Shadowrun Returns Options

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

So Khajiit started playing Shadowrun Returns today. This one doesn’t care for the third person isometric perspective for an RPG but the game seems solid otherwise. Liking the skills and dialogue. Still have to get accustomed to the way things work (like for instance Khajiit’s character was fighting a “hellhound” alone and tried using a medthing to heal but this one couldn’t figure out how to make the character use it and she died).

[SubRosa]

I beat Shadowrun Returns like an ork stepchild. The final battle was a good one. It was exciting, but not so insanely difficult that you have to cheat just to survive it. The game went very quickly. Except for one truly optional side-quest, the game is entirely linear. It is basically talk a bit to npcs, do a run, check with the vendors for new gear, repeat.

I liked the npcs, their lives, and their stories. Coyote was my favorite. I wound up bringing her along for almost all my runs. I wish I could have brought some of the others, like Paco and Armitage. The music was great, exactly what I expect for Shadowrun. The portrait artwork was excellent. It is clean, and with just the right amount of stylistic flair that you can see they are not meant to be picture perfect representations, without going too far and becoming caricatures.

The story itself was good. It starts out pretty standard, seamy underworld affair. You are hired by an old chummer who has been murdered. He had a dead man switch that automatically triggered a lawyer to contact you when he died. Said lawyer has a fat stack of nuyen for you, once you bring in his killer. That sends you down a wormhole of the Seattle underground, investigating a serial killer, an organ legger, and deeper into the Universal Brotherhood, and Inspect Spirits. Some old Shadowrun luminaries like Harlequin even appear at the end.

The Bugs in this seem different from what I recall. Back in the pen and paper days I remember Bugs coming in Flesh Form and True Form. They had extra armor against ballistic weapons, which made shooting them really difficult. They only had their normal armor against melee attacks, but you used your Willpower to hit, not your normal weapon skill. It took an unshakable will to defeat a spirit. But either way, normal weapons could kill them. But here all the Bugs are a combination of both forms. They start out with meat bodies completely vulnerable to guns. When you kill one, its True Form spirit rises from the body however. And it cannot be harmed with anything, including spells. At the end of the game they come along with Aegis, a magical bug-killing virus fired by a shotgun. That is all that can kill the True Forms.

It could be this stuff came along after I stopped playing. I was not around for Bug City, which is alluded to at the end of the game. Or maybe I am just not remembering correctly. Still, I do recall doing the Queen Euphoria adventure that our team got special armor piercing, discarding sabot ammo to use against the bugs. It wasn't anything magical. Just the top end milspec gear, and it worked on Bugs.

The nuts and bolts of the game itself still feels cheap and behind the times to be honest. It is definitely not a AAA game. It feels like something from the late 90s, early 00s. The modding is extremely difficult and scarce. These aren't the worst things in the world for a game. I still love playing Neverwinter Nights 1 and Kotor after all. It just seemed like a specific lack of effort on the part of the developers, where the art, music, and world-building was given a ton of tender loving care.

Next up I am going to try Dragonfall. This time I think I will do it with Hecate. I already made character portraits for her. She seems ideal for the Shadowrun world. I can easily picture her with wired reflexes and smartgun link. I think I will make her a Sniper/Decker, that way I won't have to use a npc for matrix runs. Maybe I will eventually circle back to doing Shadowrun Returns with her as well.