Veteran designer Warren Spector is joining developer OtherSide Entertainment as a director to work on its upcoming Ultima successor, Ultima Ascendant, and the recently announced System Shock 3. Spector has been working with the studio as a Creative Adviser since its inception, and will undertake the full time position once his current teaching agreement wraps up.

A veteran designer some of Warren Spector's credits include Ultima Underworld, System Schock, Thief: The Dark Project, Deus Ex, and more recently Epic Mickey.

OtherSide Entertainment is thrilled to announce that Warren Spector, one of the leading creative minds in the game industry, will soon be joining the company. Warren has acted as a Creative Adviser to OtherSide since the studio’s inception. Following the end of this semester’s classes at UT Austin, he will transition into a full-time position as one of OtherSide’s Studio Directors. Warren will continue to help in a creative capacity on Underworld Ascendant and, later this year, ramp up and lead the team developing System Shock 3. Warren has a long history working with members of the OtherSide team, having collaborated with founder Paul Neurath on the original Ultima Underworld games, Thief: The Dark Project, and System Shock.

This is great news for the upcoming System Shock sequel, which we still know very little about. It's expected that at some point the title will launch a crowdfunding campaign similar to the one for Underworld Ascendant, which raised over $850,000 USD.

In a statement made to Games Industry, Warren notes his excitement for getting to work on new installments to some of the most seminal games of his career, "When the opportunity to have a bigger role in bringing Underworld Ascendant to life, as well as playing in the System Shock universe once again, helping to bring these games to a 21st century audience, I just couldn't say no. Working on System Shock was one of the most fulfilling things I've done in my career and it's hard to describe how much I'm looking forward to sharing with players what SHODAN has been up to since the last game was released."