On higher difficulties, the unevenness spreads: a build intending to take Standard Weapons to at least 3 (With no Psi) should, on Impossible, always pick to go Navy, as you end up with more Cyber Modules than a Marine focusing on Standard Weapons. OSA Agents have more Cyber Modules' worth of benefits, and thus a run that ever intends to do anything with Psi should always start as an OSA Agent, no matter what else you might intend to do.

On the most basic mechanical level, the choices are not even. This all sounds fairly interesting, letting the player define/customize their character without being overwhelmed by an opaque screen filled with technical information, but the execution is broken on basically every level. ('Welcome to cyberspace!' 'You mean this is what the hacking minigame is going to be like?' ' Not even slightly, not that we'll actually tell you that in-game.') Part of this involves picking your 'class' in the form of which branch of the UNN military you want to join -Marine, Navy, or OSA- and from there you pick three duty stations that each last a year and provide some beginning-of-game stat/skill boosts. System Shock 2 has an 'immersive' tutorial/'class' selection opening dealy where the game flat-out lies to you and provides extremely misleading impressions.

System shock 2 player builds