Difficulty levels will be handled in a slightly different way in Shock 2.

System Shock 1 gave you more of an RPG experience by allowing you to turn down aspects of the game you didn't like, i.e. turning down puzzles let you bypass the hacker aspect of the game and let you focus on fighting.

Our true hardcore RPGness lets you develop a character organically along different paths, thereby letting the player approach the problems thrown at you as the player sees fit. That is to say, a weapons oriented guy will solve many problems by blasting his way thorugh, a hacker type guy will do a lot of hacking into security systems, modifying his tech, etc. and the psionic oriented guy will use his psi powers to carry the day.

As to specific difficulty levels, we are currently finalizing the spec, but we will have actual difficulty settings that make the game harder or easier to play.

So in brief, System Shock 2 supports BOTH actual difficulty levels and a deeper, more organic "play the game as you want to play" it method.

Ken Levine
Lead Designer, System Shock 2

Hey there. My name is Dorian Hart, and I'm a designer currently working on System Shock 2. I also worked on the original System Shock. It's good to see lots of people interested enough in our games to talk about them so passionately in this forum.

I wanted to address some of the points being raised on the Newsgroups, regarding the respawning of monsters, and the "dumbing down" of the game.

First, some points about the original Shock:
1) The security systems, security levels, and cameras generally had nothing to do with monsters respawning.
2) Infinite monster respawning happened, to some degree, on almost every level of the game.
I know some of you might remember it differently, but trust me, I was there. This is what was happening. If you killed enough of certain kinds of monsters on a level, it made more.

In System Shock II, the monster spawning is more sophisticated than it was in the original Shock. Most monster spawnage is linked to security cameras. If a camera spots you, it will spawn "reenforcements" in your general area. Once you take out a camera, it's no longer a threat in this way.

Yes, there still is general "infinite spawning" on our levels, but it's there just to keep minimum population levels, and not to turn all our game spaces into neverending slugfests. The opinion has been raised numerous times that "Infinite Monster Spawns = Terrible Badness," but I don't see it as being that simple. Monster Respawning is just a tool that game designers have, and like any tool, it can be (and often is) misused. We think that completely cleaning out a level, in a game like System Shock, hurts the overall experience. We always want the player to be on his/her toes, never being sure that an area is completely safe. I think we'd all agree that spawning dozens of monsters all the time, with some right in the PC's face, is a bad thing. But making sure that 5-10 minutes (a long time in a 1st-person game) are not likely to go by without a single monster encounter -- call me crazy, but I think that's a good thing. We did that in the original Shock, and we're doing it in Shock 2.

Now, about the alleged "dumbing down" of the game: As near as we can tell, this rumor started when our lead designer, Ken Levine, made a public comment about how the interface was going to be easier for people to learn. And that's true. The biggest single complaint made about the original Shock was that the inteface was too complex and had too steep a learning curve. We believe that we have designed an interface that is easier to learn, but even more powerful and expressive than that of the original. System Shock 2 is a more complex *game* than its predecessor; there are more different possible playing styles, a more sophisticated combat system, and many more RPG elements.

Now, two things that are NOT in System Shock 2 are:

1) Cyberspace, in the same way as you experienced in Shock 1. (There's something similar, but I don't want to give too much away.)
2) Those wire puzzles where you clicked on wire ends until they all matched up.

I know some of you will miss these things, but frankly, the majority of feedback we got about them was that they didn't work very well, were annoying, etc. The new hacking system is actually more than just rolling a die, though it's very simple. We made it simpler and faster because there are *many* more places in the game where it's applicable. But the player will have often have the choice to make when hacking, where he can go ahead and risk breaking the thing he's trying to hack (or modify, or repair), or back out and start over (and by starting over, have to expend more resources in the process).

A last point I'd like to make: Remember that you can do actual harm to a game project by loudly proclaiming (and I paraphrase) "I heard a rumor that this game is going to suck because of X and Y, and I believe it, so watch out!" I've worked on a lot of games, and I've seen a lot of previews and commentary in gaming magazines, web sites, and newsgroups, about our products. I intend no disrespect to the hard-working and well-meaning Gaming Journalism Community, but the correlation of printed material to actual fact, at least in games I've worked on, is sometimes astoundingly small. Much of that inaccuracy, to be fair, happens because a previewer will see an advanced pre-Alpha or Alpha version, which changes drastically by the time a game hits the shelves.

And in some cases, like Ken Levine's quote about Monster Respawns, people will add their own spins to what they read. What Ken said was, essentially, "there will be monster respawns." People seem to have taken that to mean: "dozens of monsters will appear in every area just as you leave it, and you'll be wading hip-deep through combat everytime you want to back-track." The truth, as I've already said, is: "you'll never be able to rest perfectly easily, knowing that a whole level has been cleared out. There will always be at least a monster or two prowling about here and there."

I guess what I'm really saying, is to recognize the difference between hypothesizing and doom-saying. I urge you to wait and see for yourself whether features (or their absence) make for a better (or worse) game. If the game comes out, and you play it, and you think monster spawning (or anything else) ruins the experience, then I'll stand here and let the flames wash over me, and I won't even put on an asbestos jacket.

Anyway, I've probably said too much already. ;-) I'll warn you now that I won't have time to be involved in further threads on these topics -- I have to go back and keep working to finish System Shock 2! Again, I (and the whole team) appreciate all the interest and discussion going on, and want you, the hard-core fan base, to be happy and satisfied with our games.

-Dorian Hart
not speaking for his employers, or anyone else, for that matter.

They are both from my Command level. The two of the least objected areas in that level. They just show off some subtle use of colored lighting and open spaces. They also have the interface in "minimized" mode for a more Quake/Unreal look. Also, they are from the old Alpha version and look even better now.

System Shock II just is, and, on the early evidence, it just works. Like its predecessor, it uses an indirect form of storytelling that shows us the outline of a plot instead of telling it to us—allowing us to put the story together in our own minds from found emails, logs, and notes. It offers up an intimidating twilight densely populated with doorways leading every which way, threatening creatures, and machines and items exotic, familiar, and just gross. (It's amazingly full, this one.) It has the visceral feel of a place, not a game.