Someone To Drive You Home

Syndicate Wars is a atmospheric Squad based real time strategy game made by Bullfrog(Theme Hospital , Dungeon Keeper). Its cyberpunk slant is the aspect that really leaves a lasting impression while many games have harvested the Cyberpunk Aesthetic few have allowed it to manifest in gameplay. Syndicate Wars is to Cyberpunk games what Blade Runner is to Cyberpunk films.

Syndicate

Syndicate Wars  (1996) is simply put a classic many people believe that the original Syndicate (1993/1994) is better but personally Syndicate Wars(SW) hits with a art style that is overall more consistent (Environments, menu’s ) and is therefore more effective.

Syndicate Wars

The missions in the game are extremely straight forward Assassinate this guy , persuade this guy to join your faction and escort him to the exit, how you choose to achieve this is really up to yourself. The levels work like mini sandboxes with no Correct way to complete them. You can roll in and kill everybody or build a small army of pedestrians and use them as adhoc human shields. Will you blow up a bank while you are in the area and make off with the money incurring the wrath of the local police force? Do you fight your way in with your four man squad guns blazing to assassinate your target or do you add a expendable member to this squad and use him as a suicide bomber?

The idea that your squad are tools is reinforced at every level they are faceless, nameless, and as the game progresses scarcely human with cybernetics and enhancements rendering them more machine than flesh.

Your agents have been stripped of self awareness have zero personality and will wait diligently for your orders while being ripped to shreds by enemy fire. You can introduce psychotropic drugs to their nervous systems increasing their aggressiveness perception allowing them to return fire autonomously but there is a cool down period where they will default to bullet sponge mode.

This is one of the most fascinating facets of Syndicate wars that game developers said what would a faceless multinational corporation/religious fanatics do with mind control technology if they had wet work to do?Ethically is it better to have a person who has to carry around the memories of murder or a drone who makes no moral judgements during and has no recollection afterwards?

Eurocorp are one of the two playable factions in Syndicate Wars  and are responsible for deploying mind control chips on the general populous. After the events of the original syndicate are the replacement for government. They have the world in their Iron grip and will obliterate anyone who attempts to upset the status quo.

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YouTube - Watch this for a better idea of what its like to be a peon in the Syndicate Universe

The Church of the new Epoch are a religious group, the second playable faction, believe Eurocorp must be over thrown , led by nine scientists that where experimenting with mind expansion technology which ended up leaving them a bit queer. Their technology is theoretically better than Euro Corps owing to the mental capacity of their leadership but they lack the raw materials necessary to realise their potential.

The Unguided are the third faction which where originally meant to have a playable campaign. Their ranks are filled with citizens who have awoken from the mind control induced lie and boy are they pissed .In contrast to the other two Factions these guys value freewill and freedom rather that an Orwellian nightmare state (there’s just no pleasing some people). They are led by the tenth scientist in the mind expansion experiment who decided that he didn’t want to be part of the church or the corporations schemes. I have a feeling that owing to the nature of the unguided and their ethos the system setup for the other factions (they cant really be espousing free will and use mindless killing drones!) is a big part of why this campaign never materialised. Although I would be interested what ideas the developers had for it in a purely academic way.

I’ve purposefully been leaving the feature in Syndicate Wars that was/is most impressive. The Persuadertron. What’s a Persuadertron? God I’m glad you asked that, you understand that every one up and down the line of humanity has the mind control chips implanted in them right?

Well how about if you could use this to your advantage in a mission to say override whatever daily routine they’re on and make them body guard your agents? Cool right ? How about if you could even use it to capture enemy agents, scientists and law enforcers?! Really! awesome? Wont this make the game way too easy ? This is the genius part, with your Persuadertron equipped you will persuade anyone in its range to your cause, but only if you have enough followers so average civilian you get him for free, a law man you might need about 5 followers , enemy agents require a significant following mostly due to the number you will lose while getting close to a Agent. So with this mechanic you are harvesting the local populous and moving them into the firing line in order to achieve your goals sinister stuff and the game pretty much encourages it a health human shield wall can be the difference between Mission Complete and your untimely demise (Failure isn’t a option in Syndicate Universe). This of course takes the potential for collateral damage to dizzying new heights (Explosions will cull the flock almost instantly with only your cybernetic taskmasters left standing if you’re lucky).

Yeah I Roll about 50 Deep

There have been rumblings of a Syndicated Wars Sequel for a while now and most recently Peter Molyneux has said he would be interested in making a new game in the series but I honestly don’t see it happening. I’ve always been a fan of Cyberpunk culture and the idea of blurring the lines between man and machine are becoming more and more possible with Vat Grown Skin and stem cell based ocular modification being just two recent developments that spring to mind. Only thing that remains is for me to provide you with a  link to the wondrous Unofficial Syndicate Website. Feel Free to leave a comment!