SHODAN

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For other uses, see Shodan (disambiguation).
SHODAN
System Shock character
SHODAN in System Shock 2
First gameSystem Shock (1994)
Designed byRobb Waters (original, remake)[1]
Greg LoPiccolo (voice)[2]
Ryan Lessler (System Shock 2)[3]
Gareth Hinds (cyberspace, System Shock 2)[4]
Voiced byTerri Brosius[5]
In-universe information
RaceArtificial intelligence
GenderFemale

SHODAN, an acronym for Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network, is the main antagonist of Looking Glass Studios's cyberpunk-horror themed video game System Shock and its sequel, System Shock 2.

Appearances[edit]

SHODAN was created on Earth to serve as the artificial intelligence of the TriOptimum Corporation's research and mining space station Citadel Station, which orbits around Saturn. She was hacked by the game's protagonist (at the behest of the corrupt corporate Vice President Edward Diego, in exchange for amnesty and a military-grade neural implant) and, to access the vital information about TriOptimum corporation, its ethical restrictions were removed, starting a process that eventually resulted in the AI going rogue, seizing control of the station's systems, robots and considerable defenses, and either slaughtering the whole staff or converting them into mutants and cyborgs—with the sole exception of its "creator", the unnamed hacker whom the player controls. Basically omnipresent and the de facto ruler of Citadel Station, SHODAN watches from security cameras, stares out of screens and monitors, sends threats and snide messages over the station's PA system or via email to the player's data reader, and sometimes cuts off communications from friendly sources to prevent the hacker from advancing in his goals. Though she commands a small army of cyborgs and mutants, she wields no physical power of her own, and thwarting more than one of her schemes has to be done with the AI's screams and threats in the background.

In System Shock, the player ejects a garden grove pod from Citadel Station. The grove contains one of SHODAN's processing components and part of her grand biological experiment. The pod crash lands on the planet Tau Ceti V and she survives by hibernating for the next 42 years. After both are brought aboard the starship Von Braun and SHODAN is reactivated, she discovers the experiment is no longer at her command and begins to enlist humans to aid her in destroying her creations. The player character in System Shock 2 is a soldier cybernetically modified by SHODAN to serve as her avatar. Her involvement in the game's goings-on is not disclosed up front, but only subtly hinted at in the game's early portions. She only reveals herself to the player during a moment of despair, at the same time the player discovers that Dr. Polito, the player's trusted guide for the first portion of the game, has been dead all along, as she committed suicide when she realized what SHODAN had done and was going to do.

After the player's and SHODAN's mutual enemies have been defeated, the player enters her expanding new reality—created via her manipulation of the Von Braun's reality-warping faster-than-light engine—and defeats her. However, as shown in an epilogue at the end of the game, SHODAN apparently lives on by taking over a woman who fled the Von Braun in an escape pod. The upcoming System Shock 3 is planned to follow immediately from these events, with Brosius returning to voice SHODAN.[6][7]

Design and development[edit]

SHODAN's original appearance (top left) used biomechanical influences, while the remake's (bottom left) was meant to be an "ethereal" ghost in the machine.[8][1] Meanwhile System Shock 2 (right) leaned into the biomechanical aspect for her cyberspace body, with various styles considered for her cable-like hair before settling on a headdress design.[4]

Originally, SHODAN's gender was intended to be ambiguous, with the writers actively trying to avoid using male or female pronouns, and original editions of System Shock lacked a voice due to storage space on the game's floppy disks. When the Enhanced Edition was developed using CDs, SHODAN was changed to female after Terri Brosius, a member of a local Boston-based rock band Tribe, was hired to voice her. According to programmer Marc LeBlanc however, at one point in development they considered having SHODAN be male, but using a female voice to be "creepy or sexist" and imply that the trope of it presenting itself as a "nagging, evil computer lady" was an act.[5]

Shodan's original appearance was created by Robb Waters, System Shock's lead artist. Her design reflected his interest in a biomechanical aesthetic, and he used it to give her a more physical look, appearing as a face with green eyes and green conduits radiating from it, meant to resemble a twisted circuit board.[8][1] Meanwhile, her appearance in the game's cyberspace environment was meant to represent an abstracted form for her. Modeled after a cornucopia, SHODAN's abstracted form resembled a large vertical diamond, with the upper part instead ending in four curved tentacles.[9]

For System Shock 2, Ryan Lesser was commissioned by Mammoth Studios to develop the box art for the title, consisting of a silver female face with green eyes and lips, and various wires and cables extending from it. The model he produced for it was later used in game, with Lesser creating the lip sync animations for it.[3] While the development team originally did not want to use it for the box art due to it giving away SHODAN's presence in the game, all other pieces of artwork provided by publisher Electronic Arts had proven insufficient, and they felt they had spent a significant amount to have it made as is.[10] Lead artist Gareth Hinds meanwhile conceived the design of her cyberspace appearance, resembling a pale woman with wires embedded in her skin wearing a patterened robe, while wires making up her hair splay outward to form a headdress.[4]

For the System Shock remake, Waters wanted to deviate from the original design and give SHODAN an "ethereal" appearance instead and used a holographic representation of the character to create a "ghost in the machine" feel in contrast to her earlier physical appearance. He also drew a more distinct contrast between her regular and hacked visual states, with the corporate shield logo appearing to contain her in the former, while the in the latter her color would shift from blue to green and appear unbound by the borders of the logo.[8][1] Her cyberspace appearance was also redesigned, with Waters giving it a segmented appearance resembling that of a squid,[9] and the player intended to "harpoon" it to restore her ethical constraints.[11]

Voice design[edit]

A significant factor in SHODAN's reception has been her personality and taunting of the player, but also Brosius' emotionless vocal portrayal coupled with the use of sound effects.[12][13]

When voicing SHODAN, Brosius performance used varying cadence to create the feeling of a machine trying to mimic human speech, to create a sense of unease of listening to something that understood how speech worked but just slightly off in terms of delivery.[14] Fellow Tribe band member Greg LoPiccolo, who acted as the sound designer for the first game, had asked Brosius to voice SHODAN because he felt she had "this sort of voice that would lend itself" and a creative sensibility that would be receptive to the character's concept.[2]

In System Shock, LoPiccolo added sound effects and glitches to her dialogue that grew progressively more frequent to illustrate SHODAN's degrading mental state, inspired by degradation of AI character HAL 9000's voice in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey as its disabled towards the end of the film, though where HAL's voice handling was intended to be "stately" LoPiccolo wanted SHODAN's to fit System Shock's "cybery and fast-paced" sound design. These effects had to be done by hand for each line however, as the sound software at the time was particularly limited. Changes in pitch or repetition in her dialogue was inspired by the character Max Headroom's manner of speaking and how he would fixate on certain words and repeat them in a stuttering manner.[2]

For System Shock 2, Eric Brosius, Terri's husband, took over the sound design. While he and LoPiccolo initially discussed how they should change SHODAN's voice and have it "evolve" for the game, both quickly realized they would rather leave it as close to the original as possible. The method was similarly done manually by Brosious, who would first process the voice to make it sound like the character, and then add stuttering and glitches to give it a mechanical feel, with each line taking two to four hours of work. Brosius used stuttering to express SHODAN's mood, with it growing more prominent depending on how annoyed towards a particular subject she was. He had some difficulty with how many of her voice lines were instructional or directional, and aimed to find ways to maintain the character's menacing tone without feeling off.[15]

In System Shock[edit]

SHODAN's role in System Shock was meant to represent the development team as they viewed the player, commenting on how they explored the level and interact with events similar to a dungeon master in a tabletop game. SHODAN was intended to be a persistent presence through the title, with the design team wanting players to hate her not because they were told to, but because of how they experienced her "messing with them" directly. To this end several scenarios were considered but never implemented, including one where SHODAN would be able to drain experience points from the player. The dynamic between the player and SHODAN was also meant to feel like a siege situation, with the player representing the "enemy" from the game developer's viewpoint.[5]

During development, the team was originally unsure how to approach the final battle with SHODAN, with half of the development team opposing the idea to have it take place in the game's "cyberspace" levels. While they ultimately did go with the cyberspace environment, originally the game was intended to let the player choose to either destroy SHODAN or restore her ethical constraints.[16] However the latter option was considered too difficult to implement in the original game.[17] Another option that went unused however was to have the game appear to crash, only for the player to realize their command prompt no longer worked and the implication to be that SHODAN had overtaken the player's actual computer.[5]

In System Shock 2[edit]

For System Shock 2, lead writer and designer Ken Levine wanted to highlight SHODAN in the title, particularly with the reveal of her presence which he described as a "fuck you moment" for the player, though the twist received pushback from the development team initially and proved quite difficult for him to write.[18] Levine also added a moment where the player could consciously reject SHODAN's directions and enter an area she had forbidden them to, in which she would respond by reducing the player's experience points. He intended it as a way for the players to directly communicate with SHODAN, frustrated that such was often excluded from first-person shooters at the time. As a result the player's ability to communicate in Levine's eyes was done by action to contrast SHODAN's strictly verbal means of communication.[19]

The ending was also originally completely different, with Levine intending it to be the player being attacked by SHODAN who had physically manifested for one final act of betrayal, with the scene serving as a stinger for the game. However when the cinematic was completed and sent to the development team, they found due to a miscommunication it did not match what they had written at all. With development almost completed, they wrote additional content to try and make it fit, with Levine stating he felt it "wasn’t the right ending for the game."[18]

Critical reception[edit]

Liz Lanier of Game Informer named SHODAN one of the best female villains in video games, stating that while she was not a woman in the traditional sense, "what she lacks in femininity and humanity she makes up in creepiness" and that her face and voice would "send shivers up even the most seasoned gamer's spine."[20] Meanwhile Chris Remo in an article for Game Developer examined how the player's relationship with SHODAN in System Shock 2 to the film Silence of the Lambs, where the protagonist's openly dangerous ally was more of a threat than the one present for most of the story, and while the player is aware of her presence and menace it's presented in a Hitchcockian manner that does not diminish its impact.[21]

The staff of GameSpot praised how "she seems to be one step ahead of you all the while and taunts you every step of the way" in System Shock, and felt the tight-corridor based environment of the game was one ideal for her. Comparing her to HAL 9000, they stated that while she may lack HAL's modesty, "she is every bit as dignified and even more self-aware than that soft-spoken machine". In particular, they felt SHODAN was conscious she was made by human hands, and that she held resentment in particular towards their involvement in her creation due to their "fallible nature".[22]

The sentiment was shared by the staff of IGN, who praised her "ominiponent" presence in the game due to her use of the station's security network and expressed that each insult she threw at the player "actually felt like a slap across the face",[23] and in a later article elaborated that most of the impact from SHODAN's insults came from her " ability to intimidate and disturb you with her twisted rationalizations" that often made the player feel powerless and insignificant while she made herself appear "untouchable and beyond injury". They also emphasized however that while at the character's core she was a trope common in science fiction regarding AI, sharing GameSpot's comparison to HAL, she also represented the horror of a complex program exceeding the boundaries of predictability and the uncertainty that resulted. They felt this helped make her memorable, and likely had an influence on similar characters such as Portal's antagonist GLaDOS.[24]

Amanda Lange in the 2017 book 100 Greatest Video Game Characters drew parallels with how humanity at the time viewed artificial intelligence, relying on "omnipresent and disembodied voices" to aid people through the day and form a centralized network. Due to the ubiquitous nature of computers however Lange felt people tended to notice them most when they stop working as they should, and she the distortions and cracks in SHODAN's voice helped emphasize this factor alongside Brosius' portrayal of her. In System Shock 2 Lange saw post-reveal SHODAN as a reversal of this aspect, with the player now an extension of her. She additionally drew comparison to other AI-based characters introduced in video games later on, feeling in many ways that they were very akin to SHODAN only with traits such as humor or caring for the player's wellbeing added to them.[19]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Mahardy, Mike (April 6, 2015). "Ahead of its time: The history of Looking Glass". Polygon. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
  2. ^ a b c Weise, Matthew (July 13, 2011). Looking Glass Studios Interview Series - Audio Podcast 6 - Greg LoPiccolo. Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab. Event occurs at 12:40. Archived from the original (MP3) on October 24, 2011. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  3. ^ a b "System Shock - SHODAN". RyanLesser.com. Archived from the original on December 13, 2004. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
  4. ^ a b c "Cover". Game Developer. November 24, 1999. p. 3.
  5. ^ a b c d Peel, Jeremy (May 30, 2023). "System Shock: The oral history of a forward-thinking PC classic". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved May 23, 2024.
  6. ^ Frank, Allegra (December 14, 2015). "System Shock 3 is officially happening". Polygon. Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  7. ^ Sarkar, Samit (February 17, 2016). "Warren Spector joins OtherSide Entertainment for Underworld Ascendant, System Shock 3". Polygon. Retrieved February 17, 2016.
  8. ^ a b c Waters, Robb (February 20, 2024). The Art of System Shock. Dark Horse Books. pp. 162–164.
  9. ^ a b Waters, Robb (February 20, 2024). The Art of System Shock. Dark Horse Books. p. 172.
  10. ^ "System Shock 2 roundtable interview with developers Jon Chey and Dorian Hart". PC Invasion. August 22, 2013. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
  11. ^ Waters, Robb (February 20, 2024). The Art of System Shock. Dark Horse Books. p. 176.
  12. ^ Krpata, Mitch (October 16, 2008). "The 20 Greatest Bosses in Video Game History - #1: SHODAN". The Boston Phoenix. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
  13. ^ Arkin, Mike (November 2000). "Developer's Top Ten". GameFan. Vol. 8, no. 11.
  14. ^ Weise, Matthew (July 27, 2011). Looking Glass Studios Interview Series - Audio Podcast 7 - Eric Brosius. Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab. Event occurs at 47:25. Archived from the original (MP3) on February 29, 2012. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  15. ^ Weise, Matthew (July 27, 2011). Looking Glass Studios Interview Series - Audio Podcast 7 - Eric Brosius. Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab. Event occurs at 14:00. Archived from the original (MP3) on February 29, 2012. Retrieved May 25, 2024.
  16. ^ Bielby, Matt (May 1994). "System Shock". PC Gamer. Vol. 1, no. 1. p. 16.
  17. ^ Yee, Bernie (March 1995). "Through the Looking Glass". PC Gamer. Vol. 2, no. 3. p. 69.
  18. ^ a b Collin, I. G. (January 29, 2010). "What Might Have Been". Irrational Games. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
  19. ^ a b Jaime Banks; Robert Mejia; Aubrie Adams, eds. (June 23, 2017). 100 Greatest Video Game Characters. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. pp. 174–176. ISBN 978-1-59582-768-5.
  20. ^ Lanier, Liz (November 2013). "Top Ten Female Villains". Game Informer. p. 24.
  21. ^ Remo, Chris (March 17, 2010). "Analysis: System Shock 2 - Structure And Spoilers". Game Developer. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
  22. ^ "GameSpot's TenSpot: The Ten Best Computer Game Villains". GameSpot. Archived from the original on February 8, 2001. Retrieved May 23, 2024.
  23. ^ "Top 10 Tuesday: Most Memorable Villains". IGN. March 7, 2006. Archived from the original on March 16, 2006. Retrieved May 23, 2024.
  24. ^ "SHODAN is number 47 - IGN". IGN UK. Archived from the original on January 15, 2013. Retrieved July 21, 2013.

External links[edit]

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