There was a lot going on in System Shock. Trapped on a space station which had been taken over by SHODAN, its now-homicidal AI, your task was to explore its tightly wound decks, fight cyborgs, solve puzzles, and envelop yourself in cyberspace, in order to stop it firing a mining laser on Earth. System Shock, after all, had transposed Ultima Underworld’s pioneering fully 3D first-person roleplaying to a sci-fi setting only a year after Doom’s release. "It was trying to innovate on almost every front, whereas we kept a lot of the core principles, and then layered more conventional RPG systems on top." "System Shock was maybe trying to be a bit cleverer than we were," says Chey. And they all agreed on a very clear vision for what they wanted to make: a worthy follow-up to the original System Shock but with a stronger story and a greater focus on character building and mechanical progression. We certainly didn’t have expectations about producing something that people would really enjoy, though of course you’re always hoping for the best." Character-buildingīut the team worked well together, dividing up responsibilities so that Chey managed the project, Levine was in charge of design and story, and Fermier was in charge of technology. "So most of the time we were just trying to stay afloat, and to come up with good ideas. "The whole development process was us pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, not a very big budget, and trying to put together a team and run a project and do things we’d never done before," says Chey. The team took a couple of rooms in Looking Glass’ office, some staff, the Dark engine, which was still under development for Thief, and a meagre budget of $700,000. Sure, it was critically lauded, but for Chey and his fellow founders, Ken Levine and Rob Fermier, it was simply enough. At the time, though, it didn’t quite light up the charts. System Shock 2’s sci-fi horror adventure made Irrational Games’ name, laying the foundation for a future in which it would make the likes of SWAT 4, Freedom Force and, of course, BioShock, and lately, Chey has found himself returning to it for inspiration. Now, over 20 years later, Chey can say the gamble worked. "My strongest motivation was not wanting to look like a fool, because we’d never done anything like this before in our lives."
"It was probably the most pressure I’ve felt in my life," says Jonathan Chey, one of its three lead developers. It was the first project by a new studio called Irrational Games, a chance to prove it could deliver a game that matched the calibre of Looking Glass, the developer of the original System Shock, Thief, and other PC classics.
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