Ken Levine Says Multiplayer Hurt System Shock 2

[Andy Chalk]

Ken Levine Says Multiplayer Hurt System Shock 2

The BioShock mastermind says the series' legendary predecessor would have been "much, much stronger" if the team hadn't wasted time on multiplayer.

Did you know that System Shock 2 had a co-op multiplayer mode? It did, tacked on by a post-release patch, and it wasn't great. Having three or four people running around in a game designed to be handled by a single person effectively did away with any semblance of challenge, and as I recall it was a bit of a buggy thing, too. Worst of all, as it turns out, it had a detrimental impact on the single-player game, too.

The most common concern among gamers against the inclusion of multiplayer modes in single-player-focused experiences is that they're an unnecessary drain on resources that would be better put toward the development of the "real" game. Most developers deny it but in a recent interview with Edge about the making of System Shock 2, Levine admitted that the effort put into creating an online co-op mode was wasted.

"It was a real distraction," he said. "There are a number of people who really enjoyed it, but the amount of time versus the amount of reward for that versus what we could have done with the rest of the game... I don't think it was a win. The single player game would have been much, much, much stronger if we had that time back."

System Shock 2 was a brilliant game despite being a bit of a sales bust, so the idea that Levine thinks it could have been that much better if the team hadn't wasted time and effort on multiplayer is a bit of a surprise. But it seems likely that his experience on that game was a factor in the recent confirmation that his current project, BioShock: Infinite, will not have a multiplayer mode [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120770-Creator-Confirms-No-Multiplayer-In-Bioshock-Infinite]. Better late than never, right?

Source: Edge [http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-system-shock-2/]


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[bartholen_v1legacy]

Meh, not really such a big deal, since the game is grrreat anyway. I guess the extra time would have gone into balancing the game a bit better and perhaps trying to make better character animation (dolphin hands etc)

It's still a great game. Give us System Shock 3 already!

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Odd I thought it was a last minute thing they never got to fully implement.... Also System Shock 2 has better AI than Bioshock and Dishonored ;_;

 

[Aetrion]

I generally agree that tacking multiplayer onto a game that doesn't need it hurts the game, but I played through System Shock 2 with a friend when it came out and it was some of the most fun I've ever had gaming, and there are still people who host this game online and play through it again and again.

What hurt System Shock 2 the most was two things:

Internet and meme culture was in its infancy at the time, the only place you would hear about a game was either from other people, by seeing an unfamiliar box in the store, or in a magazine that did a review. System Shock 2 didn't get rave reviews at the time because it did have a lot of bugs, and graphically it was behind the times. A game like this that attracts a hardcore following does a heck of a lot better today. You'll see memes cropping up, let's plays... A game that is great just underneath the first glance can be recognized as such before the earnings reports are due today.

HalfLife came out a month after SystemShock, and that pretty much ruined its chances to pick up in sales. Let's face it, everyone was swept up in HalfLife and how awesome it was, and how good it looked and how smooth it played. System Shock 2 is one of those games where you have to explain to people why its good if they haven't played it for very long or haven't really thought about it yet, HalfLife is one of those games where from the moment you pick it up you know that it's good.



The box art for System Shock 2 was also weak. It just had SHODAN on the front and a gigantic 2. Marketing guys today would cringe at that, since the package design was obviously meant to have insider appeal to the players of the first game, but didn't at all take into consideration that it had to reach a much broader audience that had no idea who SHODAN is or particularly cared about buying 2 without having played 1. Buying PC games in 1998 was a bit different than today, sometimes you just went to the store and looked at shiny boxes and picked one that looked cool. Some stores had PCs with product demonstrations set up. I remember that I got Mechwarrior 2 because on the shelf that hulking Madcat that was just loaded for bear with weapons looked like it would eat all those other games' lunch.

 

[Ldude893]

And this is why I call bullshit on anyone claiming that all games ought to have a multiplayer component.

Yes, I'm looking at you, EA.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

Hey Ken Levine, if you love your old game so much, figure out how to pry System Shock out of the hands of EA and that weird insurance company. System Shock 3, despite the rush of "omg it's like Bioshock only different" that will happen (inviting me to facepalm really hard), would sell like hotcakes because everyone now knows the -shock series name.

So if there were no multiplayer, would the ending have been whatever the original devs wanted it to be, instead of the weird ending we have now? I hear the ending fight was supposed to be much more awesome; I'd have liked to see SHODAN be more difficult and cooler, rather than MCP-like.

I liked the multiplayer, though, if only because I have an incredibly hard time playing scary games, because I have an overactive imagination and will get freaked out and have nightmares and things...so having a buddy watching or playing really helps.

 

[Pyrian]

Also System Shock 2 has better AI than Bioshock and Dishonored ;_;

What? The SS2 AI's do very little other than wander around and attack you.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Also System Shock 2 has better AI than Bioshock and Dishonored ;_;

What? The SS2 AI's do very little other than wander around and attack you.

Ya but if you boil it down all AI dose that. The difference being SS2 AI had a greater radius of sight and hearing, in DIS you can jump up and down behind the AI and do all kinds of shit in stealth mode thats immersion breaking. Then you have the problem of limited hearing and sight radius(one for stealth and one for non stealth mode), they do not pay attention to guards missing nor doors opening or have been opened nor the sound of a door opening yet they can hear the cross box bolts landing behind them and sometimes far off.

What made SS2 so great was that larger radius made it harder to avoid and sneak up on the AI, in DIS like bioshock you can do all kinds of shit and the AI dose not pay attention to it till they are hit or see you 5 feet away from them >>

 

[Formica Archonis]

Funny, I remember SS2 getting some pretty good reviews. In fact, that's why I bought it.

And I never stopped regretting it. Please, please tell me why the multiplayer drain caused:

1) Weapon degradation (with repairs costing money) and infinitely respawning bad guys to seem like a good idea. Especially together.
2) The plot to be rewritten seemingly only to add random connections to SS1 while introducing plot holes.
3) The dumbest take-over-the-universe plan followed by the lamest last-second sequel hook in the known universe.
4) That goddamn elevator. Seriously, the entire first half of the game you were an elevator repairman. The second half was rushed as hell, that's clear, but the first half should have shown the strain far less.

I might give you that multiplayer drain caused the other problems, like putting your main weapon in a spot that the game implores you to speedrun through and then seals off thus making it easily missable and lost forever, or not balancing the classes so it was like a hidden difficulty setting, or not looking at the logs and asking why the world's best expert on crazy AIs doesn't know who SHODAN is, or why... eh, I guess I'll spoiler this:

Spoiler

SHODAN's fake human form and the human it was based on were active on the ship at the same time for four whole days without anyone questioning or wondering what was going on, even people who had reason to be interacting with both the real one and the impersonator. Who sounded completely different.

 

[Barciad]

That's a bit like saying Sgt. Pepper would have been better had the Beatles not faffed around on their whole 'Magical Mystery Tour' malarkey. Thus allowing all those good songs from that album to go onto Sgt. Pepper itself, thus making it the most perfect album in existence.
Sometimes, I feel as if people are just showing off. Listen, if you really feel any remorse, make a System Shock 3. Make it the game Bioshock should have been. Make it deep, make it complex, make it tight, and make it demanding. I fear that Valve are getting a touch too cocky in their old age and are not quite pulling their weight.

 

[Barciad]

Everyone already knows multiplayer drains resources from singleplayer, its a fact of life

If you have 10 million and you spend 8 million on singleplayer, and 2 million on tacked on multiplayer, thats 2 million that could be dumped back into single player.

Anyone who doesnt understand that is likely lieing to themselves.

Sometimes, I feel as if people are just showing off. Listen, if you really feel any remorse, make a System Shock 3. Make it the game Bioshock should have been. Make it deep, make it complex, make it tight, and make it demanding. I fear that Valve are getting a touch too cocky in their old age and are not quite pulling their weight.

...What does valve have to do with anything here? This is about Ken Levine, he has nothing to do with Valve..

Unless you hadn't noticed, this article also happens to be about a certain game called System Shock II. One of the few PC games franchises that could challenge the Half Life franchise. Which unless you didn't know was made by a company called Valve. Alas, System Shock got watered down, glitzed up, and thus became Bioshock.
What I am implying is that System Shock once posed a credible threat to Half Life's crown, but they blew it. Them talking about how System Shock II wasn't as good as it could have been merely compounds the issue. Just think for a second what a waste of creative talent we have witnessed here.

 

[Dead Seerius]

Too much focus on multiplayer hurts the singleplayer campaign?
Well there's a Shock!

Are you on some sort of pun spree or something? Frankly, I'm impressed.

Anyway, just even more fuel for the fire that is the argument against mediocre multiplayer being tossed into every single game. Most people dont end up playing it long anyway. Why do publishers keep insisting on it being included? Just doesnt make sense to me.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Funny, I remember SS2 getting some pretty good reviews. In fact, that's why I bought it.

And I never stopped regretting it. Please, please tell me why the multiplayer drain caused:

1) Weapon degradation (with repairs costing money) and infinitely respawning bad guys to seem like a good idea. Especially together.
2) The plot to be rewritten seemingly only to add random connections to SS1 while introducing plot holes.
3) The dumbest take-over-the-universe plan followed by the lamest last-second sequel hook in the known universe.
4) That goddamn elevator. Seriously, the entire first half of the game you were an elevator repairman. The second half was rushed as hell, that's clear, but the first half should have shown the strain far less.

I might give you that multiplayer drain caused the other problems, like putting your main weapon in a spot that the game implores you to speedrun through and then seals off thus making it easily missable and lost forever, or not balancing the classes so it was like a hidden difficulty setting, or not looking at the logs and asking why the world's best expert on crazy AIs doesn't know who SHODAN is, or why... eh, I guess I'll spoiler this:

Spoiler

SHODAN's fake human form and the human it was based on were active on the ship at the same time for four whole days without anyone questioning or wondering what was going on, even people who had reason to be interacting with both the real one and the impersonator. Who sounded completely different.

Spoiler

As far as I know, Shodan never had a fake human form, rather she simply impersonated Polito over coms. Also, during that time there was an insurrection taking place, which resulted in a ship wide security lockdown, necessitating the soldiers constant need to hunt for passwords and keys. A single suicide during all this chaos could easily go unnoticed.

Meanwhile, shodan only communicates with 2 other people, that being Grassi (the tech expert) and Bayliss. Being of lower rank then Polito, Grassi blindly follows orders despite his concern (that of the illegal r-grade implants used on the soldier) and bayliss, who clearly shows suspicion, also agrees to his job (tampering with the soldiers memory restoration). Why? presumably because it seemed so innocuous at first glance, if only a little immoral, and Polito hadn't shown any reason to be suspected up to that point (though it was that point that raised suspicions, he probably chalked it up to the stress of their predicament).

Polito is an AI expert, but Shodan was found light years away from her origin, so you can forgive her for being confused at first. The Many was already causing problems at this time and this mysterious AI was aiding her, so she belayed her concerns to focus on the immediate threat. Shodan, meanwhile was already enacting plans for a ship wide takeover, which is halted before long until the Soldier arrives on scene. By the time Polito realises who the AI is (she does figure it out) it was too late.

1. Repairing was meant to add to the tension. Granted it was a little overwrought given that a futuristic weapon falls apart after a couple of clips, but the idea behind it was that, for the majority of the game, your chosen firearm is an emergency weapon only. What's more, the game encourages you to settle on a specific weapon (psi amp, pistol or wrench) for large chunks of the game.

All classes are not fixed choices and a mishmash like Psisoldier or PsiTech or TechSoldier can be achieved, though spreading yourself too thin cause issues in the late game. But as a rule of thumb:

*The psi-amp would be your main weapon if you went down the root of OSI for obvious reasons.

*A soldier would specialise in a preferred line of weaponry while keeping a pistol as back up since combat is going to be your focus

*The wrench/pistol would be your main if you went Tech (due to low combat stats). Eventual a tech could use some of the more exotic weaponry as they would have made a more significant investment in research.

As for the respawning enemies. Given that the game is FPS survival horror with RPG elements, simply spawning a set number of enemies would nerf the challenge and tension greatly. It would spoil the intended impact of ammo conservation, repair and maintenance, resource scavenging etc. The fact is, the game doesn't rely on closet horror, rather it sets a tone then let's the game dynamically generate the horror.

2. System shock was never about story. SS1 had a very generic rogue AI plot. AI went mad, kills everyone, you have to stop it. System shock 2 expands on the events of SS1 (oh my god, continuity in a sequel!?), so of course there will be plenty of references to SS1.

The thing that SS1 and 2 both do really well, is feed the very basic plot to the player in a very tense and dramatic way. Trough the audio logs you are piecing together the events that transpired, who the movers and shakers were and the motivations behind their actions which you are there to sort out. Essentially, the story has already happened and you are at the conclusion, but first you must figure out what happened before you can act.

3. System Shock is b-grade sci-fi. Again, the plot was never SSs strong point. It's the delivery that distinguishes it.

4. The elevator repair was to limit your movement around the ship early on, forcing you down a fixed path. Given the disrepair the ship fell into, the lack of able bodied crew, the infestation and other anomalies, a few DIYs are to be expected. I always felt that this section of the game was the most focused and entertaining. After the reveal the plot starts to go all "yeah we sort of made this up as we went along". Again, B-grade sci-fi.

On a final Note: I have to agree about the balancing of the stats and classes. They do sort of act like an extra layer of difficulty, depending on your chosen path. There are skills I never invest in, no matter how many times I play the game, simply because they aren't well represented. Likewise, the game really squeezes you if you don't invest in tech, meaning a pure psi or soldier run is very hard to do.

Still one of my favourite games of all time, though I would be fooling myself to think it aged well. If someone was to ask for my recommendations I would direct them towards Bioshock instead.

 

[Lugbzurg]

I actually managed to snag a copy of System Shock 2 for PC. (Was it on any consoles?) Unfortunately, the game is from 1997, and won't even run on my old Windows XP, due to the age. Even worse is that neither Steam nor Good old Games holds either System Shock title. I don't suppose anyone knows some way I could actually play my PC copy? Maybe something I have to download to make it compatible with modern PCs, much like what SkullTag does for the old Doom games?

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Everyone already knows multiplayer drains resources from singleplayer, its a fact of life

If you have 10 million and you spend 8 million on singleplayer, and 2 million on tacked on multiplayer, thats 2 million that could be dumped back into single player.

Anyone who doesnt understand that is likely lieing to themselves.

Sometimes, I feel as if people are just showing off. Listen, if you really feel any remorse, make a System Shock 3. Make it the game Bioshock should have been. Make it deep, make it complex, make it tight, and make it demanding. I fear that Valve are getting a touch too cocky in their old age and are not quite pulling their weight.

...What does valve have to do with anything here? This is about Ken Levine, he has nothing to do with Valve..

Unless you hadn't noticed, this article also happens to be about a certain game called System Shock II. One of the few PC games franchises that could challenge the Half Life franchise. Which unless you didn't know was made by a company called Valve. Alas, System Shock got watered down, glitzed up, and thus became Bioshock.
What I am implying is that System Shock once posed a credible threat to Half Life's crown, but they blew it. Them talking about how System Shock II wasn't as good as it could have been merely compounds the issue. Just think for a second what a waste of creative talent we have witnessed here.

What is this...? Blew it? Whaaaa?

System Shock 2 was in no way near a competitor to Half-Life. Aside from the fact that it was basically a different genre of game and was also released nearly a full year after Half-Life, there is also the issue of it selling pretty underwhelmingly on its release for no other reason other then simply falling under the radar (it wasn't beat out in competition). Post release the game eventually got recognised as a generational leap ahead of other games in its time, but it was a commercial let down.

What you aren't taking into account is that the game had a troubled development besides the tacked on co-op. The game was split between 2 separate studios which clashed a few times, ran on an a game engine that was incomplete and buggy and the development team was torn apart by internal disagreements resulting in staff leaving the project (distinct from the co-op).

SS2 was never directly in competition with Half Life. Half-lifes competition was in other action orientated FPS juggernauts like Quake II and Unreal. System Shock initially had no real competitors for what it offered, it filled a niche that wasn't really tapped yet (FPS Rpgs) until Deus Ex was released a year later. Both games offered an at-the-time unconventional approach to FPS games.

Much like the original SS, it was never a straight forward FPS. It put emphasis on tone, pacing and atmosphere over action and set pieces. It offered a completely different experience to what Half-life provided.

Seriously, your logic is akin to saying Gears of War is in competition with God of War based of the fact they were both in third person.

SS and HL both progressed the FPS genre down 2 different routes. They didn't clash for attention at any point. The only thing that took credit away from SS2 was Deus Ex. That game simply overshadowed all it's competitors at the time and was a commercial success to boot.

I actually managed to snag a copy of System Shock 2 for PC. (Was it on any consoles?) Unfortunately, the game is from 1997, and won't even run on my old Windows XP, due to the age. Even worse is that neither Steam nor Good old Games holds either System Shock title. I don't suppose anyone knows some way I could actually play my PC copy? Maybe something I have to download to make it compatible with modern PCs, much like what SkullTag does for the old Doom games?

http://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=106.0

This page should have all you need to get it started, but you might need to do a bit of studying before you get it working. The thing that you will need is the SS2Tool, a program which both acts as a platform for mods (which you should look into as the game looks and feels like ass in the vanilla) and also a fix for many of the problems this game has on modern hardware.

Good Luck and I hope you enjoy it.

EDIT: Just to let you know, that whole site is valuable to a starting SS2 player. Aside from fixes for most of the problems you will face, it has a huge repertoire of mods and some good tutorials for first time players, as the game kinda drops you on your head and expects you figure everything out.

Just be careful of spoilers or overhaul mods, as they can ruin your experience. Play as close to the original as you can while still availing of some awesome mods.

EDIT EDIT: I should also mention that they have a SS1 emulator on their as well. If you feel like putting on some retro goggles I would recommend it. Since the original game is Freeware they packaged it up into an easily run dos emulator. Just download, click and play. Again, some tweaks may be needed to get it working, but the site should have all you need.

Just be warned. SS2 has aged like Ass. SS1 is that asses great ancestor.