The game lacks traditional character classes, but players may optionally play as one of six pregenerated archetypes: street samurai, cybernetically-enhanced warriors who focus on weapon mastery; the spell-casting mages; deckers, who focus primarily on computer hacking; shamans, who summon spirits to assist them in battle; riggers, who control mechanical drones; and physical adepts, who are magically-enhanced monks.

Riggers can equip drones like weapons and use their action points to manually control them, attacking enemies or healing allies.

Depending on how much power the shaman imparts on them and how long they have been summoned, these spirits have a chance to break free and become hostile or flee.

The player character may develop focus in one specific archetype or balance advancement between combat, magical and drone capability.

Sam's message states that he has 100,000 nuyen being held in escrow as a reward should the player bring whoever was responsible for his death to justice.

After receiving help from Coyote, a female human bartender/shadowrunner who first asked for assistance in a private war against those who make "Better-Than-Life" ("BTL") chips, the runner discovers that the Ripper is a male elf named Silas Forsberg whose victims were those who had a transplanted organ from Sam's mother.

After killing Silas, the player learns he was directed to commit the Ripper murders by Jessica Watts, Sam's twin sister.

The runner and Coyote investigate the restricted areas of the facility and discover that the Universal Brotherhood is itself a front for a cult trying to create an insect spirit hive.

Mary-Louise connects the team with her boyfriend, a decker going by the alias Baron Samedi, who organizes a shadowrun on Telestrian Industries to steal a sample of Project Aegis; a chemical weapon capable of killing the insect spirits.

His father had an affair with Melinda Watts, Sam and Jessica's mother, thus Mary-Louise was a viable candidate since they shared the same grandfather.

Telestrian gives the runner and Harlequin each a shotgun able to fire capsules filled with the remaining Aegis compound, which can kill the insect spirits.

The team infiltrates the hive and they fight their way into the heart of the inner sanctum where Telestrian's sister, Lynne, has volunteered to let the queen take over her body, as she is also a blood relation to Jessica.

In the main campaign of the game's first expansion, players assume the role of a Shadowrunner who has recently arrived in the anarchic free state of Berlin to join a team headed by an old colleague, Monika Schäfer.

In 2056, the player travels to the Hong Kong Free Enterprise Zone, meeting with their foster brother Duncan and his superior officer Carter, who agree to investigate their foster father's mysterious message, are ambushed by the HKPF, and escape to and continue their investigation from a small boat village built on the outskirts of a modern Kowloon Walled City, a nightmarish slum built on the ruins of the original.

[9][10] Weisman was originally inspired to create a video game in the Shadowrun universe after reacquiring the rights to it from Microsoft through his Smith & Tinker startup company in 2007.

[3] The success of the campaign made Complex rank it number eight on their list of the biggest video game wins and fails on Kickstarter in 2012.

[20][21] The game originally had an estimated delivery date of January 2013, but the designers stated that the additional content to be added after meeting stretch goals will require more time.

[25] IGN reviewer Dan Stapleton stated that the game's best days were ahead of it, and they will be more interested in it "a year from now, after the community has used the included mod tools to build on it, than in what it is today.

Functionality to allow the player to save the game at any time was omitted because of development resource constraints,[40] but was later added in the Shadowrun Dragonfall expansion.