Equipped with nothing but your wits and training from your previous three years in the military it's up to you to figure out what is going on. As you begin your exploration it becomes quickly clear that all is far from well, the only crew members you meet are dead or inaccessible to you in other areas of the ship. And creepy alien-human hybrids run rampant in the corridors of the ship intent on sending you to an early grave. Save the remainder of the crew if you can, stop the aliens, and get out alive to warn the Earth. Basics of Play System Shock is played from a first person perspective, similar in look to any one of a number of first person shooters.
Control is essentially the same.
But on top of this action framework there exists an overlay of role playing features. You then can customize your training to learn specific skills to begin the game with. Characters have ratings from 0 to 6 in different skills and statistics. Each character has a rating of 1 or more in Strength, Stamina, Psionics, Agility, and Cyber Affinity. These represent how hard you hit and how much you can carry, your maximum hit points, the number of Psi points at your disposal, how quickly you recover from firing weapons, and how easily you can interact with high technology.