Irrational Games Reveals System Shock 2 Secrets And History

System Shock, and its sequel System Shock 2, comprise what is hands down one of my favorite IPs of all time. Bioshock was all right, but it wasn't quite the experience that was System Shock 2, and the older title remains one of the few games I still play repeatedly and religiously. It's also one of the few games that still utterly terrifies me no matter how many times I complete it, leaving me screaming like a terrified girl hiding from the monsters.

Over on the Irrational Games blog there's an entry titled "What Might Have Been," which features a treasure trove of secrets and behind-the-scenes stuff about the game from its Creative Director, Ken Levine.

One of the most interesting revelations is the fact that the cliff-hanger ending for System Shock 2 wasn't actually intended at all; Levine had plans for something completely different, but due to miscommunications with the team that developed the ending clip, the final video he was handed didn't resemble anything like the script he'd written. Unable to afford the time and resources to send it back to be redone, the team instead squished their story around to match up with the fixed plot of the final FMV.

"Due to miscommunications or differing ideas, a different cinematic video was created from the one that I originally scripted," says Levine. "It had this elaborate sequence where Shodan would attempt to kill you in a double-cross, as this 'cyber stinger' that was in view provided tension of your impending doom." Upon getting his hands on the video for the ending sequence, Levine didn't see anything that he wrote in the script. "We didn't have much to work with. It was like when you look in the cupboard and you're trying to make soup, and you have a bag of salt and couple of pinto beans." Working with fixed assets can be extremely challenging especially with limited time and resources as well as fighting the technology back then. Levine remembers, "We had to write to the assets we had at that point, and all we could do was edit it. We completely ran out of time and that cut scene wasn't the right ending for the game."

There's other fun stuff, like how the transition from the Von Braunn to The Rickenbacker was meant to be a zero-gee level but the technology wasn't feasible so it was dropped, along with Levine's commentary on how "fucking with" the player-- one of System Shock 2's greatest accomplishments, was something that the creative team pushed back against and didn't initially support.

All in all there's a lot of cool stuff in the interview. I've long hoped that an actual third game in the series would be released, paying proper respects to the first two, and just reading this blog entry has me nostalgic to start up yet another play-through.

System Shock 2's Surprise Ending -- for Ken Levine, Anyway [Kotaku]