Of all the Shadowrun games, the Returns series embodies what might be called the "western RPG dialogue choices" tradition the most. You choose which teammates to bring with you on each run and get to enjoy little bits of character advancing dialogue each time you return to your hometown and safe house. Dragonfall and Hong Kong have you leading a (mostly) plot-mandated team of shadowrunners from a small hometown of NPCs and shops. Then you'll outfit them by investing nuyen into different weapon and gear types. Outside of battle you'll spend plenty of skill-point karma to hone your main character's build. Lots of X-COM grade cover shooting goodness here. Sometimes you'll see Shadowrun Returns referred to as "Dead Man's Switch" to give it a more unique moniker. The first game being just "Shadowrun Returns" with two much more expanded followups: the great Shadowrun: Dragonfall and the good-to-great Shadowrun: Hong Kong. The Shadowrun Returns series (PC platforms):Ī Kickstarter revival brought Shadowrun back as a trio of tactical RPG games where you follow a cybperunk story intermixed with battles, light exploration, and flavorful text dialogue. I regret not giving this game enough chances in the 90s and had to make up for it almost two decades later. The initial area presents a miniature version of this gameplay loop using easy runs to build up your starting character, which is a very satisfying arc to reach "escape velocity" and become strong enough to feel like you have solid footing. You'll spend a great deal of time in the middle game performing instanced runs to build up karma and gear. A top down game with a more heavily delineated class system, and skills that more closely reflect the tabletop game. Shadowrun Genesis (1994): A completely separate game by a separate developer, not uncommon for this era of course. This game is the best <3 and I will probably have the longest write up for it later in this thread. Moody atmosphere and lots of run-ins with supernatural beasts. Colorful characters at each bar, club, and plot junction. Very unique system of interaction using keywords to handle all conversations and a d-pad cursor to handle both enviroment interaction and combat (and the game has tons of both!). Shadowrun SNES (1993): An isometric game that is more of a plot based action-adventure first and foremost with a simplified RPG progression stacked on top. They also possessed the uniform title "Shadowrun" so you have to refer to them by their system instead. Until recently, pretty much all the games were very different beasts. I think a lot of people visiting this thread know at least something about most of these games, so let's give a refresher for now and leave most of the meat for anyone to write about later. I will only put small blurbs here for now. The standard depiction of shadowrunners is that of a small, close-knit team of diverse specialists who work together and complement one another (obviously tracing directly to its tabletop roots). Of course, shadowrunners are always the role the player steps into. They live on the edges of society, but with a more glamorous life than a corp wageslave, and also with a more dangerous profession than a gang thug or lone star cop. Assassinations, hacking, corporate espionage, or just your usual smash and grab. Shadowrunners are a type of independent, for-hire criminal contractor. Many cyberpunk settings have the feeling of the "new world" being built over the history "old world", and this is the case here as well with cybernetic augmentation, magecraft, and the rebirth of Tolkein races becoming the new normal for the nations and geography that we all know from the actual world. The setting takes place in a cyberpunk 21st century which posits that fantasy magic is in fact real and works in cycles of about 5,000 years. It has also served as the source material for a number of beloved video game adapations, which is what this thread is about. The Shadowrun franchise started life as a popular tabletop role playing game in 1989, being a science-fantasy take on your dungeon-master-guided party 'em ups like D&D. I've recently played Shadowrun: Hong Kong and I am currently replaying both it and Shadowrun: Dragonfall, so I think it is on me to create a general thread for the series.
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