After playing DOOM3 for about 8 hours, and being heavily reminded of the tense atmosphere that system shock 2 provided [and the amazing use of sound as an emotional hook] I ended up re-installing ss2 to re-experience my memories of it.

iD Software does amazing work in pushing the limits of computing hardware for interactive entertainment. This latest title does an awesome job taking advantage of sound and lighting to generate an immersive atmosphere. That being said, I didn't get into the Doom3 storyline, and with the plethora of inane content on a lot of the data pads, it was kind've painful. I think the mechanism for story telling is great, but iD just pulled it off poorly.

System Shock 2 was an amazing, immersive game. The sounds in it don't compare to Doom3 in my opinion; however they do work very well, and were a groundbreaking for for me when I first experienced them. The appeal of SS2 was in the immersive environment, but unlike Doom3 which did so by placing a premium on environmental sound effects, the story, method of story telling, and open-ended partial-RPG style of the game were what made it the game that I love so much.

That all being said, I decided a few weeks ago that my ideal game would be if the DOOM3 team teamed up with the team that made System Shock 2, and build something that took the amazing immersive elements of both the technical and aureal that iD did so well, with the story telling and, to borrow a term, "emergent" environment from Irrational.

I'm looking forward to this announcement tomorrow, and hope to hear something along the lines of the Doom3 engine being licensed for the next in the System Shock series.