After the implosion of Looking Glass, Dorian signed on with Irrational Games, joining the talented team working on The Lost for the PS2. He also was the lead designer of Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, and he's very grateful to the 17 people who purchased it. His design credits from his time there are: Ultima Underworld 2, System Shock, Thief: The Dark Project, System Shock 2, and (in a very limited role) Thief 2: The Metal Age. It received acclaim from critics, but many players felt it was a disappointment compared to the original.Dorian spent over seven years at Looking Glass Studios, learning the arcane rites of game design. In 2013, they released Bioshock Infinite, the highly anticipated threequel to Bioshock.

It received universal acclaim and strong sales. Irrational Games eventually released Bioshock in 2007, a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. System Shock 2 released on August 11th, 1999 to universal acclaim, but mediocre sales.

I wanted to violate that trust and make the player feel that they, and not the character, were led on and deceived'. He stated 'Sometimes characters are betrayed, but the player never is. He believed game characters were too trusting, so he thought SHODAN's betrayal would affect the player. The game's lead designer Ken Levine decided it would be interesting for S.H.O.D.A.N to ally with the player and then betray them. Irrational enthusiastically agreed and EA allotted one year for the team to implement story changes. Electronic Arts, the publishers of the original System Shock, suggested to the team that Junction Point should become a sequel to System Shock. Irrational sought to make Junction Point extremely different from Doom, with RPG elements and a detailed storyline.Īfter 18 months of development and a budget of $1.7 million, the game was nearing completion. Originally, the game was to be titled Junction Point and involved the player assassinating a starship commander gone insane.ĭue to System Shock being seen by the media as a Doom clone upon release, it undersold. Irrational were fans of the original System Shock and wanted to create a similar game. In 1997, Looking Glass Studios approached Irrational Games with the idea of co-developing a new game. Irrational Games was the development company behind System Shock 2, as well as the Bioshock series.

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