Microsoft Fails to Get Shadowrun
Players of the Tabletop Game Will Have Difficulty with this New FPS
If the original version of the game was a role playing game, why did Microsoft present the fans with a first person shooter?
Microsoft had 2 successful releases based off of FASA games with the release of Mech Assault and Crimson Skies. Expecting another success, the video game programmers at Microsoft produced another off of a FASA title, Shadowrun.
Microsoft's recent release is not the first game to bear the title of Shadowrun.The computer division of the now defunct FASA corporation put out a role playing game under the same name for the Genesis in the early 1990s. While the new game is better than the Genesis release, the video game programmers at Microsoft did not understand the fan base of Shadowrun.
The World of Shadowrun
When the cyberpunk genre became popular in the mid 1980s, it is not surprising that 2 tabletop role playing games exploiting the genre's popularity followed. They were Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Both presented a distopian future where corporations became more powerful than nation-states and showed a shadowy underworld of the people trying to fight against them.
Shadowrun had one key difference over its competitor, in Shadowrun, magic had returned to the world after a 5,000 year absence and players could not only play a decker, they could also play a wizard. The racial options were not limited to humans only. The event that brought magic back into the world also gave rise to the return of dwarfs, trolls, and elves.
Microsoft's video game programmers incorporated these elements successfully into Shadowrun. They should have paid more attention to the target audience of the video game than they did, however.
What Microsoft Got Wrong with Shadowrun
The first and most obvious mistake Microsoft's video game programmers made with the release of their version of Shadowrun was requiring a player to have Windows Vista. While Windows Vista is not a horrible operating system compared to some earlier Microsoft releases, such as Windows Millennium, many hardware companies have not yet caught up with its new features, nor is Vista as stable as XP was.
The error of releasing it for Windows Vista alone may have been forgiven if the programmers of this video game had understood the universe and made the new Shadowrun a role playing game. Instead, they took a look at the universe and saw guns, magic, and high technology and decided to make it a first person shooter. Instead, it is another Half-Life clone available in a market already suffering from an overabundance of such games.
Is Microsoft's Shadowrun Worth the Purchase Price?
Fans of the original tabletop role playing game should give Microsoft's new Shadowrun game a pass, as the game programmers did not understand the universe, and likely thought the model for the earlier FASA games would work. Video gamers who enjoy first person shooters like Halo and who are running Windows Vista will have no problems enjoying this game. Even fans of FASA's original setting might learn to enjoy it if they can think this video game as something other than Shadowrun.
Sources
Shadowrun, First Edition. FASA. Seattle, Washington. 1988.
Microsoft's Shadowrun Homepage
