Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown Preview

Being mostly a ‘00s kid, I’ve missed many things from the ‘90s, one of them being Shadowrun. Shadowrun videogames are the legacy of fantasy sci-fi pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing games that were popularised in the early ‘90s, which unlike the videogames, I sadly never got to experience. The premise in the Shadowrun videogames is simple: you create your own character with a very specialised set of skills, all with retro cyber-punk aesthetics, and you undertake runs, or contracts. These are reduced to a series of turn-based battles against much more generic enemies, in an XCOM style, although with less environmental options (such as climbing buildings) and more classes available. Skill trees unlock different abilities and boosts the performance with a particular weapon. This time, however, you do it online, or that’s the theory.

So here I am, deciding on which abilities I’m granting to my third character, Natasha Romanoff, a red-haired human killing machine. As much as I’m fascinated by the variety of classes in character creation, I’m not doing it out of pleasure. Shadowrun Chronicles has been updating quite often, and pretty much with each update, there’s been a full wipe of characters. This meant that I have already played that first five hours of the campaign twice, plus the one that’s to come, and that my characters’ stats have always been quite mediocre as I haven’t been able to invest enough time to level them up much. My previous one, Odin Borson, a bearded smashing 8-foot troll with a voice deep enough to trigger earthquakes and seduce orks, could summon spirit bears that would tear apart enemies’ defences and handle blunt melee weapons like it's nobody's business. To my surprise and disappointment, Nat—only I can call her that—, who’s twice as badass and able to handle a katana and a pistol like a piece of cake, had the same beginning and story as the other two, even though she had a different ‘origin. That’s right, in a similar way to Dragon Age, each character can have a different background, which affects its initial stats.

I soon realised that I was playing with the same group of archetypes and thus the same strategy in every run. Individually, characters play very distinctly, but controlling them as a squad lacks variety. In my last run, I decided to scout out for other shadowrunners in the global chat and team up, and things took a different turn: what used to take me three attempts, it now takes one; what used to kill me now dies before me; and this time I have gained twice as much karma, the currency used to level up skills. The game enforces a series of design devices that encourage players to continue seeking player interaction and cooperation. Most runs are four-player co-op missions, but you don’t really need three other human players; you can rely on henchmen, predetermined characters that you can control yourself. However, these characters are usually not as competent as a player, the main reason being that instead of two weapons, they can only wield one. For example, the rigger henchman, expert in drones and vehicles, is rendered useless once the drone has been deployed; only being able to ‘mark’ targets, which is a circumstantially useful ability. The developers, however, mentioned via Steam that they will try to make henchmen a more reliable choice by the final release.

When playing cooperatively, a player must invite other players to join his or her campaign. Once in a mission, if a player finds loot, all players receive an item of loot. In the same way, when the mission is completed, all players will receive equal karma; however, only the host of the game will see progress in the campaign. I’ve played missions (come hell or high water) that were way too difficult for me, or too easy, as they were hosted by a player with a different amount of experience to mine. Fortunately, Shadowrun Chronicles has a very friendly and helpful community, always trying to make the game more accessible to new players. This has created a system where newbies must rely on veterans’ advice and abilities to progress; perhaps a very old-school mentality, shifted into an online platform. Shadowrun is a very difficult and unforgiving game, and players are aware of this and thus understanding; however, if you want to play with the older kids, you better play as prudently as possible, they’re not going to like you messing up their run. Trying harder missions is quite a challenging way to test yourself, and dominating the battlefield in the easier ones is the best way to gain karma quickly. If only the game were properly optimised…

In its current state, the game seems to be way too demanding of hardware for how little definition there is in its visuals; I’m no expert, but my rig struggled keeping enough FPS when it’s able to run much more graphically dazzling games. Not only that; there seems to be major netcoding issues. Lag makes every run utterly tedious, going up to thirty seconds in some cases, to the point that more often than not, you won’t bear to do more than two missions in a row. As I’ve said, the game is constantly being patched, which is appreciated, but these problems remain obnoxious.

I contacted the developers on Twitter asking about implementing PvP; they replied saying that they’re working on making it ‘Shadowrun worthy’ for when they introduce it, which I certainly look forward to. The combat is deep and intricate, and skills are original and feel powerful and different from each other. At the time of writing, the personalizing content —weapons, outfits, armour…— is rather scarce, so don’t be surprised if you find some player’s avatar alarmingly resembling yours. However, don’t be put off by all this, as it’s getting progressively better, and it will be worth it to push through the occasional frustration, because this game has much to offer.

Thanks to Hexagar, Crow, Teranox, XIII, Keyvlar Mayden, Hitman and Puppet Master for initiating me in Shadowrun Chronicles.