KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Lord_Trashcan]

Anyway, I restarted my playthrough to incorporate some mods. Much-needed mods, as it turns out.

I also adjusted the visual settings, turning them up slowly as the older hardware might suffer a meltdown.

One of the mods removes a red tint that's prevalent in the lighting, so Citadel station looks proper dark now. I actually have to use the head lantern now.

The recycler-related mods are a Godsend. Instead of recycling a whole batch that nets me around 4-6 credits, I'm getting ~30 credits per batch.

Recycling shouldn't have been added, just increase credits earned through looting enemies and exploring. If you really want to keep the system, make collecting junk immediately vaporize items. Some people might argue that it's "optional" but you get locked out of too many vending machines otherwise because of how damn rare coins are outside of this repetitive mechanic. Granted, the modifications are mostly useless and in some cases you're better off keeping the weapon as is. Why increase the mag-pulse's size by two slots only for a small increase in damage? Not to mention, they even decided to add a disadvantage to this so you consume more energy while using it.

 

[randir14]

To be honest i've never been a fan of this techno shit.

I actually played SS2 and even Half Life without music because i found it too intrusive and obnoxious. Don't remember much from System Shock 1, played it around the same time i played Doom which feels like millions of years ago i should revisit it one of this days.

I play SS2 with the music off too. SS2 has an amazing soundscape that gets drowned out by the music.

 

[schru]

To be honest i've never been a fan of this techno shit.

I actually played SS2 and even Half Life without music because i found it too intrusive and obnoxious. Don't remember much from System Shock 1, played it around the same time i played Doom which feels like millions of years ago i should revisit it one of this days.

Then it seems like you have at least three games to revisit. The only correct way to play System Shock is to go with the DOS version without the mouse-look mod and Sound Canvas VA for the MIDI music (assuming that acquiring an SC-55 is too much of a bother).

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I think Nightdive should focus on remaking the other IPs they own before putting all their eggs in one basket. Develop a diverse portfolio to protect themselves from single mistakes. How many do they own now? I remember they own BloodNet, which could definitely stand to be remade. Cyberpunk is in vogue and adding vampires instantly sets it apart from other cyberpunk games.

 

[SharkClub]

The people who play System Shock games with the music off are why this game's soundtrack invokes BioShit more than anything. Decline enablers.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Recycling shouldn't have been added, just increase credits earned through looting enemies and exploring. If you really want to keep the system, make collecting junk immediately vaporize items. Some people might argue that it's "optional" but you get locked out of too many vending machines otherwise because of how damn rare coins are outside of this repetitive mechanic. Granted, the modifications are mostly useless and in some cases you're better off keeping the weapon as is. Why increase the mag-pulse's size by two slots only for a small increase in damage? Not to mention, they even decided to add a disadvantage to this so you consume more energy while using it.

This is exactly my opinion too.

I don't mind the idea of having an economy - I feel like it's potentially a good addition, especially since the original game had a significant problem with resource overabundance, and locking some of it behind an economy sounds like it could be very beneficial to the game as a whole.

But I agree the coins should have either been strictly exploration rewards, or we should have only had 1 currency type, namely scrap, which everything auto-vaporises into. Another alternative would have been that there is no junk items, and instead we vaporise useful items into scrap (like duplicate weapons, extra grenades and so on that we don't need), which would largely maintain the players power level while allowing them to "trade" unwanted items for currency that they can then spend on things they do want.

The thing that baffles me the most is that, by far the biggest destroyer of the economy in the original was how abusable medbeds and resurrection chambers were. There's literally no point using med patches when you can just resurrect infinitely upon dying. The remake made this element even worse because you can still respawn on the previous deck without finding the resurrection chamber on the current deck. I feel like resurrection chambers and medbeds are the perfect candidate for this kind of economy, since they undermine resource acquisition. You COULD let yourself die and respawn, and not need to use a med hypo, BUT it will cost you some currency! (This is exactly what System Shock 2 does and the mechanic works way better as a result and the resource scarcity element actually functions). Instead, the currency can ONLY be used to overpower the player, which is a monumentally stupid design. Want some cool weapon addons to make yourself more powerful? Time to spend junk simulator. It's baffling.

Even Prey, the game that everyone here (unfairly) hates, had a better recycling system than this. Not only did it have 4 scrap types instead of 1, which is far more interesting, it made it significantly less tedious to actually recycle.

Also, the mag pulse is WAY better with the upgrade and can take on bots even late into the game. Are you using the double-shot? I don't know where you got the idea that the upgrades are not worth it, I haven't found a single weapon upgrade that wasn't massively better except maybe the minipistol because it's burst fire chews through ammo much quicker (although this is toggleable now with the latest patch, so it's a straight upgrade again)

The people who play System Shock games with the music off are why this game's soundtrack invokes BioShit more than anything. Decline enablers.

This soundtrack sounds nothing like the bioshock soundtrack. It's also quite good in some places (the Executive track straight up sounds better than the one from the original, and the Reactor track is a nice remix of the original)

The people who declare everything remotely different from the original as decline are why remakes so often go terribly wrong despite mostly being okay. Decline enablers.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The problem with the economy is lack of things to buy. It's pretty much there for the weapon mods. I never needed to buy patches, and ammo was barely for sale. It's very easy to buy everything and have 100s of coins left.

If there were more incrementaal upgrades RE style that allowed you to pour cash into your guns and specialize that might have been more interesting. Still, it's not a horrible addition to the game.

I feel this remake stands alongside the original, without replacing it. It's an interesting take on a classic.

 

[Spukrian]

The respawns definitely stop after I've spent some time in the level. I'm sure respawns never stopped in the original.

I think it's tied to the Security level percentage, as well as the robot production controls on the Research level specifically.

I'm gonna say it's not tied to Security, the Executive level had no respawns even though Security was at 79% for a very long time.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Maybe bugged. I had security below 50% but got respawns on executive

 

[Naraya]

To be honest i've never been a fan of this techno shit.

I actually played SS2 and even Half Life without music because i found it too intrusive and obnoxious. Don't remember much from System Shock 1, played it around the same time i played Doom which feels like millions of years ago i should revisit it one of this days.

Then it seems like you have at least three games to revisit. The only correct way to play System Shock is to go with the DOS version without the mouse-look mod and Sound Canvas VA for the MIDI music (assuming that acquiring an SC-55 is too much of a bother).

...on a CRT monitor (the lower resolution the better) from a HDD (SSDs are obviously a decline).

I mean, c'mon.

More to the point - why the hell you can't put NOTES on the damn map?! Whyyy?!

Also I have a question for veterans. I'm struggling with bagspace - I just found a big rifle on Executive level and I couldn't take it with me due to having no space. Are there weapons that become obsolete as game progresses so they can be safely replaced and not carried around?

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

To be honest i've never been a fan of this techno shit.

I actually played SS2 and even Half Life without music because i found it too intrusive and obnoxious. Don't remember much from System Shock 1, played it around the same time i played Doom which feels like millions of years ago i should revisit it one of this days.

Then it seems like you have at least three games to revisit. The only correct way to play System Shock is to go with the DOS version without the mouse-look mod and Sound Canvas VA for the MIDI music (assuming that acquiring an SC-55 is too much of a bother).

...on a CRT monitor (the lower resolution the better) from a HDD (SSDs are obviously a decline).

I mean, c'mon.

More to the point - why the hell you can't put NOTES on the damn map?! Whyyy?!

Also I have a question for veterans. I'm struggling with bagspace - I just found a big rifle on Executive level and I couldn't take it with me due to having no space. Are there weapons that become obsolete as game progresses so they can be safely replaced and not carried around?

In the remake, the minipistol is obsolete as soon as you find the skorpion, since it takes the same ammo and deals more damage

I guess the sparqbeam is replaced by ion rifle


Technically nothing is obsolete because it always has a niche purpose, but in general you want to ditch earlier game weapons when you can.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

How do you turn off the elevator music?

You don't, you reconsider your life choices instead

 

[Lord_Trashcan]

Also, the mag pulse is WAY better with the upgrade and can take on bots even late into the game. Are you using the double-shot? I don't know where you got the idea that the upgrades are not worth it, I haven't found a single weapon upgrade that wasn't massively better except maybe the minipistol because it's burst fire chews through ammo much quicker (although this is toggleable now with the latest patch, so it's a straight upgrade again)

The damage increase is 60 > 70, and it costs more energy to use + 2 more slots. It's not really worth it considering the game is very generous with ammo and combat is all about peeking, shooting, then waiting. I would've liked to see more special modifications like increased RoF for shotgun, since the majority of modifications are just a choke on the front of the weapon that increases damage, or increased magazine size.

 

[schru]

To be honest i've never been a fan of this techno shit.

I actually played SS2 and even Half Life without music because i found it too intrusive and obnoxious. Don't remember much from System Shock 1, played it around the same time i played Doom which feels like millions of years ago i should revisit it one of this days.

Then it seems like you have at least three games to revisit. The only correct way to play System Shock is to go with the DOS version without the mouse-look mod and Sound Canvas VA for the MIDI music (assuming that acquiring an SC-55 is too much of a bother).

...on a CRT monitor (the lower resolution the better) from a HDD (SSDs are obviously a decline).

I mean, c'mon.

Of course, if you have one, though shaders can make up for it. And what you add about HDD may not be so ridiculous, in the sense that sometimes loading screens were part of the presentation, like some little animation playing out, a music track playing, or some images being shown. I'd imagine that slower loading speeds had more to do with RAM and it would be hard to control it outside DOSBox, but slowing down the loading times just enough to see those things as intended would be nice, wouldn't it.

At any rate, the first time I played System Shock I did do it with the mouse-look mod, but later on while I tried the original controls I came to prefer the latter. The keyboard controls are quite serviceable for moving and looking around at the same time, while having the mouse cursor free all the time makes the manipulating the complex UI, things in the environments, and using weapons feel more integrated or ‘continuous’, while switching constantly between mouse-look and free cursor is rather tedious and makes the experience more disjointed.

 

[Naraya]

switching constantly between mouse-look and free cursor is rather tedious and makes the experience more disjointed.

I can agree with this at least. It never felt 'right' to me. Unfortunately I didn't have the patience to finish the original game. I remember quitting around Groves, the UI was too clunky and frankly I wasn't particularly captivated by the game itself (which is weird since I love SS2 and I finished it multiple times).

After finishing this remake though I can see trying getting back to the roots to be able to compare both versions.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Anyway, I restarted my playthrough to incorporate some mods. Much-needed mods, as it turns out.

I also adjusted the visual settings, turning them up slowly as the older hardware might suffer a meltdown.

One of the mods removes a red tint that's prevalent in the lighting, so Citadel station looks proper dark now. I actually have to use the head lantern now.

The recycler-related mods are a Godsend. Instead of recycling a whole batch that nets me around 4-6 credits, I'm getting ~30 credits per batch.

Update: After playing briefly I realized I had to reassess my mods.

The mods that make Maintenance dark and creepy and remove the red tint had to go. They start out fine, but enter/exit cyberspace or reload an old save, and the station literally goes into Dark Mode, I couldn't see shit.

Then I had to switch over to the alternate fork of the "improved stacking"-mod, as the main fork also stacks weapons. This screwed with my game, but now junk items don't stack either... at least I still have a large recycler (5x6).

There's a mod now called Equalized Vaporization which means you get equal scrap-to-credits value for vaporizing all the items (and now skulls as well).

There's also a mod which Replaces the music in the remake with the original SS1-music.

In other news, I'm now at the second elevator in Research, ready to to Reactor all over again.

# Looking at the view outside of Research (Level 2), it's higher than that of Medical (Level 1), as the groves are now almost directly above you.

# I went looking for secret rooms, and found more in Medical than I remembered there being. That's five now in total.

Spoiler

1. The hidden stash mentioned in the Hacker's self-mail, which is not in the remake (floor panel just south of laser door to Alpha Quadrant)
2. Concealed door in the SE-corner of the central area.
3&4. Concealed closets on the west wall of the hallway going N/S from the healing suite to the elevator.
5. Concealed room in far SE-corner of the map, guarded by a Mantis robot. This door needs the Security-level to be at 0% to open, as it contains the Magnum.

Strangely enough I'm only finding one secret room in Research (in the radiation pit).

# I'm aware that there are special items that can be found on each floor, hidden in hard-to-reach places. So far they all seem to require the top-tier rocket boots.

# Regarding respawns - everything suggests they're plot-related, i.e. do certain things and new monsters are spawned in, sometimes right in front of you. The most persistent spawns I've seen are the hopper + maintenance bot-spawn outside Beta Quadrant on the Research-floor when you're working on shutting down the Robot Production Plant - until the plant is shut down, new bots spawn there every time you get near. But once you do shut it down, nothing else spawns on the floor. There seems to be a complete lack of spawns that are just there to keep the level populated.

 

[Infinitron]

Not quite as amusing in greenscreen.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

That laser would take ~40 minutes to reach earth and would certainly lose most of its power by then.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That laser would take ~40 minutes to reach earth and would certainly lose most of its power by then.

Thank you for reminding me of the mining laser-arguments I took part in some years ago, when the remake was first announced.

Anyway, I finally ventured into Storage... and WTF did they do to this place? This floor feels like a Half-Life obstacle course, only including the most memorable snippets of the original, like the skiing-slope, and the lone Tigrilla-mutant and the lone Avian Mutant (and the lone Enforcer-cyborg, she sounded like a former Antifa-member before the 'conversion'). There are several obstacle-courses crammed in here, and most of them require the skates, so make sure you have them before exploring further.

But one upside, the new enemy: The Loader-bot. THIS is a fun enemy. It's a huge robot with a gravity gun, and it LOVES to grab volatile containers specifically attributed to them, and toss them in my general direction. Unfortunately the level design gave this away before I ever saw the damn thing, so I could plan... and I did. Once I saw it, I backed away so I could snipe a volatile container as the bot (and posse) got close to it. I managed to do this twice and then finish off the bot with a fully-loaded shotgun (and the posse were smears on the walls). Sadly there only seems to be the one Loader-bot on this floor, I hope to see more of them.

I remember the puzzle where you get two audiologs that contain two digits of the 3-digit code - and I'm only finding one of them. This seems to be a common bug, and not even the latest patch seems to fix that.

Worse than that, I'm trying to figure out what to do win Storage 4, and I'm stuck. I think need to get across the gap to the other side, but I don't know how.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

That laser would take ~40 minutes to reach earth and would certainly lose most of its power by then.

Thank you for reminding me of the mining laser-arguments I took part in some years ago, when the remake was first announced.

Anyway, I finally ventured into Storage... and WTF did they do to this place? This floor feels like a Half-Life obstacle course, only including the most memorable snippets of the original, like the skiing-slope, and the lone Tigrilla-mutant and the lone Avian Mutant (and the lone Enforcer-cyborg, she sounded like a former Antifa-member before the 'conversion'). There are several obstacle-courses crammed in here, and most of them require the skates, so make sure you have them before exploring further.

But one upside, the new enemy: The Loader-bot. THIS is a fun enemy. It's a huge robot with a gravity gun, and it LOVES to grab volatile containers specifically attributed to them, and toss them in my general direction. Unfortunately the level design gave this away before I ever saw the damn thing, so I could plan... and I did. Once I saw it, I backed away so I could snipe a volatile container as the bot (and posse) got close to it. I managed to do this twice and then finish off the bot with a fully-loaded shotgun (and the posse were smears on the walls). Sadly there only seems to be the one Loader-bot on this floor, I hope to see more of them.

I remember the puzzle where you get two audiologs that contain two digits of the 3-digit code - and I'm only finding one of them. This seems to be a common bug, and not even the latest patch seems to fix that.

Worse than that, I'm trying to figure out what to do win Storage 4, and I'm stuck. I think need to get across the gap to the other side, but I don't know how.

The first and third digits for me were both 8.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

switching constantly between mouse-look and free cursor is rather tedious and makes the experience more disjointed.

I can agree with this at least. It never felt 'right' to me. Unfortunately I didn't have the patience to finish the original game. I remember quitting around Groves, the UI was too clunky and frankly I wasn't particularly captivated by the game itself (which is weird since I love SS2 and I finished it multiple times).

After finishing this remake though I can see trying getting back to the roots to be able to compare both versions.

I pulled the original Mac source code yesterday, am experimenting with SDL.

I was thinking of trying to make a "modern" shock port, which isn't 100% faithful, but instead is more geared towards being more friendly to play without significantly changing difficulty.

Having use-shoot mode be a hold instead of a toggle seems like a good idea.

I would base this off shocolate but it uses cmake, which is garbage. Any project that uses cmake is not worth contributing to or forking from.

 

[SharkClub]

That laser would take ~40 minutes to reach earth and would certainly lose most of its power by then.

The developers of the System Shock games have always had a very loose grasp on cosmic distances and how fast things can travel between planets/galaxies/etc. And by very loose I mean the grasp was basically nonexistent.

It is especially weird in the intro cutscene where you get taken from Earth to Citadel Station orbiting Saturn in a cop car in what seems to be a much shorter amount of time than would ever feasibly make sense both timewise and for Diego to bother doing. My favorite was always the absolute impossibility of Beta Grove somehow beating a faster than light traveling ship to Tau Ceti V in SS2, which they have now retroactively rectified with the subtle wormhole asspull that gets mentioned in the remake (let's just ignore the amount of coincidences that would have to occur to bring the plot of SS2 together).

Maybe the mining laser is aimed at a wormhole that is next to earth? Maybe the cop car used said wormhole to get to citadel super quickly? Tbh, short of moving Citadel Station to orbit the moon (like Talos One), this shit was never going to make sense and Nightdive would have had a hell of a task on their hands trying to write around it. Citadel Station is orbiting Saturn because that sounded like it'd be cool to Looking Glass Studios. Simple as.

 

[SharkClub]

Thank you for reminding me of the mining laser-arguments I took part in some years ago, when the remake was first announced.

I'm curious what your (or anyone's) conclusion was on the matter.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

That laser would take ~40 minutes to reach earth and would certainly lose most of its power by then.

The developers of the System Shock games have always had a very loose grasp on cosmic distances and how fast things can travel between planets/galaxies/etc. And by very loose I mean the grasp was basically nonexistent.

It is especially weird in the intro cutscene where you get taken from Earth to Citadel Station orbiting Saturn in a cop car in what seems to be a much shorter amount of time than would ever feasibly make sense both timewise and for Diego to bother doing. My favorite was always the absolute impossibility of Beta Grove somehow beating a faster than light traveling ship to Tau Ceti V in SS2, which they have now retroactively rectified with the subtle wormhole asspull that gets mentioned in the remake (let's just ignore the amount of coincidences that would have to occur to bring the plot of SS2 together).

Maybe the mining laser is aimed at a wormhole that is next to earth? Maybe the cop car used said wormhole to get to citadel super quickly? Tbh, short of moving Citadel Station to orbit the moon (like Talos One), this shit was never going to make sense and Nightdive would have had a hell of a task on their hands trying to write around it. Citadel Station is orbiting Saturn because that sounded like it'd be cool to Looking Glass Studios. Simple as.

Yes. The entire story and lore of System Shock and System Shock 2 are beyond stupid. They are immersion and gameplay focused first, story second (if at all). People sperging over this remake "changing the story" are too busy being autistic to actually think about how dumb that makes them sound.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thank you for reminding me of the mining laser-arguments I took part in some years ago, when the remake was first announced.

I'm curious what your (or anyone's) conclusion was on the matter.

I brought up the distance (as a minor point) and no one was seemingly bothered by that, but my main point was the possibility that the Earth would be occluded by other celestial bodies in the Solar System at that particular date (as that can be calculated) and far too many people lost their minds over that.

It basically amounted to "Looking Glass Studios possibly did something wrong? Heresy!"