System Shock 3 Formally Announced Oh Gosh It Is Real
An eyeful and earful of SHODAN
System Shock 3 [official site] is now properly, formally announced with a press release and everything, and, well, I was two-thirds right. First, the basics: the third part of Looking Glass Studios' hallowed sci-fi FPS-RPG series, whose rights were only recently untangled by Night Dive Studios, is being made by OtherSide Entertainment. That's the Underworld Ascendant lot, who were founded by Looking Glass co-founder Paul Neurath and include a few other LGS folks. And... that's mostly all we know. Oh! And Terri Brosius is returning to voice AI antagonist SHODAN, as you can hear in this clip.
"System Shock 3 is currently in the early concept stages of development," OtherSide said in the announcement. That's basically all they have to say about it - as I predicted! They also share that sound clip - a Shock veteran returning, as I predicted (yeah, I know, shh)! And... okay, I had also boldly predicted that they would be crowdfunding it, or announce plans to crowdfund it, so I'm wrong there (for now? I still have my suspicions).
Oh, and OtherSide shared that bit of SHODAN artwork by SS concept artist Robb Waters. They call this "an early peek at the evolving 'next generation' look of the character", which I'm sure is a phrase that'll launch a thousand furious comments.
Now's a good time to revisit Old Man Gillen's lust letter to SHODAN, which ended saying "There's never going to be a System Shock 3. We really should be glad."
"If there's never a System Shock 3, Shodan, in a suitably perverse way, gets the immortality she's chased so desperately through both games. As she is, she's unforgettable. If there was another game... well, Shodan is a villain and villains are entirely unlike heroes. Heroes save the world repeatedly, and each repetition increases their status.
"Every time a villain fails to destroy the world, it lessens them."
Since we learned that, uh, actually Kieron, there is a SS3, so I don't know WHAT you were thinking, he's tweeted "In passing, my solution to the diminishing of SHODAN in a System Shock 3 would be a simple one. You play as SHODAN." Yeah, yeah.
Night Dive do also have a fancied-up remake of the first System Shock on the go.