I’m going to dream about this. Or have nightmares. More likely the latter.
Night Dive Studios, the saints responsible for re-releasing System Shock 2, have floated the idea of a SHODAN announcer pack for Dota 2.
Night Dive’s CEO Stephen Kick took to Reddit to ask the userbase if people would be interested in a SHODAN announcer pack for Dota 2, and somewhat unsurprisingly, the answer was a resounding “yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”
Kick has apparently already been in touch with Terri Brosius (the voice of SHODAN) and Eric Brosius (the sound engineer of System Shock 2), and both are on board with the project. The team then approached Valve, who wanted a bit of community feedback before diving into production; judging by the current amount of positive feedback on Reddit, this is something that may well happen.
For the uninitiated, SHODAN is the malevolent, superior AI that both opposes and assists you in System Shock and System Shock 2, and is one of the most terrifying antagonists in gaming. If you didn’t know that, you should go and buy System Shock 2 right now, insect.
I confess to being a little concerned, if only because delving too deep into in-jokes and self-referential humour will both lessen SHODAN’s presence and stray too close to the GLaDOS announcer pack. Even just the basic lines in SHODAN’s unique voice and cadence would be preferable to it being humorous. On the plus side, when someone mentioned packaging the announcer pack with a System Shock 2-themed HUD and courier, Kick seemed pretty optimistic about the possibility. A psychic monkey courier? It could happen.
Considering how much love (Stockholm syndrome?) gamers of a certain age have for SHODAN, it’s a project that’ll have to be approached carefully; unlike a lot of packs that can get away with over-the-top comedy, this is going to need some precise balance. If it happens, though, it’s almost certainly going to be a day one purchase for me. We like System Shock, after all, and I’m a pretty big fan of Dota 2.
