I'd upvote this ten times if I could. One of the scariest bits of a video game, ever.

A great example of a story being carried by incredible voice acting...

Shodan: Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Ghost: Not me, no way. They're not gonna get me. They're not gonna change me.
[loads a pistol]
Ghost: Rachel, kids... I'm sorry.
[shoots himself]

Bronson: They've killed my men and now they've killed me. I'm holding my guts inside me with both hands; I'm almost done. Resist. This is bigger than my little life, the lives of my men, and the lives of the people I was forced to kill. Resist. Humanity demands it. Resist.

Dr. Janice Polito: Marie, I'm sorry I've been out of touch, but i've been working on that artifact Bayliss bought back from Tau Ceti 5. I've done a level three analysis on it. I think it's some kind of artificial intelligence. I've managed to pull an audio tag file of its memory. I'll let you be the judge.
[a distorted voice of SHODAN can be heard]
Dr. Janice Polito: Marie, I think it's speaking Engish.

This scene totally blew me away, I was not expecting it at all. A great use, as Farhad said, of dialogue and plot development!

The game was an excellent blend of RPG and FPS, I loved the side stories that you would hear recorded on the strewn audio PDAs: of the couple moving through the ship ahead of you, (and whom you'd eventually almost meet); the slow degredation and corruption of the various crew; the chilling last moments of crew members fighting back a mutant attack. By only hearing what was happening, your imagination ran wild.

Also the soundtrack, the psychic echoes of the people recently killed and the small touches like cold helpful tone of those relentless androids... If a game was to be defined as a work of art, this one was certainly in the list.

----

Though this clip doesn't really provide the context as to why it was such a shock (sorry ), it's a pretty massive spoiler. Is there some way you could mark it for those who've yet to play SS2?

What interesting is that the audio logs is the only character interaction you have really, at no point do you meet anyone in person. Not a bad decision considering the graphics were pretty bad in terms of models.

I must say BioShock failed to impress me entirely even though it attempted to follow in System Shocks footsteps, I guess it just wasn't nearly cerebral and more geared to the Xbox market.

>> ^BoneyD:
Though this clip doesn't really provide the context as to why it was such a shock (sorry ), it's a pretty massive spoiler. Is there some way you could mark it for those who've yet to play SS2?

Well the game is nine years old now, so I figured anyone who is going to play it already has. I posted this more as a nostalgia sift rather than anything revelatory.

It's not as if I've posted a 'Would you kindly..' clip, but I've said too much .

As good as it gets.

she left a hole in my heart that was only filled recently by GLaDOS.

I had this game for years before starting it a few months ago with all the graphic upgrades. Awesomely great game that STILL beats the crap out of pretty much everything thats come out fps-wise. I skipped most of the comments in case of spoilers

Playing in darkness with head phones is some of the best fun I've had with my pc. Including pron. Seriously.

Can someone please explain GlaDos? Gladys?

Tags for this video have been changed from 'SHODAN, System Shock 2, brown trousers time' to 'SHODAN, System Shock 2, brown trousers time, spoilers' - edited by ant

very very nice post! To this day, this game was the most immersive game I've played...

If anyone hasn't played this, you can still play this with enhanced graphics.
Use SHTUP to upgrade the textures, and SS2 rebirth for the models. I've recently re-played this game with those upgrades, and it looks great.

http://shtup.home.att.net/
http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,8.0.html

You may still be able to pick SS2 from video game stores bargain bins, or... Other sources.

^And make sure to read this great forum giude to getting it to run smoothly on newer systems: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69958

Never played this game, but this clip was great. *Promote (I should have promoted for Halloween).

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 12:15pm PDT - promote requested by Kuga.

My fav game!

This "I am Shodan" sound is the start up sound for my machine

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