Ken Levine goes behind the scenes on System Shock 2

Irrational Games continues to empty out its vault of memories and secrets over on its newly commissioned blog -- Ken Levine and the crew are revealing so much old insider information over there you have to wonder how long they'll keep it up. Today, it's "what might have been" on System Shock 2, as Levine relates what they would have liked to do with the SHODAN showdown game, given more time and resources. The game was originally designed as an Apocalypse Now-style assassination in space, and it included some zero-G gameplay ideas (that sound pretty similar to what Dead Space pulled off years later). The ending also had to be rewritten, as the cinematic that Levine got back didn't have much to do with the script that he had originally put together.

And perhaps the most disturbing factoid is that the entire game was created in just 900 square feet of office space, full of overworked (and smelly) game developers. Wandering around the Von Braun was scary and all, but spending 11 months in a tiny room full of developers on crunch? No wonder Levine sounds ecstatic he survived.