System Shock 2

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System Shock 2
Sshock2-logo.jpg
Studio United StatesUnited States Irrational Games Looking Glass Studios
United StatesUnited States
Publisher United StatesUnited States Electronic Arts Night Dive Studios
United StatesUnited States
Senior Developer Jonathan Chey (Project Director)
Ken Levine (Lead Designer)
Gareth Hinds (Lead Artist)
composer Eric Brosius, Josh Randall, Ramin Djawadi
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 Microsoft Windows: August 11, 1999 February 13, 2013 macOS: June 18, 2013 Linux: April 1, 2014
world
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platform Windows , macOS , Linux
Game engine Modified dark engine
genre First person shooter , survival horror , action RPG
Subject Science fiction , isolation
Game mode Single player , multiplayer
control Keyboard , mouse , joystick
system advantages
preconditions		 Windows 95 or newer, Pentium or AMD K6 200 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX 6, high-color 4 MB graphics card, 660 MB storage space
medium CD-ROM , download
language German
Current version v2.3 (1999)
v2.46 (2017, community patch )
Age rating
USK approved from 16
information The German version contains green instead of red blood and a dead body has been removed from the game.

System Shock 2 is a computer game released in August 1999 and the sequel to System Shock from 1994. The action role-playing game with survival horror elements was developed by the Irrational Games studio , which was founded by Ken Levine former employees of Looking Glass Studios has been. The sequel continues the plot of the first part. System Shock 2 earned critical acclaim and is an indirect predecessor of the BioShock published by Levine and Irrational Games in 2007 . System Shock 2 is also considered to be an important influence on the development of the Prey , which was released in 2017 .

action

System Shock 2 is set in the year 2114, 42 years after the events of its predecessor, on board the faster than light spaceship Von Braun . Five months after the ship's departure from Earth, the crew is on the brink of civil war between the crew of the Von Braun and the soldiers of the UNN Rickenbacker , a space cruiser attached to the main ship. Before the situation can worsen, the ships receive a foreign signal from the surface of the planet Tau Ceti 5. An exploration team is psychologically absorbed by the worm-like beings there and finally brings them on board the Von Braun . The player, a UNN soldier, is equipped with cybernetic implants and wakes up from a cryogenic sleep a few days after the events on the Von Braun . In the meantime, the strange annelids, who now call themselves “The Many”, have assimilated the crew and taken over the ship. The player gradually explores the incidents of the last few days and discovers to what extent the artificial intelligence SHODAN is involved in the situation.

Gameplay

Different character classes are available for the character controlled in the first person perspective : Navy (weapons specialist / fighter), Navy officer (technology expert / hacker) and secret service agent ( psi ). The classes differ essentially in their basic skills. The character is further differentiated through participation in three “campaigns”, training phases that add or strengthen individual skills. In addition, various upgrade modules (the currency of character development) are distributed in the game, which can be invested in skills at upgrade stations, whereby skills of another character class can also be learned. Nanites, the game's second currency, can be used to purchase items such as much-needed ammunition from replicators.

The feeling of loneliness already generated in the predecessor, the terrifying opponents and the harmony of shuffling monsters and unidentifiable noises from Von Braun create a threatening atmosphere. Game elements such as the constant shortage of ammunition and the possibility that the weapons wear out with increasing use are further elements that make the game a representative of survival horror .

development

The game was developed by Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games under the direction of Ken Levine , co-founder of Irrational Games, who was the lead writer and designer of the title. The game was produced by Looking Glass Studios and Electronic Arts . The development budget was $ 1.7 million. The graphics have been revised and the controls and the user interface have been adapted to the established first-person shooter control scheme. In contrast to its predecessor, System Shock 2 can be played cooperatively with multiple players over the network or the Internet (provided that Patch 2.3 is installed). Furthermore, there are various community patches that have set themselves the goal of polishing up the graphics of the now quite old game. Also, due to a bug in the distribution of a developer SDK, the Dreamcast source code for the Dark Engine, on which System Shock 2 is based, was unintentionally available to the public . In September 2012 a large unofficial update of the dark engine with patch v2.4 became available which retrofitted missing support for modern graphics and sound hardware and operating systems, probably based on the leaked Dreamcast source code .

technology

The game's graphics engine is based on a slightly improved graphics framework from the Thief (Dark Engine) game, also produced by Looking Glass and released in 1998.

reception

System Shock 2 was received mostly positively by the press and criticism, with Metacritic.com it scored 92 out of 100 points. The US online magazine IGN voted it 13th of the 25 best games of all time in 2007.

Awards:

  • PC Game of the Year - USA Today (1999)
  • Best Action Game & Game of the Year - CNET (1999)
  • Game of the Year - Game Revolution (1999)
  • Game of the Year - Computer Games Online (1999)
  • RPG of the Year - PC Gamer (1999)
  • Game of the Year - Evil Avatar (1999)
  • Game of the Year - Intelligamer (1999)
  • RPG of the Year - GameSpy (1999)
  • RPG of the Year - Games Domain (1999)
  • Adventure Game of the Year - Gone Gold (1999)
  • Game of the Year - Glide Underground (1999)
  • Single Player Game of the Year - PC Accelerator (1999)
  • Best Genre Bender - GameSpy (1999)
  • 5th place Best Game of All Time - PC Gamer (1999)

Despite the great critical acclaim, the sales figures fell short of expectations, a year after publication, sales were 58,000 copies.

Important characters in the game

  • SHODAN: The artificial intelligence SHODAN survived the events of the first part and uses the player to act against their own creation. She secretly pursues her own goals. The name stands for Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network ("perceptual hyper-optimized data access network").
  • The Many ( The Many ): A biological collective that emerged from SHODANs experiments in the space station Citadel. After they have infiltrated the Von Braun, they rebel against their former creator and want to use the ship to spread across the entire galaxy. Initially only annelid-like beings, they go through an evolution and continue to develop with the help of human host bodies .
  • Xerxes 8933A / A: Von Braun's on-board computer. In many areas, not as mature as SHODAN, the AI ​​is being reprogrammed by the infected Von Braun technicians and is now working against the former occupation.
  • William Badford Diego: Captain of the UNN Rickenbacker and son of Edward Diego. After the exploration team discovered the foreign creatures, he gave Korenchkin a free hand to bring them on board the Von Braun . Later he is infected and part of the crowd, but then decides against them, which seals his death.
  • Anatoly Korenchkin: Head of Von Braun and Head of TriOptimum. Since his top priority is the well-being of the group, he lets himself be blinded by the sensation of a first contact and brings the Annelids on board the ship despite all the danger. From the beginning he succumbs to the reputation of the crowd and mutates into a psi reaver, only to be defeated by the player in the end.
  • Dr. Marie Delacroix: Von Braun's chief engineer and inventor of hyperspace propulsion. The scientist, skeptical of the mission from the start, sided with SHODAN after the Von Braun invasion, only to be betrayed by her later. At the end of the game, it is she who reveals SHODAN's true plans to the player and gives him the final vital information.
  • Dr. Janice Polito: Scientist on the Von Braun . She decrypts the AI ​​fragment from Tau Ceti 5 and thus unwittingly helps SHODAN to penetrate the ship's on-board computers. She leads the player through Von Braun up to the operations deck, in fact SHODAN only uses her picture to gain the player's trust, since she is long dead.
  • Spaceship Von Braun : The first superlight spaceship in history. The Von Braun has six decks: A technique deck, a research deck and an infirmary, a deck for hydroponics , an operation deck, a leisure deck and the command deck. Each deck has different sections that are connected by bulkheads. Access to decks 1 to 5 is via a central main elevator, access to deck 6 (Command) is only possible from a special elevator from deck 5. Since the Von Braun is a pure research ship, it has neither weapon systems nor soldiers. The spaceship is named after the German space pioneer Wernher von Braun .
  • Spaceship UNN Rickenbacker : Heavy space cruiser. Since the UNN does not want the mission to be carried out entirely without military involvement, the Rickenbacker is connected to the Von Braun via a series of docking mechanisms. The ship has its own crew, independent of Von Braun , and has a considerable arsenal. Compared to the mother ship, the Rickenbacker is much smaller. The spaceship is named after Eddie Rickenbacker , the most successful American fighter pilot in World War I.

Trademark situation and republication

The rights of the brand have been split. The naming rights to System Shock were for a long time with Publisher Electronic Arts , which after a renewal in 2006 let them expire in 2007. The development rights, however, fell to an insurance company after Looking Glass Studios was dissolved. Both rights would be necessary for another part of the series. An indirect successor to System Shock is the BioShock developed by Irrational Games also under the direction of Ken Levine , which was released in August 2007 for Xbox 360 and Windows, and in October 2008 for PlayStation 3 . The lead programmer described BioShock as a mix of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , Doom 3, and System Shock 2 .

After it was not possible to legally acquire the game for several years due to the complicated legal situation, the company Night Dive Studios, founded at the end of 2012, announced that it had obtained the rights to digitally distribute the game. The game was first offered again on February 14, 2013 on the online distribution platform GOG.com , with other providers to follow. Since the new release, the game can also be played on Mac OS and, since 2014, also on Linux.

successor

In December 2015, the indie studio OtherSide Entertainment announced the production of the official successor System Shock 3 . Warren Spector is in charge of development, Levine is no longer involved. The third part ties in seamlessly with the plot of the predecessor. System Shock 3 was supposed to be released by Swedish publisher Starbreeze Studios , but the company sold the distribution rights back to the developers in 2019. In May 2020 it became known that the Chinese company Tencent is actively involved in the production of System Shock 3 . Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were announced as platforms in 2017 . In the course of development, OtherSide Entertainment switched from Unity Engine to Unreal Engine 4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IGN editorial team: Shock 2 2.0 . In: IGN . September 17, 1999. Retrieved February 16, 2008.
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ Section report System Shock 2 at schnittberichte.com
  4. ↑ "System Shock 3 is coming!" - Nonsense, of course I mean "Prey is coming!" at eurogamer.de, accessed on June 19, 2017
  5. ^ A b Ahead of its time: The history of Looking Glass
  6. ↑ SS2 Kolya SS2Tool v4.4 ( English ) In: systemshock.org . October 12, 2012. Archived from the original on July 28, 2013. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 16, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.systemshock.org
  7. ↑ Quintin Smith: Dark Engine Source Code Found In A Bag ( English ) In: Rock, Paper, Shotgun . December 14, 2010. Retrieved April 15, 2011: “As of this weekend, Christmas has come early for the Through the Looking Glass community. A CD's been discovered containing the source code for the Dark Engine, aka the engine used by Thief, Thief II and System Shock 2 (not to mention Irrational and Looking Glass' canceled cold war spy game Deep Cover). "
  8. ↑ “Le Corbeau”: Thief 2 V1.21 & System Shock 2 V2.42 ( English ) September 25, 2012. Accessed on November 10, 2012: “This is an unofficial patch for System Shock 2 (SS2) which updates the game from v2.3 to v2.42, providing improved support for modern hardware and correcting many known bugs. "
  9. ↑ System Shock 2 PC ( English ) In: Metacritic . Retrieved May 16, 2011.
  10. ↑ Dan Adams, Steve Butts, Charles Onyett: Top 25 PC Games of All Time - Dear Lord, what have we gotten ourselves into? ( English ) In: IGN . March 16, 2007. Retrieved May 16, 2011: "# 13 System Shock 2"
  11. ↑ Brendan Sinclair: EA files System Shock trademark ( English ) In: GameSpot . January 9, 2006. Retrieved November 10, 2012.
  12. ↑ g4tv staff: The Lost History of System Shock ( English ) In: g4tv.com . May 30, 2011. Retrieved May 30, 2012: “ Looking Glass Studios closed in 2000, a year after System Shock 2's release, and the copyright to the series went into the hands of an insurance company. That left EA with only the System Shock name, but no actual development rights. "
  13. ^ Adam Smith: Many Questions: System Shock 2 Comes To GOG. In: Rock, Paper, Shotgun. February 13, 2013, accessed February 13, 2013 .
  14. ↑ System Shock 2 on gog.com
  15. ↑ Craig Pearson: Sudo Shock: System Shock 2 Now On Linux. In: Rock, Paper, Shotgun. April 10, 2014, accessed June 26, 2014 .
  16. ↑ System Shock 3 - Officially announced, first details on GameStar.de , date: December 14, 2015 (accessed on February 19, 2016)
  17. ↑ Warren Spector's sure System Shock 3 will stand out from the pack on polygon.com, accessed June 20, 2017
  18. ↑ Finally certainty: This is what it says about a console version on gameswelt.de, accessed on June 19, 2017
  19. ↑ System Shock 3 - Starbreeze sells distribution rights back to OtherSide Entertainment on gamestar.de (accessed August 13, 2018)
  20. ↑ Tencent officially takes control of System Shock 3 on pcgamer.com (accessed August 13, 2020)
  21. ↑ System Shock 3 is coming to consoles, thanks to new publisher on polygon.com (accessed August 13, 2020)