Irrational was once a tiny team that made games on miniscule budgets. Today we’re much, much bigger and the budget’s grown along with the ambition of the group’s games. This month’s episode of Irrational Behavior explores what these changes have meant for the studio’s culture and the individuals who’ve been on board as the industry itself has had to adopt the professional practices of big business. Episode highlights include an insider take on the making of Thief, designers Dorian Hart and Alexx Kay waxing nostalgic on the days when they were allowed to do voice over work for Freedom Force, as well as the story of a mysterious onanist who secretly used artist Shawn Robertson’s office for forbidden self-pleasures.

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Podcast music provided by:

• Josh Rathbun
• Matt Grimm
• Geoff Graves
• Rich Vreeland/DisasterPeace
• Signal Hill

All games have secrets that stay locked away for years on end.  Creative Director Ken Levine sits down and reveals some of these secrets from 1999’s classic shooter System Shock 2.

Apocalypse Shock?

“The original story had the player going to a spaceship to assassinate a character similar to Colonel Walter Kurtz from Apocalypse Now,” says Creative Director Ken Levine. “We pitched the game to Paul Neurath at Looking Glass Studios based on a story outline I wrote and they gave us access to the Dark Engine which was used to make Thief.”

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For every feature that ends up in a game, 10 more are proposed and dumped during the pre-production phase, and another five on the road to final release*. The handful of examples that follow offer a window into the different ways that BioShock and System Shock 2 might have turned out.

*These aren’t hard figures. Include them in your school papers at your own peril.
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