A teaser website announcing the development of System Shock 3 has been launched by OtherSide Entertainment.
So far, all the site consists of is a countdown timer set to hit zero in 5 days time, accompanied with two flickering instances of the letter S, while another page has been found that seems to have revealed the page’s secret message a bit too early. Obviously, not much else about the game can be deduced from all this apart from that it’s definitely meant to be happening and that OtherSide Entertainment appears to be attached as its developer.
The previous two entries in the cyberpunk series, released back in the nineties, are held in high esteem for their story, sound design, and engaging gameplay that manages to combine elements of first-person shooters, RPGs, and survival horror. They are thought to be the spiritual predecessor to the similarly loved Bioshock, with games from both series featuring the work of writer and director Ken Levine.
The news comes just a month after Night Dive Studios, the team who gave us September’s System Shock: Enhanced Edition, revealed their plans to make a fully-fledged remake of the original. They also announced that they had been toying with the idea of making a whole new installment, although the studio’s head of business development, Larry Kuperman, had admitted that it was “not really our core business.”
Could it be, therefore, that Night Dive are involved with System Shock 3, joining forces with OtherSide to help them make it a reality? At this stage, whether or not the two developers are cooperating on the project is still not clear.
Even if Night Dive don’t have a direct hand in the third game, the material is still in very good hands at OtherSide. The founder of this new studio, Paul Neurath, also founded the company behind the original System Shock games, Looking Glass Studio. The members identify themselves as being focused on resurrecting their past work, as they are also developing Ultima Ascendant, a continuation of the old Ultima Underworld franchise that a few of the team helped originally create.
You can expect to learn more about System Shock 3 in the near future. In the meantime, though, both System Shock: Enhanced Edition and System Shock 2 are currently available for PC.
