System Shock 3 Concept Art Preview, Warren Spector Interview
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Warren Spector has made an appearance at a promotional stream by Starbreeze Studios, the publisher of the upcoming System Shock 3. He talked about the game and presented a bunch of colorful concept art. The relevant part starts around the 1:37:00 mark. Check it out:
Additionally, if watching Twitch VODs isn't your thing, Polygon had an opportunity to interview Warren Spector. All the aforementioned concept art can also be found there. An excerpt:
Spector’s return to the series comes more than 23 years after the original System Shock, hailed as an innovative action role-playing game at its time of release. Although he wasn’t involved with System Shock 2, Spector told Polygon that returning to the series after two-plus decades was an easy decision.
“I produced System Shock and played System Shock 2 so I’m pretty familiar with the universe,” Spector said. “And there were some fictional loose ends to explore and tie up. That sounded like fun. Also, SHODAN. You know what I mean?”
SHODAN, the A.I. being that terrorizes the player throughout every System Shock game, is absent from what we saw today. Yet she’ll again play a significant role in System Shock 3, just as Spector told us last August. The game picks up where System Shock 2 left off, when — spoiler alert for the 1999 RPG — SHODAN takes the form of a human woman.
As genre-defining as System Shock 2 and its predecessor were in the 1990s, the concept — “you alone on a space station,” as Spector called it — has come to feel commonplace these days, in the post-BioShock era. The recent release of Prey, which pays obvious homage to System Shock developer Looking Glass Studios in myriad ways, may further point to the genre’s mainstream familiarity.
Now that System Shock’s setting and storyline isn’t quite so unique, is Spector concerned about System Shock 3 failing to stand out among the pack?
“I think having more immersive simulation games out there is all to the good,” said Spector. “Based on what I’ve seen of Prey so far, there are some similarities but I assure you we’re doing stuff that team didn’t do, just as they did stuff we’re not. I’m not worried about people getting confused.”
