I would like to collect canon inconsistencies in Shadowrun Returns for the Shadowrun wikis. So if you noticed something I invite you to post it here.

What prompted me is Her Excellency Marie-Louise Telestrian (alternatively called Mary-Louise). She is the daughter of James Telestrian III in Shadowrun Returns but in canon as far as I can tell has always been his younger sister. Also Lynne Telestrian is James' (and Marie-Louise's) niece not his cousin.

The only things that come to mind are the orks' and trolls' snaggle-tooth and the weapon ranges and ammo capacities. I'm not particularly well-versed in SR lore, however.

Mentions of commlinks and AR in 2054. Though if that's a retcon, I'm not too upset.

Kind of an artistic nitpick, but I know Dodger had white hair, not blond. Although I guess if he wanted to dye it, who am I to judge?

I'm pretty sure the SNES game mentioned commlinks, and that takes place in 2050.

The usage was different though - not referring to small personal computers used for hacking and managing a PAN, but rather to communication devices more akin to walkie-talkies or early "portable" phones.

AR may be a different matter, though. Doubt there was much of that floating around, or at least if there was, it wasn't called AR.

~Umi

Aye, Commlinks themselves existed back then-and were just communication devices, but the AR thing was different. Now, Deckers had an addon they could put on their decks called a 'Hitcher Jack' in those days, which, if I recall, sort of functioned as the whole 'trode net' thing. I guess they sort of did a bit of a handwave/retcon for a good purpose here, since if I also remember, you needed a datajack to use a hitcher jack, and they didn't want to force everyone to get a datajack for that part-so they decided to use a more modern thing for that bit.

He is also a horrible decker in SR:R

You could use a trode net for hitching.

The way the Orks look in SR:R is not only my biggest complaint about the game, but something I was very adament about on the blog they not do. I saw at least a handful of other people beg them not to make orks ugly fantasy creatures too. I guess they were paid off by Humanis Policlub.

Well, I've started my second playthrough with a different character, and I noticed that since the patch, it looks like commlink got switched with PDA...a change to correct this, maybe?

They were called "Comms", derived of "Telecoms", so ... well. To make things much mroe complicated, there also were Commlinks, a cheaper version of Tacticoms and Radio Transceivers. I can live with calling mobile telecoms commlinks in 2054, myself.


I suppose someone, somewhere, confused James II and James III. It happened in the Anthology too.


Yes, it required a cable connection and wasn't widely used, or it's potential utilized, until real AR research came along. It even offered comparable boni (given that SR3's -X TN was universally translated into +X dicepool in SR4).


Ah damn. Now THAT is a continuity error. PDAs were called Pocket Secretaries, or PocSecs.

Shit yeah he is. Pathetic. Of course, I'm a combat decker (rifles and decking), but even compared to some of the other available NPC deckers he isn't that great. I mean, I understand that from a gameplay perspective you can't actually stick Dodger in the game because there'd be no reason for you to exist (same with Harley), but given the option I'd rather they just weren't available for your team than them being there but nerfy and useless.

He didn't have a Sandler TMP. That's what stung me most for some reason. Also, he had no dialogue.

Yeah, the actual Dodger is the drek-hot decker, with an SMG, cyberspurs(making him kinda combat himself), and probably would have made that mission a laugh if he was 'at level', let alone what Harley would have done.

My favorite bit is if you let Harley "die", he just appears afterwards fine and dandy and you can be like "Wait, what? You were dead! I saw your corpse!" and he's like, "Nope, I'm Deadpoo... I mean, Harlequinn, I don't do dead."

~Umi

@orks and trolls without proper dental care: I think we can ascribe that to artistic license. Though I remember the discussion and thought they had promised a bit more variety?

@dodger's hair: Differences to his established description (or of any other canon relevant characters) could be mentioned.

@underpowered overpowered characters: That is probably worth a mention, too.

Other than that we have PDA instead of Pocket Secretaries. And possibly AR?

Ah, you mean the one that supposedly nobody has ever heard of? To be fair though, that was just shadowtalk in the Tir Tairngire sourcebook.


I'm sure there is more stuff. Probably minor. To be honest I was a bit astonished by the Telestrian family continuity error, as that is an important part of the game and of the Shadowrun universe. Also since they had said, they fact-checked with Catalyst. Wait! I know what you want to say. But Catalyst published The Land of Promise a while back and that reiterated, James was Marie-Louise's brother and Lynne a niece rather than a cousin. Which to be fair again was previously mentioned only in a few scattered places. Almost makes me think that it was deliberate.