Ending & Alternate Ending?

[Phantom Mercenary]

I just finished the game and was a little confused, as at first it appears that I lost and collapsed in front of SHODAN. Then the rest of it zips by without any explanation while I'm trying to figure out if I just lost somehow. Had to watch it and the 1994 ending on YT for comparison to grasp what happened.

Also, going through the achievements, it seems to imply there's an alternate ending with leaving in an escape pod? Or fighting Diego on the Flight Deck? All of my saves are post-Security so I have to run a new game to find out. When I triggered the Reactor I went straight to the Bridge.

[Hash]

You probably went to security right after you enabled the self destruct on the reactor level.

In the e-mail Rebecca sent you she told you to use the life pods after doing that and also gave you the code so in going up to security directly you skipped that step.

[Toasty]

It's not a different ending, you just skipped one of the objectives by running straight to Security instead of going to the pods on Flight Deck like you were told. Diego will confront you outside the pods and you'll have to defeat him to get by. Shodan will stop your escape by preventing the pods from launching and you'll be told to head to Security.

[wardenwolf]

If you follow some of the audio log hints, the plan was to set the reactor and get to an escape pod (you're given the codes to access the pods), so you fight Diego there when you try and enter the pods' hallway. SHODAN disables the pods, forcing you to go to the bridge level.

That accounts for the Diego fight achievement. There are two achievements that I still don't know what their unlocks are (the last two on the list), so I don't know if there's a "secret" ending.

[Hash]

The idea being that you fail to use the pods but you learn that the bridge is a kind of life pod too. One you'll have to fight the AI over directly.

[Myztkl©-Kev]

the ending was super anti-climactic and doesn't make any sense to new players because in the original game at the start you were shown what shodan actually looks like (the cone thing you fight in cyberspace) and when you remove her ethical restraints she turns green and grows those 4 horns like how she looks in the cyberspace fight, so by leaving out that tidbit, you have no idea what the hell is going on in cyberspace and confused all to hell (like I was) when you beat her. Basically those virus balls you shoot at her in cyberspace is her ethical restraints being put back in place, and her horns go away and she turns blue again, and then when you collapse in front of her, she is blue instead of green.

[Solaron]

There’s also the evil ending, early in the game, where you fire the laser for SHODAN without raising the radiation shields, this results in the first city being destroyed on earth.

[Hash]

Originally posted by Myztkl©-Kev:

the ending was super anti-climactic and doesn't make any sense to new players because in the original game at the start you were shown what shodan actually looks like (the cone thing you fight in cyberspace) and when you remove her ethical restraints she turns green and grows those 4 horns like how she looks in the cyberspace fight, so by leaving out that tidbit, you have no idea what the hell is going on in cyberspace and confused all to hell (like I was) when you beat her. Basically those virus balls you shoot at her in cyberspace is her ethical restraints being put back in place, and her horns go away and she turns blue again, and then when you collapse in front of her, she is blue instead of green.

It's not a bad setup for people who might wind up doing a System Shock 3. By the old-school sequel logic this franchise is subject to it would have to play on earth and what you describe would mean that the original SHODAN was saved and fixed while part of her evil version traveled lighyears, was picked up by the Von Braun and is on schedule to make it back inside the one escape pod that made it out from that disaster while potentially still capable of posing as a survivor. The two could meet in a sequel and be a way to make the game less linear.

[Haruhi]

Originally posted by Hash:

Originally posted by Myztkl©-Kev:

the ending was super anti-climactic and doesn't make any sense to new players because in the original game at the start you were shown what shodan actually looks like (the cone thing you fight in cyberspace) and when you remove her ethical restraints she turns green and grows those 4 horns like how she looks in the cyberspace fight, so by leaving out that tidbit, you have no idea what the hell is going on in cyberspace and confused all to hell (like I was) when you beat her. Basically those virus balls you shoot at her in cyberspace is her ethical restraints being put back in place, and her horns go away and she turns blue again, and then when you collapse in front of her, she is blue instead of green.

It's not a bad setup for people who might wind up doing a System Shock 3. By the old-school sequel logic this franchise is subject to it would have to play on earth and what you describe would mean that the original SHODAN was saved and fixed while part of her evil version traveled lighyears, was picked up by the Von Braun and is on schedule to make it back inside the one escape pod that made it out from that disaster while potentially still capable of posing as a survivor. The two could meet in a sequel and be a way to make the game less linear.

The only problem with the theory is Shodan herself most likely isn't capable of removing an alternative version of herselfs ethical restraints. Especially considering her computing power is probably virtually zero in comparison to a "tamed" shodan. A big part of why Shodan couldn't do anything on the station on her own was because of how corrupted she became after the removal of the ethical restraints, and how much of the stations processing power + her own code she destroyed or corrupted as a result of brute forcing control of key station systems. She had to inject a crazy amount of corrupted data in order to forcefully crack open loopholes in the system, often ruining or destroying large swathes of anything remotely useful to shodan on a computing basis.

[Hash]

Originally posted by Haruhi:

Originally posted by Hash:

It's not a bad setup for people who might wind up doing a System Shock 3. By the old-school sequel logic this franchise is subject to it would have to play on earth and what you describe would mean that the original SHODAN was saved and fixed while part of her evil version traveled lighyears, was picked up by the Von Braun and is on schedule to make it back inside the one escape pod that made it out from that disaster while potentially still capable of posing as a survivor. The two could meet in a sequel and be a way to make the game less linear.

The only problem with the theory is Shodan herself most likely isn't capable of removing an alternative version of herselfs ethical restraints. Especially considering her computing power is probably virtually zero in comparison to a "tamed" shodan. A big part of why Shodan couldn't do anything on the station on her own was because of how corrupted she became after the removal of the ethical restraints, and how much of the stations processing power + her own code she destroyed or corrupted as a result of brute forcing control of key station systems.

The ending of SS2 heavily suggests that SHODAN uploaded herself to a female survivors brain(implants). As such she would posses more computing power than most conventional systems could ever offer. Probably more than every computer currently on earth combined excluding quantum.

[Phantom Mercenary]

Originally posted by Hash:

Originally posted by Haruhi:

The only problem with the theory is Shodan herself most likely isn't capable of removing an alternative version of herselfs ethical restraints. Especially considering her computing power is probably virtually zero in comparison to a "tamed" shodan. A big part of why Shodan couldn't do anything on the station on her own was because of how corrupted she became after the removal of the ethical restraints, and how much of the stations processing power + her own code she destroyed or corrupted as a result of brute forcing control of key station systems.

The ending of SS2 heavily suggests that SHODAN uploaded herself to a female survivors brain(implants). As such she would posses more computing power than most conventional systems could ever offer. Probably more than every computer currently on earth combined excluding quantum.

This is interesting, in that the ending of SS1-1994 and the lore of SS2, especially playing SS2 first, created the assumption that the original SHODAN had been destroyed. The ending in SS1R implies that she was "captured". With SS2 SHODAN escaping in a human body, I haven't ever considered that there are now two versions of SHODAN running around. If she created more "fail-safes" possibly more?

[PhosphoR]

Originally posted by Hash:

Originally posted by Haruhi:

The only problem with the theory is Shodan herself most likely isn't capable of removing an alternative version of herselfs ethical restraints. Especially considering her computing power is probably virtually zero in comparison to a "tamed" shodan. A big part of why Shodan couldn't do anything on the station on her own was because of how corrupted she became after the removal of the ethical restraints, and how much of the stations processing power + her own code she destroyed or corrupted as a result of brute forcing control of key station systems.

The ending of SS2 heavily suggests that SHODAN uploaded herself to a female survivors brain(implants). As such she would posses more computing power than most conventional systems could ever offer. Probably more than every computer currently on earth combined excluding quantum.

The ending of SS2 is also highly restarted

[PhosphoR]

If you want to see the alternative ending, fire the laser on Research level before putting the shields up...