System Shock 2 Alternate Cover Art (Patreon)

Afternoon!

The System Shock 2 video is out, though I wasn't able to look at any Enhanced Edition stuff so that'll have to wait for the future. However, I was waiting on EE for quite a while and was hoping it'd be out last year, and in that time I had some alternate covers for the game commission by a professional artist in the key art field, Dakota Lee, so here's some of the WIP stuff we went through.

Originally for an "enemy on the cover" idea there were a few different variants to go with, though it did seem like the hybrid might be the best idea especially to contrast 1:1 with the elite cyborg for System Shock 1. So overall this was the simpler one direction wise.

As for the Xerxes one, this one was much trickier. Dakota had several ideas of how it could go, and first thought the pillar of him would be best since that's how most people first encounter and remember him in the medical wing by the replicator.

This eventually morphed into something a little more abstract. Instead Xerxes could actively be consumed by the Many, and it would be a freaky totem inspired by the one in Hellraiser.

As you can see above this one got damn far along, but then he decided to tweak the idea even more. Instead of being aboard the Von Braun, the totem could be in space similar to the egg on the Alien poster.

From here he iterated on this idea even more, until settling on this absolutely amazing finish.

These two are both the big PNGs he sent to me for the video, and naturally they're yours for the taking to do whatever with. I've seen some people already using the Twitter copies to replace their art on Steam and GOG Galaxy. Anyhow, more videos to come soon. 

Thanks as always for your support!