Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a High-Tech Low-Life’s Dream Come True
Shadowrun games have never been for everyone, either in their ideas or execution, but for those in the audience they’re targeting, they’re always right on the money. For one thing, the setting seems almost insurmountably tied to its origins in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The neon-lit, stick-it-to-the-man cyberpunk half of the universe is essentially grunge for nerds, while the magic and metahuman half calls back to a time when we weren’t yet drowning in the cultural influence of Lord of the Rings and D&D. Shadowrun: Hong Kong continues that tradition, doubling-down on the setting’s weirdness and making practically no concessions to newcomers to the series. Like I said, it’s not for everyone, but if it’s for you, it’s the best game of its kind out there.
Gameplay-wise, one of Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s biggest hurdles for mainstream players is also one of its strongest differentiators. The game is an RPG to its core: your character’s stats drive what s/he is able to do, and your decisions shape the outcome of your interactions. It’s a much less forgiving system than modern gamers are likely used to. Want to use a weapon type that you haven’t invested any skill points into? Enjoy your 10 percent chance to hit. Don’t have the hacking chops to open that security door? You’ll have to live without ever knowing what was behind it.
The same philosophy dictates conversations. Stats and skills determine your options in dialogue, and lacking the necessary prerequisites means that entire relationships or paths through missions may remain locked off to you. Likewise, your choice of which of the available dialogue options to go with can vastly change the way that missions – though not so much the broad strokes of the main story – unfold. With the right investment of stats, careful investigation of the environment, and judicious dialogue choices, you can get through a significant number of the missions without ever unsheathing your surgically implanted razor claws.
To me, this is where the game really shines. You can charm, coerce, or lie your way through enemies just as easily as you can slice through them, provided you’re willing to invest the time and mental energy to do so.
Even better, you can choose which encounters it would make the most sense for your character to talk his or her way out of and which s/he would prefer to settle with a manabolt to the face. The game’s dialogue trees allow for this kind of characterization with razor-sharp writing and a wealth of dialogue options that sound like characters you’d actually want to roleplay. In addition to the good/evil/wacky archetypes that are the beginning and end of most games’ personality options, Shadowrun’s responses allow you to be a bit more nuanced, playing dumb when it suits you, mouthing off when you can get away with it, showing deference when you need to. By picking your fights and finishing conversations the way your character would rather than maximizing bonuses to one disposition or another and simply clearing map after map of every enemy you encounter, you can actually mold a character that’s interesting rather than one that’s the most efficient killing machine.
Playing this way is deeply satisfying, but it could easily be a turnoff for players not used to or interested in getting so deeply immersed in an environment. This style of gameplay can be incredibly taxing and it’s certainly not the kind of game you’re going to sit down to for a quick session to take the stress off a hard day. Even though I loved the game, I still tended to feel about the time that I spent playing it more the way that I would about reading a somewhat bleak novel than playing a rowdy shoot-em-up. Players who aren’t willing to invest time and energy into reading absolutely massive amounts of text and getting absorbed in the game’s environments aren’t likely to stick around to unravel the mysteries presented by the game’s story, much less spend the time to become emotionally involved with its characters.
That would be a shame, because the characters here are the best you’re likely to find in a game without booting up an old copy of Baldur’s Gate. While I didn’t connect with any of the characters nearly as much as I did with Dietrich and Glory of Shadowrun: Dragonfall, both your crew and the game’s secondary characters were uniformly well-written, fully realized, and intriguing. Gaichu, the tortured samurai ghoul, and Gobbet, the anarchic rat shaman, are the standouts among your crew, each bordering but never falling into well-worn video game character cliches. What’s more, you get the feeling that you’re actually talking to them rather than drawing out long strands of exposition. That is essentially what you’re doing, of course, but their reactions to your dialogue choices and the fact that many will simply tell you to leave them alone for a while if you badger them too much make them come alive just enough to really sell the illusion. All told, there may not be another game since Morrowind that does quite as much to make players feel like they’re part of the world on display.
And the world itself is one you’ll want to get absorbed in. The phenomenal writing that’s come to be a hallmark of Harebrained Schemes is apparent even in the completely inconsequential unnamed characters that litter Hong Kong streets and the description cards that often precede entry to a new area. They go a long way toward establishing a living environment, as do the graphics. While not mind-blowing on a technical level, the sheer amount of care and detail that went into every single one of the game’s environments is staggering. I often found myself slowly guiding my character through the world with the camera zoomed all the way in just so I could better take in every neon light and trash-strewn street corner. Between the writing and the excellent stage design, it’s enough to distract players into spending half of a play session talking to random NPCs who serve no purpose other than to tell their own stories. It’s almost enough to get you to log on intentionally just to do that.
That’s not to say that the illusion is perfect, however. One mission in particular on my playthrough was riddled with small annoyances. If you make certain choices during this mission, you end up teaming up with another group of shadowrunners. Interesting in theory, but everything about it felt broken. For one, the AI on your new friends was completely broken, making them just as likely to toss a grenade into a group of allies or just run up and stand face to face with enemies. At one point you get the option to relinquish that run’s prize to the group. Whether you choose to or not, you later run into yet another group of low-lifes looking to snag the treasure from you. Even if you’ve already parted ways with it, your only choices (unless you pass a skill check) involve refusing to give up the goods and taunting the group into attacking you. My first time through that mission, my main character died just steps from the train home and even though the rest of my group survived, it was game over. It seems the extraction system that safely evacuates a fallen member of your team even deep in enemy territory was unable to pull me into a waiting escape car.
Aside from those gripes, though, the game looks and plays great. Sound design is equally praiseworthy, with everything from ambient street noise to the soundtrack fitting in perfectly and helping to sell the setting. The only thing detracting from the illusion is the marked lack of animation in the environments. Characters stand rigid in their places and clutter remains neatly piled.
I’ve barely mentioned the combat, and that’s because it’s practically identical to how it was in this series’ first two entries. Players seem to have a wider variety of strategic options at any given time, but everything still proceeds exactly how you’d expect it to in a turn-based strategy game. One massive improvement comes from the UI, which now displays more helpful information in combat and makes inventory and character management easier. They’re small changes, to be sure, but they so clearly improve the game that they were the first thing to really catch my eye when I started playing. The single biggest change made in this department was the Matrix. Where before, hacking into computer systems meant entering into a lame, stripped down version of regular combat, it now launches a much more entertaining stealth/evasion challenge punctuated by number-matching minigames. It’s still probably the game’s weakest section, which is a shame considering its potential, but it’s a 180 degree turn from the dreadful way it was presented in the previous Shadowrun games.
In short, I can’t recommend Shadowrun: Hong Kong strongly enough. It’s a game you have to set aside time for and invest in emotionally, but it pays off enormously, not so much in how the story ends up, but in where it takes you on the way. Its characters may not be the best ever presented in a game, or even in a Shadowrun game, but they’re fleshed out enough that you’ll want to help them and spend time with them as you travel through the gloriously filthy streets of Hong Kong. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Harebrained Schemes’ best efforts to date and one of the most rewarding RPGs I’ve ever played. Even if the slow pace and predictable combat aren’t your thing, the game is worth playing if only to see what it looks like when a developer is truly giving its all.
Gameplay-wise, one of Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s biggest hurdles for mainstream players is also one of its strongest differentiators. The game is an RPG to its core: your character’s stats drive what s/he is able to do, and your decisions shape the outcome of your interactions. It’s a much less forgiving system than modern gamers are likely used to. Want to use a weapon type that you haven’t invested any skill points into? Enjoy your 10 percent chance to hit. Don’t have the hacking chops to open that security door? You’ll have to live without ever knowing what was behind it.
The same philosophy dictates conversations. Stats and skills determine your options in dialogue, and lacking the necessary prerequisites means that entire relationships or paths through missions may remain locked off to you. Likewise, your choice of which of the available dialogue options to go with can vastly change the way that missions – though not so much the broad strokes of the main story – unfold. With the right investment of stats, careful investigation of the environment, and judicious dialogue choices, you can get through a significant number of the missions without ever unsheathing your surgically implanted razor claws.
To me, this is where the game really shines. You can charm, coerce, or lie your way through enemies just as easily as you can slice through them, provided you’re willing to invest the time and mental energy to do so.
Even better, you can choose which encounters it would make the most sense for your character to talk his or her way out of and which s/he would prefer to settle with a manabolt to the face. The game’s dialogue trees allow for this kind of characterization with razor-sharp writing and a wealth of dialogue options that sound like characters you’d actually want to roleplay. In addition to the good/evil/wacky archetypes that are the beginning and end of most games’ personality options, Shadowrun’s responses allow you to be a bit more nuanced, playing dumb when it suits you, mouthing off when you can get away with it, showing deference when you need to. By picking your fights and finishing conversations the way your character would rather than maximizing bonuses to one disposition or another and simply clearing map after map of every enemy you encounter, you can actually mold a character that’s interesting rather than one that’s the most efficient killing machine.
Playing this way is deeply satisfying, but it could easily be a turnoff for players not used to or interested in getting so deeply immersed in an environment. This style of gameplay can be incredibly taxing and it’s certainly not the kind of game you’re going to sit down to for a quick session to take the stress off a hard day. Even though I loved the game, I still tended to feel about the time that I spent playing it more the way that I would about reading a somewhat bleak novel than playing a rowdy shoot-em-up. Players who aren’t willing to invest time and energy into reading absolutely massive amounts of text and getting absorbed in the game’s environments aren’t likely to stick around to unravel the mysteries presented by the game’s story, much less spend the time to become emotionally involved with its characters.
That would be a shame, because the characters here are the best you’re likely to find in a game without booting up an old copy of Baldur’s Gate. While I didn’t connect with any of the characters nearly as much as I did with Dietrich and Glory of Shadowrun: Dragonfall, both your crew and the game’s secondary characters were uniformly well-written, fully realized, and intriguing. Gaichu, the tortured samurai ghoul, and Gobbet, the anarchic rat shaman, are the standouts among your crew, each bordering but never falling into well-worn video game character cliches. What’s more, you get the feeling that you’re actually talking to them rather than drawing out long strands of exposition. That is essentially what you’re doing, of course, but their reactions to your dialogue choices and the fact that many will simply tell you to leave them alone for a while if you badger them too much make them come alive just enough to really sell the illusion. All told, there may not be another game since Morrowind that does quite as much to make players feel like they’re part of the world on display.
And the world itself is one you’ll want to get absorbed in. The phenomenal writing that’s come to be a hallmark of Harebrained Schemes is apparent even in the completely inconsequential unnamed characters that litter Hong Kong streets and the description cards that often precede entry to a new area. They go a long way toward establishing a living environment, as do the graphics. While not mind-blowing on a technical level, the sheer amount of care and detail that went into every single one of the game’s environments is staggering. I often found myself slowly guiding my character through the world with the camera zoomed all the way in just so I could better take in every neon light and trash-strewn street corner. Between the writing and the excellent stage design, it’s enough to distract players into spending half of a play session talking to random NPCs who serve no purpose other than to tell their own stories. It’s almost enough to get you to log on intentionally just to do that.
That’s not to say that the illusion is perfect, however. One mission in particular on my playthrough was riddled with small annoyances. If you make certain choices during this mission, you end up teaming up with another group of shadowrunners. Interesting in theory, but everything about it felt broken. For one, the AI on your new friends was completely broken, making them just as likely to toss a grenade into a group of allies or just run up and stand face to face with enemies. At one point you get the option to relinquish that run’s prize to the group. Whether you choose to or not, you later run into yet another group of low-lifes looking to snag the treasure from you. Even if you’ve already parted ways with it, your only choices (unless you pass a skill check) involve refusing to give up the goods and taunting the group into attacking you. My first time through that mission, my main character died just steps from the train home and even though the rest of my group survived, it was game over. It seems the extraction system that safely evacuates a fallen member of your team even deep in enemy territory was unable to pull me into a waiting escape car.
Aside from those gripes, though, the game looks and plays great. Sound design is equally praiseworthy, with everything from ambient street noise to the soundtrack fitting in perfectly and helping to sell the setting. The only thing detracting from the illusion is the marked lack of animation in the environments. Characters stand rigid in their places and clutter remains neatly piled.
I’ve barely mentioned the combat, and that’s because it’s practically identical to how it was in this series’ first two entries. Players seem to have a wider variety of strategic options at any given time, but everything still proceeds exactly how you’d expect it to in a turn-based strategy game. One massive improvement comes from the UI, which now displays more helpful information in combat and makes inventory and character management easier. They’re small changes, to be sure, but they so clearly improve the game that they were the first thing to really catch my eye when I started playing. The single biggest change made in this department was the Matrix. Where before, hacking into computer systems meant entering into a lame, stripped down version of regular combat, it now launches a much more entertaining stealth/evasion challenge punctuated by number-matching minigames. It’s still probably the game’s weakest section, which is a shame considering its potential, but it’s a 180 degree turn from the dreadful way it was presented in the previous Shadowrun games.
In short, I can’t recommend Shadowrun: Hong Kong strongly enough. It’s a game you have to set aside time for and invest in emotionally, but it pays off enormously, not so much in how the story ends up, but in where it takes you on the way. Its characters may not be the best ever presented in a game, or even in a Shadowrun game, but they’re fleshed out enough that you’ll want to help them and spend time with them as you travel through the gloriously filthy streets of Hong Kong. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Harebrained Schemes’ best efforts to date and one of the most rewarding RPGs I’ve ever played. Even if the slow pace and predictable combat aren’t your thing, the game is worth playing if only to see what it looks like when a developer is truly giving its all.
