Welcome back to Citadel Station. We hope your somnolent healing stage went well.
A couple of months ago, Night Dive Studios announced the release of System Shock: Enhanced Edition, a remastered version of the underwear-saturatingly scary 1994 original, and we were all very afraid. The original System Shock is fantastic, and I love it dearly, but I honestly don’t think I want to play it again. Imagine all the most unnerving bits of the original BioShock, then play them through a grainy lo-fi filter, and you’re just starting to approach how unsettling System Shock could be.
Who are you? My cameras and probes scan your body, but you do not match any employee file. When my cyborgs bring you to an electrified interrogation bench, I will have your secrets and you will learn more about pain than you ever wanted to know.
Imagine my horror, then, when just last week OtherSide Entertainment released a teaser site, with what looked suspiciously like the System Shock font, a number three, and an ominous countdown. There are very few surprise teasers that stay hidden right up to the moment of release, and no sooner had the teaser been posted, some enterprising individuals had found the existence of a System Shock 3 logo.
Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
Today the countdown has completed, and has indeed confirmed the existence of System Shock 3. The years of wrangling and negotiations – due to OtherSide owning the rights to produce any further games in the series, but Night Dive owning the trademark name – are over, and System Shock 3 is coming.
I see there’s still an insect loose in my station.
We don’t know much about System Shock 3 yet, other than some of the original crew are back:
- Lead concept artist Robb Waters, who worked on both previous System Shock games and designed SHODAN.
- Nate Wells, a senior artist on System Shock 2.
- Paul Neurath, veteran designer and founder of Looking Glass Studios, who worked on System Shock 2 alongside Irrational Games.
- And last but certainly not least, voice actress Terri Brosius – the voice of SHODAN. And my nightmares.
And we’re treated to a little snippet of Brosius as malevolent artificial intelligence SHODAN on the System Shock 3 teaser site. Sleep well, everybody.
Did you think I’d forgotten you, insect?
