
Then, the entity speaks, not with one voice, but, as its self-given name suggests, with many, offering seductions as readily as it does threats, promising the player a place in its symphony, its collective, making what are, at that point, cryptic references to “...the Machine Mother,” serving not only to disturb and intimidate, but also provide clues as to what's occurring aboard the Von Braun and beyond.
Whilst the encounter itself is framed in such a manner as to be powerfully disturbing, what it implies is more unsettling still:
The Many makes psychic contact with the player directly, infesting their minds seemingly without a great deal of effort, allowing them to see what it intends, the merest portion of what it truly is. Moreover, the fleshy cavern and its interconnecting corridors suggest something far more hideous: that somewhere is an entity of truly gargantuan proportions, giving birth to and orchestrating those that have infested the Von Braun and its crew.
That the moment comes out of nowehere, with no signfication, no build-up or even the slightest suggestion that it's about to occur, makes it all the more effective. This is our first encounter directly with the invading force that has wrought such havoc aboard ship, that has reduced its crew to such lamentable conditions that they plead to be killed even as they attack, but it is far, far from what we might expect:
The entity doesn't comport itself as an invading alien, doesn't speak in terms of threat (at least exclusively): it is a seducer and an evangelist, a collective, parasitic consciousness that seeks to unify all within itself, mentally, biologically and spiritually. It becomes clear even from this encounter that The Many believes itself to be essential, far beyond a mindless, atavistic or animal force in the universe, but a means of cleansing what it proclaims “...the tyranny of the individual” from the face of creation, uniting all within the joyous unity of the mass.
And nor is it a liar in that regard: as we come across data logs and vid messages from various crew members infected with the parasites (initially, a fairly grotesque, worm-like entity that physically infests its host whilst also mentally warping their perspectives via a form of collective telepathy), it becomes clear that more than a handful have consciously embraced The Many, finding in the gradual dissolution of their individuality a kind of freedom, a species of rapture. Those that progress to the ultimate conclusion of this absorption express ecstasies that transgress beyond human notions of love or power, ambition or inspiration: they are rapturous at their transformation, their loss of humanity, and also provide some fairly convincing arguments as to why surrender to The Many is not only desirable, but essential to humanity's survival.
The initial encounter leaves some troubling implications for the player, that only mount as the game progresses: what if, by fighting The Many, we're murdering humanity's one and only chance for survival, for a kind of transcendence? What if The Many is the future of humanity and the only means it has of attaining one? Whilst the game is from an era when elements of choice were limited by technological constraints, there's little doubt that, were the game to be made now (or maybe remade, which is entirely possible, in the current climate), there would be a far greater element of choice regarding player loyalty: do we side with The Many as so many others have against The Machine Mother? Do we find ourselves inviting and facilitating their infestation, gradually becoming more and more one with their bio-mass, their collective?
The moral and philosophical quandaries the mere existence of The Many poses are uniquely troubling, in that they throw into question assumptions and limitations that underpin what it means to be human:
What if the individuality and isolated consciousness we so prize is a sincere limitation, a source of suffering rather than of joy? What if the only means of becoming more is to eradicate that limitation by whatever means we can? What if there is liberation to be found in the abandonment of humanity, consciousness, will? What if the means of our renaissance is not merely ideological, but biological?; Something that alters the states of our genetics and biology as well as our modes of perception?
All of this, threading out from that initial encounter, which is in itself powerfully disturbing. This is a prime example of how unique the horror of System Shock 2 is: what begins as familiar, survivalist shocks and fear for our character's well-being expands as the game progresses into far more ideological concerns and fears, culminating in a question that, sadly, the game provides no answer to:
What if we're wrong? What if we're the villain of our own story, fighting to destroy something that is beautiful and transcendental?
A wonderful concept for any piece of horror media to tackle, let alone one ostensibly labelled as a “game.”
The entity doesn't comport itself as an invading alien, doesn't speak in terms of threat (at least exclusively): it is a seducer and an evangelist, a collective, parasitic consciousness that seeks to unify all within itself, mentally, biologically and spiritually. It becomes clear even from this encounter that The Many believes itself to be essential, far beyond a mindless, atavistic or animal force in the universe, but a means of cleansing what it proclaims “...the tyranny of the individual” from the face of creation, uniting all within the joyous unity of the mass.
And nor is it a liar in that regard: as we come across data logs and vid messages from various crew members infected with the parasites (initially, a fairly grotesque, worm-like entity that physically infests its host whilst also mentally warping their perspectives via a form of collective telepathy), it becomes clear that more than a handful have consciously embraced The Many, finding in the gradual dissolution of their individuality a kind of freedom, a species of rapture. Those that progress to the ultimate conclusion of this absorption express ecstasies that transgress beyond human notions of love or power, ambition or inspiration: they are rapturous at their transformation, their loss of humanity, and also provide some fairly convincing arguments as to why surrender to The Many is not only desirable, but essential to humanity's survival.
The initial encounter leaves some troubling implications for the player, that only mount as the game progresses: what if, by fighting The Many, we're murdering humanity's one and only chance for survival, for a kind of transcendence? What if The Many is the future of humanity and the only means it has of attaining one? Whilst the game is from an era when elements of choice were limited by technological constraints, there's little doubt that, were the game to be made now (or maybe remade, which is entirely possible, in the current climate), there would be a far greater element of choice regarding player loyalty: do we side with The Many as so many others have against The Machine Mother? Do we find ourselves inviting and facilitating their infestation, gradually becoming more and more one with their bio-mass, their collective?
The moral and philosophical quandaries the mere existence of The Many poses are uniquely troubling, in that they throw into question assumptions and limitations that underpin what it means to be human:
What if the individuality and isolated consciousness we so prize is a sincere limitation, a source of suffering rather than of joy? What if the only means of becoming more is to eradicate that limitation by whatever means we can? What if there is liberation to be found in the abandonment of humanity, consciousness, will? What if the means of our renaissance is not merely ideological, but biological?; Something that alters the states of our genetics and biology as well as our modes of perception?
All of this, threading out from that initial encounter, which is in itself powerfully disturbing. This is a prime example of how unique the horror of System Shock 2 is: what begins as familiar, survivalist shocks and fear for our character's well-being expands as the game progresses into far more ideological concerns and fears, culminating in a question that, sadly, the game provides no answer to:
What if we're wrong? What if we're the villain of our own story, fighting to destroy something that is beautiful and transcendental?
A wonderful concept for any piece of horror media to tackle, let alone one ostensibly labelled as a “game.”
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