System Shock is often cited as an inspiration for games like Deus Ex and Half-Life. The story is mostly told through log disks and email messages found and recieved throughout the game.Īlthough the game was superficially similar to many other first-person shooters on the market, it was critically acclaimed for having detailed environments, an engrossing storyline and a memorable villain. He must fight for survival against mutants, cyborgs and robots created or reprogrammed by the brilliant but insane SHODAN. However, once the hacker awakes from his post-operation healing coma on board the station, he finds all hell has broken loose. In return, the hacker receives a valuable, military-grade cybernetic implant. The player is a hacker hired by an ambitious Tri-Optimum Corporation executive to do a secret hack job on the stations controlling Artificial Intelligence, SHODAN. System Shock was Origin Systems' 1994 entry into the first person sci-fi/ horror genre, set aboard the fictional Citadel research and mining space station. Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
