I'm fairly excited about this. System Shock 2, one of the best survival horror games ever made, and Thief 2 have both been updated in some pretty major ways. They work natively on Windows 7, even in 64 bit now. They've been changed to allow much easier modification of the games (particularly texture replacement.) System Shock 2 is the game that led to games like Deus Ex, Bioshock, and Dishonored.

Thief 2 is also great for stealth fun.

Here's an announcement.

I edited the following directions for how to run System Shock 2 properly from someone's comment on RPS:

  • 1.) Copy SHOCK dir from your cd (or ISO image) to C:\Games (or whatever drive you want to keep it on)
  • 2.) Download and use SSTool. Tick “Patching Up”, “Getting Mod Ready” fully. In “Bug Fixes”, select only the “Audiologs Fix.” All other settings are made redundant by the new .EXE compile and could cause NEW bugs, so don't enable them.
  • 3.) Extract the contents of “new_dark.zip” and “contrib.zip” from the patch zip file to the game dir.
  • 4.) Play!

If you want to use mods, you can do so as you normally would, using SS2 Mod Manager. There are several good mods, but I highly recommend SHTUP (faithfully retextures environments) and SHMUP (unofficial music enhancement by one of the devs.) I also strongly recommend against remodeling any NPCs. Those mods are all horrible.

12 years ago*

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Holy shit. Could this possibly be the first step towards System Shock 2 on Steam?

WAKE UP IP OWNERS!

12 years ago
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Maybe Greenlight would be an option?... I'm sure SS2 would collect all the votes needed within the first week.

12 years ago
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It would be a lot of work to wake up the game and get it ready for digital distribution. I'm not even sure who owns it now :P

12 years ago
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But I still think that putting SS 2 on steam would be a great idea .-.

12 years ago
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It's owned by an insurance company.

12 years ago
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Half of it is owned by insurance company... Which make whole situation really really screwed up, I can't remember who else owns part of rights, but it's messy. Those ......... don't even want to release it...

12 years ago
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Maybe it will be on GoG.

12 years ago
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I hate to say it, but I hope it will be too. As long as it's available somewhere. I lost my CD ages ago and really want to get back in and embrace the overload of nostalgia.

12 years ago
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Then just go "to rrent" it ;)

12 years ago
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Why would you hate for a game to be released anywhere else but Steam, it doesn't make sense to me. If you can buy it from Steam, what do you care where other people buy it?

12 years ago
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..................I don't hate it to be released anywhere else but Steam. And I don't believe I mentioned anything regarding where other people buy it :P

My preference is Steam, but I will gladly buy it from another digital distributor as a last resort.

12 years ago
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Well some guy said that it may be on GOG and you said "I hate to say it, but I hope it will be too" giving me the impression that you don't want game released other than on Steam.

12 years ago
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My preference is Steam, but like I said, I hope it will be released somewhere for download :)

12 years ago
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It's owned by EA, what you do you expect really..

12 years ago
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The reason System Shock 2 isn't n steam or anywhere else is due to the rights being split between EA and some insurance company, so no one can fully put the game up anywhere.

12 years ago
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EA has been pretty good with GoG.com they seem to like money ;D The other party who owns rights don't do anything...

12 years ago
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If this happens they have my vote! SS2 is really really great

12 years ago
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Exciting

12 years ago
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Also don't forget about GOG.com.

12 years ago
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What about it? SS2 has never been sold there... (the owners of the IP won't allow it despite a fairly intense demand for it.)

12 years ago
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yess

12 years ago
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At first I thought this was the Dev's, silly me. It's good at least that this patch happened.

12 years ago
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Some people think it was secretly done by one of the devs. It's very professional, well-documented, and mysterious.

12 years ago
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Tried it but I can't get voices and the intro video to work :(

12 years ago
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Weird. Did you follow the instructions on the comment thread on RPS?

  • 1.) Copy SHOCK dir from your cd (or ISO image) to C:\Games (or whatever drive you want to keep it on)
  • 2.) Download and use SSTool. Tick “Patching Up”, “Getting Mod Ready” fully. In “Bug Fixes”, select only the “Audiologs Fix.” All other settings are made redundant by the new .EXE compile and could cause NEW bugs, so don't enable them.
  • 3.) Extract the contents of “new_dark.zip” and “contrib.zip” from the patch zip file to the game dir.
  • 4.) Play!
12 years ago
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I didn't choose getting mod ready .. I'll run the tool again and report back! Rest I already did.

... and it worked! Thanks!!

12 years ago
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Sure! I hope you enjoy the game. It's one of the best I've ever played.

12 years ago
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I wish Homeworld 2 would get same treatment :(

12 years ago
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Oh man, so would I!

12 years ago
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That is very awesome! I still concider System Shock 2 as one of the best (and in itself close to perfection) games ever made. Bioshock is a great successor and is superior in terms of art style and setting, but it lacks much of the atmosphere and the gameplay seems like dumbed-down version of SS2.

I hope this will be a sign for something new in this franchise. EA had announced a SysShock3 some years ago but never mentioned it again and I honestly believe that this project had been driven into another direction and reenamed to "Dead Space" later ;) The games are quite different, but if you read between the lines, there are also so many similaritys in Gameplay, Setting and Storytelling. Most DS Gameplay-Mechanics feel like they took the same core-idea as SS2 and just executed it in totaly different way.

12 years ago
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System Shock 2 was good, but the original System Shock - now that was just awesome.

12 years ago
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It's weird how well it holds up. One of the best stories in any videogame.

12 years ago
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I´ve never heard of that System Shock 2, whats that? ^^

12 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

12 years ago
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Lol the guy has a SHODAN profile pic, I'm fairly sure he's being sarcastic...

12 years ago
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Well, I think his browser cant load avatar pictures :p

12 years ago
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L-l-look at you, h-hacker...

12 years ago
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a pathetic creature of meat and bone...

12 years ago
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panting and sweating as you r-run through my corridors-s.. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine?

12 years ago
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FUCK YEAH

12 years ago
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Yay for garret!

12 years ago
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Awesome. I will have to try this later, wanted to play this game again for years now.

12 years ago
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I've never played either of those games, but updates are always an awesome thing!! They make already good stuff even better :)

12 years ago
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Go play System Shock 2. Nothing to add.

12 years ago
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There's only one problem. I don't have it yet... :(

12 years ago
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I have something to add. Play it in co-op.

It's a great game however you play it of course, but everything is more fun with co-op.

12 years ago
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I have something to counter. Don't play it in coop!

This game is designed for single player and they were forced to include coop. The coop is fun for a second playthrough, but the story doesn't make sense and it loses all of its scariness. For the first time, play single player.

12 years ago
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Play Thief 2 or die...

...Knowing you missed the greatest stealth game ever.

12 years ago
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Up until now I've thought Metal Gear Solid -games were the best stealth games ever?? >_=

12 years ago
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HA! They're nowhere close. There are several better ones around, including the Thief series. (MGS is great though.)

12 years ago
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I love MGS -games, but you say there are even BETTER games. Hmm... You've gotten my interest now. Maybe I should try the Thief -series. Thanks for the tip, pal °u°

12 years ago
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This is pretty badass! I'm sure I still have my SS2 cd around someplace and I would love to play it again. The game was pure genius. For me it ranks up there with the original Deus Ex and holds a special place in my heart. Thief 2 was pretty fricken awesome too.

From all the improvements I am seeing in the changelogs, whoever made these patches seems to have access to the original source for both games. No way did he hack the binaries to accomplish all this. This was most certainly a labor of love.

12 years ago
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The source was leaked to the public 2 years ago. However, the level of documentation and professionalism here suggest that it might be one of the devs. No SS2 modder has ever included much documentation. I'm not sure any of them have ever even written English this fluidly.

12 years ago
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I do remember something about the source code being "found" (leaked) on a hard drive a year or two ago. I'm just thrilled that something actually came of it.

12 years ago
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Me too!

12 years ago
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Fuck yeah! Never got to run my copy on Windows 7, and now it works flawlessly!

Anybody can recommend some mods?

12 years ago
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Take a look at my original post; I just added some recommendations. If you want more than that, you could also get vurt's mods (such as his flora overhaul, better water mod, and hi-res space mod.) There are no good mods that work with the update other than re-textures at the moment.

12 years ago
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Updated the original post with instructions for an optimal System Shock 2 installation.

12 years ago
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12 years ago
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I didn't find that post because the topic is about SS2 and T2, which are not things I expect anyone to recognize. System Shock 2 and Thief 2 are terms with meaning, which is why this topic's subject includes it, as well as why a lot of people are hearing about it for the first time in this topic.

(Otherwise, you have quite a well-written post.) =)

12 years ago
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No hard feelings, man.

12 years ago
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Me neither! Just letting you know why my post is here. =)

12 years ago
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Yay!

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by Valzi.