Weird Weekend
Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it’s the canon height of Thief’s Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.
At the turn of the 2010s, fans of PC tactics and strategy games were feeling justifiably hard done by. The indie boom that would eventually enable the likes of Mewgenics and Slay the Spire 2 to become chart-toppers was but a nascent spark. And the mainstream publishers? They were looking askance at their trove of beloved ’90s click-and-think licenses, wondering how to warp them into something with broader appeal.
In the eyes of many PC gamers, these projects weren’t just disposable spinoffs, they were insults. EA and Take-Two were exhuming corpses and posing them like Captain Price—all in the vain hope of infiltrating the blockbuster shooter market. It was hardly an atmosphere in which these games could be judged on their own merits.
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That’s a particular shame for Syndicate, which named one of its principal cast Merit, and hired seasoned Hollywood villain Michael Wincott to fill his lungs with raspy baritone evil. It was Merit who first sold me on the idea that Syndicate might be slightly better than its reputation. I watched with growing interest as he loped around glass-covered corporate towers with a chunky pistol and the ease of a man in his own living room—a standard-issue cyberpunk trenchcoat in place of a dressing gown.
While Wincott’s voice definitely contributes to Merit’s air of insouciance, a lot of credit has to go to Starbreeze’s animation and mocap talent (including one Josef Fares, who worked on Syndicate right before his breakout hit as a director, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons). Merit’s choreography imbues this corporate saboteur and assassin with the vibe of a colleague who’s been in the same role a little too long; a competent familiarity that verges on boredom. At one point, Merit calls an elevator, blows the head off the scientist unfortunate enough to occupy it, then casually kicks the dead man’s legs free of the doorway. “You’re in my way,” he says, without feeling. Then, turning to you, by way of goodbye: “Have fun.”
Syndicate’s world is, fundamentally, a lesson in the importance of antitrust laws. Its conglomerates have glommed onto more and more companies, absorbing biotech firms, petrochemical giants and computer chip production lines—to the point where quality of life is dependent on working for one of several continent-spanning employers. Nationhood has been rendered irrelevant—an idea that’s only become more convincing in our own timeline as Silicon Valley has run roughshod over Europe’s leaders, reducing the latter to cringing compliance as misogynistic algorithms and art-thieving AI are crowbarred mercilessly into citizens’ lives.
In Syndicate, disputes between companies are resolved with impunity by Adam-Jensen-ass agents, and you embody one of them—shooting up lobbies and labs as collateral damage piles all around. To some degree, Syndicate is exactly as its detractors imagined it might be: a linear spectacle shooter, soundtracked by Skrillex, which leaves little or no room for the player to pick their approach.
But it’s not an unthinking FPS. Syndicate’s development began under the watch of veterans who had made Escape from Butcher Bay and The Darkness. By its end, many of them had left to found MachineGames, ultimately becoming the custodians of Wolfenstein. This rocky process evidently left its scars on Syndicate, but also left traces of that team’s trademark brilliance, too.
For instance: Syndicate’s levels are littered with codex entries and transcribed conversations, filled with irony and pathos respectively. Follow the prompts for further reading and you’ll wind up in a back-and-forth rhythm between murderous rampages and quiet study—a pacing the Wolfenstein games have offered ever since.
Even off the page, Syndicate makes space for moments of quiet as you step through seaborne cities and listen in on the gossip of receptionists. This kind of breathing room was by no means a given in the era of Black Ops, which was defined by the constant bray of machine gun fire. Back in 2012, Call of Duty was reaching for science fiction and landing somewhere near gadget-driven gobbledegook. Syndicate, by contrast, is admirable in the consistency and diligence of its worldbuilding.
Sure, I didn’t necessarily need a potted history of a fictional South-African-Dutch weapons manufacturer. But scan through the internal comms of your employer, Eurocorp, and you’ll find an engrossingly grisly history laid out in the coldest possible terms. Take, for example, the “aggressive and innovative lobbying programme” carried out against EU anti-trust legislators: “Total cost 41.3 million euros; 18 deaths; two clinically induced comas; one chemically induced mental collapse”. A bargain, one supposes.
All that background narrative matters. It contributes a context that ensures Syndicate feels like more than a series of vents, lift shafts, vents, Brian Cox monologues, vents, warehouses and vents. Even if, strictly speaking, that’s exactly what it is.
There are no optional routes that BJ Blazkowicz might find through an environment, nor throwing axes to help you cut a quieter path through Syndicate’s levels. Yet there’s certainly a whiff of proto-Wolfenstein in the laser rifle that causes my controller to buzz with AA-powered energy, and a pervading fondness for heavy weapons in general. One extended sequence with a minigun proved so deafeningly out of whack with the game’s overall sound mix that my dogs made their disapproval clear with sustained stares. Less noisy than the minigun, but no less dramatic, is the thermite gun that spews liquified metal.
Ironically enough, the greatest weakness I’ve identified in Syndicate is a decision that was made to placate fans of the original strategy series. Namely, it’s just a bit too hard. “It’s a very challenging, hardcore shooter game,” EA partners exec producer Jeff Gamon told Eurogamer in 2011. “It’s very traditional in that sense. It’s really tough.”
Except, of course, traditional first-person shooters of the late 90s and noughties tended to give you room to manoeuvre. Space to back off, reassess, perhaps find another door or an overlooked cache of ammo with which to bolster your position. In a 2010 game, staged in confined rooms with enemies who spawn in waves, being felled by a sudden volley somewhere over your left shoulder doesn’t feel like what Gamon once called an “excellent shooting experience”.
Needless to say, EA didn’t win over longtime Syndicate fans. But in arse-about-face fashion, the publisher did wind up contributing to the return of strategy games. In fact, Bullfrog veteran Mike Diskett used the disappointment of the shooter reboot as a springboard to kickstart Satellite Reign—a highly tactical spiritual sequel to the original series, which won critical acclaim three years later.
In a sense, Diskett did Syndicate a favour in return. Now freed from a legacy it was never going to measure up to, this misbegotten FPS is far easier to like.
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