This statement was said by Warren Spector, a veteran in the gaming industry – and since he was the first System Shock’s producer in 1994, it’d be hard to find someone more involved with the series. (Maybe Doug Church, the director of the first game? He’s currently a creative consultant for OtherSide Entertainment, the developers of the third System Shock game…)

Spector can be quite a critical person: about one and a half decade ago, he called Grand Theft Auto 3 „a stunning accomplishment as a game design that was wasted on the ultimate urban thuggery simulation,” and he also had some harsh words last year, when a montage of violent video games was aired in the White House. Regarding this video, he described it as a trap that he may have fallen into due to his tendency to overstate to make his point. He repeated that he wishes developers to restrain themselves and that the players would stand up against over-the-top violence.

Thus, it’s no wonder OtherSide is a little held back when it comes to approaching violence in System Shock 3. „It’s very hard, to be honest with you. System Shock at one level is a survival horror game and achieving horror is about creating tension and making people stop to wonder what lies around the corner. There are expectations with a game like System Shock that I’m going to go a little bit further [with violence] than I normally would. So what I’m trying to do is listen to my team, listen to the audience and adjust my beliefs, or work within my beliefs, appropriately,” Spector told VGC.

He also talked about an earlier game of his. Epic Mickey was an experiment to make a game without weapons, but since the paint thinner in it to make objects disappear can be considered as one, he didn’t get to achieve what he wanted.

System Shock 3 has no release date (and, at the moment, not even a publisher – Starbreeze has financial issues, which is why OtherSide is self-funding itself…), which is why it’s possible that it could become a next-gen title.

Source: PCGamer