Shadowrun Returns
Intense overall intensityWhat's in it
Strong profanity runs through the dialogue.
Turn-based gunfire and melee against human and creature enemies show blood, and dead bodies remain on the field.
A noir murder investigation drives the plot into an organ-harvesting killer and a spirit cult, with a murdered ally at the center.
The player character is a shadowrunner who commits break-ins, hacking, and contract killings as the core of play.
An act of suicide is depicted within the story.
Severed body parts and harvested organs appear as subject matter beyond ordinary combat damage.
Alcohol and tobacco are referenced in text and dialogue rather than shown in use.
Parasitic insect spirits that possess people and an underground hive give some scenes an unsettling body-horror tone.
Mutated vermin such as devil rats are fought as ordinary combat enemies.
Sexual abuse is referenced in dialogue and text; nothing is shown.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Shadowrun Returns is a single-player, turn-based tactical RPG set in a 2050s cyberpunk world where magic has re-entered reality alongside high technology, populated by humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and trolls. You build a mercenary 'shadowrunner' and take deniable, illegal jobs — hacking, infiltration and cover-based gunfights resolved through turn-based combat with a small hired crew. The bundled campaign, 'Dead Man's Switch,' is a noir murder investigation that leads into an organ-harvesting killer and an insect-spirit cult. Combat shows blood and bodies that stay on the field, and the story includes a depicted suicide, references to sexual abuse, severed body parts and harvested organs, textual references to alcohol and tobacco, and strong language throughout.
How it's framed
The game frames the player as a hired criminal operative in a bleak, corporate-run dystopia, presenting illegal work matter-of-factly as how the setting functions rather than glorifying it. Its darker material — the murder, the mutilated victims and the suicide — is delivered through investigation and dialogue as grim atmosphere, and the setting's magic (mages, shamans and summoned spirits) is treated as an ordinary part of the world.
Details
- Developer
- Harebrained Schemes
- Publisher
- Paradox Interactive
- Released
- Jul 25, 2013
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