Thoughts on the System Shock (2023) manual
Originally posted Jun 1, 2022 on Cohost (archive link).
Since I just posted something I cobbled together from screenshots of the System Shock remake’s manual, here’s some disorganized thoughts about the manual as a whole! (Archive.org link to the full thing)
- It’s cool that the game has a manual! I don’t think I’ve seen a new release come with one since… whatever the most recent Wii U game I played was. Probably Breath of the Wild?
- Flavor-wise, I’m enjoying this! It’s been a long while since I played SS2, and this remake is my first experience with the first one, so I honestly have very little idea how much TriOptimum has been characterized like this previously. Regardless, this really helps contextualize the corporation’s methods and goals, which the game itself hasn’t placed as much emphasis on as, say, Prey does. The humor works well, and it really helped re-contextualize the game’s narrative for me, as I wasn’t really reading the game as satire prior to reading the manual.
- This is so close to being a good manual for the puzzles (at least on puzzle level 2). I was completely perplexed by both of the first two junction boxes I ran into, and reading the manual helped me on one, but not the other.
- For the power level puzzles, it doesn’t seem like it’s explained in-game that you need to make the level go in-between the two blue notches, but hey, that is explained in the manual.
- The rotating tile Pipe Dream-ish ones though? The manual still doesn’t point out that the blue tiles can have wires running through them, which is not communicated effectively in-game either.
- But, even if it was a good tutorial for the puzzles, I still wouldn’t have found it if Steam Cloud was set up correctly, since I only saw it when I went looking for my save files, haha.
- The rorschach tests and personality quizzes makes me think of Prey (2017).
- I’m glad the guy they tfed into a bird got away
2025 update: They got rid of the manual in the game's first (and likely only) big update??? It's no longer in the Steam version's files, which feels like a really weird decision.
2026 update: I haven't personally reinstalled the game to check, but it sounds like the manual is back in an unexpected new update (at least, I wasn't expecting it) that adds in all the stuff that the console ports changed! Cool! It was missing from Apr 11, 2024 to Mar 20, 2026, presumably due to an accident.