The “real” System Shock 2 soundtrack is now available for download, according to an entry on the SShock2 fansite.
In a post on the System Shock forum of TTLG.com, the user MysteryDev wrote that after seeing so many “fan interpretations” of the System Shock 2 soundtrack floating around, he decided to make the real one available, which he describes as, “real as in, ‘ripped from a CD that Eric Brosius burned.'”
Combining hard-driving techno beats with ominous, “something out there is going to kill you” ambiance, the music contributed significantly to the alternating feelings of dread and manic fear that permeated the game.
Eric Brosius served as the audio director at Looking Glass Studios for four years, and along with System Shock 2, worked on projects including Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri, Descent 1 and 2, and perhaps most notably, the Thief series, one of the first and finest examples of the use of sound as an integral component of gameplay. Since the collapse of Looking Glass, Brosius has done work for Ion Storm and Irrational Games, and has most recently signed up with Harmonix Music Systems, an independent game developer notable for producing the Guitar Hero games.
The site states, “These are the real arrangements created by Eric himself, authored as full soundtrack songs and burned as an album.” The songs are CD-quality, ripped from the original audio CD and encoded as 320 kbps MP3s.
The original download link to the soundtrack can be found here, while other mirrors are listed in MysteryDev’s post on TTLG.
