The Making of System Shock 2

The British gaming magazine Edge, which has teamed up with the website Next Generation, offers up a piece looking back at the creation of System Shock 2 . The cult classic storytelling horror-themed FPS has survived as a popular and often-referenced game despite the eight years between now and its release. The piece covers the reasons behind that popularity, as well as the 'horror' of an inexperienced team taking on a dauntingly high-profile task: "The original System Shock was one of the games that made Levine want to move into the videogame industry in the first place. What made it so special? 'The feeling of being in a real place,' he raves. 'The feeling of a mystery, of unraveling it - not in an adventure game way, but in the context of an action game. You arrive and... what happened? That's a really good storytelling mechanism.' Austin Grossman and Doug Church's original idea from Shock was something Irrational expanded in its sequel. 'In Shock 1 you were a specific guy, you had a backstory,' Levine notes. 'With Shock 2, I started you out with the classic 'wake up with amnesia'.'"

Comments

Agree

[SuperKendall]

Can't mod you up anymore, so I might as well agree...

Although I did finish Bioshock.

Overall I really liked all sorts of aspects of the story in System Shock 2 more as well, beyond just the gameplay - in System Shock 2 you really felt more in-between two larger powers than in Bioshock (hopefully not spoiling too much for people that have not played either game).

I would love to play through System Shock 2 again, but sadly I sold off my copy a few years ago.

Sometimes I wish they would just update graphics and do gameplay tweaks on older games like that one more often, but not in a Frogger 3D kind of way...