Haaa, that's why. I remember finding it weird that the wrench animation was similar to Thief's sword's animation, while the enemies were less detailled.
Make sense, if they lacked experience.

As a fun bonus image, the same hallway with a updated character model/textures:

http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/systemshock2/engineering/12.jpg

Yeah, the Dark Engine was originally written for the Thief games. It was recycled to the System Shock 2. The funny part is that System Shock 2 was not made by the Looking Glass Studios. It was made by the Irrational Games as their first game.

They quite literally didn't have skill to utilise the game engine to its maximum potential. They also streamlined the original System Shock to the point that they're very far apart from each other.

Just look at this: http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/4/3329/16548.jpg

It takes modders to make full potential character models. lol

Ha, I finally understand why everything reminded me of Thief.

More like system-shocked!

xD ROFL