Vapourware System Shock 3 by OtherSide Entertainment - taken over by Tencent!

[Roguey]

"Unannounced project"

Fabulously optimistic.

And what's blobka? A specific person or some term of endearment? It sounds like the kind of word someone would use to describe fans of blobbers.

 

[Terenty]

Don't worry guys everybody they talked to are excited beyond belief to fund Warren Spector's next masterpiece, he just cant quite decide which one of them will be granted the honour to do it.

 

[Zep Zepo]

"Unannounced project": Shutting down and filing for bankruptcy.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

Interview from April, posted yesterday for some reason: https://wccftech.com/interview-warren-spector-system-shock-3-deus-ex-trilogy/

Expectedly nothing new about SS3, but brief history of production timeline:

How long have you been working on System Shock 3 now?

WS: A while, that’s for sure. It started out as just me, you know, writing up a bunch of docs, that was about two years ago. And then I brought on my leads, art director, design director, tech director, and then later on a producer, and we sat at my house (one of my houses, I own three houses with a library, and a gallery, and a house I live in). The library had enough space that we set up shop there. And we did some really quick prototyping and wrote a bunch more docs. That was about nine months in, and then we started growing and really entered pre-production. Yeah, so how long we’re working on System Shock 3, that’s about two years. But, really working on the game? No, no, no. Probably about a year, a little more.

To finish up, is there anything that you can tell me about System Shock 3?

WS: Okay. Hear me choose my words carefully. It won’t require prior knowledge of the earlier System Shock games, because we want to grow the audience beyond just the core fans. But if you are a fan of the original games, there’ll be some things in there that I think you’ll find appealing. There were some survivors in the first two games that we don’t talk about too much. So maybe we’ll learn what happened to them. SHODAN is coming back, of course, but this time we’re going to kind of make her a complete character, with believable motivations. And you’ll see her change and grow over time in logical ways. Citadel Station is going to come back from the first game, except maybe not in the way people expect. We’re going to continue to try to capture the vibe, the combination of the shooter with light role-playing and survival horror, and stick with that. Going to tell a story in that traditional System Shock way where there are no living characters, and you have to piece what happened and what you need to do together from video logs and emails and messages from some folks off-site, just like the original. Beyond that, I should probably not say anything.

Also, I think most of these are already known, about a cyberpunk jesus RPG Deus Ex sequel we've never got:

I’m guessing the same answer goes for Deus Ex too?

WS: Deus Ex was a little different, actually. Just to contradict myself completely. When I started thinking about that game, I, planned out is a little too strong, but I had an idea in my head of three games. I wanted to make sure that the world that we’re creating was rich enough and deep enough that they could support many stories. And so I had a trilogy in mind. And we made the first one and it was astonishing because, I’ve said this before, but every detail changed from the time I started thinking about it to the time that the team and I finished it, but it was exactly the game I wanted to make. And then on Deus Ex: Invisible War, the sequel, by the time we got around to working on that, my studio for a variety of reasons, Ion Storm, had grown to the point where we were working on two projects. Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. And so my role, I essentially moved up a level, and said to Harvey Smith, ‘you’re the lead designer on Deus Ex, you know this world inside out, you’re a better designer than I will ever be. You’re going to be the game director on the new Deus Ex game’ and to Randy Smith, ‘you know Thief better than I ever will, you’re a great designer, this is your chance, step up to be the game director on Thief: Deadly Shadows. And I’ll look over your shoulders and nothing’s going to go in the game I don’t know about, I’m gonna review and critique but they’re your games, your teams, go.’ And Harvey, in this case, made a game that had nothing to do with the trilogy I had in mind, and probably for the best. And we never got around to doing the third game, which probably wouldn’t have worked given the way the second game played out from a narrative standpoint. But on Deus Ex, I actually did think through multiple games before we got started.

Is there anything you can tell me about your original trilogy plans? I know it’s been a while.

WS: Yeah, in retrospect, thank God we didn’t do it. It’s kind of stupid. But the interesting, kind of stupid, thing was at the time I was intrigued by the Arthur C. Clarke quote about, you know, ‘science that’s sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.’ And so what I wanted to do was get JC Denton basically ascends to God or Godhead, and in one of the endings in Deus Ex, you can kind of see the roots of that. And I wanted to get him off the planet, to a world where magic really exists. And he’s the ultimate, epitome of science and there’s a world where magic actually works, and what happens when those come into conflict? And thank God we didn’t do that because it’s basically a terrible idea. But that was kind of where I was headed with it. Yeah, but would have destroyed the franchise.

Actually, I’ve always liked something that invokes the biblical.

WS: Biblical stories are powerful. JC Denton, right?

…Oh, I can’t believe I just got that.

WS: Well, there are a variety of reasons why he’s called JC Denton.

Any of those that you can share?

WS: The team had their reasons. And the fact that it’s possible for JC to make big sacrifices at the end, you know, for the sake of mankind. There’s an obvious reference there. But one of my best friends in Austin is a guy named Brad Denton, he’s a wonderful writer. Everybody should go look for Bradley Denton’s work. Blackburn, Lunatics, Laughing Boy, go read these books. But anyway, he’s really the most helpful person in the world. Behind his back, now he’ll know but, behind his back, I call him Helpful Guy. And to myself, when he volunteers for something really crazy I just mutter to myself; ‘Jesus Christ Denton, what are you doing?’ So, JC Denton was kind of an in-joke about that. As I said, the team had their reasons, I had my reasons. It all sort of worked in the context of the game. So JC definitely did.

Bonus #2:

 

[BEvers]

 

[BEvers]

 

[Lutte]

Indeed this is where the cracks show up.. for otherside. Prey is a good game, things otherside and warren touch are condemned to be shit.

 

[anvi]

Guys I'm going to make System Shock 4, please fund me thx! Now I just need a publisher and a team.

 

[Katana1000S]

Guys, because of my peculiar diet I am quite constipated, its nearly ready to pop out after my prescribed laxative ... here it goes yes, yes, is it a boy or is it a girl, is it a proper Ultima Underworld game ... gh ugh, get out why dont you ... ahhh ... looks in toilet bowl ... damn, its a great big fat brown steaming turd ... all is not lost though, will call it System Shock 3, Shodans bowel movement revenge.

Please fund my big brown turd please, pretty sure GoG will back me.

 

[BEvers]

Sounds like continuing development without a publisher is still an option. Perhaps they're considering crowdfunding again?

 

[LESS T_T]

Hey's it's Larry of Nightdive.

I've been wondering the other day, if they ever showed a build of SS3 to Stephen Kick or someone at Nightdive.

Perhaps they're considering crowdfunding again?

Unlikely considering when Warren Spector is strongly against it. (Also even if they do a successful campaign against all odds, it won't be enough.)

 

[Viata]

The funny thing is that if they do a crowdfunding, people would still give money to them. A gamer and his money are soon parted.

 

[Sacibengala]

They're just disgusting. Period. How can anyone still give this assholes money is beyond belief.

 

[ciox]

Well, good luck with the whole "official plan" thing.

 

[LESS T_T]

Hey, another designer from BioWare Austin. He sounds like a level designer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-ammer-0168517/

He's no longer working at Otherside.

Senior Designer
Company Name OtherSide Entertainment
Dates Employed Sep 2018 – Aug 2019
Employment Duration 1 yr

* System Shock 3 [In Development]
 Designed Modular level-construction systems and metrics; worked with Artists to ensure Modular Kits met Design use cases and scalability
 Designed key content-authoring systems such as Plot, Object State Machine, and Interaction; worked with Engineers to implement these systems
 Designed, documented, and constructed several interactivity-focused levels using above Art Kits and content systems

 

[anvi]

They're just disgusting. Period. How can anyone still give this assholes money is beyond belief.

Can anyone give a summary of what happened?

 

[ciox]

They're just disgusting. Period. How can anyone still give this assholes money is beyond belief.

Can anyone give a summary of what happened?

Everything went FUBAR and we're probably looking at Underworld Ascendant 2.

 

[Curratum]

If they do make a new KS pitch, I'm backing at $1 just to tell people in the comments to cancel their pledges because Otherside are a bunch of lying lowlifes.

 

[LESS T_T]

From an article about Nightdive's SS2 EE: https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/12/system-shock-2-enhanced-edition-is-coming-soon/

What about System Shock 3?

Separate from all of this, developer OtherSide Entertainment is still working on System Shock 3. Founder Warren Spector, who was in charge of the original Looking Glass development team, says the game is still coming. The third entry in the series still does not have a release date, though.

 

[vortex]

SS3 could be good if Arkane would help Otherside to make it.

 

[Max Heap]

SS3 could be good if Arkane would help replace Otherside to make it.

There we go.
That makes much more sense.

 

[MasterLobar]

By my count, this is the first Austin-based employee to be fired and the first who solely worked on SS3.

 

[LESS T_T]

We don't know if he got laid off or fired, or left himself.

 

[Misco Jones]

From an article about Nightdive's SS2 EE: https://venturebeat.com/2019/08/12/system-shock-2-enhanced-edition-is-coming-soon/

What about System Shock 3?

Separate from all of this, developer OtherSide Entertainment is still working on System Shock 3. Founder Warren Spector, who was in charge of the original Looking Glass development team, says the game is still coming. The third entry in the series still does not have a release date, though.

Come on, Epic. You know what to do.

 

[MasterLobar]

We don't know if he got laid off or fired, or left himself.

People who quit voluntarily usually have their next job already (else why would they leave) and announce what comes next.



Looks to me very much like OS is kicking out people just to survive a few more weeks so they can kowtow in front of a few more potential SS3 publishers, none of which will be interested, and then shutting down a few weeks later, instead of being honest to their employees and tell them right now that the studio has no future and that they should start looking for a new job now.

Well, anyone with a brain knows this and is searching for new opportunities already.