Warren Spector, a figurehead in the creation of the immersive sim genre with seminal titles like Deus Ex and Thief, has shed light on the fate of OtherSide Entertainment's ambitious System Shock 3 project. While OtherSide recently released its stealth-action heist game, Thick as Thieves, Spector revealed the factors that led to System Shock 3's cancellation in an interview with Game Informer.
Spector joined OtherSide Entertainment, co-founded by Paul Neurath, with the express goal of working on System Shock 3. "Paul's already done it and I get to work on System Shock 3? I'm in," Spector recalled. He spent approximately two years on the project with a team of 17 developers, aiming to create an experience that was deeply rooted in the immersive sim philosophy. However, the project faced significant hurdles with its publisher, Starbreeze.
"They came along and said, 'We've gone into whatever the Swedish equivalent of bankruptcy is, and we're killing all of our external projects,'" Spector explained. This forced closure of external projects left OtherSide in a precarious financial position, three years into development. A subsequent investment from Tencent aimed to revive the project and allow it to scale, but Spector indicated that if System Shock 3 is to ever materialize, it will likely be under Tencent's direct control.
Regarding the work done on his iteration of the game, Spector stated that the assets and ideas exist on his hard drive. However, he expressed doubt that Tencent would utilize any of the material developed by his team, aside from a publicly released trailer. The full interview with Warren Spector, which delves into his career and the development of Thick as Thieves, is available in the latest issue of Game Informer magazine.