Graphics

The future is definitely high tech

System Shock 2 uses the Thief engine to power its graphics. While Thief mainly showed dark castles and tombs, the graphics in SS2 show off the engine's versatility. The squarish corridors, rooms, and walkways of the Von Braun definitely have that cold, harsh, futuristic feel to them. I also appreciated the vibrant colors on the computer consoles and ship's view screens. Metallic or non organic objects look just as they should - the gun models in particular look detailed even when lying on the floor. The ship architecture itself was refreshingly varied too, ranging from cavernous rooms to small utility closets. Overall, the mostly empty bowels of the Von Braun convey a cold, desolate feeling. The gamer truly feels as if he/she is all alone.

Moody lighting

Alright - armor!

But soft targets look really bad

Where System Shock 2 really falls down is how the engine handles "soft, organic stuff." Like Thief, the humanoid models look very artificial, which is a shame because everything else in the game looks clean and sharp. This is most obvious when you carefully examine faces. Everything looks mostly ovaloid with a beak like extension for the nose, just like the Thief models. It simply looks as if there were too few polygons used to model the living things - hybrids and other humanoids look like a pile of angles and odd shapes. Hanging plants have no fullness or volume to their leaves. Even the odd pile of worms you see lying about are just flat moving textures rather than a 3 dimensional pile of nasty looking maggots. Now with that aside, I should mention that this one of the few gripes I have with SS2. Everything else is fantastic.

Kill that monkey!

What's that in the shadows?