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[Update] System Shock 3 Announced A Week After Everyone Already Figured It Out
Update: As we've known for six days, System Shock 3 is coming, unfortunately it appears that it's going to be a while. The game is currently in the "early concept stages of development."
A few new details have emerged, though. The game is a partnership between Otherside Entertainment, which owns the rights to future games in the franchise, and Night Dive Studios, which recently purchased the System Shock trademark.
Otherside was founded by Paul Neurath, who was a co-founder of System Shock studio Looking Glass Studios is handling development. Terri Brosius, who played the malicious AI Shodan in the first two games, returns. You can hear a clip of her in the role on the updated teaser site.
Original Story (December 8, 2015):
Shodan, the nefarious computer antagonist of the System Shock series, will apparently be making a return. Otherside Entertainment, which is currently working on the Kickstarted game Underworld Ascendant, appears set to announce the return of the franchise in just over five days.
Otherside was founded by Paul Neurath, who is also a co-founder of Looking Glass Studios, which helped develop the System Shock series. The teaser site, which Otherside points to via its Twitter account (in turn confirming its authenticity) was unraveled by a member of the RPG Codex forum.
User LESS T_T found something in the site’s coding that leads to the image above. You can see it for yourself here.
The System Shock series featured two titles, released in 1994 and 1999. An enhanced edition of the first was recently released by Night Dive studios, which acquired the franchise rights and is also working on a remake of the original game. CEO Stephen Kick recently told Fast Company that there were ongoing discussions about a true sequel.
The System Shock series is known for allowing players to craft their own abilities via branching upgrade trees. This open-ended approach to character skill development was later implemented in the Deus Ex and BioShock franchises.
[Source: Otherside Entertainment via RPG Codex, Ars Technica]
Our Take
While we might not be due another BioShock game for a while, even knowing that a System Shock 3 is in the works is great news. You can pick up the first two games for PC now if you want to see what all of the (well deserved) fuss is about.
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