14 DAY TRIAL // The CEO of developer BioWare has stated that one of his all time favorite gaming experiences was System Shock, the first person mix between shooter and adventure game that was created in 1994 by Looking Glass Studios.
Speaking to Develop as part of a bigger interview, Dr. Ray Muzyka, who is one of the co-founders of BioWare and now serves as Chief Executive Officer of the company, has revealed that, “Mine was probably the original System Shock. It was awesome. I finished that game four times in 10 years. I loved the way it was the first true 3D adventure. The shooter mechanic in 3D meant it was very hard to control in a way, but the richness of the world was amazing.”
He added, “Our IT guys hate us for it, but we use a fan website with patches to make sure System Shock will work on our current gen laptops.”
It's interesting to note that System Shock is not a role-playing game, the genre which BioWare has specialized in creating over the years, from Mass Effect to Dragon Age.
System Shock was a milestone when it comes to gaming because of the complex levels that players were asked to tackle and because of the way the story was built, with SHODAN emerging as one of the malefic and interesting characters in gaming.
It would be interesting to see whether Muzyka's love for System Shock has any clear effect on upcoming titles from BioWare.
At the moment, BioWare has at least three big projects in development.
The closest to the launch date is Dragon Age 2, the mix between action and role playing that is set to come out in March 2011 and push the story of the franchise forward past the Blight.
The company is also working on Star Wars: The Old Republic and probably on Mass Effect 3.