[Since it’s Space Week, it’s a good time to pull my Edge-commissioned Making Of System Shock 2 feature out of Stasis. The material for this was drawn from the lengthy conversation I had with Ken Levine last year. So, yes, before Bioshock. I’m quite fond of this piece, if only as it reveals the secret origin of the Psychic Monkeys…]
System Shock series
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ZFR
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From Ireland
So I noticed SS2 on GOG got an update. I'm planning on playing this series soon, and I'm one of those purists who'd rather not try any remakes, enhanced versions or fan patches before playing the vanilla original at least once first, no matter how good or necessary they are or how they improve the playing experience.
I was therefore surprised that a 16 year old game is still getting updates, long time after the developer officially stopped working on it. I searched around a bit, but got lost amongst all the information, and other than Wikipedia mentioning GOG's version being a 'Collector's Edition' and the changelog mentioning a mysterious SS2tool, I'm not really sure where I stand. Could anyone give me a TLDR version of how the version I got on GOG would be different from the classic version had I played it back in 1999/2000? As I said I'd rather have mine as close as possible to the original, with any ugly graphics, cumbersome controls and whatnot. Thanks! EDIT: Well, what do you know, I just read a similar thread: https://www.gog.com/forum/system_shock_series/first_time_play_through_ss2_new_update (a) I should read a few threads before posting (b) There seem to be lots of people like this and (c) JeCy's question is not exactly same, so I'd still be grateful for an answer of how GOG's version is different and what's this SS2tool I keep reading about.
Post edited April 05, 2016 by ZFR
This question / problem has been solved by voodoo47
Guter
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From Germany
It's in the sticky thread 'Changelog'
System Shock 2 Changelog for update Patch 2.45 ND (GOG-11) (added 04 April 2016): - additive blending enabled for all explosion effects (makes the explosions NOT look terrible) - enabled FSAA by default (smooth edges) - enabled new mantle (smooth climbing) - enabled buffer limit (reduce lag) - made autosaves and quicksaves NOT overwrite one another (reduces chances of people who forget to save losing progress) - enabled subtitles, fogging and weather effects (may be required by mods or fan missions) made sure all cutscenes are scaled properly - added one dml that makes sure the 'reach Rickenbacker' quest completes properly (dml fixing is usually SS2tool exclusive, but made an exception for this one, as broken quests are a big no-no) - removed the DataPermMods quick modfolder (as this is now a sureproof way of busting your SS2 install - you will have to get the modmanager or SS2tool to mod the game safely)
ZFR
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From Ireland
Guter: It's in the sticky thread 'Changelog'
Yes, I do have that changelog in my library and have read it it, which is the reason I created this thread. My question is: are these the only changes between the 1999 classic and the GOG version? Were there any other changes made before this update (Wikipedia mentions that there were earlier changes for the GOG version to make it 'compatible with modern systems'; did this changes come with graphics improvements, resolution changes, gameplay changes or anything else?)? Does the GOG version include any community-made patches/fixes? What is the SS2tools mentioned in the update?
voodoo47
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From Slovakia
Posted April 05, 2016
System Shock 2 Monkey 3
the GOG build uses the updated Dark Engine (NewDark), that means;
- 32bit color depth (improves textures, especially water and smoke effects) - support for modern resolutions (widescreen and eyefinity) - better performance and stability now the GOG fixes in the last build, adding extra comments; - additive blending enabled for all explosion effects (makes the explosions NOT look terrible - NewDark makes explosions look way too sharp, addblend fixes this) - enabled FSAA by default (smooth edges - check wiki for what FSAA is) - enabled new mantle (smooth climbing - climbing was slightly broken in oldDark, resulting in players falling off edges, and frustration. this reduces that problem to pretty much nothingness) - enabled buffer limit (reduce lag - old engines usually don't like it too much when you let them run wild. this should make things run smoother, without FPS spikes and drops) - made autosaves and quicksaves NOT overwrite one another (reduces chances of people who forget to save losing progress - having one slot for autosave and quicksave is a terrible idea, so unterribled) - enabled subtitles, fogging and weather effects (may be required by mods or fan missions - no more comments required) - made sure all cutscenes are scaled properly (because why wouldn't you want to display them properly, right?) - added one dml that makes sure the 'reach Rickenbacker' quest completes properly (dml fixing is usually SS2tool exclusive, but made an exception for this one, as broken quests are a big no-no - yes it is) - removed the DataPermMods quick modfolder (as this is now a sureproof way of busting your SS2 install - you will have to get the modmanager or SS2tool to mod the game safely - this was a quick, dirty way of allowing users to load mods when the engine got its first update. now that we have a fully working modmanager, everyone should just use that to avoid problems) and now about bugfixes - users can choose from three levels of tuneup nowadays; -GOG build has a few fixes for the most critical orig bugs, like that Rick quest not completing. whatever wasn't critical, was left alone. -SS2tool will apply a set of patches that will also fix some (read: a lot of) less severe issues, like items not flushed to walls or floors, reversed buttons, some objects and systems not working correctly etc - not critical stuff, but still nice to have (again, why wouldn't you want to have properly positioned objects, correct ambients, lights that don't levitate in air etc, right?). -Shock2 Comunity Patch (SCP), plus Fixed Objects and Shock Texture Upgrade - this is the infinity level, now represents a couple of years of polishing of all the orig resources, with every tiny issue fixed, every rough place smoothed out (as far as we are aware). it also uses 32bit lighting, making shadows look really nice (no more 16bit discoloration). Fixed Objects make sure that there are no glitches in the objects (missing polys, z-fighting etc), Shock Texture Upgrade does the same thing with textures (fixes broken ones, replaces some extremely lowres ones with their higher res versions). made by insane people who seek perfection. and while I understand that some people want the 'original experience', my recommendation will always be - always go for number three. you'll get the original experience, just with all the broken, annoying and buggy things removed. and again, why would you not want that?
Post edited April 05, 2016 by voodoo47
ZFR
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From Ireland
Thank you very much for the detailed response!
voodoo47: the GOG build uses the updated Dark Engine (NewDark), that means; Just out of curiosity, what was the highest resolution allowed by the original Dark Engine? Is it possible to switch 32bit color depth off, and stick with the original (16 bit?)?- 32bit color depth (improves textures, especially water and smoke effects) - support for modern resolutions (widescreen and eyefinity) - better performance Is there a video comparing the original Dark with the New Dark?
voodoo47: you'll get the original experience, just with all the broken, annoying and buggy things removed. and again, why would you not want that?
I can give a general answer to this, not specifically to System Shock 2: I've seen a few examples of community-made bug fixes that partially unbalanced the game.Hypothetical example: The innkeper says he'll pay you 100 gold for completing the task, but only gives you 50. Which is the bug? Did the designers meant it to be 50, but forgot to change the text in the dialogue, or meant it 100 but after changing the dialogue forgot to change the amount given? A wrong decision by the bug fixer can make the game easier or more difficult than intended. Maybe the designers removed a second quest that gave you more gold, and as such decided to increase the amount from 50 to 100 and 'fixing' it back to 50 might increase the difficulty. Or conversely maybe they decreased the prices and then lowered the quest reward, and increasing it back to 100 means the game becomes easier. Which is why I'm a bit wary of overzealous bug fixers. That stash of ammo which was inaccessible and fixed by the mod might have been purposely made so as a quick workaround by the designers who had to rush things and didn't have time to properly redo the level. That's the general reason. Not saying System Shock 2 is this way. This is not meant as a criticism for all the excellent work the community does in creating the fixes for all those video games. I personally use a lot of fan-made mods and myself have worked with the Baldur's Gate modding community back in the day. It is however the reason why I'd prefer my very first run to be unmodified. That said, I will do a bit of research about SS2tool and SCP and decide whether to use them or not.
Post edited April 05, 2016 by ZFR
voodoo47
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From Slovakia
max oldDark allowed was 1600*1200, if memory serves. it is possible to enable 16bit in NewDark (see docs), but this is probably not a good idea, modern gpus don't do 16bit well (if at all), and the game will probably look really ugly or be completely broken.
you can read the SS2tool fixes by opening the DML fixup files (misdml folder, in your SS2 folder after you patch up) with a text editor, the fixes are fairly well documented. SCP has a 50+ page readme that documents the fixes and changes, so have fun reading. and as far as the quality is concerned - we've been at this for a very long time now, and we know how to get things done right.
Post edited April 05, 2016 by voodoo47
POLE7645
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From Canada
ZFR: Thank you very much for the detailed response!
voodoo47: the GOG build uses the updated Dark Engine (NewDark), that means; ZFR: Just out of curiosity, what was the highest resolution allowed by the original Dark Engine? Is it possible to switch 32bit color depth off, and stick with the original (16 bit?)?- 32bit color depth (improves textures, especially water and smoke effects) - support for modern resolutions (widescreen and eyefinity) - better performance Is there a video comparing the original Dark with the New Dark?
voodoo47: you'll get the original experience, just with all the broken, annoying and buggy things removed. and again, why would you not want that?
ZFR: I can give a general answer to this, not specifically to System Shock 2: I've seen a few examples of community-made bug fixes that partially unbalanced the game.Hypothetical example: The innkeper says he'll pay you 100 gold for completing the task, but only gives you 50. Which is the bug? Did the designers meant it to be 50, but forgot to change the text in the dialogue, or meant it 100 but after changing the dialogue forgot to change the amount given? A wrong decision by the bug fixer can make the game easier or more difficult than intended. Maybe the designers removed a second quest that gave you more gold, and as such decided to increase the amount from 50 to 100 and 'fixing' it back to 50 might increase the difficulty. Or conversely maybe they decreased the prices and then lowered the quest reward, and increasing it back to 100 means the game becomes easier. Which is why I'm a bit wary of overzealous bug fixers. That stash of ammo which was inaccessible and fixed by the mod might have been purposely made so as a quick workaround by the designers who had to rush things and didn't have time to properly redo the level. That's the general reason. Not saying System Shock 2 is this way. This is not meant as a criticism for all the excellent work the community does in creating the fixes for all those video games. I personally use a lot of fan-made mods and myself have worked with the Baldur's Gate modding community back in the day. It is however the reason why I'd prefer my very first run to be unmodified. That said, I will do a bit of research about SS2tool and SCP and decide whether to use them or not. NewDark has a feature, however, that you absolutely want, purist or not. Compatibility with modern OS and hardware. The original Dark Engine (I know since I used to own a copy of Thief 2 which uses the same engine) has a LOT of issues with multi-core processors and trying to run them on any OS newer than Windows XP would cause the game to crash after a few seconds.
ZFR
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From Ireland
Hunter65536
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From India
- enabled subtitles, fogging and weather effects (may be required by mods or fan missions)
Post edited April 07, 2016 by Hunter65536
ZFR
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From Ireland
- enabled subtitles, fogging and weather effects (may be required by mods or fan missions) System Shock 2 StoryI might be wrong here, but I think the latest patch simply enables the engine to display subtitles (in case a mod or a fan mission needs them) but doesn't add them to the game itself.There might be a separate mod of adding subtitles to the single player mission. Someone more knowledgeable might give you a better answer.
voodoo47
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From Slovakia
Hunter65536
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From India
voodoo47: correct.
Thank you for the reply voodoo47. Downloaded the file in that post, how do I install subs in the game now? Since english is my second language I was having trouble understanding speech in the game.
voodoo47
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From Slovakia
Hunter65536
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From India
voodoo47: should be explained in the zip with the subs.
You're right. Thank you voodoo47! One last question, last time when I was having problems with latest ss2tool installer you suggested v5.3 which worked then but now it isn't working. It's saying that it can't find the sources even though my internet is fine.Edit: The latest one is giving the same problem it gave before. (Stuck at this message 'Sync Exclude list up to date')
Post edited April 09, 2016 by Hunter65536
voodoo47
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From Slovakia
5.3 is not being updated anymore, so if you can't resolve your firewall/connection issues, you will have to do it the hard way - put your SS2 install on a flash drive, patch it on some other computer/connection, and once done, move it back.
if that's not an option, you can always just go with the plain GOG build (the critical stuff is in), install the blue mod manager manually, and load SCP (it has all the SS2tool fixes and more).
Post edited April 09, 2016 by voodoo47
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This is my favourite topic
System Shock series(15 posts)solved(15 posts)solved
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The lights are low. Everyone’s panickedly fighting against a seemingly impossible, oppressive deadline. At every turn there’s a crippling lack of resources. Viewed by any objective criteria, the small inexperienced team doesn’t have the skills to achieve their aims. They’re all crammed into a single room – in fact, half of one, since it’s one room bisected with screens. When you look at where and how Irrational worked on their first game, it’s easy to think of the claustrophobic horror of RPG/Shooter System Shock 2 as a pure product of its environment.
In fact, when looking at their situation in their early years, you begin to wonder why Irrational’s co-founders of Ken Levine, Rob Fermier and Jonathan Chey splintered from Boston’s illustrious and much-missed Looking Glass software in the first place. “Looking Glass was obviously a really impactful experience on me,” Levine says, “It was my first job in the games industry. I’d met a lot of people who I really respected and admired – people whose legacy is more known to the intelligentsia of the gaming field, and is still being felt. I left because despite how talented the people were there, in some ways it more like a university than a games company. There really was a dialogue about advancing the media, but not a lot about making successful products.” Coming from a film-industry background, Levine felt they needed to find a balance between art and commerce. “I thought – probably naively at the time – Hey! I can do that,” Levine says, “I had no idea what that would actually mean, as I was a cocky guy who thought it’d be easy. We went off on our own and very quickly found it was challenging.” Almost fatally so. Their first project, a single-player version of early isometric shooter Fireteam had been canceled, when its publisher decided to concentrate solely on multiplayer. This left Irrational at a loss, until Paul Neurath, head of Looking Glass, called them with an opportunity. While they’d left Looking Glass, they were still on good terms with their previous employers. In fact, their half room was actually buried in a corner of the larger company’s studio.
The bonds of mega evolution. How can the answer be improved? The Bonds of Mega Evolution! Following her grandfather’s orders, Korrina has arrived on Pomace Mountain for some special training with Mabel, whose partner Mawile can Mega Evolve, and our heroes are along for the adventure. 33 - The Bonds of Mega Evolution! 31,208 views. PREV EPISODE NEXT EPISODE. More from this season. XY 47 - A Campus Reunion! XY 36 - The Cave of Mirrors! XY 46 - Dreaming a Performer's Dream! XY 27 - The Bonds of Evolution! XY 14 - Seeking Shelter From the Storm!
Neurath’s offer was incredibly open. Looking Glass had, in developing Thief: The Dark Project, developed their own in-house engine. All of Irrational were experienced with it, having all worked on Thief. Why not make a game with it with us? Any game you fancy, really. “We immediately started designing,” Levine says, “The three partners sat down, and we ended up with a game design which was basically our design for Shock 2, but in a totally different world. It was a kind of Heart of Darkness story, with a military commander gone crazy and your mission was to go to this crazy space-ship and assassinate him.”. This was pitched around various publishers. The one who bit was Electronic Arts, who – through their purchase of Origin – were the possessor of the System Shock IP. They suggested that the game could, in fact, be System Shock 2. “And we said… um… sure,” Levine laughs, “I rewrote the story and changed a few of the things, but the game design never changed.”
It was a rare opportunity. The original System Shock was one of the games which made Levine want to move into the games industry in the first place. What made it so special? “The feeling of being in a real place,” Levine says, “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 here? That’s a really good storytelling mechanism.” Austin Grossman and Doug Church original idea from Shock was something Irrational expanded in their sequel. “In Shock 1 you were a specific guy, so had a backstory,” Levine says, “With Shock 2, I really started you out with the classic “you wake up with amnesia”.”
Abstract techniques and settings weren’t all the Shock license gave them. It gave Irrational access to one of videogames’ most startling antagonists, the hubristic Artificial Intelligence SHODAN. In the first System Shock, she frustrated and mocked the player at every turn, a rare case of the primary antagonist in a videogame being an almost constant presence. “My job was to try and work out how to present SHODAN in a fresh way to the player,” Levine recalls, “They’ve encountered her in the first game, and if she just says the same things she did then in the second, why is it Shock 2? Why isn’t it Shock 1.5?” The resulting notion was to team up SHODAN with the player as an ally. An uncomfortable, prickly ally, but an ally nevertheless. “That was pretty daring for the time,” Levine talks of the initial appearance of SHODAN, “Villains only appeared in cut-scenes, do their thing and then disappear when you jump on their head three times. It was really fun to try and do something a bit more sophisticated. That twist at the beginning- even how she was introduced to you – was an important part of continuing her character and making sure the player knew what they were dealing with.”
In the working partnership with Looking Glass, Irrational provided the design, art and programming, while their old company provided the Dark Engine’s technology base and the services of their Quality Assurance team. Looking Glass also provided other talents, including their Sound maestro Eric Brosius, (who has been involved in everything from Thief to Guitar Hero). His work on System Shock 2 is particularly memorable. “One of the reasons he creates such powerful soundscapes is that he creates a soundspace which has a bit of ambiguity to it,” Levine argues, “You can’t identify every single thing you can hear. Sounds, voices, things people are saying, things you can’t hear that are of unclear meaning…. That creates a great deal of tension. It adds another element of mystery, another element of suspense.” Sound is undoubtedly one of System Shock 2’s highpoints, with Designer, Writer and wife of Eric, Terri Brosius reprising her role as SHODAN, sitting alongside a host of memorable roles, from mutants to robots to… psionic monkeys?
The latter, while one of the most fondly remembered of the game’s cast, were actually an fortuitous accident. Finishing a motion-capture session two hours early , Levine was bullied by Jon Chey into just doing something to justify the time they’d paid for . “So I said [to the motion capture actor]… do monkey motions,” Levine says, “We had no monkeys in the game but we did it anyway”. These assets had to find a home, and Levine hit on the idea of lab-experimented apes, gaining sentience and being justifiably annoyed about their treatment at their hand of man. “All those story elements we had to back-solve. I find I tend to write best in those situations, when I have a constraint set already.” Levine says, “I have these psychic monkeys… so I had to work out how and why, in a way which wasn’t ridiculous and hopefully kinda scary. When my back to a wall, I tend to work better”. Not that everyone saw the appeal of Psychic monkeys originally. “Everyone else was “Dude – you’re fucking insane. We’re not having monkeys in the game”,” Levine laughs.
That was about as easy as the development got. Every element was problematic. “No time. No money. I had no experience,” Levine states, “I’d never shipped a game before that.” In fact, of the three founders, only Chey had actually done so. “I think that only one or two people on the /team/ had shipped a game before,” Levine says, “That was a blessing and a curse. We had no idea what we were doing in some ways, but we also had no idea what we couldn’t do. That’s why the game feels innovative to some degree, as we were figuring it out as we went along.” It wasn’t just the team that was inexperienced. The Dark Engine itself was far from finished technology, as Shock 2 was well underway before Thief came out. “It was still pretty broken,” Ken says, “It ended up giving us a lot of powerful things, but it constrained us in a lot of ways.” For example, the oft-ridiculed low-polygon models were resulting from having to make a conservative guess of what the engine would definitely be able to manage and still be playable. There was also some misplaced effort, in creating the co-op multiplayer which was patched into the game post release. “It was a real distraction,” Levine laments, “There are a number of people who really enjoyed it but the amount of time versus the amount of reward for that versus what we could have done on the rest of the game… I don’t think it was a win. The single player game would have been much, much, much more stronger if we had that time back.”
Not that it hurt Shock 2’s critical standing; despite slender sales (“I don’t know the exact figures, but It certainly wasn’t a blockbuster.”) its only grown in people’s minds since, a key influence in people’s anticipation for Irrational’s Bioshock. “When I first did it, people would just look at me unless they were the intelligentsia of the intelligentsia of the game industry,” Levine says, “But now there’s so many people who know it. I’d imagine if the game was still available commercially, it’ll still be selling at this point. It’ll probably have doubled in sales – and would probably have been a small success at that point. It may have made money because it was so cheap to produce.”.
Away from the matters of its financial performance, in terms of why it lingers in the imagination, Levine settles on the immaterial. Despite all the problems of its development, Shock 2 engaged with the imagination. “I think it has an atmosphere. Not a lot of games have atmosphere, and that really draws people.” Levine argues, “It’s not a Lord of the Rings atmosphere, and I think people are drawn to that.”
You were the world's greatest hacker, at least until you were caught during one of your famous break-ins. Now the TriOptimum Corporation secretly requests your services in return for your freedom. Your task? To hack into the corporate research facility named Citadel. In order to assist you, Vice President Edward Diego has agreed to pay for a special neural implant.
The drawback for such an operation is that it takes six months to heal. When you finally awaken from your comatose state, it seems the date isn't the only thing that has changed. Citadel is now home to cyborgs, security robots, and hideous mutants under the control of SHODAN (the Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network). You're the only one who can stop it!
System Shock is a first-person action adventure that offers a true 3D environment complete with variable gravity. Looking through the heads-up-display of your new visual cortex, you'll be able to plug into computers and download important data. This will be essential in order for you to bypass the secured areas and defenses set up by SHODAN.
Don't stay online too long -- SHODAN will be able to detect your presence in cyberspace and send robots to your location! In order to survive, you'll need to find various weapons, dermal patches and hardware attachments at different points within Citadel. This enhanced CD version offers full speech for all characters while you listen to logs, e-mail and video mail across multiple terminals.
The year is 2072. A hacker from a Saturn colony breaks into computer system of TriOptimum Corporation and gets arrested. He is taken to the Citadel Station, where Edward Diego, a TriOptimum executive, offers to drop all charges against the hacker, as well as grant him a valuable neural implant, if he agrees to hack into SHODAN (Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network) , the artificial intelligence that controls the station. The hacker removes the AI's ethical constraints and undergoes the promised implant surgery, after which he is put into a six-month healing coma. The hacker awakens into a horrifying reality: with her ethical restrictions removed, SHODAN took control over the station, reprogrammed all robots and machines to suit her needs, and disposed of the crew members by either transforming them into mutants and cyborgs, or killing them outright. Rebecca Lansing, a TriOptimum counter-terrorism consultant, contacts the hacker and informs him of an even more terrifying possible future: SHODAN's plan involves using the station's mining lasers to annihilate all life on Earth. The hacker must explore and traverse the desolate corridors and rooms of the large space station, fighting SHODAN's minions on his way to thwart her maniacal design.
System Shock is a first-person shooter with puzzle-solving and light role-playing elements. The gameplay incorporates gradual exploration of the Citadel's ten levels, interaction with the environment, problem-solving, fulfilling objectives, and combat.
On his way the hacker encounters numerous enemies - robots, cyborgs and mutants, all of which can be fought back with a variety of weapons. Some of the weapons use ammo, while other have infinite ammo and instead draw on electric energy. Some weapons are more effective on certain foes - e.g. the dart gun only works on organic enemies, while the magpulse is best used against robots. Once killed, the enemies can be searched for ammo and other items. The player can also find items in crates, cabinets, corpses or just lying around on the ground. Apart from weapons and ammo, the player can find patches (such as medical patches, which replenish the hero's health; berserk patches, which temporarily increase his strength but cause hallucinations; detox patches, which remove the harmful effects of radiation and biohazard; etc.), grenades of various kinds (EMP grenades are effective against robots, gas grenades are good for mutants, land mines can be used to set traps, etc.), battery packs for replenishing electricity, first aid kits for restoring health, and others. Thanks to the hacker's implant he is able to install various pieces of hardware into his body, such as a booster which makes him go faster, or a head lantern to bright up dark areas. As the player progresses in the game, higher versions of existing hardware are found, which are more effective and useful. However, most hardware uses up electric energy while it is active. At some places in the game, the player has to find a wall-mounted 'cyberjack' to go into cyberspace in order to find helpful data, remotely open doors or unlock sealed areas, or give himself clearance to access off-limits areas. Cyberspace is represented as a 3-D wireframe place, where the protagonist floats around freely in three dimensions, shoots hostile cyber-guards with phasers, and collects files represented as colorful cubes. The story of System Shock is mostly told through e-mail messages the protagonist received, and electronic diaries (logs) left by various characters (as well as SHODAN herself), which are scattered around the space station. The game features separate adjustable difficulty settings for combat, mission objectives and puzzles. The CD version of the game includes full speech for e-mails and logs, as well as higher-resolution, more detailed graphics.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
This game has been set up to work on modern Windows (10/8/7/Vista/XP 64/32-bit) computers without problems. Please choose Download - Easy Setup (72.0 MB).This game has been set up to work on modern Windows (10/8/7/Vista/XP 64/32-bit) computers without problems. Please choose Download - Easy Setup (213 MB).
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The lights are low. Everyone’s panickedly fighting against a seemingly impossible, oppressive deadline. At every turn there’s a crippling lack of resources. Viewed by any objective criteria, the small inexperienced team doesn’t have the skills to achieve their aims. They’re all crammed into a single room – in fact, half of one, since it’s one room bisected with screens. When you look at where and how Irrational worked on their first game, it’s easy to think of the claustrophobic horror of RPG/Shooter System Shock 2 as a pure product of its environment.
In fact, when looking at their situation in their early years, you begin to wonder why Irrational’s co-founders of Ken Levine, Rob Fermier and Jonathan Chey splintered from Boston’s illustrious and much-missed Looking Glass software in the first place. “Looking Glass was obviously a really impactful experience on me,” Levine says, “It was my first job in the games industry. I’d met a lot of people who I really respected and admired – people whose legacy is more known to the intelligentsia of the gaming field, and is still being felt. I left because despite how talented the people were there, in some ways it more like a university than a games company. There really was a dialogue about advancing the media, but not a lot about making successful products.” Coming from a film-industry background, Levine felt they needed to find a balance between art and commerce. “I thought – probably naively at the time – Hey! I can do that,” Levine says, “I had no idea what that would actually mean, as I was a cocky guy who thought it’d be easy. We went off on our own and very quickly found it was challenging.” Almost fatally so. Their first project, a single-player version of early isometric shooter Fireteam had been canceled, when its publisher decided to concentrate solely on multiplayer. This left Irrational at a loss, until Paul Neurath, head of Looking Glass, called them with an opportunity. While they’d left Looking Glass, they were still on good terms with their previous employers. In fact, their half room was actually buried in a corner of the larger company’s studio.
Neurath’s offer was incredibly open. Looking Glass had, in developing Thief: The Dark Project, developed their own in-house engine. All of Irrational were experienced with it, having all worked on Thief. Why not make a game with it with us? Any game you fancy, really. “We immediately started designing,” Levine says, “The three partners sat down, and we ended up with a game design which was basically our design for Shock 2, but in a totally different world. It was a kind of Heart of Darkness story, with a military commander gone crazy and your mission was to go to this crazy space-ship and assassinate him.”. This was pitched around various publishers. The one who bit was Electronic Arts, who – through their purchase of Origin – were the possessor of the System Shock IP. They suggested that the game could, in fact, be System Shock 2. “And we said… um… sure,” Levine laughs, “I rewrote the story and changed a few of the things, but the game design never changed.”
It was a rare opportunity. The original System Shock was one of the games which made Levine want to move into the games industry in the first place. What made it so special? “The feeling of being in a real place,” Levine says, “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 here? That’s a really good storytelling mechanism.” Austin Grossman and Doug Church original idea from Shock was something Irrational expanded in their sequel. “In Shock 1 you were a specific guy, so had a backstory,” Levine says, “With Shock 2, I really started you out with the classic “you wake up with amnesia”.”
Abstract techniques and settings weren’t all the Shock license gave them. Shadow of mordor mods reddit. It gave Irrational access to one of videogames’ most startling antagonists, the hubristic Artificial Intelligence SHODAN. In the first System Shock, she frustrated and mocked the player at every turn, a rare case of the primary antagonist in a videogame being an almost constant presence. “My job was to try and work out how to present SHODAN in a fresh way to the player,” Levine recalls, “They’ve encountered her in the first game, and if she just says the same things she did then in the second, why is it Shock 2? Why isn’t it Shock 1.5?” The resulting notion was to team up SHODAN with the player as an ally. An uncomfortable, prickly ally, but an ally nevertheless. “That was pretty daring for the time,” Levine talks of the initial appearance of SHODAN, “Villains only appeared in cut-scenes, do their thing and then disappear when you jump on their head three times. It was really fun to try and do something a bit more sophisticated. That twist at the beginning- even how she was introduced to you – was an important part of continuing her character and making sure the player knew what they were dealing with.”
In the working partnership with Looking Glass, Irrational provided the design, art and programming, while their old company provided the Dark Engine’s technology base and the services of their Quality Assurance team. Looking Glass also provided other talents, including their Sound maestro Eric Brosius, (who has been involved in everything from Thief to Guitar Hero). His work on System Shock 2 is particularly memorable. “One of the reasons he creates such powerful soundscapes is that he creates a soundspace which has a bit of ambiguity to it,” Levine argues, “You can’t identify every single thing you can hear. Sounds, voices, things people are saying, things you can’t hear that are of unclear meaning…. That creates a great deal of tension. It adds another element of mystery, another element of suspense.” Sound is undoubtedly one of System Shock 2’s highpoints, with Designer, Writer and wife of Eric, Terri Brosius reprising her role as SHODAN, sitting alongside a host of memorable roles, from mutants to robots to… psionic monkeys?
The latter, while one of the most fondly remembered of the game’s cast, were actually an fortuitous accident. Finishing a motion-capture session two hours early , Levine was bullied by Jon Chey into just doing something to justify the time they’d paid for . “So I said [to the motion capture actor]… do monkey motions,” Levine says, “We had no monkeys in the game but we did it anyway”. These assets had to find a home, and Levine hit on the idea of lab-experimented apes, gaining sentience and being justifiably annoyed about their treatment at their hand of man. “All those story elements we had to back-solve. I find I tend to write best in those situations, when I have a constraint set already.” Levine says, “I have these psychic monkeys… so I had to work out how and why, in a way which wasn’t ridiculous and hopefully kinda scary. When my back to a wall, I tend to work better”. Not that everyone saw the appeal of Psychic monkeys originally. “Everyone else was “Dude – you’re fucking insane. We’re not having monkeys in the game”,” Levine laughs.
That was about as easy as the development got. Every element was problematic. “No time. No money. I had no experience,” Levine states, “I’d never shipped a game before that.” In fact, of the three founders, only Chey had actually done so. “I think that only one or two people on the /team/ had shipped a game before,” Levine says, “That was a blessing and a curse. We had no idea what we were doing in some ways, but we also had no idea what we couldn’t do. That’s why the game feels innovative to some degree, as we were figuring it out as we went along.” It wasn’t just the team that was inexperienced. The Dark Engine itself was far from finished technology, as Shock 2 was well underway before Thief came out. “It was still pretty broken,” Ken says, “It ended up giving us a lot of powerful things, but it constrained us in a lot of ways.” For example, the oft-ridiculed low-polygon models were resulting from having to make a conservative guess of what the engine would definitely be able to manage and still be playable. There was also some misplaced effort, in creating the co-op multiplayer which was patched into the game post release. “It was a real distraction,” Levine laments, “There are a number of people who really enjoyed it but the amount of time versus the amount of reward for that versus what we could have done on the rest of the game… I don’t think it was a win. The single player game would have been much, much, much more stronger if we had that time back.”
Not that it hurt Shock 2’s critical standing; despite slender sales (“I don’t know the exact figures, but It certainly wasn’t a blockbuster.”) its only grown in people’s minds since, a key influence in people’s anticipation for Irrational’s Bioshock. “When I first did it, people would just look at me unless they were the intelligentsia of the intelligentsia of the game industry,” Levine says, “But now there’s so many people who know it. I’d imagine if the game was still available commercially, it’ll still be selling at this point. It’ll probably have doubled in sales – and would probably have been a small success at that point. It may have made money because it was so cheap to produce.”.
Away from the matters of its financial performance, in terms of why it lingers in the imagination, Levine settles on the immaterial. Despite all the problems of its development, Shock 2 engaged with the imagination. “I think it has an atmosphere. Not a lot of games have atmosphere, and that really draws people.” Levine argues, “It’s not a Lord of the Rings atmosphere, and I think people are drawn to that.”
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