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KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

LudensCogitet

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The trailer indicates they have really upped the horror vibe, which I'm not very in to.

I liked that the original was pretty much not scary at all and didn't feel like it was trying to be a horror game.
 

gurugeorge

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I'm definitely excited for it, but having already played the original umpteen times years ago, and the demo recently, I'll wait till the full release so I can enjoy the new graphics from beginning to end.
 

LudensCogitet

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I liked that the original was pretty much not scary at all and didn't feel like it was trying to be a horror game.
I was actually rather surprised at how non-scary SS1 is, having played SS2 first.
I started System Shock 2 before I ever played System Shock 1.

Once the cyber midwives started showing up in 2 I dropped it. I am weak. It was too much for my nerves.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/system-shock-remake-demo-preorders/

System Shock remake gets a final demo today ahead of summer launch
We chat with Nightdive about what's left to finish on its long-awaited remake as preorders open up.

It won't be long now. When the retro game rescue crew at Nightdive first launched the Kickstarter campaign to remake System Shock in 2016, the studio ambitiously thought it could be finished in a year and a half. That didn't happen, and early in 2018, the game far from done, they made the dramatic move of restarting from scratch, after straying too far from the original idea of a faithful remake.

Three more years in, it's nearly finished: Pre-orders are available starting Thursday, and Nightdive's head of business development Larry Kuperman told me the launch isn't far off. The plan is for System Shock to be out this summer. A new demo, available for everyone to download today, represents a game that's finally almost at the finish line.

The goal of the demo is to present a "feature-complete version of the game," says CEO Stephen Kick, so players "understand exactly what they'll be getting if they preorder." Kick walked me through what the demo includes that we haven't already seen from Nightdive's remake so far.

"Those features include a dismemberment system, so you'll be able to blow apart the mutants and cyborgs that are onboard Citadel Station," he said. "The lighting is now fully real-time so you'll be able to destroy the lights. We wanted to make it as immersive as possible. One of the other really big features that's available for the first time is cyberspace. You can go into cyberspace, fight the various enemies that are there, and unlock doors that are in the real world that are protected by SHODAN in virtual reality."

The demo also has new voice acting, more detailed environments, and dynamic music that will change out sections of a track rather than run on a loop. It's more advanced than the original game's, and the new soundtrack will definitely have its own vibe, too.

"The original had a dynamic system that would change based on whether you were in combat or exploring. We have that, we've recreated that, but the tone of the music has definitely changed," said Kick. "When you're exploring it's a lot more atmospheric, and not so much like you're in a '90s rave."

But don't worry—parts of the System Shock remake's soundtrack will still be danceable. Artist Evelyn Mansell pointed out that cyberspace is pretty ravey.

When Nightdive rebooted its remake back in 2018, its goal was to refocus on creating a game faithful to the original. That remains the goal, but Mansell explained that balancing the enemies and weapons was an important change.

"Certain weapons were hugely preferred over everything else, and a lot of enemies you'd end up killing incredibly quickly," said Mansell. "We're trying to make the combat a bit more meaningful, rather than just trying to blast the enemies as quickly as you can. There is not a huge amount of variation in how you play when it's built that way. Something that we really value is making sure that the player has a choice in how they tackle the game, so we're trying to make sure however they choose to play it, there are ways they can work in their own playstyle and have fun playing the game however they like."

The demo is available starting today at 1 pm EST, but if you don't want to wait, you can watch Nightdive stream the game with Alienware starting at 11 am EST. They'll also be giving away copies of Nightdive's System Shock: Enhanced Edition, a version of the original game that plays nice with modern PCs.

Pre-orders also come with an incentive: Drop $45 on Steam, GOG, or the Epic Games store, and you'll get Nightdive's upcoming System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition for free.
 
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AndyS

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I liked that the original was pretty much not scary at all and didn't feel like it was trying to be a horror game.
I was actually rather surprised at how non-scary SS1 is, having played SS2 first.
I started System Shock 2 before I ever played System Shock 1.

Once the cyber midwives started showing up in 2 I dropped it. I am weak. It was too much for my nerves.

My biggest memory of the midwives is this one time I saw one in a room and killed it, spent a minute rummaging through the room, then turned to leave only to get shot in the back because the damn game decided to respawn her right where I'd killed her. I like SS2 but that was just silly.
 

Lemming42

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The level design changes are fine and the combat is decent but ultimately I'm disappointed with the demo. The devs of this remake just seem to have a completely different idea of what made System Shock great, compared to my own. It's been clear from day one, and I've whined about it before in this thread more than once, but if this demo is the style they've finally settled on then that seals the deal.

The remake is all gloomy dark corridors where you can't see shit, droning "horror" music, people crying and whimpering on audio logs. None of System Shock's frantic fast paced action or outstanding adrenaline-pounding music, none of the "you've got 6 hours until the station explodes/Earth gets blasted/everyone dies, get moving you fucking idiot" feeling that the original imparted so well. Going just from this demo, they've gutted System Shock's tone and replaced it with survival horror shit we've all seen a thousand times before, and the result is that it just feels dull and generic.

It's a shame because the original game was crying out for a remake that unleashed the story's full potential, freed from the tech limitations of 1994. You could have had some fantastic setpieces based on the original game's best moments (that room where SHODAN traps you with the antenna that's about to explode, for example) and SHODAN could have had even more of a constant looming presence in the plot. Diego could have had some motivations to make literally anything he does make sense, and the sometimes overly-wordy audio logs could have been changed into something much more focused. Instead, they've decided to take SS2's boring (IMO, obviously) horror approach and make it even duller.

Other complaint is where the fuck is everyone? The enemies are so scarce, compared to SS1 where you'd sometimes get mobbed by like 5 - 10 bastards at once.
 

Nano

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Film remakes aren't expected to be exactly 1:1 with modern actors and set design, why's it different for video games? Just compare The Thing from the 50s and 80s; the remake is a straight-up horror movie, the original borders on comedy. Which one's better?

Instead, they've decided to take SS2's boring (IMO, obviously) horror approach
Translation: "boring" means "horror games are too scary for me to handle".
 

Lemming42

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Film remakes aren't expected to be exactly 1:1 with modern actors and set design, why's it different for video games? Just compare The Thing from the 50s and 80s; the remake is a straight-up horror movie, the original borders on comedy. Which one's better?

Come on, read what I wrote. I outright said there's plenty of room to reimagine and rework elements of the original, and that I approve of the changes to level design - 1994's maze-like corridors (though explained in-universe) wouldn't fly in a 2021 game, so redesigning it to be more logical while keeping many specific rooms intact was the right move. But the complete tonal shift exemplified in basically every aspect of the game isn't the direction I'd personally have taken it in, it doesn't work well with the over-the-top nature of the plot where you're rushing around a disintegrating space station trying to stop a big laser/a bioweapon from blowing up Earth, or SHODAN downloading itself into the internet, or the mad dash to get to the bridge before it disconnects after the station is set to overload. The original game's mood was right on target, and this demo suggests that it's been gutted with the replacement being totally ineffective.

Translation: "boring" means "horror games are too scary for me to handle".

There's never been a scary horror game! Least of all System Shock 2. The only game that really made me feel any amount of fear was Far Cry 2 when the low-poly seagulls started glitching out and spawning from beneath the ground, flying up through the floor of the car since they have no collision detection. Driving along, everything's normal, low-poly seagull in the face. Nearly shit myself.

System Shock 2 wasn't scary though, and this remake isn't scary at all. It just pointlessly has the trappings of horror - everything's so dark you can't see shit, there's Spooky Fog everywhere, the music sounds like someone fell asleep leaning against a synth, audio logs consist of people whimpering and saying "oh god, (crying) the CyberFucker 2000 is coming to kill me! (crying) my arm hurts! (crying)", etc.
 

Bad Sector

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So after a bit above 3 hours i just finished the demo. I have to say that i absolutely fucking loved it (yeah i know i'm repeating myself from last time, but guess what, i also liked it last time too :-P). If they keep the same level of quality with the rest of the game it will be a day 1... well, no, a sale 1 purchase (i am a bit strapped for money so no day 1 purchases for the foreseeable future :-P).

Initially i wasn't sure about the darker environment but i ended up liking it (and if you have a VA, OLED or CRT monitor the contrast looks great... also if you have an OLED monitor fuck you i am jealous). Same with the music, i liked both the more atmospheric music in the base game but also the more high(ish) beat music in the cyberspace (and i also liked the new cyberspace). The new recordings are also nice, not a big fan of the sobbing in a couple of them, but overall they're much cleaner and easier to listen what people are saying.

The level is mostly the same but there are some changes here and there - overall if you have played the game before you have an idea where to go but they aren't exactly the same so you can't play on auto-pilot, you still need to look for stuff (the change in environment lighting also help here). I also liked the puzzles for unlocking stuff (the one with the colors had me thinking for a bit until i figured it out).

The UI is also very good, it doesn't pause or anything when you bring it up (i remember reading some people being worried about this), it works pretty much like the SS2 GUI and you can interact with stuff on the environment while it is open (you can use the middle mouse button to look around while the UI is active). The minimap is also nice and i like how it fills using a combination of "flood fill" and your view cone but it is also blocked by doors, etc so it can be helpful to figure out which areas you have visited and which you haven't. You can also place markers in the full map view though sadly you can't enter any comments for them.

On the less positive side, i am still not a fan of the pixellated style - i think it feels very out of place with the high fidelity assets and visuals. Also i still do not like the mutant models, i think they copied the original sprites' style a bit too literally. And i hope the generic portraits are just placeholders - hopefully the corpses too. The video when you die is amusing the first time you see it but it is a bit too long - honestly i couple of times i thought it might be faster to just reload instead of waiting for the video to end so i get resurrected.

Also i noticed a couple of bugs, in one case the "whooshing" sound that plays when you are in one of the tiny cyberspace corridors that push you forward didn't stop playing when i got ejected because i ran out of time and i had to quicksave and quickload for it to stop. In another place, the sun (or whatever that very bright light you can see from the windows is) started "leaking" through the environment which was distracting. Also the ragdolls seem to... re-ragdoll after a while or after reloads and some heads have a tendency to not stop moving. But TBH those are minor issues, overall i didn't encounter any big issue in the demo.

Well, i was already convinced to get the game from last time, but i'm now convinced even more :-P.
 

Zombra

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One button doesn't cover your whole post, so I'm replying with real words.

"Agree" rating that your objection to the theme of the remake had nothing to do with "never remake anything" ... it's that you hate the direction this took, which is perfectly valid.

"WTF am I reading" rating for your assertion that games are never scary.

Either
  • You've been playing the wrong games
  • You don't know how to play a horror game (lights on, play during the day, fresh pot of coffee, chatting w roommates about other stuff)
or
  • You're a soulless monster who can't appreciate horror, period.
 

Lemming42

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One button doesn't cover your whole post, so I'm replying with real words.

"Agree" rating that your objection to the theme of the remake had nothing to do with "never remake anything" ... it's that you hate the direction this took, which is perfectly valid.

I know, right? I got a beating on this site months ago for defending Black Mesa and enjoying some of the the changes it made to Half-Life, now I'm being accused of demanding 1:1 remakes. CAN'T WIN ON THE CODEX

  • You're a soulless monster who can't appreciate horror, period.

It's this. I've never been scared by a movie, either, as far as I remember. Even my worst childhood nightmares were like, lukewarm scary at best. I've been perpetually wired on caffeine for most of my life, could be why.

Played the Silent Hill games, Amnesia, Alone in the Dark (Alone in the Dark 1 is clearly comedy, not horror), an assortment of Resident Evils (again, first is clearly comedy), Clock Tower, Condemned, Fatal Frame (no idea which ones), even a bunch of those shitty indie ones where you walk around a badly modelled forest and then Slenderman jumps out at you. Nothing, except for jumpscares but that's not True Horror™.

And in terms of less conventional "horror", I remember people back in the day seriously insisting that STALKER and the very ironically named F.E.A.R. were the scariest shit they'd ever experienced. Bewildering. Walking around an office while chairs move around on their own and static noise plays, and writers for PCGamer were actually wetting themselves. I think people were even claiming frigging BioShock made them shit themselves.

Even if I'm genetically defective and thus incapable of experiencing fear, though, System Shock 1's setting and story just seems like a terrible fit for the genre. On top of that, the demo didn't feel scary or foreboding at all, just gloomy.
 

GhostCow

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If you are a teenager or older and scary movies or games literally scare you then you are a pussy. Doesn't mean everyone else is a soulless monster.
 
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Nano

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Fear is one of the most fun and thrilling human emotions. I feel sorry for you people.
 

Tweed

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Tried the new demo, it's a festering pile of cybershit. I for one love having to reinvert my mouse each time I restart the game as well as having to start a new game and sit through half their dull intro before I can reload the game, I guess they didn't actually expect anyone to want to play this more than once. I also really like how the mouse uninverts in cyberpsace anyway with no possible way to change it, how far along in production is this game allegedly?

All that without mentioning how dark everything is coupled with disgusting levels of bloom, janky worthless grenades, and uninterruptable animations. As well as clingy ladders and godawful voice acting which includes Terri, she really phoned that welcome email in.

And no dart gun.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Presentation and atmosphere wise the demo is very ok. People saying it's too dark do have a point, though. And I don't know if it's just me, but the enemy chatter seemed completely messed up, like enemies uttering their death lines a good couple seconds too late.

Unfortunately, combat is the big problem here. It's completely flat and impactless, like playing hns where your clicks on enemies don't carry any weight. I got bored and annoyed by it real quick and I really cannot imagine myself powering through the entire game if it doesn't get significantly improved.

The pricing is predictably retarded, so I guess for me it's a -50/60% if I learn the combat got better. Normally I'd say -75%, but games don't get these discounts anymore.

And I see people just can't let go of their revisionism. SS2 was definitely a scary game if you played it on release as a teen. Yeah, you don't get too fussed about it on a replay (although the hybrid ramblings and nurse or diego audiologs are as great as ever), but looking at it from this angle doesn't make much sense.
 

LudensCogitet

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It's this. I've never been scared by a movie, either, as far as I remember.

I'm the opposite. I'm pretty high-strung when it comes to things that don't represent real danger like movies or games.
I just get into it very easily. Which means that, in the context of games, I kind of hate it.

I don't want to be feel anxious the whole time I'm playing a game.

In SS1 some stuff pops out or appears behind you. That's fine. Occasional surprises are fine.
But games that constantly lay it on and want you to feel like you're in constant peril, it annoys me. One answer is to get the fuck over it, and that could be how it contributes to a game's design, having to control your reactions.
Just doesn't seem like SS1 to me.
 

Bad Sector

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In SS1 some stuff pops out or appears behind you. That's fine. Occasional surprises are fine.
But games that constantly lay it on and want you to feel like you're in constant peril, it annoys me. One answer is to get the fuck over it, and that could be how it contributes to a game's design, having to control your reactions.
Just doesn't seem like SS1 to me.

FWIW this doesn't happen in the remake. One thing i agree with Lemming42 (and forgot to mention in my previous post even though i thought about it) is that compared to the original there aren't many enemies (i've only noticed the game respawn monsters once whereas in the original they were respawning almost all the time) and those that are there are pretty much in your face. Never had an enemy appear behind me while i was playing the game.
 

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