She goes crazy and it’s up to her “savior” (you, the player) to stop her from downloading herself into Earth’s computer systems and bringing about the end of mankind.Ĭyberspace is her world, and you a worthless intruder.ĭuring the events of System Shock it’s slowly revealed that fighting SHODAN in the physical world won’t be possible. All of this was controlled by a moral function that ensured she didn’t go crazy and kill everyone, a moral function that the protagonist of the first System Shock inadvertently disabled to cover up corporate misdeeds. The idea was a computer system guided by logic that would activate or deactivate station functions to best suit the needs of the inhabitants, as well as a personality complex that would let her override station protocols if “she” deemed it necessary. The S entient H yper- O ptimized D ata A ccess N etwork was created to monitor the systems aboard Citadel Station, a mining and research platform built by TriOptimum Corporation. Like any good AI villain, the primary idea of SHODAN was pure. Yet all of these fail to one of the greatest computer minds ever created, the mad insanity that is System Shock ‘s SHODAN AI system. Even the more frightening thought of a robot apocalypse has been approached thanks to Five Nights at Freddy’s contained and claustrophobic nightmare. Since the dawn of gaming players have been destroying robots with the same veracity as aliens or zombies, and games like the Metal Gear Solid series or Ratchet and Clank are entirely based around the idea. Video games have often used robots or artificial intelligence to create conflict, a slight nod to the irony of using a machine to play a game about killing other machines perhaps. ![]() Its only natural to have a level of fear that a cold, calculated machine may one day figure out the flaws in humanity and decide to wipe us all out. Robots, artificial intelligence, and mankind’s understanding of building the better human all continue to advance at alarming rates, and things like assistance robots or self driving cars are predicted to become commonplace within our lifetimes. This isn’t a new idea, the Terminator franchise popularized killer robots through the 80s, 2001: A Space Odyssey created the self aware and deadly HAL 9000 in 1968, and 1927’s Metropolis created the idea of a robot subverting human intelligence for their own purposes. Of all the apocalyptic scenarios man keeps dreaming up, the idea of us losing to the machines we’ve created becomes more and more likely with each passing year.
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