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System Shock is one of the most beloved PC games of all time, so you can imagine how excited fans were when original creator Warren Spector announced a third title in the series almost a decade ago.
However, System Shock 3 remains unreleased – and while Spector won't be involved in it due to his retirement, he's hopeful that it could see the light of day at some point.
Spector has been speaking to EDGE about his career and touches on what happened with System Shock 3 and OtherSide Entertainment, the indie studio he joined in 2016, which was founded by his former Looking Glass co-worker Paul Neurath.
"OtherSide was an independent developer, and it's not like we were rolling in dough," explains Spector. "Paul Neurath is an incredible creative but also a terrific business guy, and he kept us afloat, but there were constant financial pressures. We ultimately signed a deal with a Swedish publisher [Starbreeze]. To be frank, they signed on for too little money to make the game. We needed more than they were willing to pay. But it was a deal, and we were an indie, and we took it."
Spector admits he isn't sure precisely what happened, but Starbreeze would eventually get into "all sorts of legal and financial trouble" and ended up killing all external projects – including System Shock 3.
"But in terms of development, with all that other stuff that came before, I suspect that just about any [publisher] would have killed it," says Spector. "And that's on me."
However, he adds that the project, while dormant, isn't "dead" in the technical sense of the word:
"There's a potentially happy ending to this story. I mean, like I said, we were an indie and we didn't have a lot of money, and then Tencent came along and acquired the rights to System Shock. And so we survived, and they said they could go bigger than we could. Now, it's been six years, and they've done nothing with it. But at least there's a potential there."
Speaking to Game Informer earlier this year, Spector admitted he doubted Tencent would use any of the work he and his team had put into the game before they stepped in.
"It exists on my hard drive," he said. "Other than the trailer, which we put out before that all went away – check out the trailer. It's on YouTube – but other than that, I doubt Tencent would use any of it."
OtherSide cancelled its Argos: Riders on the Storm project earlier this year.