Quick Look: Shadowrun: Hong Kong

There you are, Quick Look!

Dragonfall is pretty good in this weird like "this feels like a fan project" sort of way.

Also here is the William Gibson choice quote, from 1998 no less

Gibson: To the extent that there was a Cyberpunk movement-and there wasn't, really, but to the extent that there was, the five or six people who I knew in 1981 who were doing this stuff and had a radical aesthetic agenda, at least in terms of that pop-art form of science fiction, [and] one of the things that we were really conscious of was appropriation. Appropriation as a post-modern aesthetic and entrepreneurial strategy. So we were doing it too. We were happily and gloriously lifting all sorts of flavours and colours from all over popular culture and putting it together to our own ends. So when I see things like ShadowRun, the only negative thing I feel about it is that initial extreme revulsion at seeing my literary DNA mixed with elves. Somewhere somebody's sitting and saying 'I've got it! We're gonna do William Gibson and Tolkien!' Over my dead body! But I don't have to bear any aesthetic responsibility for it. I've never earned a nickel, but I wouldn't sue them. It's a fair cop. I'm sure there are people who could sue me, if they were so inclined, for messing with their stuff. So it's just kind of amusing.

This was basically just more Shadowrun but I think I'm okay with that, they keep making really high quality campaigns.

The new matrix stuff is THE WORST though.

G-Beast bringing the cyberpunkery for days.

Good to see more successful crowdfunding/Kickstarter stories.

Best Shadowrun game yet IMO.

Hong Kong is my favorite of the Shadowrun lot. Technically I only played the non-director's cut version of Dragonfall. Hong Kong just had the best music and most memorable characters. Loved the Matrix revisions as I HATED the Matrix portions of Returns and Berlin.

The future of the 80's is my favorite future.

really cool quote. and how far we've come...

My thoughts exactly when I saw this

Shadowrun looks like a serie I'll love, but I've just never had the time to get into it. This looks really cool though.

is it just me or are all the GBEast QLs really echoey?

Woot finally, GB catching up.

1/3 done.

Now PLEASE do a QL of Satellite Reign it's cyberpunk as fuck. Austin dude don't leave me hanging, you're my only hope.

And Dan promised a to check out of Act of Agression since he is into C&C type RTS's. I feel like MGS just completely absorbed him :P

Puhlease!

I love that Austin actually knows Shadowrun lore ... it's a great system with really unique and cool story beats and ideas.

Dunkelzahn, the dragon that was elected president and got assassinated the same night is just one thing. Chicago got overrun by insect spirits which turned people into half human half insect hybrids ... stuff like that is only the beginning.

Austin, you're really cool :)

Also I feel like if Vinny starts playing through the series he should just do videos of him playing through them.

Shadowrun returns was good, but not great.

Dragonfall was INSANELY good, it was beyond great. My favorite game of last year by far (if there hadn't been my weird affinity for Sunset Overdrive, which took the #1 spot later). The story and pace in Dragonfall feel like a "best of cyberpunk". Like a team finally had the tools and engine and everything put together and now finally could care to just and only make a "good game", a good campaign instead of the rpg-maker tool the first Shadowrun was also advertised as during the first kickstarter. It felt like someone had over a year time to come up with the best short-stories that define cyberpunk (and shadowrun) and put them all into a grand opera that is Dragonfall.

Shadowrun Honk Kong is a good game. On the turn-based strategy level of the gameplay it's the best hairebrained schemes shadowrun yet, but overall it's just far behind Dragonfall... at least in my opinion.

It started as strong as Dragonfall, but it fell off about one hour in. Nonetheless, I'm happy to have backed SR:HK earlier this year.

I want to like all these games but i just can't get into text heavy rpg's. It's similar to how i can't get into books, i need the game to do the explaining for me, i need the game to tell and show me why it's a cool universe.
Austin is telling you guys about the universe and the story and you're replying with questions and having a good time learning about the fiction, if i were to play i wouldn't have that dialogue, the cool factor of the world gets lost in lines and lines of text. It's an unfortunate barrier of entry for me.

"The history was -"

"Of the game."

"... oh." : (

Austin sounded like he was ready to launch into the full Shadowrun lore breakdown there. Ready and excited!

sweet

@coldhands0802: I was literally seconds from saying "Okay, in like 2011, there was this thing called Unexplained Genetic Expression, which..."

Oh man Racter goes places. Him and Gobbet were my two favorite characters in this.

btw, His robot is named after a very very iconic Russian fairy tale villain :D And the story with his co workers is a very 80s era true to life type of occurrence, that happened a lot, still does.

I got through this in a little over 30 hours and had a pretty good time with it. It's not as strong story-wise as Dragonfall, but the combat feels improved and the matrix changes are cool. They did a good job of making the missions feel diverse and interesting. It's also a bit buggy in spots, but I didn't encounter anything too bad.

I hope HBS isn't too busy with other stuff to make more of these.

Yeah Racter is a fascinating character. Gobbet is just really fun but Racter is a fuckin' deep dive into one of the bigger aspects of the setting.

Man i really like the last couple shadowrun return games, glad @austin_walker also likes them. Need to get this for sure. Wish they would update the UI some since i never liked it but all well.
OK the update screen got a facelift, which is probably the worst offended so thats something.

I'd have to go digging for the quote, but basically they've said that they're hitting the limits of the engine, and if they wanted to do another one they'd have to build a new engine for it. So they're going to go work on some other projects for a while, and some of that work may lay groundwork for future SR games.

Which I'm totally okay with, since Necropolis looks hot, and real-goddamn-Battletech is always welcome.

@austin_walker: there are some hints and small references to your exploits in Berlin, specially a certain BBS thread.

So magic and martial arts qi magic are governed by the same stat... that must mean...

RYU IS A WIZARD :O

An adept!

Really enjoyed my time with SR:HK, it had a very strong start, but it has pacing issues that have it fall just short of Dragonfall. Overall still a good game that i'm glad I backed.

Such a great game. I really enjoyed the campaign. I can't wait to see what else HBS does.

Haven't played Returns yet(been in my steam library for a very long time), but Dragonfall was really good. The writing was probably the best I'd seen in years. Definitely gonna give this one a try at some point. Thanks for the quick look you guys.

@pilgrimm1981: If you've already played Dragonfall, don't play Returns, Returns was very much a flawed first draft type of deal. I'd recommend picking this one up instead.

I just finished it today. What an amazing game. Can't wait for the next one.

Returns, Dragonfall and this have been like yearly presents of a game type I don't see enough of.

@austin_walker: When combat finishes your latest wounds get healed on everyone by default, that's why you had no one to heal before the last fight there.

They introduced this in Dragonfall because in Returns people used to try to game the system and leave one enemy alive and spent a lot of turns trying to heal everyone once. With this automatic heal there is no more need for that. It's a quality of life type of improvement that just saves people time and busywork.

Qi is "chee" and Chi is "key".

I think. Maybe.

These games are great, it's a toss up between Dragonfall and Hong Kong for which is better. I feel like I enjoyed the core narrative of Dragonfall more but liked the anecdotal stories and world building in HK.

Things like this and the CK2 playdate ensure anything @austin_walker's involved in has my undivided attention.

Both are "chee", they're different romanizations of the same Chinese word. "Ki" is the the Japanese word for qi/chi and is pronounced like "key".

This reminds me that I've got a copy of Dragonfall tucked away somewhere. Probably by the time I get through that, this'll be on one of the various Steam sales!

I always enjoy how informative your Quick Looks are, @Austin_Walker.

I suddenly want a PayDay bar.

I can't wait to get to this game after how good the first two were, but damn is this gaming year packed. This is sadly going to be put near the top of the backlog.

Remember the #1 Rule of Survival in Hong Kong: Pick up the Purse.

And also eat Pork Buns. A runner who never eats Pork Bun is never a whole runner.

The president of Shadowrun is a dragon.

Disappointed of no "Jeff" character portrait usage
(not really Jeff but the resemblance is uncanny)

Shadowrun isn't a deep literary commentary meant to be applicable to the real world. Well, maybe a tiny bit. It's built for games, not books. Though I did enjoy the books when I was 13 and had not read the Sprawl trilogy.

Shadowrun is a P&P setting that's designed for a game where you get to do Ocean's 11. Instead of an electronics guy disabling security, it's over the matrix. Instead of the tank/dps/support holy trinity you have a bit more diversity because magic does some things, different tech things do others, etc. Instead of having a tank and a DPS, you have a face, a tech guy, a muscle dude, and the guy who handles any magical problems.

I love Gibson, but this is a quote from a raging d-bag.

I really love these games. I finished Hong Kong at about 20 hours and it's easily the best game in the series, but I prefer the story in Dragonfall. I feel like they missed an opportunity with this game by not leaning heavily enough into your fixer being a member of the Triad. You should be doing more gang related runs. As a result, Auntie Chang doesn't feel like a special character and could be replaced by any fixer and the story wouldn't really suffer. That said, I still enjoyed it a whole bunch.

@jondo: I don't know if I'd go that far. He is a guy that basically created a sub genre, saw someone else lift a lot of stuff straight out of his books and put a fantasy spin on it - all during a time when writers were trying to escape the sci fi/fantasy category that was getting panned as not a very serious one.

As a graphic designer if I saw someone take one of my serious, gritty designs, and then turn it into some thing that went completely against all of my internal aesthetics I'd probably also be kind of peeved about it.

As a huge fan of William Gibson books and the worlds he creates, I totally get why he isn't too happy to have fantasy and magic slapped all over it.

I played about 8 hours of Shadowrun Returns and really liked it. Should I play Dragonfall first or go straight to Hong Kong? I'll probably end up playing both at some point but will I be able to go back to Dragonfall if I play Hong Kong first with the changes they've made.

@razielcuts: You will be able to go back, but I'd suggest you play Dragonfall first anyway. While the games are not directly connected, Hong Kong is set after and you will get some little bit of extra narrative stuff playing them in order. Mechanically the main changes are in the Matrix which gives you more stuff to do inside it in Hong Kong.