Hello all!

As some of you may know, I'm deaf, and has been since birth. That didn't prevent me from enjoying video games, and System Shock 2 was no exception. However, since it have some parts that are voiced, and no captioning/subtitling, I had to rely on my brother to explain what's happening at times.

Since apparently a new company has the source code to System Shock 2, I was wondering if it'd be possible to add subtitle support similar to Source games? I'd really like to know what SHODAN and others were saying so I can better understand the story, and audio logs.

No one has said they obtained the source code, they just got the distribution rights, which generally does not include access to the source. It would be great if they could update the game with subtitles (frankly I'm shocked it doesn't already have that), but I kind of doubt it will be possible.

It's true that a lot of the spoken ambient lines and some of the important dialogue like the reveal are sorely lacking in the subtitle department, at least all of the emails and logs are available in written form.

Sadly I think adding a custom subtitle system would be such a huge undertaking that I don't see too many people running to volunteer for it. That's also assuming someone would even have the source code to begin with.

From the RPS article, they said: I assumed that it meant that they have the source code, since they built it? If I'm mistaken, then that'd be unfortunate...

There have been years of researching by fans who have then created their custom patches, all without the source code. I'm still waiting on someone to do a proper side-by-side comparison to the fan patched original game and the one GOG has shipped, but I'm assuming you won't find too many big differences.

It's not the first time GOG is using material created by fan communities to fix their releases.

As for build, I think they mean NewDark.

You can find a gamescript for some games online. Don't know they have it for SS2 and if it would be convenient to use due to the nonlinearity but it's worth a shot.

That doesn't necessarily mean that they have the source code at all. The term "build" can refer to just the current configuration of the software and all its attendant assets, most of which don't require any access at all to the source code at all. For example, GOG often refers to updates to the games here as "new builds", but they have never once had access to the source code of the games they sell.