It was exactly a year ago that troubled developer Starbreeze sold System Shock 3 back to OtherSide Entertainment, who assured players that the game was “more than halfway completed” under the watchful eye of industry veteran, Warren Spector. However, it looks like System Shock 3‘s development troubles never really went away. That’s according to a former developer, who goes by the name ‘Kin Corn Karn’ on RPG Codex (thanks, DSO Gaming).
Kin Corn Karn was unable to say whether System Shock 3 has officially been abandoned but confirmed that none of the original content creators are employed by the studio. He also revealed that the team was well behind on content development.
The only reason I’m posting is because I saw so much confusion about the state of the company and the project I thought some first person information would be welcome. I never suggested we were halfway done, core systems are a great foundation for a game but most of the work is content development which we were critically behind in, both in real assets and in tool support for an efficient pipeline.
Was the failure of the project right? It’s hard to say. If Starbreeze hadn’t gone into crisis I think we would’ve delivered something interesting with some fresh and innovative gameplay, but a much smaller game than what people were expecting and inevitably disappointing for a sequel to such a beloved franchise.
Kin Corn Karn added that fans had a lot of high expectations and it would have been difficult for a small team to give them what they wanted despite “expensive experimentation.”
System Shock 3 was first announced in 2015 for PC and “other platforms.” An official survey mentioned PS4 and Xbox One releases.
[Source: RPG Codex via DSO Gaming]
