Eurogamer: The making of System Shock 2's best level

[Mynon]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-09-03-the-making-of-system-shock-2s-best-level
The making of System Shock 2's best level

 

[ShaggyMoose]

I remember a lot of different moments from SS2, but wouldn't have called anything out as "the best level". Kind of a strange way to look at the game.

 

[Jaesun]

Professional Gaming Journalism™...

 

[Severian Silk]

SS1 had better levels.

 

[Dayyālu]

"I wanted to write an Article about SS2 but I played just the first Level" The Article.

That said, still interesting. SS1 was well-designed from the start to the end (even if the Hacking was left by the wayside as the game progressed) while everyone can agree that SS2 started pretty much degenerating upon reaching the Rickenbacker (hell, maybe even sooner) and ended up becoming a mess on the Body of the Many. An article on that would be far more interesting.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Reading article from Proffeshunal Gaemin Jurnols about level design of SySo while they are butchering levels in SySo1 "remake" feels funny...

 

[udm]

"I wanted to write an Article about SS2 but I played just the first Level" The Article.

Wouldn't be surprised that these hacks didn't even get past Med/Sci due to the lack of a quest compass. Hell they don't even mention what made Med/Sci great beyond the horror elements (eg the sense of exploration as you backtrack to previously locked doors). Hydroponics is the best level, followed by a tie between Recreation and Engineering.

Also:

You rush to the airlock, crawling through a hamster run of corridors and access tunnels as you're given a brief rundown of how to play. No sooner have you made it through the airlock when you're attacked by a malformed crewmember, begging you to kill him. All you've got to hand is a wrench. If you're lucky, you'll bludgeon him to death. He'll be the first of many.

I don't think these fucks even completed Med/Sci

 

[Mark Richard]

Couldn't they give the article a sensible title? Underneath it all I smell is the insinuation that level design is too dry a subject for the readers unless packaged a certain way. Med/Sci didn't need the forced accolade of the best level in System Shock 2 to be interesting.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

SS1 had better levels.

 

[Nano]

The conspiracy theories here about how the article writer didn't actually play much of SS2 are cringeworthy as fuck.

Also don't get why some people here have a sort of hate boner for SS2. Is it a combination of Looking Glass fanboyism & hatred of Ken Levine?

"everyone can agree that SS2 started pretty much degenerating upon reaching the Rickenbacker (hell, maybe even sooner) and ended up becoming a mess on the Body of the Many. An article on thatwould be far more interesting."

I don't agree. Thoroughly enjoyed the game from start to finish.

 

[Invictus]

As I understood it what the article is trying to say is that Med/Sci is the best level not because of level design or enemy encounters per se; it is great because it set up the whole game perfectly. The scenario of the supposedly vacant ship, most of its crew dead, missing or worse (and the first glimpses of what happened to them) the use of the consoles to learn how to use your skills and cybernetic modules and the audiologs mechanic... which arguably has been done to death in modern games but back then not only the mechanic was ingenious and great for setting the mood but also surprisingly well voiced and acted.
As a whole yeah we could probably call better designed levels or more impactful to the story but as a showcase for the game it is an almost perfectly bit sized package of what the game is all about

 

[Dayyālu]

The conspiracy theories here about how the article writer didn't actually play much of SS2 are cringeworthy as fuck.

I'm always up to presume the worst about vidya journalism. However, the article manages to be still rather interesting. Learn to hate game journos, they deserve it.

Also don't get why some people here have a sort of hate boner for SS2. Is it a combination of Looking Glass fanboyism & hatred of Ken Levine?

"everyone can agree that SS2 started pretty much degenerating upon reaching the Rickenbacker (hell, maybe even sooner) and ended up becoming a mess on the Body of the Many. An article on that would be far more interesting."

I don't agree. Thoroughly enjoyed the game from start to finish.

I love both. Honestly, I even enjoy a tad more SS2, 'cause it's the first one I played. Very different game from SS1, though. About the quality, the fact that everything after the Rickenbacker was rushed is rather obvious. I dimly remember Levine trying to say that even the ending was a hack job, but I do remember that there were many ideas for the last levels that could not be implemented 'cause time and budget. Like, a level with access to open space.

From the point of view of the end user, the Rickenbacker is the last level that still mantains gameplay coherency. You can still somewhat play most "classes" and everything is still roughly viable. Afterwards, the inherent problems of SS2's weapon systems start to worsen, the level design takes a dive (the platforming is mediocre) and the combat, already middling, hits the nadir with the brain of the Many and the SHODAN fight. Still enjoyed the logs, though.

Why it's bad? Body of the Many has a very unbalanced, even if "realistic", selection of enemies, and scarcity of resources that seems born more of poor playtesting than careful tuning. Sure, if someone goes Standard Weapons he won't notice as everything dies because Assault Rifle, but the other classes\weapon preferences get hit hard.

I don't think they truly planned another ending as Levine says, though. The cinematic is terrible (DON'T YOU LIKE MY NEW LOOK) but it's a mistake that can be forgiven in such a good experience. I like SS2, but I do mantain the opinion that the earlier levels are far more well-designed than the later ones, a mistake we don't find in SS1, where even the last levels have new situations and well-designed encounters. Diego boss fight is crap, though.

 

[ColCol]

All of SS2's levels are good. It is the encounter design that is bad.

 

[Master]

Okay. How is the encounter design bad?

 

[Severian Silk]

Because they designed it bad.

 

[Invictus]

Whoa whoa so now the ending was bad? Ok granted the final level IS hard on non standard weapons characters but it is understandably so since the Many are arguably absorbing everything and not leaving many items behind in their wake but what is so bad about the ending itself? Shodan had been playing with the creation (and obviously manipulation)of life as well as some sort of cybernetic/organic combos as seen with the nurses so logically she was looking for failsafe plan for not only getting out of the ship in case something went wrong but somehow taking over a human.
Soma strongly reminded me of that when you "jack in" your consciousness to the stronger robot body...some people have interpreted that not as a transfer of consciousness but as copy of the "personality" from one body to another; the weaker body isnt deactivated to my knowledge maybe it copied itself unto the other body and is aware it will get left behind but its consciousness will live on through the other body.
Maybe Shodan did the same, it make a "backup" to make sure regardless of the outcome of what happened on the ship she would survive
Damn... now I want to replay Soma AND System Shock 2

 

[Average Manatee]

From the point of view of the end user, the Rickenbacker is the last level that still mantains gameplay coherency. You can still somewhat play most "classes" and everything is still roughly viable. Afterwards, the inherent problems of SS2's weapon systems start to worsen, the level design takes a dive (the platforming is mediocre) and the combat, already middling, hits the nadir with the brain of the Many and the SHODAN fight. Still enjoyed the logs, though.

Why it's bad? Body of the Many has a very unbalanced, even if "realistic", selection of enemies, and scarcity of resources that seems born more of poor playtesting than careful tuning. Sure, if someone goes Standard Weapons he won't notice as everything dies because Assault Rifle, but the other classes\weapon preferences get hit hard.

BotM is balanced fine. There are tons of psi hypos, so psi builds are fine. I literally left with more than I went in with on my psi build (which was something like enough for 12 hours of sustained invisibility, real time). There are 2 charging stations IIRC, so energy builds are fine (and by then you should either have a backup or psi-recharge). Haven't done a heavy weapons playthrough but I think there's lots of prisms and shit, and BotM is the best part of the game to have some kind of AoE.

Good survival horror games are supposed to ratchet up the challenge in the end game by giving less and less and forcing players to be more efficient or save up. SS2's problem is that it doesn't do that enough, especially regarding assault rifle ammo.

Rickenbacker is a bigger problem than BotM because it has a high spawning frequency coupled with the retarded "shoot the black eggs" thing that will basically force any player not reading a guide to go back and forth across the long, linear path multiple times searching for that last egg that needs destroying. Even worse when there is no map, and unlike BotM there is no plausible explanation why a map is absent other than lack of dev time.