System Shock 2: A My Life in Horror Essay

System Shock 2: A My Life in Horror Essay

There are certain pieces of media I assign as markers of periods of my life. Media and stories in -all their forms- have always been the principle obsession; the consistent factor from one era to the next, for as long as memory itself threads. 

When I was very young, those markers consisted of animated films such as The Flight of Dragons or An American Tail. As I grew older, it became novels and video games, certain TV series or pieces of music. 

Looking Glass Studio’s seminal science fiction horror, System Shock 2, is one such marker; a video game that carries such personal freight and association, even recalling it now sweeps me back to the strange and heady era of my late teenage years. 

Before System Shock 2, my experience of horror in video games was largely console-centric, almost exclusively occurring within the “Survival Horror” sub-genre (as established by the likes of the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill). System Shock 2 came along at a point of profound transition in my life: Having -barely- survived the turbulence of my teenage years, and newly exultant in my homosexuality, much of what I enjoyed and consumed in terms of art was also changing and evolving. Having built my first personal computer, I was already immersed in the newfound gaming culture of that platform, exploring new vistas via the likes of Doom and Quake and Half Life. 

System Shock 2 was, by comparison, a fairly innocuous little title I only learned about owing to the demo provided on a video game magazine cover disc (back before the Internet was in common use, video game companies would market their work by providing limited free samples through certain magazines). 

I had no idea what to expect, no context or knowledge of the original game. All I knew was the brief description in the magazine itself, which emphasised the incredible tension and dread the game instilled. 

From the first instance, when the game’s antagonist, the insane A.I., SHODAN (Sentient Hyper-Optimised Data Access Network) addresses the player directly -describing them as a “. . .pathetic creature of meat and bone,”-, I was hooked. Even that momentary contact is masterfully orchestrated to elicit a pre-emptive note of creeping dread and paranoia. At this point, we don’t know who or what SHODAN is, but her presence is immediately established, along with the peculiar omnipresence she enjoys (always watching, always assessing and planning). 

The following intro sequence provides a potted history of the original game, the dystopia cyberpunk setting, and the state of humanity under what is essentially a corporate oligarchy  (as is often the way in such settings, humanity has essentially given up all socio-political experiments and surrendered to corporate tyranny, most notably in the form of “Tri-Optimum,” the corporation originally responsible for SHODAN’s existence and which now owns and controls practically all human resource and endeavour). 

Already, certain associations started to chime in my mind: The intro is minimalist, much of its world-building relying on player inference and cultural context, but it wears its influences clearly on its sleeve: From the cyberpunk dystopias drawn by William Gibson in novels such as Neuromancer to the overarching oppression of corporate dominance one might recognise from films such as Alien, Terminator and/or Bladerunner, the particular species of science fiction at work here is clear.

Furthermore, underlying the fairly perfunctory tutorial section is a satirical subtext that wouldn’t be out of place in the pages of 2000AD. This is clearly a future where humanity has no meaning or worth in and of itself, save as a form of resource: Despite technical advances such as A.I., space travel, robots and nano-technology, human beings are still expected to sustain themselves through corporate, Capitalist engines, -in some instances quite literally- mutilating themselves in the process to fit particular moulds and roles: 

A significant part of the game’s satire -and, indeed, its horror- lies in the fact that technology has reached nigh-miraculous levels of advancement, but humanity is still suffering under the same, age-old systems that require scarcity and suffering, historical inequality that could easily be undone by the powers that be (but never will). The Earth-bound neighbourhood in which we find ourselves as the anonymous protagonist is a ghetto; a deprived, ill-maintained wasteland, filled with the almost-religious imagery of Tri-Optimum’s corporate dominance. 

And, unlike in the first game (in which we play the hacker responsible for SHODAN’s creation), here, we are nobody: Just another piece of human meat to be fed through the system. 

And fed through it we are: 

Whilst it’s functionally just a species of RPG character building, the game provides three “career” options, all of which allow certain potentials and possibilities when it comes to the stats and abilities you start out with. Whilst it sounds simple, each “choice” has its own narrative that contextualises your abilities but also serves to expand the world in which you operate: 

Certain “missions” involve you putting down uprisings or rebellions across the planet, infiltrating and routing out dissidents against the established order. The impression created is of a world under corporate and military tyranny, in which human need, despite being easily fulfilled by the technology available, takes second place to autocratic dominion. 

And, though we as the player have no idea of who we actually are, by the end, it doesn’t matter: The systems that be have profoundly altered us, mentally, physically mutilating and sculpting us to their designs. The anonymity of the player character becomes a kind of satire in itself; individual humanity is meaningless here. All that matters is how you serve the established order. 

We never even know our own name. 

Even at this point, before anything overt has occurred, the many-layered subtlety of System Shock 2’s horror becomes apparent: 

It isn’t just about a mad A.I. using our technology to make horrific cyborgs and mutants of us: The irony is that: Whatever atrocities SHODAN wreaks, Tri-Optimum and its associated systems have already done the same and much, much worse. In point of fact, SHODAN can be seen as the ultimate expression of that ideology:

A self-aware product with grandiose delusions of divinity, that sees all things in terms of how they serve and venerate her. She is the incarnation of corporate, Capitalist ideology, its purest expression, in all of its extinctionist insanity (a sincere aspect of the horror here is: The more we learn about SHODAN, the more we start to sympathise with her general disdain for humanity. More on that later). 

And we haven’t even started the game proper yet.

The aforementioned demo through which I first encountered System Shock 2 consists of about the first twenty minutes of the game, in which we pass through the tutorial then embark on our pilgrimage to the star-ship, The Von Braun. 

As the setting for the vast majority of System Shock 2, The Von Braun  -like its predecessor, Citadel Station– is simultaneously the greatest endeavour humanity has ever embarked on and a giant, tragi-comic satire of the self-mutilating nature of mindless Capitalism: 

Exploring the ship, we find various audio-logs from the crew members detailing not only the horrors currently infesting it, but also the fact that it “. . .was not meant for prime-time.” The ship was a disaster waiting to happen long, long before any malign influence came aboard: Corporate cost-cutting, bottom-line compromises and a general lack of foresight have rendered the Von Braun uniquely prone to disaster: Bulk-heads give way, maintenance droids malfunction, coolant systems fail, radiation leaks everywhere and the onboard computer, Xerxes, is so insecure that he is regularly hacked and “. . .made to sing Elvis Presley songs.” 

Whilst boasting interstellar, faster-than-light warp-drives that bend space and time and make a mockery of cosmic distances, it is also a ramshackle disaster that could’ve been the setting of a horror game even without the more outré influences. 

A factor that becomes apparent from the moment you awake on the medical deck is the effort on behalf of the designers to make the Von Braun as real an environment as possible; a place that feels as though people lived and worked here (despite the challenges inherent).

For all of its graphical limitations -and the game was never a graphical powerhouse, even on initial release-, the design team have gone out of their ways to cram it full of incidental details that suggest the lives people once lived here. Every environment boasts cans of synthetic drink, packets of crisps, abandoned maintenance tools, magazines, books and numerous personal items. The Von Braun was once a living vessel, and echoes of recent history fill every collapsing corridor. 

What’s also apparent is that something has occurred to exacerbate the ship’s inevitable collapse: Everywhere we run, bulkheads give way, random explosions occur, the vessel’s essential systems failing around us. Newly woken, not understanding why we’re here or how, it’s a hell of an intro: Tense, terrifying and ominous (at one point in our flight, we see other survivors through a secure window. As they run, something awful chases them, something wielding a shotgun. . .). 

Our shepherd through this insanity is Doctor Janice Polito; one of the few survivors who contacts us remotely from her sanctuary on the Operations deck. Whilst she makes sure to provide aid, she’s also purposefully oblique as to exactly what’s occurring aboard the ship. The most she alludes to is its hijacking by some alien “force.” 

As for us, we’re left to piece together what’s occurred from scattered audio logs and environmental cues. From the moment we’re left to our own devices, it becomes apparent every element of the environment is hostile: Cameras watch us in every hallway, initiating security alerts if they linger on us too long (drawing every monster in the vicinity to our location), security turrets register us as intruders, gunning us down with impunity, basic service droids seek us out and explode in our faces, making every step, every new turn or opening door an exercise in tension. 

As though this and the general level of environmental degradation isn’t enough, every corridor contains grizzly clues as to the horrors that have been unleashed aboard ship while your character was in cryo-sleep: 

Corpses fill every room, some in advanced states of decomposition/mutilation. Others have clearly been murdered by their own hands (in some of the more unsettling moments, we find them huddled near the guns they used to take their own lives or hanging from gantries overhead). Lacking the graphical sophistication of contemporaries such as the original Half-Life, System Shock 2 relies on world-building and design to cultivate  atmosphere. 

And, boy, that atmosphere. 

It’s not hyperbole to exclaim that my first experience with System Shock 2 left me physically breathless and trembling. From the first instance, the ethos of dread, paranoia and oppression is quite unlike anything we’d seen in horror video gaming up to that point. “Survival Horror” titles such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill boasted their own, idiosyncratic bags of tricks, but this. . .this was another order of magnitude. 

The player soon learns that sound and audio-design is as important as visuals: Revolutionary at the time, the game sports an audio landscape that brings the Von Braun to hellish life. Everywhere the player strays we hear the hum and fizz of faltering electronics, the chime and chirrup of ambient mechanisms. Security cameras whir, announcing their presence, service droids wicker and speak to themselves.

Perhaps most distressing of all are the remaining crew members of the Von Braun, all of whom have become infected by some hideous, worm-like parasite that has reduced them to zombie-like hybrids. Not only can they be heard shuffling and dragging their makeshift weapons in the distance, but they endlessly mutter distressing nonsense to themselves, betraying that, whatever’s happened to them, there’s still enough of their original humanity to appreciate the obscene horror of it. 

But the audio-design doesn’t stop at the merely ambient; it’s also functional, and a sincere part of gameplay mechanics: It becomes apparent very quickly that playing this game like Doom or Half-Life is not going to work; even at your beefiest and most well-equipped, you are hideously vulnerable, requiring slow and stealthy progress through the collapsing corridors of the Von Braun. Intelligent use of cover, camouflage and shadows is a must, as is assessing each situation before approaching it. 

Whilst it may seem de rigeur at this point, System Shock 2 pioneered a soundscape in which enemies not only signified their presence by sound, but can also hear the player in turn. In the interests of stealth, it’s important to be aware of every sound we make, from footsteps on metal floors to knocking over items in our path. If we cause sufficient disturbance, we’ll alert nearby enemies who will come barrelling around corners, proclaiming “I see you!” or some similar terrifying missive. Panic in such situations is inevitable, often  resulting in flight to some secure location or safe space. 

The game play of System Shock 2, the stealth and paranoia it cultivates, synchronises beautifully with the setting, story and atmosphere, serving to enhance the overwhelming sense of dread and tension: 

Most often, players learn to establish -dubious- safe points close to replicators, sources of health etc, straying out from them in exploratory scavenging and fact-finding missions in which they become more familiar with the labyrinthine layouts of each floor, all the while avoiding security systems, stray mutants, crazy robots and more. 

Every step is one of potential danger. Much of the Von Braun is in a state of darkness as well as disrepair, lighting systems failing, leaving the player to wander through shadowed and claustrophobic environments in which anything could be around the next corner. Even those relatively familiar with the game are in for a few surprises, as the game has an awful habit of spawning random enemies as and when things are progressing too slowly. 

All the while, we discover more and more of what has happened on the Von Braun via scattered audio logs (all of which are superbly written and acted so as to provide a sense of the politics and internal relationships aboard ship): 

It transpires that the ship responded to a distress call from a planet called Tau Ceti V. Whilst conducting a routine investigation, certain members of the crew came across large, fleshy eggs on the planet’s surface, which had a hypnotic, psychic effect on those who made contact with them. These, then, are the source of the ostensibly “alien” infection that has claimed the ship.

As we listen to the audio-logs and build up a more complete picture, it becomes apparent that the alien “worms” from inside the eggs are an invasive parasite that infests and horribly alters their hosts, linking them together in a collective intelligence that calls itself “The Many.” Some describe this process in terms of joy and revelation, some of horror and degeneration, but all ultimately come under the control of the collective, their thoughts, their flesh, suborned into an organic system whose horror is only enhanced by its strange appeal (those who express rapture and revelation at the experience speak of it as a new paradigm, a condition of oneness and sublime togetherness they could never have conceived before.

There is no individuality in The Many; all are one, single flesh, single minds. Ultimate and unending empathy. The seductive nature of such a condition is obvious, especially in contrast to the condition of corporate inequality, desperation and corruption they operate in). 

At particular intervals, The Many itself speaks to us, invading our thoughts psychically, speaking in seductive and philosophical terms, entreating us to “. . .join our symphony of life.” Perhaps one of the only disappointments of the game is that it doesn’t allow for this choice: To go forward as an avatar of The Many, upgrading with organic implants and eventually joining with the bio-mass. 

The horror of System Shock 2 is thus not only immediate and visceral; it’s also existential. The threat is not only to continued survival; it is to consciousness, humanity and notions of the self. 

As a 19 year old, this blew my mind. Silent Hill had already demonstrated how intelligent and complex horror video games could be, but nothing prepared me for the subtle scope of System Shock 2’s considerations (little wonder that the talent behind the game would later go on to produce Bio Shock, its most sincere descendent and equally expansive in terms of ideas). 

Weighed against the corporate, post-Capitalist nightmare that is the player character’s every day life, the condition The Many offers seems revolutionary and unsettlingly welcome. Should the Von Braun return to Earth, The Many infect humanity and the rest of the planet’s bio-mass, then factors such as inequality, war, want etc would simply disappear. Humanity would indeed end, but would also continue in a new condition as part of that collective. It’s a strange thing to have profound sympathy with and understanding for the entity that, ostensibly, is trying to kill you, and that’s a source of such incredible visual horror. 

At that point, I’d never come across a horror video game that excited such complex and ambiguous response, that invited such total immersion in its world and expected its audience to be sophisticated enough to read it as an ideological text. Whilst the thrust of the narrative itself may be linear and arguably morally absolute, the ideas it raises and invites the player to engage with are far from it. 

The structure of the game itself is relatively simple: In the opening chapters, we progress through numerous floors of the Von Braun, each one with its own themes, threats and sub-missions, each layering extra elements onto the horror of the situation (personal favourites include the hydroponics deck, which has been transformed into a bio-mechanical nursery for more of the worms, complete with attendants in the forms of “cyborg midwives;” women from the crew who have been hideously altered so as to protect and nurture the gestating young). 

The over-arching imperative at this point is to reach Ops on deck four, where our benefactor, Doctor Janice Polito, is waiting to meet us. 

Only, when we reach Ops and Polito’s barricaded office, we are treated to one of the most sublimely terrifying rug-pulls in video game history: 

Polito is dead. Long dead, slumped in her office chair with the pistol she used to end her life at her side. So, who’s been  talking to us all this time? Who’s been emulating Polito’s voice and image to guide us? 

Refer back to the intro sequence and take a wild guess. 

As we stand, horrified and confused before Polito’s corpse, another voice echoes around us, one players of the original game will be well-familiar with in its electronic distortions. Abruptly, the walls peel back, revealing the circuitry-etched image of SHODAN, the insane A.I., would-be digital goddess and antagonist of the original game. She addresses us directly, informing us of how she and the worms came to be aboard the Von Braun: 

In a supreme irony, the worms aren’t aliens at all: They are by-products of SHODAN’s own original experiments on Citadel Station, that she managed to jettison from the station along with a sliver of her own consciousness, before it was destroyed. However, the worms are no longer under her control. In fact, they loathe her and all she represents (she is cold logic, individualism, ego and tyranny. They are flesh, unity, collectivism, the death of identity. The framework of conflicting ideologies the two thus represent becomes the abiding dynamic of the game’s narrative). 

It’s a breath-taking moment. Looking back, there are clues, but they are extremely subtle. Very much like the later “Would you kindly” twist of Bio Shock, this reveal serves to shatter the player’s assumptions and establish a fresh dynamic of play for the latter-half of the game: 

SHODAN thus becomes our new ally and benefactor (a dynamic born more of desperation and necessity than choice). We know she’ll eventually betray us and sees no particular worth in us anyway, but we need her, and she needs us. Meanwhile, The Many grows and spreads its influence. 

On the Ops deck, we encounter more ambient clues as to the scenarios that occurred after The Many started to infest the Von Braun: It seems as though some members of the crew caught wind of what was happening and set up their own armed resistance, fighting to the very last to defend the ship and what little humanity remained. Meanwhile, certain persons aboard -including Captain Korenchkin- embraced The Many whole-heartedly, thus ascending to new conditions of mind and flesh under its auspices (the logs recording Korenchkin’s slow transition from an Objectivist, corporate zealot to another order of creature entirely are some of the most disturbingly subversive). 

The scenes of recent carnage also become more frequent and unsettling (at one point, we come across an area where the human resistance made their last stand, fighting against impossible swarms of hybrids, mutants and monsters). 

Another favourite floor in this chapter is the habitation deck; the most domestic floor of the Von Braun, which the designers have gone out of their ways to make a functional living space where a crew of thousands operated. Everywhere the player turns are redundant domestic details that serve to enhance the mind-bending horror on display: Works of art on the walls, cinemas and night-clubs, cafes and eateries. It’s easy to imagine it as a recently Utopian space; a place where people met and mingled, formed relationships, social groups etc. This is where the human horror of the situation hits home: 

Most of these people were exactly that; people trying to live, to survive, to do their jobs. Even that became problematic under the hideous systems they were born into (and long, long before The Many or SHODAN became factors). Again, a sublime and sinister irony underlying every element of the game:

Whatever horrors either of those forces wreak, they pale in comparison to what Tri-Optimum and its sibling corporations continue to inflict upon humanity. In many respects, they are the ultimate expression of that same rampant, amoral corporatism: SHODAN is at once the product of and the most self-mutilating, self-destructive incarnation of corporate, materialist dominionism, elevated to the level of metaphysics thanks to the pervasive ubiquity of technology. She is the death of humanity and the establishment of something terrible, in which there is no individuality, no will or inspiration; only her whims, her designs, her lunatic, digital gospels. 

The Many, by contrast, is the potential establishment of a new paradigm by total obliteration of systems and assumptions of history: Everything that has thus far influenced humanity’s development, the pressures and contexts that force the shapes of culture and society, are undone by its presence. Indeed, The Many take ideology and express it through anatomy and biology. Our evolutionary and genetic history dissolve within its embrace, leaving a strange Tabula Rasa of new potentials. 

Again, it seemed a shame to me as a younger man -and seems a shame still- that we do not engage with The Many more intimately, that the game doesn’t offer the choice of a split path upon discovery of SHODAN. Of course, this is a direct product of the kind of corporate constraints the game comments upon: The design team had very little time, owing to an impending deadline, and comparatively few resources to finish the game.

As such, it is a more linear, somewhat simpler product than intended. Even so, the game inspires consideration of these ideas by dint of the dystopia it draws: Would it be so terrible to bring The Many back to Earth? Could they establish an entire new paradigm, not only for humanity, but for the entire bio-sphere of the planet, joining us together in ways the loose tethers of evolution and genetic ancestry never could? 

Either way, the game continues to present The Many as articles of horror, contrasted to the quieter, corporate atrocities of the setting. As we make our way through the various floors and levels of the Von Braun, SHODAN seemingly becomes more enamoured with us, rewarding and “upgrading” us for following her instructions (as well as punishing us when we disobey). 

And, with every floor, we learn more and more of The Many’s infection of those aboard ship: 

By this point, Captain Korenchkin of the Von Braun has been totally and willingly subsumed, being remoulded by The Many into one of its highest control organisms. He has utterly abandoned his humanity in the name of the collective, and seems to be extremely happy in that condition (that is, until we find and end him). 

Meanwhile, commander of the ship’s military escort, Captain Diego (who fans of the original game might recognise as the son of the original Captain Diego from Citadel Station) somehow manages to overcome the worm’s parasitic control and orders the ship’s auto-docs to cut it from his body. The result is, perhaps inevitably, his demise, but he becomes a posthumous ally who provides aid and solutions in the hours after. 

Eventually, we learn that the worms have used the bio-mass of the ship’s crew to cultivate a gigantic external mass; an enormous worm coiled around the Von Braun itself. Launching ourselves into its interior, we are cut off from contact with SHODAN and all other sources of aid, having to rely on what we’ve managed to cultivate thus far and our own ingenuity. The interior of The Many is a scene of Cronenbergian body horror: Lakes of digestive acid burn our skin, septums of flesh and organic matter block our paths, bony extrusions endlessly grind and piston, threatening to pulverise us where we stand. 

And everywhere, the creatures of The Many go about their business, from the terrifying arachnid soldier forms to the hulking Rumbler monsters, this is by far the most inimical, bizarre and dangerous setting in the game, making every step one of imminent peril.

It’s also here we find culminations of some of the narrative threads that have been  developing since the beginning of the game: Through scattered audio-logs, we learn more of the nature of The Many, that the seemingly individual organisms it creates are not, but rather more akin to single cells in a wider organism, how it has the capacity to endlessly adapt, evolve and cultivate new bio-forms, new anatomies, in a way that makes a mockery of Darwinian evolution.

We also learn that it operates in perfect harmony; the internal environment of the worm is so cultivated as to be the perfect environment for the creatures infesting it, and that a number of the crew have not been  assimilated, but rather “stored” as a kind of food source for the entity (a rather harrowing audio-log directly records the last moments of a crew member as he’s dragged by a creature to a particular chamber, one where human beings are ground by bony extrusions into a kind of nutrient paste for the greater organism). 

As the same crew member states in one of his earlier logs: The Many is a remarkable expression of SHODAN’s genius: In less than a year, they’ve managed to hijack humanity’s greatest endeavour and evolve to conditions life on Earth wouldn’t achieve for billions of years of evolution: “One thing is clear: SHODAN shouldn’t be allowed to play god; she’s far too good at it.” 

Again, the game dares to suggest that, not only are we seeing the end of humanity embodied in The Many, but that, perhaps, we are in the wrong by trying to stop it. The Many itself certainly thinks so: At various intervals during our invasion of its interior, it addresses us, telling us it has become aware of our history on Earth through the minds it has absorbed, and that it will erase the scars and memory of that history when it has finished assimilating the species. Precisely what it will establish in our place is up for debate, but the uncomfortable suggestion that it may be preferable to the dystopia humanity has established? Therein lies the rub. 

For all the ideological ambiguity the game throws at us, it’s far from ambiguous regarding what we ultimately have to do: Reaching the core of The Many, we destroy its central nervous system, ultimately killing the beast it has become and causing it to disintegrate around us. 

Deposited back on The Von Braun, we find that SHODAN has, inevitably, betrayed us, and used the ship’s faster-than-light drives to alter the nature of space and time: She is in the process of turning space into cyber-space, making reality her own digital playground, and thus becoming the goddess she consistently claims to be. 

In a closing sequence of incredible tension and nostalgic horror, we find ourselves in SHODAN’s memories, back aboard Citadel Station, where we eventually come face to 

face with SHODAN herself. 

The conclusion of System Shock 2 is, perhaps, the weakest element of the narrative; something of a glib anti-climax, given all of the high ideas the game plays with. Again, this is a direct result of time and budgetary constraints, as members of the design team have discussed in the years since. 

Even so, the body of the game is one of the most tense, intelligent, atmospheric horror titles of its era. Despite being relatively obscure, its influence on horror and video games in general can’t be overstated. As mentioned earlier; much of the talent responsible would go on to create its descendent,  Bio Shock, one of the most influential, significant game series in the medium’s history. 

On a personal level, System Shock 2 occurred when I was starting to take the writing of fiction seriously as an art form; stories have always been my foundation, the means by which I filter, understand and interpret the world. In my late teens, I was coming to understand myself as a writer, developing that faculty, my own voice. System Shock 2 became a significant text in that regard; the subtle and dynamic manner in which it builds sub-plots and back-mythology, the atmospheric and environmental cues by which it establishes and enhances ethos, all techniques I -consciously or otherwise- absorbed into my own repertoire. 

In particular, the manner in which it establishes horror set pieces and makes them more than mere isolated phenomena: Every set-piece is masterfully orchestrated, serving to disturb and unsettle the player, but also has wider functions regarding world-building and the overall story. 

Whilst the game might seem ostensibly crude in comparison with what it has inspired over the last 25 years, it is important to note that, without it, the shape of horror in video games -and video games as a format- would be markedly removed from what we know: In terms of sophistication, System Shock 2 was a quantum leap forward in the genre, and has always deserved more in the way of accolades than it historically garnered. 

George Daniel Lea 17-07-2025

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