Shadowrun: Hong Kong Ranking: A
Shadowrun, like Dungeons & Dragons, is a tabletop RPG series with a few video game spinoffs. It’s set in an alternate future after “the Awakening,” where magic and other fantasy tropes emerge on Earth alongside advances in technology. You have elves wielding magic alongside people with cybernetic implants and machine guns. I love RPGs set in modern/future times and the Shadowrun setting is no exception. I feel this game meshed the standard RPG elements, such as leveling and equipment, with the futuristic setting really well. It also doesn’t take itself all that seriously. For instance, there’s a quest where one objective is literally “find con goer, punch in face.”
You start the game having just arrived in Hong Kong in response to a cryptic message from your estranged foster father Raymond. He wants you to meet him in Hong Kong, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Suddenly the police show up and try to kill you for no apparent reason and you learn that some corporate executive had you framed as international terrorists. You spend most of the game figuring out the “why” to all of this, but because of the whole “international terrorists” thing, you have to hide. Specifically, you turn to a crime boss for help – she hides you and uses her contacts to help you in exchange for you running jobs for her (“running the shadows”).
Combat is turn-based and reminded me of Fallout’s combat system. Honestly, I found it somewhat frustrating since accuracy is terrible in this game. My biggest gripe with the game is decking, a game mode where you hack into the Matrix and need to avoid these sentry things in a clunky and annoying stealth system. I spent far too long reloading the game during those segments.
Story-wise: the first part of the game was great – a great introduction and gripping plot. The second act consists of you running those odd jobs while your boss finds information for you and I found that part really slow. It’s not plot-driven at all – you just go on random missions while the game slowly trickles tidbits of plot to you. The third act, beginning with you going to find Raymond, picks up the plot and is where you finally learn what all this was about. I didn’t find the conclusion all that satisfying, so I’ll explain why after this (spoilers ahead).
First off, that corporate executive who framed you turns out to be Raymond’s mother Josephine. She presides over a company that once received a grant to rebuild the Walled City, which is this horrific slum the game revolves around, both figuratively and literally. Raymond had this idea of building a Fortune Engine, a machine that regulates qi to generate good luck, and his mother diverted funds from the Walled City project to build this machine, which is one reason the Walled City is such a horrible place – its construction was severely underfunded.
Another reason for the Walled City’s dilapidation comes from the Engine itself. Josephine installed a modification without her son’s knowledge that siphoned the good luck and fed it to her. This made everything surrounding it full of bad luck, since any good luck was being stolen off. All Raymond knew was that the machine wasn’t working and decided to…give up and move to Seattle.
…Yeah, that part made little sense to me and, indeed, one of your party members continually takes Raymond to task over this. Why move to Seattle? I get that Josephine would likely have stymied Raymond’s efforts in Hong Kong, but Raymond didn’t know that. Why go to the other side of the world to figure out how to fix a problem at home?
Anyway, the game begins with Raymond returning to Hong Kong to shut the machine off and his cryptic message to you was asking for your help in doing so. Everything make sense so far?
Good, because now we get to the part with the demon-goddess of a thousand teeth. Wait, what?
Through conversations with various NPCs (and one party member), you learn that these entities known as Yama Kings once presided over the Walled City. One of them is Qian Ya – that’s Chinese for “thousand teeth” and you get recurring nightmares of her throughout the game. Raymond suffered from similar nightmares, which is what prompted him to decide that now was the time to return to Hong Kong – the nightmares told him that Qian Ya was returning to the Walled City.
First off, why and how did the Yama Kings leave in the first place? Raymond says his machine was responsible for opening a tunnel from Earth to Qian Ya’s realm, but how and why does it do that? Why couldn’t Qian Ya return to Earth otherwise if she once presided over part of the Walled City?
To get the good ending, you must learn some nuances of how the Yama Kings operate. Specifically, they can’t interfere with each other’s realms. So in the end, you can threaten to open the tunnel completely, thereby allowing all the Yama Kings to return. Somehow you know this is bad news for Qian Ya – you know that she was interfering with the other Kings and if they were to arrive on Earth with her, they would destroy her. How do you know that? This is the crux on which the ending occurs and the game never explains the rationale for your tactic.
There’s one last nitpick I have – your character has far too much backstory. I mentioned your foster father is Raymond and much of the dialogue in the game explains your history with him. Hell, one requirement for the good ending necessitates you remember a specific line of dialogue you once had with him. For a role-playing game such as this one, I prefer a more blank-slate character.
Here’s me at the end of the game. I had 233 kills and saved 240 times (why does the game keep track of how many times you saved?).
Shadowrun, like Dungeons & Dragons, is a tabletop RPG series with a few video game spinoffs. It’s set in an alternate future after “the Awakening,” where magic and other fantasy tropes emerge on Earth alongside advances in technology. You have elves wielding magic alongside people with cybernetic implants and machine guns. I love RPGs set in modern/future times and the Shadowrun setting is no exception. I feel this game meshed the standard RPG elements, such as leveling and equipment, with the futuristic setting really well. It also doesn’t take itself all that seriously. For instance, there’s a quest where one objective is literally “find con goer, punch in face.”
You start the game having just arrived in Hong Kong in response to a cryptic message from your estranged foster father Raymond. He wants you to meet him in Hong Kong, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Suddenly the police show up and try to kill you for no apparent reason and you learn that some corporate executive had you framed as international terrorists. You spend most of the game figuring out the “why” to all of this, but because of the whole “international terrorists” thing, you have to hide. Specifically, you turn to a crime boss for help – she hides you and uses her contacts to help you in exchange for you running jobs for her (“running the shadows”).
Combat is turn-based and reminded me of Fallout’s combat system. Honestly, I found it somewhat frustrating since accuracy is terrible in this game. My biggest gripe with the game is decking, a game mode where you hack into the Matrix and need to avoid these sentry things in a clunky and annoying stealth system. I spent far too long reloading the game during those segments.
Story-wise: the first part of the game was great – a great introduction and gripping plot. The second act consists of you running those odd jobs while your boss finds information for you and I found that part really slow. It’s not plot-driven at all – you just go on random missions while the game slowly trickles tidbits of plot to you. The third act, beginning with you going to find Raymond, picks up the plot and is where you finally learn what all this was about. I didn’t find the conclusion all that satisfying, so I’ll explain why after this (spoilers ahead).
First off, that corporate executive who framed you turns out to be Raymond’s mother Josephine. She presides over a company that once received a grant to rebuild the Walled City, which is this horrific slum the game revolves around, both figuratively and literally. Raymond had this idea of building a Fortune Engine, a machine that regulates qi to generate good luck, and his mother diverted funds from the Walled City project to build this machine, which is one reason the Walled City is such a horrible place – its construction was severely underfunded.
Another reason for the Walled City’s dilapidation comes from the Engine itself. Josephine installed a modification without her son’s knowledge that siphoned the good luck and fed it to her. This made everything surrounding it full of bad luck, since any good luck was being stolen off. All Raymond knew was that the machine wasn’t working and decided to…give up and move to Seattle.
…Yeah, that part made little sense to me and, indeed, one of your party members continually takes Raymond to task over this. Why move to Seattle? I get that Josephine would likely have stymied Raymond’s efforts in Hong Kong, but Raymond didn’t know that. Why go to the other side of the world to figure out how to fix a problem at home?
Anyway, the game begins with Raymond returning to Hong Kong to shut the machine off and his cryptic message to you was asking for your help in doing so. Everything make sense so far?
Good, because now we get to the part with the demon-goddess of a thousand teeth. Wait, what?
Through conversations with various NPCs (and one party member), you learn that these entities known as Yama Kings once presided over the Walled City. One of them is Qian Ya – that’s Chinese for “thousand teeth” and you get recurring nightmares of her throughout the game. Raymond suffered from similar nightmares, which is what prompted him to decide that now was the time to return to Hong Kong – the nightmares told him that Qian Ya was returning to the Walled City.
First off, why and how did the Yama Kings leave in the first place? Raymond says his machine was responsible for opening a tunnel from Earth to Qian Ya’s realm, but how and why does it do that? Why couldn’t Qian Ya return to Earth otherwise if she once presided over part of the Walled City?
To get the good ending, you must learn some nuances of how the Yama Kings operate. Specifically, they can’t interfere with each other’s realms. So in the end, you can threaten to open the tunnel completely, thereby allowing all the Yama Kings to return. Somehow you know this is bad news for Qian Ya – you know that she was interfering with the other Kings and if they were to arrive on Earth with her, they would destroy her. How do you know that? This is the crux on which the ending occurs and the game never explains the rationale for your tactic.
There’s one last nitpick I have – your character has far too much backstory. I mentioned your foster father is Raymond and much of the dialogue in the game explains your history with him. Hell, one requirement for the good ending necessitates you remember a specific line of dialogue you once had with him. For a role-playing game such as this one, I prefer a more blank-slate character.
Here’s me at the end of the game. I had 233 kills and saved 240 times (why does the game keep track of how many times you saved?).