You'll infiltrate company X to steal McGuffin Y or hold off rival gang Z for some pre-determined number of turns. Each one is a turn-based tactical scenario with usually one clear win condition and a few side items or collectibles. On a minute-to-minute level, the majority of the game is spent running missions. But on closer inspection, the façade is just that. It uses a lot of the lingo, it has the right color palette, and the soundtrack is spot-on for a dystopian Boston. Shadowrun Chronicles has the veneer of a proper Shadowrun game. In doing so, it betrays its namesake by incorporating a long list of technical and gameplay missteps to create one of the most underwhelming releases in a long time. They are an intrinsic part of the property itself, and they cannot be extricated, though Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown certainly tries.
These pieces are all fundamental to Shadowrun. You can use cybernetics to boost your stats, but without a heady narrative, potentially interesting moral choices are reduced to seeing which numbers are bigger than others. Again, we have an implicit question regarding whether the loss of pieces of our anatomy is analogous to the loss of some ethereal sense of self or our souls. Moreover, cybernetics, while vital to bringing the lower classes up to the same level of physical and mental acumen as their well-funded corporate adversaries, sap users' humanity. With such a rendition of the future, the game makes some important points about the role of class in this world and the tensions caused by unchecked corporate power. On top of that, it supposes a future in which corporations take the role of national governments, and the only way to make a decent living is to steal from these cyberpunk renditions of the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John. It melds classic fantasy elements like dwarves, elves, orcs, and magic with bleeding-edge cybernetics. On the whole, Shadowrun fits into this grand unifying theory of science fiction.
They are curt expressions of the human experience filtered through the impossible or the surreal. These questions are important, and they tap the underlying fears and hopes we all share. Films like Blade Runner asked us to look at the Platonic ideal of a life well lived. Jules Verne's works raised questions about our boundless curiosity. In the broadest strokes, science fiction has always been about testing the limits of humanity in strange or unimaginable circumstances.
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