The System Shock 2 Community Patch (SCP) Beta 4 is now available. In the words of its authors:

"SCP is intended to serve as an unofficial patch for System Shock 2 that delivers an authentic but also highly polished SS2 gameplay experience — hopefully approximating the form SS2 would have taken if Irrational had had a few more months to work on it before release. All changes have been made with the intent of respecting Irrational's original vision. The other goal of SCP is to upgrade SS2 to take advantage of the enhanced graphical features of the NewDark engine in those ways that are beyond the means of standalone mods.

The guiding principle for SCP has been that SS2's gameplay is fine as-is, and that its greatest strength is immersion — its ability to make players feel like they’re really trapped on board the Von Braun with all its horrors. So while we’ve tweaked game systems and made adjustments to the level geometry, the goal hasn’t been balancing gameplay, but rather eliminating those things that don’t make sense to the point that they take you out of the game. Anything illogical, gamey, or otherwise immersion-breaking, we've tried to correct."

SCP requires System Shock 2 patched to version 2.46+ and you need to start a new game.

Head on to systemshock.org, where you can find more details about this patch, download, and discuss it.

Great work guys!