This month for From the Vault, we are thrilled to share a long lost System Shock 2 sketchbook.

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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