Game News First Look at Night Dive's Unity-powered System Shock Remake

[Zed]

Tags: Nightdive Studios; System Shock (Nightdive Studios)

Night Dive Studios' System Shock remake has been looked at by Polygon. Note that this is not the previously released Enhanced Edition – but a complete overhaul of the original game, made in Unity.

Night Dive Studios acquired the rights to the System Shock franchise IP from the Star Insurance Company, which picked them up after original developer Looking Glass Studios was forced to relinquish the assets following its closure.

After testing the waters with its Enhanced Edition of System Shock, the studio is now working on a full remake. The spirit of the original title guides the fairly young Night Dive, which opened its doors in 2012.

"We have been in contact with members of the original System Shock team and any future iterations of the System Shock games, and by this I mean both new titles in the series as well as major updates to the existing games, will be very true to the spirit of the originals," Kick told us.​

Would you believe me if I told you that it doesn't look like total crap? Judge for yourselves.

 

[thesheeep]

Hmmm... maybe this will make the game a bit more... playable.
I consider SS2 one of the best games ever made, but I could never get more than a few minutes into the first part.
The controls are just too cringeworthy, at least to me. Unfortunately.

 

[Drowed]

My problem with it is this:

(...)made in Unity.

Can the devs, please, stop using Unity? Every game I played on it runs like shit, and my computer isn't even that old.

 

[Infinitron]

Unity is like eating your veggies. You'd better learn to love it, boy.

 

[Ludo Lense]

My problem with it is this:

(...)made in Unity.

Can the devs, please, stop using Unity? Every game I played on it runs like shit, and my computer isn't even that old.

Unity doesn't make you a good programmer or artist. We tend to rage on unity because so many people use it but I guarantee you that 90% of the "unity-related issues" are pure incompetence. Also every single one? How old is your GPU?

 

[Spectacle]

Looks sweet!

 

[Zeriel]

Unity-powered

Oh look, more trash.

Unity is like eating your veggies. You'd better learn to love it, boy.

Unity is more like stevia or any of those other "healthy" sugar substitutes that are actually worse for you than sugar.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Stompa]

made in Unity.

And it's fucked. Can't wait for them memory leaks.

 

[Drowed]

Unity doesn't make you a good programmer or artist. We tend to rage on unity because so many people use it but I guarantee you that 90% of the "unity-related issues" are pure incompetence. Also every single one? How old is your GPU?

I have a i5-3450 with 8gigs of ram and a R9 280x. It's not the greatest computer ever, but I got it for free (mostly, because of my previous job) and it can run Witcher 3 just fine, even if not all maxed out. But Wasteland 2 DC stutters here like hell, and POE didn't run that well, also.

 

[Burning Bridges]

System Shock 2 ran on 32 MB.

I bet these idiots will manage to make it load between rooms and require 4GB.

Unity is for beginners. I have zero respect at all for any developer who goes with this shit.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Hmmm... maybe this will make the game a bit more... playable.
I consider SS2 one of the best games ever made, but I could never get more than a few minutes into the first part.
The controls are just too cringeworthy, at least to me. Unfortunately.

What's wrong with the controls?

 

[Darth Roxor]

why would anyone use unity instead of unreal for an fps is absolutely beyond me

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Kem0sabe]

visuals look like crap, uses unity, will not touch

 

[Average Manatee]

Unity is like eating your veggies. You'd better learn to love it, boy.

But veggies are supposed to make me grow big and strong, not max my GPU/CPU in order to display PS2-level graphics with bloom.

 

[Perkel]

why would anyone use unity instead of unreal for an fps is absolutely beyond me

Same reason why everyone else uses Unity for everything. Because under the hood Unity is easier to work with (especially Unity 5). People often say that UE is just as easy if you use Blueprints but blueprints are good for your modder or some small indie game and when you want to actually make game blueprints go out of window.

At least with Unity5 they fixed for most part performance. Unity4 had problems but Unity 5 games sure do look good and perform well.

 

[ortucis]

Why are they trying to keep the lighting so flat? SS had that look cause of hardware limitations, else it would look more like SS2 which was obviously trying to go for more realism. The only reasons games like these (DeusEx including) stuck with a bit cartoony look in textures was because of limitations of hardware.

Pointlessly forcing that look with newer engines when they can make it look more immersive is just stupid.

 

[thesheeep]

Yes, I agree. Unity 5 is a large step up and good developers can make good games with it.

The main problem remains, though, that you don't have to know shit about programming and development to do something with Unity.
Thus, most people "growing" up using it are just not very good developers. Because they never had to become good, as things work "okayish" even without that.

 

[Perkel]

Why are they trying to keep the lighting so flat?

What are you talking about ? They are using Unity5 and it comes with PBR lighting pipeline as standard.

Yes, I agree. Unity 5 is a large step up and good developers can make good games with it.

The main problem remains, though, that you don't have to know shit about programming and development to do something with Unity.
Thus, most people "growing" up using it are just not very good developers. Because they never had to become good, as things work "okayish" even without that.

You could say that about any kind of work.

"Damn kids don't learn assembler and they will fail at being devs due to that !"

Point is that modern engines and languages do stuff for you precisely so you wouldn't loose time doing something that program can do for you.

Most of people now don't learn even C++ they go straight to java, python and so on.

 

[ortucis]

What are you talking about ? They are using Unity5 and it comes with PBR lighting pipeline as standard.

WTF has PBR got to do with flat lighting?

Flat lighting means they are trying to imitate original look in half-assed manner. If they want that look they should implement cell-shading like Borderlands else it looks terrible the textures they are using.



While we're at it. The first screenshot comparison has so much smoke in it. That amount of smoke should make that whole small area smoky/foggy. Lazy level designers.

 

[thesheeep]

The main problem remains, though, that you don't have to know shit about programming and development to do something with Unity.
Thus, most people "growing" up using it are just not very good developers. Because they never had to become good, as things work "okayish" even without that.

You could say that about any kind of work.

"Damn kids don't learn assembler and they will fail at being devs due to that !"

Point is that modern engines and languages do stuff for you precisely so you wouldn't loose time doing something that program can do for you.

Most of people now don't learn even C++ they go straight to java, python and so on.

I don't think it can be said about any kind of work.
Here, we have many cases where "kids" just produce objectively bad results, because they started to develop without ever learning the basics.

The problem is that these engines go so far in "doing something for you" that you remain completely ignorant to the basics.
The basics are things like memory management & layout, data structures, basic algorithms, API design, documentation, etc., etc.
These are more or less the same since programming exists, and they are existential in becoming a good programmer, and thus existential in writing good code.
They never change, just as the basics of physics and maths will never change (well, probably).
So what we see in so many recent games with Unity or some other easy-to-use tool is nothing but the result of a lack of understanding the basics.

Take artists as another example. It is rather easy to teach yourself some tool like ArtRage, Black Ink, PS and whatnot.
But none of that can replace the knowledge about image composition, chromatics, (some basic) psychology, character design, color scheme design, etc.
And this leads to the same problem. Lots of artists out there, of which only few actually know their shit and are thus very valuable and versatile.

Now, you don't have to know C++ to be a good developer, but I always encourage people (which want to become developers/programmers) to do so, as learning it forces you to get most of the basics.
But it does not mean that you have to use C++ for everything.
In fact, I prefer almost any language over C++, as development speed is usually much, much better in other languages. Rarely, one needs the performance speed boost provided by only C/C++.

 

[m_s0]

The original is much easier on the eyes, with a nice, varied color palette. The remake looks incredibly generic and drab.

Way too early to show those early visualizations of what the game might look like screenshots.

 

[Jaesun]

System Shock is now a RPG?

System Shock 2 is however a FPS/RPG hybrid.

 

[Doktor Best]

Unity doesn't make you a good programmer or artist. We tend to rage on unity because so many people use it but I guarantee you that 90% of the "unity-related issues" are pure incompetence. Also every single one? How old is your GPU?

I have a i5-3450 with 8gigs of ram and a R9 280x. It's not the greatest computer ever, but I got it for free (mostly, because of my previous job) and it can run Witcher 3 just fine, even if not all maxed out. But Wasteland 2 DC stuttlers here like hell, and POE didn't run that well, also.

Well then something with your system is still fucked. I had a weaker system (2500k, 8gig ram, 6950 radeon) and i could play wasteland 2 maxed out never having any framedrops.