Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Ken Levine's Take On System Shock 3 And Its Similarities To His Next Project
With the announcement of Otherside Entertainment's upcoming sequel to the beloved System Shock 2, we wanted to check in and see what the lead designer and lead writer of that game, Ken Levine, thought of the news. In an interview for an upcoming episode of The Game Informer Show, Levine had this to say about the prospect of System Shock 3.
“I wish them the best," Levine said. "I have a personal connection to System Shock, [System Shock 2] was the first game I ever shipped. We were completely stumbling around in the dark on that game… so the impact that it had was a complete surprise to us. Without that game, there’s nothing else for us. Nothing would have happened. So I have a deep connection with it... I’m excited, I hope they can figure it out and make a cool game out of it.”
We then asked Levine about leaving the next System Shock in somebody else's hands and whether he would have liked to work on it himself, but he responded by drawing comparisons to his mysterious next project that he says is a first-person sci-fi RPG.
“I’m so deeply involved in the themes of our new thing, our new game is a science-fiction game," Levine said. "It involves themes like artificial intelligence and what it means to be programmed, that you are a thing that was created by programming. That’s a big theme in the new game. And how much agency you have outside of what you are as a piece of programming instructions. So I’m scratching a lot of those itches in the new game already. I don’t really feel a need to go back to touch those characters again, in the same way that I didn’t need to when I made BioShock. Say we would have gotten the rights to System Shock before we did BioShock, there wouldn’t have been an Andrew Ryan, or Big Daddies, or Elizabeth… I do think it’s important to move on and make different things in life.”
To listen to the full interview with Ken Levine, subscribe to The Game Informer Show and stay tuned for Thursday's episode.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
