Something wrong, twistedly familiar but repellently alien.

You look down a long, dim hallway just as that unnaturally-elongated human form rounds a corner, with its oddly hooked elbows and jerking gait, and you aren’t looking at that character model anymore but instead you’re seeing something completely different. In the game, you hear the hiss of a door opening and then irregular, meaty footfalls on a polished metal deck. But that’s not how they were in the game, not really. If you look at still frames of those zombie-like enemies, then the models and textures are incredibly crude and ugly. Take the game’s most bog-standard enemy, the Hybrid. Within some severe constraints, the artists, sound engineers, level designers, and writers at Irrational made a game that has been under my skin and inside my head ever since I first played it. I think there was something about those limitations themselves that helped it achieve a deeper resonance. Therefore, it's often found in alcoves or other concealed areas.Ī more powerful variety, the Greater Psi Reaver, also exists.Don’t think that I’m saying System Shock 2’s achievement is transcending its limitations. The brain is defenseless and cannot move. The Psi Reaver’s brain is physically separate from the “body” - the “body” is a psychic projection of the Psi Reaver’s will. As psychic beings, they are capable of flotation, which is their primary means of movement. A small fleshy sack hangs behind this stalk, and a pair of green eyes sit at the creatures sides. They are squid-like, vaguely jellyfish in appearance, with four tentacle-like appendages dangling from their bulbous flesh-tone body, with a fifth less-developed one in the back, as well as a short eyestalk ending in a green eye. The Psi Reaver projection lacks any humanoid features whatsoever. In order to permanently kill a Psi Reaver, the player must locate and destroy its vulnerable brain stem.

Killing only the Psi Reaver’s floating “body” is a temporary measure - when destroyed, this projection will reappear after 30 seconds. Psi Reavers float through the air, mostly keeping their distance from the player, as the rely on ranged psychic attacks.

Psi Reavers are psychic beings and the most advanced and metabolically expensive forms for the Many to produce. These structures project powerful floating Psionic forms. The remains from this process form a structure of nerves and bone, which resemble a brain and spinal column. When an Annelid Hybrid has mutated enough, its physical body is absorbed by the Many’s biomass. The Psi Reaver represents a final stage in the Annelid’s parasitic life cycle.

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