► Unverified Transcript
**00:00 - 00:12**
*(Video Intro: Montage of System Shock 2 imagery with atmospheric music and Deep Dive logo)*
**00:12**
**Locke Vincent:** Hello everyone, and welcome back to Nightdive Studios Deep Dive. My name is Locke Vincent, and today I have a very special guest. The man, the myth, the legend behind System Shock 2: Anniversary Remaster. It's Lead Producer at Nightdive Studios, Daniel. How are you doing, man?
**00:27**
**Daniel:** First of all, you're too kind. You're too kind. I'm all right, thank you. I'm doing very good. How are you doing?
**00:34**
**Locke Vincent:** Oh, I am very excited. This, uh, this game has been cooking for a long time. Um, I know we have some history with System Shock, you yourself, you know, that's... I know it's your baby. Um, that's fair to say. Um, but yeah, let's chat about it. Tell me a little bit about the background on, on this project and how you got involved with System Shock 2.
**00:58**
**Daniel:** Oh, wow. Yeah. So, this goes back a ways. Um, so I remember we just finished off doing a, uh, the Enhanced Edition for System Shock 1. And that was released, it went down really well, people loved it. And then so we started going, "Well, if we can do the same with System Shock 1, let's start the train for System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition." So we immediately, um, got the person who had worked previously on System Shock 1 Enhanced Edition, Alex, got him to look at the code and just start doing stuff. Well, actually, I say looking at the code, I believe at the time we didn't have anything. He was kind of just reverse engineering the code on his own.
**01:44**
**Locke Vincent:** Right.
**01:45**
**Daniel:** Which, if you are familiar with reverse engineering, I can put it this way: It's a bit like trying to extract the ingredients from an already baked cake.
**01:57**
**Locke Vincent:** *(Laughs)* Great analogy. That's a great analogy.
**02:00**
**Daniel:** Yeah, that is... it's very, very difficult trying to put the cake back into its raw ingredients when it's already been made. So we were like, "Yep, you can have a look at that, and if we come across any leads for any kind of code, we'll try and sort you out with things." But, um, so that was happening. And then the System Shock Remake project was ramping up, and so I was moved over onto that project for a bit as well as, I think Doom 64 at the time. I think we were just wrapping up Doom 64 as well. Um, but I got told, "Dan, we need you over on this project to sort things out."
**02:41**
**Daniel:** So I jumped onto the Shock Remake project and there was a lot of, a lot of hats to wear on that project. I, uh, let's see if I can remember everything else I was doing... I was... I didn't start off as it, but I eventually ended up being a kind of co-director on the project. I was producer on the project. I was doing level design for the project. I was working on all the cyberspace levels, or near enough all of them. Um, and I also had a fair hand with the writing, as well as just helping build the ordinary levels as well. So I did a fair amount of stuff on that project, let's say. And that was over the course of six, six, seven years.
**03:24**
**Daniel:** I was also involved in the beginning as well. People might remember me from the streams that I used to do where I BSP brushed out the game completely in Unreal Engine 4. And that whole process in and of itself took seven months. And there was a lot of history after that. There was a lot of project changes, personnel changes. It was very difficult. And I will say that I do believe that it was kind of a miracle several times over that System Shock Remake actually ever came out at all.
**04:00**
**Locke Vincent:** Hmm.
**04:01**
**Daniel:** There were so many points in that project where it could have just, you know, flat out just stopped and we could have been, "Yeah, this is another one of those projects that's failed," everybody just go. But no, we were really, really determined to see it through. And there were many, many challenges, but we got it over the finish line and it was a great feeling when it finally went out to people and the reviews came in. It was absolutely fantastic and I couldn't have been happier to be involved. But then when that project wrapped up, you know, we did a few patches and then I came back over onto the KEX team.
**04:32**
**Daniel:** And, uh, the situation really hadn't changed that much. You know, Alex was still working on the reverse engineering side of things, but the movement on it was obviously slow. And it was just one person working on this code base for so long and it wasn't sustainable. It needed somebody to come in and have a look and see what could be done about it. And I took this experience from System Shock Remake, everything I learned about production on that side, and I came into this project with a very specific goal, which was to get a team together.
**05:12**
**Daniel:** We had resources now. A lot of time had passed and we had much more people involved now on that side. And so I said, "Okay, let's build a team that can get this done." And so I got some artists, I got a few more programmers, and we just, yeah, assembled a team. And then it was a case of, "Okay, let's sit down, let's play the game, what needs to be done? Let's sort out the tasks that need to get done for this project." Including some things that we'd never really done before on the KEX side of things, which I can go into more detail in a little bit.
**05:46**
**Daniel:** But that was my overall function, just to oversee the project, make sure it was going in the right direction for this re-release and to try and steer this ship that had been lost in very troubled waters into port. And I think we've done a very, very good job with that at the end. I'm super proud of the team coming together and just overcoming all of the obstacles we had in the production of Shock 2. But I think it's turned out really, really well. We've learned a lot about how the Dark Engine works, which is the underlying code base for that. We've learned a lot about it. And, um, we're in a very, very good position right now with the game. And yeah, I'm super happy that it came out to the reception that it did.
**06:33**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, I think Shock 2 is the game I've done the most work on for like, in terms of trailer and content and that sort of thing. Just cause there seems to be, yeah, a release of it every five years that I get to play with. Which I'm not complaining about because it is one of my all-time favorites. It's really easy to work on because it's so evocative with the sound and the visuals and just... if you've played it, you know. But, um, maybe if you wanted to, uh, for those at home, just kind of give us a, a broad, uh, go into as much detail as you feel, but like, what did you do to this anniversary remaster? Um, what are people getting? And it doesn't need to be like, "Oh, you're getting this and that," just like what are some of the favorite things that you were able to put into this one versus like the Enhanced Edition?
**07:29**
**Daniel:** Yeah, I think the biggest thing that we can really champion was we got the game working on controllers.
**07:36**
**Locke Vincent:** It is awesome. And it's awesome.
**07:37**
**Daniel:** If you are familiar... Yeah. We had a lot of iteration going into that, but we just had to look at this very PC-heavy game and go, "Okay, how on earth do we get this working on a controller?" And it, like I say, it took a fair few iterations to get right and to land on something that we felt was comfortable for anybody to really play. And as we understood how the Dark Engine worked—again, how windows in the interface worked and how they're called in the engine and things like that—we were able to tap into that because by this point we have access to the source code now for a lot of the engine. And we're able to really tap into that and figure out how it worked.
**08:27**
**Daniel:** And I think we came up with a system that is very intuitive. Um, it's still System Shock 2, so there is a bit of, you do have to do things a certain way, because... but that's just its whole history as a very PC-heavy game. But I think we've ended up with a very good solution to the problem. And in future updates we're really just kind of looking to expand on that functionality.
**08:53**
**Daniel:** Because so we have the quick weapon select now where you can tie things to button presses. You hold down the L1 or R1 button and then it will bring up a menu. And if you have assigned a weapon to the A button for example, you would hold down R1 and then you would press A and then it would equip that weapon. Instead of having to go into the inventory, find the weapon, press a button, go to equip, press the button again. It's like, "Okay, here's a really snappy, intuitive way to do it on consoles."
**09:23**
**Daniel:** We also had some—we've never done this before either—we had some in-world button prompts now. I felt it was necessary to do that because in System Shock 2 you have "Right click to search corpse," "Right click to interact with this." But I felt, could we go a step further with this? Could we have it on screen? And so they went away and they decided, "Okay, we have this system and now we can show button prompts in the world." So now it says "Press Square" or "Press X to interact with this." That was also another big win that might not seem that big, but for us it was just like, "Ah, we finally got this in, you know, we've got these sort of on-the-fly tutorials kind of thing." So that was pretty special moment.
**10:05**
**Daniel:** Another big win as well was the multiplayer. So yeah, if you're familiar with System Shock 2 back in the 90s, you know, there was no such thing as Steam. Uh, I think MPlayer... who remembers MPlayer? Do you remember MPlayer?
**10:19**
**Locke Vincent:** Like as a multiplayer thing? No, I don't.
**10:25**
**Daniel:** Yeah. Because I think the M was for Multiplayer, yeah.
**10:29**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, must have been.
**10:32**
**Daniel:** And yeah, you could use that but like, there was none of that back then. Or if there was, they were very, very early. And, you know, Shock 2 didn't really use any of that. Instead, it uses a direct IP connection which back then I think was, you know, it wasn't as secure as it needed to be as it gradually became. And it was like, "Yeah, just give me your IP and I'll just key it in here and you know, if it works, it works." And it uses DirectPlay which was a very old Windows built-in functionality to do some redirecting somewhere and ultimately just try and end up at the destination. And then, "Oh, I see your name appear in the list, that means we're connected, let's go."
**11:40**
**Daniel:** And with all that came the caveats of PC gaming really, you know, your connection could drop anytime, running over 56k modem, which was likely the most affordable way to connect to other clients back then. So it was really a thing to go in there and look at all this code that we have. And it really does stem a lot into the gameplay as well.
**12:10**
**Daniel:** The multiplayer gameplay in ways I can go into, but the idea was, yeah, we need to strip this out. Completely strip it out. We can't have direct connections anymore because the consoles will not allow that at all.
**12:21**
**Locke Vincent:** Right.
**12:22**
**Daniel:** So how do we do it? Okay, well, we need to construct some kind of lobby system. And we need to tap into PlayStation and Xbox and Switch and all this and try and get them connecting all together in a cross-play environment because that's the end goal. You know, Shock 2 had four-player cooperative multiplayer and we have four-player cooperative multiplayer. But wow, was it a task to get there. It was very, very, very difficult and it still kind of remains, as of recording of this, it still does continue to be quite difficult because there's just so much that goes into it in terms of like object ownership.
**13:06**
**Daniel:** When you're in the game, for example, something might be designated a certain number. And then if somebody interacts with that object, then the object number becomes the property of somebody else now. And then that data is handed off from that person to that person on their local machine. And then situations can arise from that where, oh well, the local state didn't kind of clean out properly on this, and now we've changed level, so when we go back into it, it doesn't know the object... it doesn't know the ownership ID of this anymore and it's completely gone wrong. And now we need to sort it out.
**13:41**
**Daniel:** It was so complicated to work out. But the guys have done an absolutely fantastic job in just unthreading all of this. And where it is now from what it used to be, it's a complete night and day transformation of everything. And I'm looking forward to seeing what improvements we can do to it in the future at time of recording obviously.
**14:05**
**Locke Vincent:** Yes, yes.
**14:06**
**Daniel:** Yeah, it's been very, very, very challenging, but it's been so much fun to watch people run through the game and just have fun with it in a coop kind of way.
**14:17**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, I had a blast recording the footage for the multiplayer trailer. Again, almost a different game. You know, after playing Shock 2 so much, going through with a bunch of friends was a blast. And yeah, the dynamics are way different, the inventory management is way different. And yeah, just like definitely the vibes are way different. So that's a lot of fun, especially for people who are coming to this game who have played before. Playing it with a friend is definitely a way to experience this differently, which is cool.
**14:52**
**Daniel:** Yes. I would say though, however, and this is I guess a kind of a little personal message: If you are playing Shock 2 for the first time, don't play it in multiplayer.
**15:02**
**Locke Vincent:** Do not.
**15:03**
**Daniel:** You should probably play it in single-player first to get the true experience of System Shock 2. Because multiplayer really, as you said, it is a different vibe. You don't feel alone. You don't feel scared. You don't feel afraid. You've always got, "Oh, well, I've got my wingman behind me, he's going to sort me out if I get into trouble." No, you should definitely go into Shock 2 single-player first and then when you're comfortable enough with that, then get your friends in for a good laugh.
**15:27**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah. I mean, somebody might turn around and, you know, at work and say, "You've got to play System Shock 2 again because we need this." And I'll just be thinking to myself, "Oh, I have to play System Shock 2... what a shame. Oh well, guess I'll jump back into it again."
**15:42**
**Daniel:** Yeah. I find myself in the same situation. Like I will play Shock 2, replay Shock 2 every... well, it used to be every once a year, maybe once every two years just to go back to it. But right now, because I've been working on the Anniversary Remaster, I've got something like 540 hours clocked up on Steam just from me running through the game and testing it.
**16:05**
**Locke Vincent:** It's for work!
**16:07**
**Daniel:** It is technically for work, yeah.
**16:10**
**Locke Vincent:** That's what I tell my wife. I'm just like, "It's for work, I gotta play this game."
**16:15**
**Daniel:** Yeah. And I've been wanting to get into some new experiences myself. I know you mentioned Death Stranding. I really do need to get around to playing the first one of that cause everyone's talking about the second one. And I'm thinking to myself, oh man, I really need to play that. But I also started and recently finished playing through Yakuza Kiwami. The first one.
**16:36**
**Locke Vincent:** Oh, well done. Nice.
**16:38**
**Daniel:** Yeah. And after coming off Yakuza 0 I thought, oh yeah, let's go straight into Yakuza Kiwami. It was a lot of fun but wow, does that game demand quite a bit of your time if you want to 100% it. I spent about...
**16:50**
**Locke Vincent:** Goodness me. Yeah, they are. Those are long-*** games.
**16:53**
**Daniel:** I think I spent about 70 hours in it and I got about 75% overall completion of everything. And I'm thinking, yeah, that's probably enough. Yakuza 0 was 90%, Yakuza Kiwami was 75% and I was thinking to myself, you know what, I'm done. I'm good. I've done all the substories, I've fought the secret boss at the end, I've done the story. I think I'm ready to move on from this.
**17:14**
**Locke Vincent:** That's maturing as a gamer, being like, "I don't need to squeeze all of the pulp out of this orange. I got a great experience, that's enough, onto the next thing."
**17:24**
**Daniel:** Especially if you can't play Mahjong like I can. If you're like me, you're clueless. Just move on.
**17:30**
**Locke Vincent:** Right? And even when I like boot up a new Shock playthrough and I'm like, "Okay, what am I going to do here?" I—and this is for any game with RPG mechanics or builds being... or like a lot of my favorite games are like the FromSoftware stuff. I... a lot of the literature and guides tend towards min-maxing and I'm more in the camp of, "No, just give me something thematic or interesting." Right?
**17:58**
**Daniel:** Yeah.
**17:59**
**Locke Vincent:** And like, I'm less interested in like, "Oh, you can get the laser sword and just kill everything in one hit." It's like, no, I want to be like the laser stealth ninja. I don't want a min-max, I want a thematic experience. So that's what I'm looking for. I'm gonna start writing guides about like that. Just being like "Roleplay guides."
**18:18**
**Daniel:** Nice. Yeah. It's always fun to do that stuff and see other people's builds as well, you know, just how they play the game. And it really is a remark—it really is remarkable how much they let you customize that stuff. And I'm really happy for FromSoftware personally, you know. They... I felt as if like the really early stuff they were kind of just maybe doing to keep the lights on maybe, and that was it. It felt like it might've been a struggle and the games didn't really resonate with people. But then, you know, just this guy had an idea: let's do this game. It's a dark fantasy RPG where it's very difficult and let's see what happens. And you know, you get a whole new genre out of that. Now there's "Soulsbornes." Is that the term? Soulslike? Soulsbornes?
**19:05**
**Locke Vincent:** I like... I use that. I think Soulsborne is pretty good.
**19:09**
**Daniel:** Yeah. And now they're everywhere and people can't get enough of them. And I'll be honest, I can't get enough of them either. I find them very fun to play. But man, you need so much time investment in those. Like people are saying, "Oh, you should play Elden Ring." I'm like, "I don't have time! I don't have 150 hours!"
**19:27**
**Daniel:** No, some people did coerce me into playing Nightrain [***Transcriber's Note: Likely referring to a mod or similar for a game***] though. I know more about Elden Ring Nightrain than I do Elden Ring. So when I go to play Elden Ring now I'll be like, "Oh I know that boss from Nightrain." Oh I know that from Nightrain. Yeah. It's just funny how it turns around.
**19:43**
**Locke Vincent:** System Shock 2 is... you know, the... I'll say System Shock 1 and 2 are often considered the birth of the Immersive Sim. Um, are there any other Immersive Sims out there that you enjoy or are a fan of? Or are you just straight Shock man?
**20:09**
**Daniel:** Oh no, I am not a straight Shock man. I will delve into any experience really. And there's a lot of them out there these days. Although the Immersive Sim being the quote unquote "cursed genre" that it is... you might not really hear about them. So for example, I love Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age. I think Thief II and System Shock 2, it can sometimes... like which is my favorite of these? Because they're both just up there for me. But I kind of think, ooh, it's very close. So I will go through and give Thief II a good going over again cause it's just so much fun to go through those huge expansive levels and just have the tools that you need to do the job. It doesn't matter how you do it, just get the job done and you can come up with some really creative and funny scenarios out of everything you do. So I love those.
**21:02**
**Daniel:** Deus Ex is obviously another one. Every time somebody mentions Deus Ex, somebody will reinstall it and I hope I'm going to cause at least three more installs by talking about it. But oh my goodness, Deus Ex is such a relevant game. It's relevant now more than ever, I think. Just with the... with the things that they sort of maybe predicted, maybe not intentionally, but they did predict that, you know, next it will be the self-aware systems you have invented to judge you. And I'm like, oh my god, what year is it? Oh, they were so good in writing that game. So if you really want an Immersive Sim and you have not played Deus Ex and you want to feel how relevant it is, just go play it. It's absolutely fantastic.
**21:52**
**Daniel:** And there's others out there as well. There's, you know, the Arkane stuff with Dishonored. Dishonored is a fantastic time as well. Um, and...
**22:01**
**Locke Vincent:** Shout outs to Prey.
**22:03**
**Daniel:** Prey! Oh my goodness, yeah. I played Prey really recently and I thought, I forgot how much fun this game was. It scratches all those, those parts of my brain that are like, "I want a good Immersive Sim experience but I don't want to play System Shock 2 again. What do I play?" I play Prey. Yeah. It really is good.
**22:23**
**Locke Vincent:** Especially with the Mooncrash edition where they make it a roguelite or a run-based...
**22:28**
**Daniel:** I've not done that DLC. Right at the minute... It's a treat. It's a treat. It's installed. I can't remember if it's installed separately or not. I do have it and I do want to get around to it. But there's some other smaller indie games as well. You may have heard of Gloomwood.
**22:45**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, yeah that's been getting some traction.
**22:48**
**Daniel:** Yeah, Gloomwood is an interesting one. And it's... I think it's still in Early Access right now, but that is looking to be a very, very promising time.
**23:01**
**Locke Vincent:** Is that New Blood? Are they producing that? Or is that someone else? I can't remember.
**23:06**
**Daniel:** I think it... I think it might be. I think a fella called... oh, I might be misremembering the name... Dillon I think his name is? I'm not quite sure. But yeah, definitely check out Gloomwood as well. That's definitely shaping up to be a good time.
**23:23**
**Daniel:** There's another one as well that came out recently called Skin Deep. Skin Deep reviewed quite well as well. That's a very interesting looking Immersive Sim style of game. A lot of cats. If you like cats you'll like Skin Deep.
**23:39**
**Daniel:** There's also Cruelty Squad. A very unique look to that game. If you've never seen Cruelty Squad, just go look up some trailers and some images of Cruelty Squad. It is very unique. You will not forget how that game looks for quite a while. But that is also another immersive style sim/action game.
**24:00**
**Locke Vincent:** Okay. I didn't realize that Cruelty Squad was an Immersive Sim. I thought it was a Boomer Shooter. But...
**24:07**
**Daniel:** But yeah, shout outs to those games. Skin Deep looks really great. Coming from... the guys that did Thirty Flights of Loving. Why is their name escaping me? I'll add it in in post.
**24:21**
**Daniel:** Blendo Games?
**24:22**
**Locke Vincent:** Thank you, Blendo. Blendo, Blendo, Blendo. Yeah, their take on the Immersive Sim. It looks really funny, tongue in cheek. That's awesome.
**24:31**
**Daniel:** Another one is Shadows of Doubt. I could go on! You've opened a can of worms here. I could go on. Shadows of Doubt...
**24:35**
**Locke Vincent:** Dude, no, this is good. People need to know. People need to know.
**24:40**
**Daniel:** Yeah. Shadows of Doubt is a Immersive Sim detective game where you are trying to work out murders.
**24:46**
**Locke Vincent:** Is that the one where they like, generate things on the fly? Little procedural...
**24:51**
**Daniel:** I believe they do, yes.
**24:53**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, I listened to a podcast about that and that sounds really cool. Where it switches maybe the killer or something like that at the start of the game or throughout the game. I think that's...
**25:07**
**Daniel:** Yeah. There are a lot of interesting games out there and if you're a fan of the genre, yeah, go out, explore and try and play as many as you can to get a... cause that's really how you kind of... that is one path into getting into game development. It's not the only rule you should follow, but yeah, play a lot of games, get a lot of experiences under your belt and just find out what went right, what went wrong with things and try and build on those. So yeah, definitely encouraged.
**25:35**
**Locke Vincent:** Expand your palette, if you will. I'll get this back on the track. Give me something... what's something that you are most proud of with System Shock 2: Anniversary Remaster?
**25:51**
**Daniel:** Um... One of the most proudest things I think was just getting everything together. Getting a successful team together and just seeing it come to fruition. Seeing all those interconnected bits just, those pieces just come together in a nice package that people outside of the PC realm can now enjoy.
**26:17**
**Daniel:** One thing that was new for us as well was voice recordings. We'd not really ever done a voice recording session at all for a KEX game. We've never really needed to. Those older games would usually just have text prompts on the screen saying "Press X to jump" and things like that. But Shock 2 does not have that. When you go into the training center you get told to jump simply "press the space bar". And "Some guns need to be... you'll need to reload this gun. Press 2 on the keyboard to equip your gun and then press the R key to reload the gun. Press this key on the keyboard to change ammo types." And it's like, oh my goodness, this is not going to work at all. What do we do?
**27:01**
**Daniel:** So I had to go to Steve and say, "Hey, we need voice acting. It's not something we've really done on the KEX side, but we need it." And again, this was me coming from System Shock Remake with experience now. I knew how to set the wheels in motion for this. So we sat down, we looked at what was needed to be done. I ran it through a bunch of people but we came up with lines. I passed them off to a coworker to review and we iterated on them. But at the end of the day we had these lines and then we got a vocal studio with voice actors and we auditioned. We did the whole audition thing. I got to choose from a list of people.
**27:46**
**Locke Vincent:** Nice.
**27:47**
**Daniel:** Then we came in, we did the voice recordings. I sat in the voice recordings, picked up on any changes. And yeah, new stuff for me, but at the end of the day when we got these recordings, we then processed them, we got them in the game and we tweaked a few things. And at the end of the day it was just something again that I was really pleased to be involved with as somebody who didn't really have the experience but had the somewhat of a know-how from Shock Remake to bring over. That was something I was also incredibly proud about. And now we have those systems in place for anything in the future that might need it. We know what to do and it's all saved away and banked for future projects.
**28:28**
**Locke Vincent:** Amazing.
**28:29**
**Daniel:** Yeah. What else is there?
**28:31**
**Locke Vincent:** If you could add one more feature that maybe wasn't possible due to time or technical restraints, what would it be?
**28:40**
**Daniel:** Ooh, that's a tough one. I don't know if there is anything else we could really add. We got as much as I wanted in there. That's a very good question. One I don't really have an answer to.
**29:02**
**Daniel:** I would have liked to maybe include more Vault stuff. I'm sure there's a lot out there. But we have another Vault in the game and it is, last time I checked, about 1.1 gigabytes on a hard drive just full of stuff. And I am a terrible data hoarder. I will hoard all sorts of stuff. So I had these old trailers, I had still images, I had a whole load of other stuff that just kind of didn't have a home before. It would live on somebody's PC on the original Steam app ID, it just lived on your PC. But now that we do the Vault for all our games, it was like, okay, we have a place to put this now.
**29:44**
**Daniel:** So I learned how to make a JSON file. I got told, "Okay, this is how this works and this works." Go nuts. And now that JSON is about 5,000 lines long, just absolutely full of trailers, screenshots, scans from magazines.
**30:02**
**Daniel:** And we also had something really interesting happen to us during development as well. Steve posted an image from Reddit of somebody who had an old build of the game from May 20th, 1999, which was roughly three months before the game shipped. And so I was like, okay, there is a slim to none chance here, but what are the odds of there being something interesting on that disc to include? So I said, "Hey Steve, you should probably reach out to this guy, see if you can get a copy of this." And that was on a Friday. And then on Monday he was like, "Yep, I got an ISO of this disc, here you go."
**30:42**
**Daniel:** And I cracked it open and the amount of undeleted content that was on that disc was insane. There was stuff going back to 1997 that had never ever been seen before by anybody. Images of like old unused menus, menu designs, characters, old copies of levels as well. We found some unused enemies used in like the final level that never made it in. Alternate skins for enemies. Just all sorts on this disc. It was obviously just before they'd gone through the game and done a cleanup. And I was like, oh my god, this is a gold mine of stuff.
**31:25**
**Daniel:** And it gave me a lot to do for the Vault. There was an unused death video when you die... everybody knows in Shock 2 when you just kind of fall over, it just takes you back to the main menu. But in this version of the game there is a video that plays of SHODAN talking to you. And that had only really been seen in previews, magazine previews. But it never made it into the final game. But we found it, we converted it and we put it in the Vault.
**31:52**
**Locke Vincent:** Amazing.
**31:53**
**Daniel:** So that is another one that I'm personally extremely pleased with was just how much content there was in the Vault. And I was a little bit sad that there wasn't enough time to put everything I wanted in there, but with future updates, we'll see what happens if I'm able to include that stuff or not.
**32:08**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, I know. Even just the size of all the interviews, that's just not feasible to include in a game file. So we had to offload those onto the website. But like, someday. Someday we'll figure that out. Gotta talk to those Digital Eclipse fellows and find out how they do it.
**32:27**
**Daniel:** Yeah.
**32:29**
**Locke Vincent:** Amazing man. Well this has been great. Is there anything else about... I know we could talk for hours about System Shock 2, but I want to be mindful of your time. Speaking of work-life balance, you know. Is there anything else you wanted to cover or shout out with regards to the remaster?
**32:48**
**Daniel:** I guess shout out to... I'm hoping to get the name right... What He Said Studios [***Transcriber's Note: What He Said Voice Actors***]. They helped with the voice acting. And Muteki Studios for helping us work on the multiplayer side. It was an absolute effort to get that going and you guys did a fantastic job in getting that all sorted out for us. So thank you very much from me on behalf of Nightdive Studios.
**33:17**
**Daniel:** And shout outs to everybody who has bought the game. I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you're... if it's your first time, I'm hoping you are having a blast with it. If it's a fond memory that you played on PC back in the day and you're now playing it on consoles, I'm hoping you're having a fun time there as well. We have a lot of interesting plans for the future. Nothing I can go into right now but, once again, thank you from me and everybody at Nightdive for continuing to support our games, support our work and everything that we do. We love bringing this content to you and we can't wait to see what the future holds for us.
**33:53**
**Locke Vincent:** Absolutely. Yeah, it's been a blast just seeing how well the game came together. You know, taking that classic and making a definitive edition of it is really, really cool. So hats off to you and the squad. I am excited to get in there and toot around again for my yearly playthrough. So thank you again for all the effort you put into it.
**34:17**
**Daniel:** What's your class? What's your go-to class? Do you play Marine? Navy or...?
**34:20**
**Locke Vincent:** I'm always Navy. I'm always... every... I'm always sneaking, I'm always hacking. I'm always like... Yeah, but on my last playthrough that I did for the trailer, I did a wrench build which was silly.
**34:38**
**Daniel:** Nice.
**34:39**
**Locke Vincent:** Just like, this thing go bonk. But I definitely tend to go towards yeah, sneaking, stealth and like worming my way around. Mostly cause of OCD because I want to be able to like, look in what's in the crate or what's in this computer or this and that, you know. I want to get my fingers into everything versus like...
**35:04**
**Daniel:** Yeah.
**35:05**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah, like gun explode big. Like I never, ever, I never play Marine. Maybe I should. For someone that likes playing thematic builds, like...
**35:15**
**Daniel:** Yeah.
**35:16**
**Locke Vincent:** And then yeah like once in a while I'll do Space Wizard and do the OSA stuff. Cause that's just like... it's just like a, almost a different game when you're playing that way with all the Psi-Ops stuff.
**35:29**
**Daniel:** It can be. For a cozy time I do do a Navy build. But yes, we are very much the same. I do like to sneak around these environments and search every little nook and cranny to find whatever I can and see all the little hidden maybe story things. Like, you know, if you ended up alerting these two on the second floor but you go through a vent you might hear a little hidden conversation from them and be like, "Oh, now I have the keys to do something else in the environment." So yeah, I personally find that very rewarding. And yeah, Space Wizard on Shock? That's the hardcore. If you go pure OSA, you are in for a rough time. But if you are able to finish the game with a pure OSA build then my hats off to you. That is difficult.
**36:16**
**Locke Vincent:** It's awesome. It's awesome. Yeah, it's really hard. And I think, I think for me it's more of a like, in these types of horror, tension-filled games, I don't want to feel too capable. And when I get too powerful as a Marine, it changes the vibe of the game. Which I think is a completely viable way to play. Like that power shift is really interesting and the game's balanced for that too. But I put a constraint on myself where I don't want to feel too outwardly capable. I'm very capable because I like, have all the resources, I have all the tools I need. I'm capable but it's not forward-facing, I find, especially in Immersive Sims.
**37:01**
**Daniel:** Yeah, I find that as well especially with Shock 2. Now I've played it so much, unfortunately I know the location of every single, you know, clip of ammunition, where every repair tool is and all that other stuff. And I'm thinking to myself, man, I need a good randomizer mod now. I've gotten to the point where I need randomizer mods to make things a bit more interesting for myself personally now.
**37:25**
**Locke Vincent:** Well I remember when we were playing the multiplayer and you're like, "Don't... when you're in that room, don't touch the hypo! I need the Psi Hypo!" I was just like, "I'm not even in there yet! What are you talking about?" So... yeah, for sure. It's amazing.
**37:37**
**Locke Vincent:** Well once again, just amazing job on this game and thank you for coming and chatting about it. Maybe in, once it's been out and people have had their hands on and you guys have had a break, we can revisit after some future patches and have another conversation about System Shock because I'm always game for it.
**37:58**
**Daniel:** I am as well. Thank you very much for having me.
**38:00**
**Locke Vincent:** Yeah absolutely. Thanks so much Daniel. And again on behalf of Nightdive and myself, we'll see you all on the next one. Bye bye.
**38:10**
**Daniel:** Bye bye.
but it's like the original but with a fancy coat of paint over it, fancy in the bad sense.
