Walkthrough and Game Playing Philosophy
This walkthrough isn't what you would call a
"detailed" walkthrough in the sense of "go here, turn left, look down
and find 6 crystals". System Shock allows you to play one of three different
characters. Plus, you can play at one of four difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard,
Impossible.
Many items in the game are random in where they appear in
the game, such as the mutant organ and monkey brain you find at the beginning by searching
enemy bodies. The first mutant or monkey you kill may/may not have any of these
organs in their inventory. They might not appear until you kill a third or fourth
enemy. The same goes for the location of enemies. I have walked around a
corner and gotten whacked by three bad guys, restored my game, walked around the corner
again, ready for combat , and found no enemies there, or sometimes only one or two.
And this is all with the same difficulty setting. The main difference in difficulty
levels seems to be in the number of enemies normally encountered and how your character's
hit points are handled (at lower levels you take less damage per whack). There also
seems to be slightly more security stations around for you to hack.
So, this makes producing a very detailed walkthrough, like
the CanOfWorms walkthrough of Thief, very
difficult. What we've come up with is a system of maps that detail the location of
items critical to the accomplishment of each level's goals coupled with a
"general" description of the route through the level that will accomplish the
goals with an occasional "look out for this!" note.
There is no mention of what enemies to expect (we don't
know because we don't know what difficulty level you've set) and how to handle them (we
don't know which character you've chosen to play). If you doggedly follow the
descriptive route across the level, you probably will be killed pretty quickly. It's
assumed you will explore your way along the route, cautiously
and carefully. It's also assumed you'll explore all areas
of each level, not just the ones mentioned in the description. If you try to zip
through it, you'll miss all kinds of useful items, like ammo, armor, logs, weapons,
nanites, etc.
System Shock 2 is hard, even on the normal level. The
enemies are tough, you can never kill them all, and there's definitely not the amount of
ammo laying around you'd like to have. I think Looking Glass wants it this way.
There is an atmosphere they wish to create in the game. They want
you frantically scrambling from room to room, searching desperately for the few ammo clips
or med or psi hypos miserly scattered around. They want you to have
to be so totally focused on what you're doing to stay alive that you sweat. They want,
at certain places for your heart to jump up into your throat. And believe me, if you
are into the game to that extent, and I think you will be, there are places where this
will happen. Couple this tension with an exceptionally detailed and solid story
line, spun out through the audio logs you find, and you discover this is one outstanding
game. I love it!
We've also found that the game is much more enjoyable, and
less frustrating, if you play true to your chosen character. If you're OSA,
concentrate on PSI solutions to problems, etc. If your character starts out heavy on
PSI or Hacking, don't give in to the "shooter" mentality soon as things get
tough and try to spend all your nanites on weapons skills. You'll regret it later.
You can't possibly get max skills in all areas and you may find yourself in a
situation where none of your skills are up to the task confronting you because you've
wasted resources by spreading them around instead of concentrating on your core skills.
If you play as a Marine, don't think you can play the game
as a first person "shooter". In our opinion, there just isn't enough ammo
and weapons around to pick up. You can't barge into a room and hose-down the area
with your weapon. You'll be out of ammo very quickly. You will find many
different types of ammo, each suitable for a particular situation or enemy. You must
husband these ammo types and use them sparingly in the appropriate
situation. Try thinking of your character as a "sniper" or
"sharpshooter" who makes every shot count. Enough said...play the game.
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Walkthrough Description:
The walkthrough pages are done by deck. Each
page contains an annotated map of the deck, map one of the series. Under the map is
a listing of the goals for that deck as found in the Notes section of your MFD.
Following that is the general description of the route through the deck There
is more than one way through the deck, of course, and none can be said to be the
"correct" way. What we show you is one way.
The level maps are large and there are more than one per deck. There will be much
switching between these level maps. Where the walkthrough switches between maps
there will be two icons. This one,
 , toggles between maps
by opening a new instance of your browser as a separate window with the map inside.
You can minimize this map and refer to it as needed.
This icon,
 , toggles between maps by replacing the map at the top of the
page with the new map. There will be a few seconds of lag between clicking this icon
and when the new map appears. Please be patient.
Since these icons are toggles, you can rotate through all the maps for a particular
deck by continuously clicking - one to two to three and back to one, etc.
Navigation bars are located at the top and bottom of each page that allow going to any
part of the walkthrough. The bars are laid out in two sections - one for the Von
Braun and one for the Rickenbacker.
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Good Advice
(from the Demo Readme file)
- Examine/use everything you can select. There
are many useful objects in the world!
- Pick up and examine everything you can. But you
can only carry a limited amount of stuff, so don't carry around a lot of junk.
- Listen to the audio logs you pick up by hitting the
"U" key. They will give you valuable information that will guide your
exploration.
- Your MFD (accessed in the Use mode by clicking on the
little audio-log icon) has a host of useful information in it. It stores all the
emails and logs you have received and it also keeps Notes that tell you what your current
set of objectives are. These are marked off as you succeed at them.
- Your map will help you navigate through the world.
You can toggle a minimap on by hitting the "M" key and then checking the
"Minimap" box. The map displays the location of many useful objects in the
world like replicators, recharge/upgrade stations and resurrection stations.
- Pick up the small cyber-upgrade chips. They can
be spent at upgrade stations to improve your character. Different character types
will have different ways of solving problems.
- Nanites are useful for buying objects from
replicators, hacking, repairing and modifying weapons and a host of other things.
You can never have too many nanites.
- Most weapons have a minimum skill requirement before
you can use them. Buy these skills with cyber-upgrade units.
- Use different ammo types to fight different monsters.
Each ammo type is effective against certain targets.
- Destroy security cameras before they can see you.
If you set off the alarm, find a security computer and use it to shut the alarm
off.
- If you are skilled enough, you can hack into security
computers, locked crates, replicators and even turrets!
- If you have modification skill, you can modify your
weapons to vastly increase their effectiveness.
- Weapons degrade with use. Maintenance skill
allows you to use maintenance tools to stop weapons from breaking. Repair skill
allows you to repair broken weapons.
- If you find strange unidentified objects and you have
research skills, you can research them to gain valuable information or special items that
will help you.
- Surgical units will heal you, but you may need to
attach a surgical unit key to them. They also consume nanites each time you use
them.
- Quantum bio-reconstruction machines (Resurrection
Stations) will rebuild you if you are unfortunate enough to be "deconstructed".
But you have to activate them first and they consume nanites.
- The info-kiosks scattered around the level will give
you more useful advice. Read them.
- Experiment. There are always many different
ways of approaching problems in System Shock 2. Rushing blindly into the world will
probably just get you into trouble.
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[ Philosophy
| Walkthrough Description | Good Advice ]
Von Braun
[ CanOfWorms | Intro
| Deck 2 | Deck 1
| Deck 3 | Deck 4
| Deck 5 | Deck 6
]
Rickenbacker
[ Deck A | Deck
B | Deck C | Body of the Many | Where Am I?]
System Shock II Walkthru © 1999 by
Jim Blanchard
All original material including names and images © 1999 by
Looking Glass Studios and Eidos Interactive
|
