Looking Glass Studios Retrospective 2/3 (System Shock, Thief: The Dark Project, Terra Nova).

During the final stages of Ultima Underworld II's production, concepts for a new game were bouncing around. It was a collaboration between Doug Church, Paul Neurath, Warren Spector with design input from Austin Grossman. Feeling the burnout of a rushed production of Underworld 2, the team felt that it had done enough "dungeon games" and concepted a new one with a futuristic setting while relying on the working gameplay of Underworld as a foundation, but with a more streamlined approach. Thus System Shock was born, with Doug Church as director and Warren Spector as producer. The prospect of making a completely new setting and franchise excited the team, as they could try and do whatever they liked without having to fit into a previously existing mold or universe. "You hear the sound of a security camera swiveling, and then the beep of it acquiring you as a target, so you duck behind the crate and then you hear the door open so you throw a grenade and run out of the way." Minutes of gameplay like this were written as part of the original design document and determined the development and direction of the game moving forward. Pushing the idea of emergent gameplay even further, the game was designed with many tools, items, weapons and methods of playing each area of the game, which would prove to be a theme amongst Looking Glass and Spector's games in the future. One major departure from their previous games was the decision to remove dialogue trees entirely from System Shock. This both eliminated the awkwardness of having almost "separate games" of exploration/combat and dialogue. The solution, which ended up fitting the theme of the game well, was to eliminate friendly NPCs from the game altogether, instead providing many text documents stored on devices around the Citadel space station it was set in, as well as real voice recorded audio logs and transmissions. This was one of the first times this method of storytelling would be used and would become a trend in future games such as BioShock, Doom 3 & 4, Metal Gear Solid series, Dead Space, Deus Ex as well as countless others. It provided a meaningful and immersive story experience without slowing gameplay to a stop with huge blocks of text. Clues and information needed to progress were sometimes placed in these logs so the thorough listeners and readers would get insight that others may not. Another often overlooked feature in System Shock is its incredibly advanced difficulty setting screen, where you can set specifics before you start the game which determine quantities of enemies, their strength, the difficulty of puzzles, or removing them from the game, the challenge of cyberspace sequences or excluding those sequences from the game, as well as the density of plot elements, adding a thematic time limit to the game, or even removing plot elements from your playthrough entirely! This impressive customization has, to my knowledge almost never been replicated in another game before or since. Mutants, cyberpunk themes and hacking, interesting storyline told primarily through voiced audio logs, there was so much innovation and refreshing elements to the game that it's easy to overlook one of the reasons why it is most remembered...SHODAN, the renegade AI who lost her mind when hacked by the protagonist in the game's intro. Voiced by Terri Brosius and put through layers upon layers sound engineering, SHODAN's voice will haunt just about anyone who's played the System Shock games to this day. SHODAN is ever-present in the game's world, controlling the cameras, doors, sound systems and screens, gradually shifting into a darker and more menacing entity as the game goes on. She remains one of the most memorable and ominous antagonists in video game history. Instead of follow-ups to established games in the mid-90s Looking Glass Studios began to develop games and self-publish them as well. They had some failures but also had some success along the way.

In 1995, they released Flight Unlimited, a solid and well-received flight simulator , selling over 780,000 copies. This helped bridge the drought that would follow.

In 1996, they released the critically acclaimed but commercial failure Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri. Terra Nova was a mech combat game and was compared to Activision's popular Mechwarrior 2 game released the year prior. But instead of Mechwarrior 2's approach of having a fully polygonal world and models with simple flat colors and shading, Terra Nova opted for a textured world and 2D sprite models, which some criticized. Things looked worse when in 1997 when 18 months into development, a Star Trek: Voyager tie-in game was cancelled. The third and final self-published game to be released was British Open Championship Golf in 1997, which was again well-received by most critics but was a financial disaster as one employee put it. Self-publication ceased after that point and layoffs of several employees including Warren Spector occurred thereafter. The mid-90s was not Looking Glass's shining moment as the situation there was on shaky ground... That is until The Dark Project came around. Starting production in early 1996, many iterations and thematic shifts occurred early in development, including an early setting of medieval swordfighting, another one about communist zombies, then evolving to a grim interpretation of Arthurian legend, becoming Dark Camelot. Looking Glass designer Ken Levine played a key role in the worldbuilding and design of the game, as well as Warren Spector in its earlier stages. After several shifts in setting occured, trailers and demos of Dark Camelot/The Dark Project were shown off and were impressive for the time. Dynamic lighting allowing corridors and areas to be specifically lit by candlelight, torchlight or gaslight while darkness prevailed just around the corner were really new and interesting features for that era. It was in 1997 where development hit full stride, but in that year about half of Looking Glass employees had been laid off, and the morale of the remaining staff on The Dark Project were at a low point, leading many to voluntarily quit out of stress or fear that they might be next. While the original game design outlined a swordfighting-centric hero and mechanics involving dynamically gaining or losing reputation with various factions through your actions. Paul Neurath suggested that the thievery aspect of the game was the most interesting bit and that focus should be placed on that. Thus it started to become a stealth-centric game with interesting new mechanics like light-sensitivity in enemy sight and patrolling guards that would grow suspicious of your actions, artificial intelligence routines that were non-existent at the time. These features would cause major issues, glitches and QA concerns that the programmers would struggle with for many months. In late 1997, the lead programmer quit, and when the new lead programmer Tom Leonard took over, he saw a fixable AI system but had to rewrite nearly 4/5ths of the code to make it work. This was a huge change in the game, and many previously planned features were cut, including a proposed multiplayer mode, branching story paths and a more in-depth inventory system. By narrowing the game's scope down to a stealth-focused, linear, single-player mission-based game, Thief: The Dark Project was born. After an uneasy relationship with their publisher of the game, Eidos, development finally came to a close late 1998 when the game was released. The Dark Engine was the first Looking Glass engine to support 3D acceleration and featured fully 3d modeled characters, items, weapons and environments. But it was the gripping world and revolutionary stealth mechanics that blew people away. Thief had a brooding and cruel atmosphere, from the industrial gothic noise and lighting of the game environments, to the Nine-Inch Nails-like aesthetic of the promo videos, Thief had a style of its own. Creeping through the decrepit streets and hallways of "The City", exploring every nook and cranny of the medieval/industrial revolution setting for every coin, valuable and useful item you could find was enthralling and immersive. Fans will recall the tension of letting a crucial arrow fly to hit a target while remaining undiscovered, or stalking a guard until just the right second to land a blow with your trusty blackjack. There was nothing quite like its focus on stealth, immersion and open level design which allowed players to try and discover many different paths and styles of completing missions. The impressive lighting engine allowed for atmospheric soundscapes but also served as a functional foundation for one of Thief's core mechanics: the Light Gem. The game was designed for a 1st person perspective for immersion, but players could track their visibility via a simple interface tool on the bottom of the screen which told you how much light was being cast on you at any given moment. Enemy AI would react to loud sounds, the protagonist, Garrett if he was in enough light, torches if they went out, and stray arrows if they missed their mark. The atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife, starting with moody stealth missions often involving valuables or artifacts, the game eventually lands in downright Lovecraftian supernatural turns, which some have criticized, favoring the simple, more realistic earlier storyline. Thief: The Dark Project was one of Looking Glass's biggest financial successes. It was a revolutionary experience on many fronts and is beloved to this day as one of the finest examples of stealth gaming ever made.