Shadowrun Preview

Fan excitement for the long-awaited return of a Shadowrun videogame soured almost immediately when they learned it would be a first person shooter. Like Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun began years ago as a pen and paper role-playing game, and has been maturing ever since (the rules are now in their fourth edition). Unlike D&D, though, videogame adaptations have been few and far between (the last coming out in 1994 on the Sega Genesis). With the jump in hardware since then, anticipation of what a modern videogame could do with its tech-meets-magic fantasy role-playing setting ran high. As if that wasn’t disappointment enough, the current publisher of the pen and paper game, FanPro, issued what it called a "fair warning" on its blog that stated: "Microsoft rewrote the timeline and setting for this game, so it is not in continuity with the tabletop RPG. It may be more accurately described as a game loosely based on Shadowrun."