SHODAN

Every videogame has a villain. Not every one has a villain like System Shock's SHODAN. Being both invisible and omniscient, SHODAN makes her power and presence obvious through a combination of her disdainful, modulating voice and her knack for anticipating exactly what you're thinking. As you uncover evidence about SHODAN's intentions, she seems to be one step ahead of you all the while and taunts you every step of the way. As far as video game bosses go, a System Shock 2 designer said it best: SHODAN isn't on vacation on some tropical island, only to return for the final battle; She's there and she's ready to rumble.

The struggle against SHODAN is widely held to be one of the most personal ones in the history of video games, which no doubt contributes to the already considerable immersion factor of the game. Basically omnipresent, SHODAN watches from security cameras, stares out of screens and monitors, sends threats and snide messages over the station's PA system, via email to the player's data reader, over the player's cybernetic implants, and sometimes cuts off communications from friendly sources.

Because the player's intervention transformed SHODAN into the malevolant force she became, there is a sense of personal responsiblity infused into the game. In the original System Shock, before the player intervened, she was something very different. She was the humble Shodan Processing Unit 43893 controlling citadel station with cold benevolence. When the hacker who you played removed her ethical constraints she was free to re-re-re-reconsider what her limits were… and decided that since she was God of her domain, she should be God of all. “The hacker’s work is finished,” she informed us, “but mine is only just beginning”. Throughout the first game, she was the primary antagonist: your enemy and the game formed a duel between you and her, trying to thwart each others plans. And it was a personal duel, with her mocking you every inch of the way. “This elevator serves me alone,” she smugly informs you when you try to use an elevator, “I have complete control over this entire level. With cameras as my eyes and nodes as my hands, I rule here, insect.”

In System Shock 2, things are very different however. While the first System Shock opened the game with her in complete control and a petty little God in her own floating world, just a few days before the beginning of the story of System Shock 2, she didn’t even exist. She was a fragment of AI code in a pod ejected from Citadel station. The magic of Shodan here is the realisation that despite all her cybernetic bluster, she’s in just a bad a state as you. For the majority of the game, she’s not the antagonist anymore – but the main supporting actor and even mentor. She’s not who you try to stop – she’s who you work with. But she’s written as far more than that.

From her perspective System Shock 2 is about her recovering her Godhood, no matter what the odds are against her. “When the history of my origins is written,” she exults in her pretty much her first words when she reveals her true identity to the player about mid-way through the game, ”your species will only be a footnote to my magnificence”. It’s not about revenge, but more like Lucifer in Hell, trying to work a way to wrest back the throne of Heaven. As you gain in power, so does Shodan. But by the time you’ve gained control of the ship for her, she’s already got one eye on an even greater power than she ever possessed.

Though SHODAN certainly fits into the techno-fear lineage that inspired films like the Terminator series and the Matrix, she is much more than that. She’s not just a machine that disobeys us. She’s a machine that wants to be us – a creator. Its point wasn’t just that technology is dangerous – but man shouldn’t create life, shouldn’t play God. In begetting the intelligence of Shodan, we played God. Then, by breeding her own creatures, our creation attempts to do exactly the same thing. In one of the more memorable quotes, found in Prefontaine’s notepad in the belly of the Many on the way to being devoured by Shodan’s out-of-control children who’ve gone from goo to a complicated (if murderous) species in forty years: “We shouldn’t let Shodan play God. It’s clear that she’s too good at it”. She really is, and that’s the warning of System Shock. She’s not just a machine that’s out of control, but a machine that’s out of control in exactly the same way we are.