Levine's story encourages you to ultimately wander the floors of the Von Braun as if you own the place. And, since a dropped object remains in System Shock 2's world forever, the only limitation on hunting it down is your own memory. But once you've unlocked the requisite RPG skills, that same gun might acquire new lustre. You might wisely drop a gleaming assault rifle because it takes up three slots in your inventory, and is unusable until you've fully developed your weapons ability.

Engine earĮven a nondescript room can become a treasure trove in retrospect. Given that your guns deteriorate without maintenance, an untouched stash of grenade launchers and EMP rifles is worth any detour. And periodically, you'll come across codes for the doors of weapon caches on previous floors.

Those are what take you back to the chemical stockrooms-part of a research path that Irrational dropped when it modernised the formula with BioShock. Then there are the alien materials, extracted from warped skulls and pulled from sacs where The Many's larvae nest. Their locations quickly become burned into your brain, rare buoys for a survivor adrift at sea. So you'll want to make regular use of surgical units, which refill your hitpoints, but are few and far apart. Healing is expensive, and can easily hoover up your supply of medical hypos, which is limited by a tight and punishing resource economy. Returning to previous areas in System Shock 2 isn't just a fun hypothetical-you're given many reasons to retrace your steps over the course of the game. By contrast, the Von Braun persists the whole time you're playing, from top to bottom-accessible via the elevator that acts as your portal between decks. But together they make up a rollercoaster ride, a series of one-shot setpieces snapped together like pieces of track. BioShock Infinite has distinct districts analogous to System Shock 2's decks: the downtrodden Finkton, unnervingly idyllic Raffle Square, and Battleship Bay, which evokes Brighton Beach. Yet there's a pervasive sense of permanence to the Von Braun that Irrational left behind in its later projects.

System shock 2 the many