Terminal Hacking Interface

Lore & Background

The game is set in the year 2072. The protagonist, an unnamed hacker, is caught while attempting to access files concerning Citadel Station, a space station owned by the TriOptimum Corporation. The hacker is taken to Citadel Station and brought before Edward Diego, a TriOptimum executive. Diego offers to drop all charges in exchange for a confidential hacking of SHODAN, the artificial intelligence that controls the station. After hacking SHODAN and removing the AI's ethical constraints, the protagonist undergoes surgery to implant a neural interface and is put into a six-month healing coma. The game begins as the protagonist awakens and finds that SHODAN has commandeered the station. All robots aboard have been reprogrammed for hostility, and the crew has been either mutated, transformed into cyborgs, or killed.

Reader's Guide

The player advances the plot by acquiring log discs and e-mails; the game contains no non-player characters with which to converse. Throughout the game, SHODAN hinders the player's progress with traps and blocked pathways. Specific computer terminals allow the player to temporarily enter Cyberspace; inside, the player moves weightlessly through a wire-frame 3D environment, while collecting data and fighting SHODAN's security programs. Actions in Cyberspace sometimes cause events in the game's physical world; for example, certain locked doors may only be opened in Cyberspace.

Did You Know?

• System Shock was first conceived during the final stages of Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds development, between December 1992 and January 1993.
• The game was a moderate commercial success, with sales exceeding 170,000 copies, but Looking Glass ultimately lost money on the project.
• A sequel, System Shock 2, was released by Looking Glass Studios and offshoot developer Irrational Games in 1999.