

The “surely, you’ve done this before” expectation is jarring when you get thrown in at the deep end.
Shadowrun hong kong wiki ett series#
It’s actually a bit unforgiving for folks jumping into the series for the first time, which is a possibility, considering this is a complete disconnect story-wise from the previous titles. The turn-based isometric gameplay of Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s predecessors is back, unchanged, and things get tense and brutal from the very first fight, when two potential allies take a bullet to the head before you even remember their names.

Missions involve no small amount of investigation, collecting clues from crime scenes, interviewing eyewitnesses, organizing thefts, making back-alley deals for information, negotiating trades and delivering messages, in ink or blood, to the worst brand of scumbag on the planet.When words won’t do the trick-though quite often, they can-you turn to the sword. Most of your time in Shadowrun is spent playing it strictly as a point-and-click adventure, running messy errands for your Triad boss, a badass old buzzard named Kindly Cheng. Asking me to be your right hand man? Oh, no, ma’am, I’ve played Streets of Rage. The focus in Shadowrun Hong Kong is exactly where it belongs, and that’s on the storytelling. But Shadowrun has far too weighty a pedigree to make it that simple. For occasionally long swaths of the game, that’s exactly what it is. In another universe, this could very easily be the futuristic brother of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, yet another tale of a low-level underling killing their way into the mantle of boss in the name of revenge, just with the twist of being able to create your own character out of the multiple fantasy races and RPG classes offered at the outset. So begins the tale of how you became a Shadowrunner, a member of the vast, unstoppable network of scrappy cybercriminal underdogs fighting the questionably good fight against the cabal of mega corporations running the world’s lower classes even deeper into the dirt. And by “arrest,” of course, they mean “brutally murder on sight.” Just when you thought it was safe to walk down a back alley alone again. Not even five minutes after stepping onto Chinese soil, you find out your foster father is missing, presumed dead, and there’s an APB out to arrest you, your brother, and anyone seen with you that evening. The plotting is a little uninspiring: You’re an ex-con, recently released, now trying to make an honest living in Seattle, when you get a call from your estranged foster father to return to China. Narrative, character development, and world-building are king here. The change-up is welcome, in part because not much else about Shadowrun has changed since 2013’s well-received Shadowrun Returns. The series has done a fantastic job exploring both of these aspects through several games now, but with Shadowrun: Hong Kong, the series adopts an Eastern flavor, incorporating a classic facet of the cyberpunk genre for the first time in its nearly 30 year tenure. This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.Shadowrun, as a universe, is already a great marriage of two very separate, very Western fantasy scenarios one part D&D-inspired elves-and-dwarves witchcraft and wizardry, one part William Gibson-brand gritty, street-level cyberpunk. This article has been rated as C-Class on the project's quality scale. Role-playing games Wikipedia:WikiProject Role-playing games Template:WikiProject Role-playing games role-playing game articles If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. This article is within the scope of WikiProject Role-playing games, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of role-playing games on Wikipedia.
