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" You'd have these moments where you'd think: 'What are we doing? This doesn't look competitive,'" Chey said. System shock 2 enhanced edition full#The motion capture data was full of glitches that couldn't all be cleaned up, for example, leading to characters' hands getting stuck at strange angles. That explains why there are things in the game that aren't that great: We didn't have time to redo it."Ĭhey worried about polish during development. "We were just trying to make it from the very beginning. "We just had to start building the game, because there wasn't any time to prototype," he explains. They had just over a year to play with, Chey recalls, leaving no time to iterate. It wasn't a lot, and they had no choice but to hire junior developers: The many interfaces were all built by 19-year-old Mike Swiderek, who later worked on Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. Irrational got roughly $650,000 to make System Shock 2, just over $1m in today's money. They also remember why, ultimately, it was all worth it. They remember the six-and-a-half-day work weeks, the ending they had to cut, the game-breaking bugs they failed to fix, and wrestling with an unfinished game engine. The human story behind it, as told by Ken Levine and Jonathan Chey, is less glamorous. System shock 2 enhanced edition Pc#20 years later, System Shock 2 is one of the most celebrated PC games of all time. ![]() But it was only the start of the hard work. Just like that System Shock 2 was born and Irrational was pulled back from the abyss. ![]() "I'm pretty sure it was our idea to bring back the System Shock license… 'hey, you guys already have this world, and it was really cool, why don't we use that instead of trying to invent an entirely new franchise here?'" " was just a science-fiction shooter game called Junction Point," he says. The team smelled an opportunity, says Jonathan Chey. And EA, it just so happened, owned the rights to System Shock, which Looking Glass developed in 1994. System shock 2 enhanced edition how to#Irrational, who knew the engine, seemed like a natural fit, and so Looking Glass asked them to come up with an idea for a game.Īfter Irrational built a crude prototype of an RPG-shooter hybrid-Levine says the team mastered how to show it off "just exactly the way where it wouldn't explode"-Looking Glass presented it to EA, which was impressed. Looking Glass had built an engine for Thief: The Dark Project, and he wanted to spread the cost by making other games with it too. It was Looking Glass co-founder Paul Neurath, who threw Irrational a lifeline. Irrational scrambled to create a top-down strategy game to shop to publishers, but most were unwilling to take a risk on it, and those that liked it didn't have enough money to fund the idea. "I figured it was back to graphic design and computer consulting… I thought I'd missed my shot." I'd just got into the industry, I'd quit my dream job to start this thing, and then it was already not working out," he says. They were out of work, and Levine was sure he'd blown it. But shortly after they went independent, the deal fell through. The young, hungry group wanted to test their skills and run their own project, and scored a contract to make the singleplayer portion of FireTeam, an online multiplayer strategy game. The trio had left Thief studio Looking Glass after a wasted 18 months working on a Star Trek: Voyager tie-in that was suddenly aborted, leaving Looking Glass in " financial and creative disarray." It was 1997, and just a few months after Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier founded Irrational Games, it looked like the company was about to collapse. They were all having fun, but I remember thinking my life was over." "I went away with my girlfriend and some friends up to Maine for the weekend. How one phone call saved a tiny new studio and gave the world System Shock 2Ģ0 years later, Irrational Games co-founders Ken Levine and Jonathan Chey on the immersive sim's rollercoaster development. ![]()
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