Before I touch on anything else, there’s something about this game I need to talk about. It’s something that Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, and Chronicles didn’t manage to do for me that Hong Kong manages to pull off in a neat way. Hong Kong managed to make me depressed over the fates of the main character. In Returns you’re already a Shadowrunner, getting pulled into the story by another Shadowrunner. In Dragonfall you’re already a Shadowrunner, recruited by an old friend to join a team. Chronicles, the online game, has you creating a character that’s already a Shadowrunner in Boston.
In each of these games, you’re already a criminal, with the big score just waiting for you — if you’re good enough.
Hong Kong doesn’t do that. Hong Kong starts you off as a regular person, who started off in a bad way but got adopted (along with your adopted brother) by a wealthy, law abiding older guy who cleaned the pair of you up and helped get you off the streets. At some point in your past you have to leave to do something, and then the game starts several years later as you respond to your adopted father asking you to come to the city of Hong Kong to meet. As soon as you arrive, in proper Shadowrun fashion things go sideways — but it still isn’t until a little while later that you officially become a Shadowrunner.
The time spent establishing the fact that you and your brother are distinctly NOT Shadowrunners serves to hammer home a core facet of this universe, that the rest of the games sort of miss. In the other games, you’re already a criminal. You start those games already in the lifestyle, working as a badass spell slinging, computer hacking, gun shooting, drone controlling mercenary, and the only way to go is up.
Hong Kong has you start ‘up’ and then drives you into the dirt, hitting you with so much crap that the only option is literally destroying your own lives and becoming criminals. In order to not catch a bullet you have to have someone delete your SIN — every trace of your existence, anything and everything that remotely traces back to you is gone in a keystroke.
It’s something the previous games almost nailed, but fell short of due to a flawed approach. In Returns, you feel bad for your old friend, and in Dragonfall you feel bad for.. your old friend. And like maybe a dragon depending on your choices. In Hong Kong you feel bad for yourself and your family, and it’s the first time in one of these games I’ve ever felt truly, truly invested in the fate of my character. I wanted closure for my character, instead of wanting my character to be an unstoppable killing machine delivering closure to everyone around her.
There’s still that, of course. As your team grows and you explore dialogue options after every mission you eventually take on side-missions from your team, fleshing out their stories and bringing an end to their troubles, or helping them get revenge, or whatever. It’s nice, but it’s fleeting. Every resolution you achieve only serves to remind you that the world of Shadowrun is pretty shitty, and if you aren’t a MegaCorp you’ll probably die screaming and broke.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong also changes how the Matrix (the fully immersive VR internet) works. You still jack in, but now there’s an active, almost stealth component to each encounter in there. Instead of the entire affair being turn-based combat, it’s possibly to sneak past most enemies and hack your way to victory… though incredibly difficult. I normally defaulted to getting spotted on purpose, just to kill everything and casually get the files I needed. Still, the new Matrix gameplay is much closer to the way the Shadowrun lore paints it — only the best can slip through undetected.
I think on the whole, Dragonfall might still be my favorite of this series, but Hong Kong is a very, very close second. It’s definitely worth playing for even a casual Shadowrun fan, and fans of cyberpunk in general might have a good time with this one, as long as they don’t mind a touch of the magical in their dystopia.
Also you can name your safehouse. One of the options is Big Texas. This is obviously the correct choice.
This review is based on a code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher
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