KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[thesoup]

The intro music better not change, fuckers.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, "You need Standard Weapons 3 to use this shotgun" was phenomenally stupid.

That was the last problem. I mean, it's stupid that a trained soldier isn't able to use a fucking shotgun, but if you developer want to base the system on this mechanic, I'm ok.

The biggest issue was the lack of balance between skills. Exotic, energy and maybe also heavy weapons (apart from the grenade launcher) were all useless, compared to a good assault rifle (a weapon that you could find early on, also, and which used the most common type of bullets), and half or more of the PSI powers were absolutely crap.

I love System Shock 2 (more than SS1), but if you want to play well you need at least to read a guide to prepare your build properly (since the guy who plays it for the first time can't know that in the boring "standard weapons" class there are all the useful weapons of the game, while in the super cool "exotic weapon" class there are only shitty ones), and that's not a good thing.

The SS2 community patch (previously ADaoB) does a pretty good job of balancing the game. Rifle is still very good but can't quite destroy everything with a single bullet.

SS2's difficulty made stuff less or more expensive. On Easy/Normal you had enough cyber modules to do basically everything and even on Hard you had enough to master multiple things. Laser weapons were powerful (infinitely recharging several overloaded laser pistols + laser rapier), Heavy Weapons was indeed kind of crap but the grenade launcher was bugged and did massive damage after an upgrade, exotic weapons had the very OP shard and wasn't *that* bad with its weapons. Half of the PSI powers were crap but it was obvious to a newbie which to get and which to not get. The other half of the PSI powers make the game an incredible cake walk on easy difficulties were you can buy psi hypos like candy.

So no, I don't think a first time player needed to read a guide unless they were playing Impossible difficulty.

 

[Jaesun]

Just played the demo. I REALLY like this, and the look they are going for this <3

If they keep all the levels and the game-play mostly the same (as much as they can with the originals), this will be kick ass!

Curious what they will do with the Cyber realm. Ugh hated that in the original...

 

[DraQ]

Well, the movement is fucking slow, that's one. Object handling is also not the fastest, since sometimes you have to highlight very small switches on screen, and they have an unreasonably tiny frob box.

How is it any worse than original with its mouse driven interface? Sure it was flexible and powerful but 80% of the time it was a fucking pain to work with.

The intro music better not change, fuckers.

This. Intro music is a big exception to the "SS1 music is crap" rule.

 

[thesoup]

So I played the Demo. It's like 30 minutes long at best if you're retarded like me and wander around for no good reason.
I liked what I played so far.

edit
here's a screenie

 

[Excidium II]

This game looks like it's not very pleasant to look at for long periods.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-system-shock-remake-delivers-a-haunting-return-to-citadel-station/

The System Shock remake delivers a haunting return to Citadel station
The classic cyberpunk horror game is back, and it's been seriously upgraded.
By Richard Cobbett

Remember Citadel? Absolutely, and if there’s one thing that really stands out about the new System Shock reboot, it’s that five seconds in, I’m home. To be exact, I’m in the Citadel Station that I think of when I fondly remember the series, rather than the blockier, low-resolution version of it that passed for the future back in 1994. Evil AI SHODAN is back in her original home, orbiting Saturn. All around are the corpses and blood splatters marking the human population’s last stand—a failed one. As the hacker accidentally responsible for the whole mess, you enter the story hoping to prevent things from getting even worse.

And yet, saying that the alpha demo is simply the same does it a disservice. This isn’t just an HD remaster, but a complete rebuild intended to take advantage of what was almost unthought-of technology for the time. It even adds a few clever tricks of its own. It’s System Shock, but it’s also new license-holders Nightdive Studios proving they can handle the franchise—System Shock 3 is on the way, in partnership with Otherside Entertainment. This is a chance to put their own stamp onto it.

You don’t often hear this, but check out the walls. The section of Shock’s first level in the demo—a tiny, tiny slice of a huge space—follows its aesthetic down to the letter. Ordinarily, a level designed over 20 years ago is going to feel pretty simplistic regardless of how it’s updated, but no. Just the use of greebles on the walls to have bits sticking out and sucking in instantly makes things feel fresher. Likewise, while the opening Medical Suite area is extremely faithful to the original map, this reworking adds a few flourishes that simply make sense—notably a reception desk at the entrance and some comfy chairs for visitors. Where the now classic code 451 was originally in a datalog, now it’s painted across the wall in suitably smeary blood. Most dramatically, where System Shock’s idea of windows was originally black wall panels with dots painted on them, now we get proper skybox-driven views of Citadel Station and Saturn proper.

It all looks great. To be picky, the texture resolution is a little low in parts, but this is a pre-alpha. It's remarkable how shiny it all is, how much more packed the corners are with piping and equipment and smoke. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s Shock as it would be made today. It’s got too much of a retro aesthetic and general feel for that. It does however successfully capture its soul in a much more, let’s face it, playable form.

The interface is completely new, and a great improvement. System Shock came out before exploring 3D space was a solved problem. Its interface was part mess, part MENSA test. Now, WASD controls and mouselook are your friends. You press buttons and rewire circuits with right-clicks, while left-clicks swing your trusty pipe and fire bursts of the Sparq side-arm—as in the original, an exquisitely flashy yet pretty much entirely useless gun. It all works fine, making a mockery of Shock’s original tutorial without cutting down on options that matter. You can still lean left and right for instance, there’s just no crazy need to click on a little man to do it.

The only real modern addition I’m not sold on is the way that picking up equipment like the messaging unit now involves overly long cut-scenes where the Hacker stares and tosses it from hand to hand while a pop-up explains. It feels distracting rather than immersive. Also, now clicking around the map produces pop-up text that’s meant to make Citadel feel more like a real place, but at the moment really doesn’t. Part of the problem is that it’s never sure whether it’s meant to tell you what a thing is—“there’s body parts from at least three people here”—or to react to your attempts to use it with a “you don’t know how that works.”

I like the idea in theory, to fill in gaps and make the random future-tech look like it has a place, but writing-wise it really needs a consistent point of view and purpose, especially since usable objects are perfectly well flagged up.

Speaking of writing, even this little slice of the game has a few notable changes from the original. Your contact on Earth, Rebecca Lansing, has a subtly different script setting up how bad things are, while SHODAN’s welcoming message no longer lists every floor of the station up front. Luckily, while Rebecca is a different voice actress, SHODAN remains the one and only Terri Brosius. (Fun fact: prior to the CD version with voices, SHODAN was canonically male.)

Exactly how much Night Dive fiddles with the game remains to be seen, but it’s brought on both veterans from the original game and some new blood, most notably writer Chris Avellone, currently best known for his involvement in every RPG ever. That said, the issues that are likely to make System Shock feel old aren’t really in the graphics or the writing, but in some of the era’s design limitations. For example, even in the demo, there’s the feel of characters just waiting around to be shot and beaten up, as opposed to Shock 2’s wandering foes, which made you fear for an ambush at any minute.

Likewise, while that game evolved security cameras into something to be avoided for fear of unleashing an army on your head, here they’re just static props that you smash to reduce SHODAN’s control over the level. For the time, System Shock did a fantastic job of creating a feel of push and pull between the two of you, and SHODAN as an omnipresent malevolence pulling the strings from a distance. In practice though this was almost entirely down to atmospherics, performance, and enemies respawning on return trips to levels. 20 years on, it’s going to take more than that to convey the same feel of being watched and hunted.

With that said, it’s hard to imagine a more promising update than this one. It’s an update clearly made with both love for the original and a desire to see it be all it can be, and if the new content, puzzles, music and more can live up to the action in this small slice of the game, a great way for the original game to get its due with players who missed it back in the day. Its innovations have been much borrowed and often stolen, but there’s only one Citadel Station and one SHODAN. Unless you count that the one in Shock 2 was technically a copy, but nobody likes a pedant.

The System Shock remake is looking for $900,000 on Kickstarter. The alpha demo is available to download right now. Visit the System Shock kickstarter pagefor details.

 

[Alchemist]

I gave the demo a try - and the intentionally pixelated textures aren't working well, in my opinion. I know they did that as a stylistic choice but it really just looks like the game is on low-quality mode, and I suspect many people will complain. Even journalists who ought to know better (see the PCGamer piece above) aren't catching on that this is intentional:

To be picky, the texture resolution is a little low in parts, but this is a pre-alpha.

If you have all these other modern special effects and rendering you need to have properly modern textures or it looks incoherent.

Other than that it was an enjoyable demo. I haven't played the original so I don't have any emotional / nostalgic baggage toward this one. I wish them well though - they seem pretty passionate about the game.

 

[Melan]

Well, the movement is fucking slow, that's one. Object handling is also not the fastest, since sometimes you have to highlight very small switches on screen, and they have an unreasonably tiny frob box.

How is it any worse than original with its mouse driven interface? Sure it was flexible and powerful but 80% of the time it was a fucking pain to work with.

The original interface had to be learned, but once you did, it allowed for smooth and fast movement, and good environmental interaction. The character in the playable demo is just plodding, definitely slower than in SS.

If you try to open a door or operate a surgical bed, or use one of those puzzle things, you have to focus on a very small area of the screen, which is a pain in the ass, and probably going to be worse if you are cornered by a bunch of enemies. In SS, the entire area of a door or usable object would light up, with a much larger reticle.

Sure, they can fix it, and I hope they will.

 

[LESS T_T]

First update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/1616384

Hey everyone! This is Jason Fader, the Project Director on System Shock. This has been a crazy 24 hours and we're already halfway there! The team was incredibly overwhelmed by your support and we truly appreciate it. You guys are awesome!

A word from Stephen
Our fearless leader, Stephen Kick, the CEO of Nightdive Studios and Creative Director on System Shock has a few words to share:

I'm sitting at my desk after our first day of funding and I'm finding it very difficult to put into words just how grateful I am to everyone and the support they've given us over the last 24 hours. Your outpouring is inspiring and we're doing our best to answer the various questions, requests and concerns you have regarding the campaign, rewards, supported platforms and bugs you've encountered in our demo.

Here we go!

Platforms: We've been listening to your requests and have started discussions with Sony regarding a PS4 release - at this stage we can't confirm System Shock on PS4, but we will follow up with an announcement in the near future with more details.

The Demo: Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and played our demo - also thanks to those of you who have been sending us crash/bug reports. We're planning an update early next week that will fix various issues and bugs you've encountered while adding in a few additional features for you to experiment with.

The 'Limbs for Days' bug

RPG Elements: We're aware of the discussions going on and while there is still plenty of design work to do, we have the best intentions in mind of making a game that will both challenge the player, while still staying true to what people loved about System Shock.

The Plan
As Stephen mentioned, we're working on a patch with fixes and updates based on all of your feedback. That should be out around Monday if everything looks good.

We're also looking into ways of connecting more closely with our backers with some snazzy things like access to a private Discord server so you can chat with the team while we work on stuff. If you have suggestions about more ways we can connect with all of you, please let us know

There's quite a bit more brewing based on your feedback, but I'll talk about that in another update.

 

[LESS T_T]

And some Q&As from Steam forum.

Development plan:

Hi, I'm the Project Director on System Shock (Jason Fader). Regarding experience, Nightdive has been bringing folks onto the team that have solid AAA experience. I was the senior producer on Fallout: New Vegas and lead producer on the DLC's. I've also worked on WoW, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2. I've been around :-p

We're bringing on more folks from Fallout: New Vegas, as well as devs from Bioware and Cryptic. I'm happy to answer any questions regarding the team and production plan (within reason) ;-)

1. The plan after the KS is to enter pre-production, which involves ironing out our content pipelines (including level construction). The demo level is a verrrry tiny piece of a full level. The immediate steps will be to construct a full size level, iterate on it until we're happy with it, and then establish a pipeline for the rest of the levels. Alongside that, art (level art and creatures) will be worked on in that iteration phase. There are several folks on the team of various disciplines, and we'll be parallelizing our tasks to ensure an efficient development roadmap. As for the look and feel, we're going to do our best to be as faithful as possible to the original, and modernize where it makes sense to (ie, controls, level design, and visuals)

2. Our current audio direction is more towards dark and orchestral, but we've had numerous requests for cyberpunk tracks and have been discussing it internally, but no concrete decision one way or another.

System Shock 2 remake?:

Not ready to indicate one way or another, but if there is a demand for it, and we can raise the funds for it, we're always open to doing what makes sense.

451 code on the wall:

Regarding the door code, we originally had it in the old place from 1994 game, but decided to move it to an obvious spot until we had better tutorials implemented that taught the player about email logs (which will have the code in it as well). We can't have everything in the pre-alpha demo that will be in the final product since there's still lottttts left to do, but rest assured, we will do our best to keep the game as faithful as possible to the original.

Level design:

We will be taking more creative liberties with the level design later on; the reason it's very similar to the original so far is to be able to demonstrate the tech upgrades more easily. It's like dipping your toe in a pool to check the temperature

Body awareness?:

We have thought about first-person body presence, but as it stands it's out of the scope of our small team.

Why not UE4?:

So a lot of people here have said good points and I'm mostly not gonna repeat them, so, closing words:

- Engines don't matter as much as the general gaming public think they do; their main differences are in what they provide to developers, and different engines have specifities toolsets that suit certain teams better
- Switching engines when we already have many of the underlying frameworks done would take a lot of time and manpower.

We'll do whatever makes the most sense for the project.

The pixelated textures:

Yeah, the pixelated textures are totally a part of our art direction. We're not using texture filtering at all, like 3D games before consumer GPUs. I was against it at first then they really grown on me. I couldn't imagine the game without them now.

 

[Jaesun]

This is the actual original intro music from the game as played on an actual Sound Canvas. Just for those curious...

 

[vean]

The biggest issue was the lack of balance between skills. Exotic, energy and maybe also heavy weapons (apart from the grenade launcher) were all useless, compared to a good assault rifle (a weapon that you could find early on, also, and which used the most common type of bullets), and half or more of the PSI powers were absolutely crap.

I love System Shock 2 (more than SS1), but if you want to play well you need at least to read a guide to prepare your build properly (since the guy who plays it for the first time can't know that in the boring "standard weapons" class there are all the useful weapons of the game, while in the super cool "exotic weapon" class there are only shitty ones), and that's not a good thing.

Well I can conclusively say that energy weapons rock, having finished an impossible LP with just a laser pistol. By the end I carried around 7 laser pistols and had essentially infinite ammo.

I don't know about the other categories though, but heavy has the granade launcher, and exotic has the shard, which I know are also good weapons.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

So this is going to be shit right?

 

[A horse of course]

So this is going to be shit right?

Pull quote for boxed version?

 

[Perkel]

This is the actual original intro music from the game as played on an actual Sound Canvas. Just for those curious...

Sounds like dwarf barfing while shitting. Complete lack of proper mastering aside it is all over the place with volume of different parts of track compared to actual intro ost.

I still fucking love SS intro ost after all these years.

 

[Sordid MCA/Prosper Hybryd]

MAC verson has the best music. But it's not MIDI, I guess.

 

[Outlander]

Why not UE4?:

So a lot of people here have said good points and I'm mostly not gonna repeat them, so, closing words:

- Engines don't matter as much as the general gaming public think they do; their main differences are in what they provide to developers, and different engines have specifities toolsets that suit certain teams better
- Switching engines when we already have many of the underlying frameworks done would take a lot of time and manpower.

We'll do whatever makes the most sense for the project.

Apparently UE is not completely out of the table:

Right now the lack of performance is more due to the very small size of our team (four core people to make the demo), and not tied to our engine choice, but if we end up having to switch engines due to scalability or whatever other reasons, we’ll take the decision that makes the most sense for the project.

Currently we’re using Unity, but we’ve received a lot of feedback from our backers regarding Unreal. Whichever technology we ultimately decide to use, it will be based on the best tool for the job for making a great System Shock game for our backers. That’s really all I can say about it right now, but trust us, we’ll do things that make sense.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/syste...-optimizations-engine-change-sounds-possible/

Edit: fixed quotes.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

It has slowed down quite a bit! It's not gonna be as fast as WL2 which reached 900k in just 42 hours

 

[Infinitron]

I was just thinking it'd be cool if MCA ends up doing the writing for Edward Diego:

I'm pretty sure the character was inspired by Carter Burke from Aliens:

I suspect the Looking Glass guys were fans of James Cameron movies - the backstory of the goblin-dominated world in Ultima Underworld 2 is reminiscent of Terminator and the John Connor-like human rebel leader is named "Bishop".

 

[BlackGoat]

Difference from the original aside, I dig the slow movement. Got a King's Field vibe, doing a back and forth slow swing shuffle fighting the zombies

 

[bonescraper]

I'm definitely backing this next month. I fucking love the unfiltered look.

 

[Talby]

Played it, wasn't particularly impressed. It's too dark and there's no techno music.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/30/system-shock-reboot-comparison/

Remember Citadel:System Shock v System Shock Reboot

Suddenly, we have an embarrassment of System Shock riches. First System Shock Enhanced, then a Warren Spector-augmented System Shock 3, and now System Shock Reboot, a total remastering of the first game. It’s just poor old System Shock 2 that’s left in the cold, as EA jealously guard the rights to the sci-horror series’ most acclaimed instalment. That’s another day’s concern, though: right now, let’s talk about the free alpha demo released to promote System Shock Reboot’s Kickstarter. When they say ‘reimagining’, just how much similarity and how much change does that actually mean? It’s compare and contrast time, chums.

I’ve taken a few close-as-I-can-get-‘em screenshots of both System Shock Reboot and GOG’s System Shock Enhanced (whose changes are only really on the user interface and compatibility side of things), demonstrating how meticulous Reboot’s recreation of Shock 1’s first level is. There are layout changes, especially in the later sections, and also the original game shoves a few more enemies at you – Reboot is aiming to be a bit pacier, as tense and slow-burn as we remember Shock being, rather than the surprisingly abrupt reality of it in 2016.

Here’s the first side-room, where you obtain your starting equipment from. It also shows off the way the UI’s being minimised while trying to retain the essence of the original. You can see that Reboot being fully-voiced means we don’t get a big block of text on the bottom of the screen when NPCs natter over the radio, though I do sort of miss the 90s cyberpunkishness of the green text and bitmapped faces.

And here’s the first Humanoid Mutant encounter, right next to the legendary 451 keypad (it should be noted that Reboot has ‘451’ scrawled in blood in foot-high letters right next to the keypad. Whether it’s trying to be all iconic or just worried that people won’t figure it out otherwise, I don’t know). Team RPS had a brief discussion as to what the white patches on the foreheads of the original-look mutants are, in light of what we see in Reboot. Adam’s years-long conviction that they are big bushy eyebrows has been tragically demolished, but I don’t agree with his assertion that it’s patches of exposed skull – I think it’s simply light reflecting off the pate.

Crew member corpses are rather more elaborate and ghoulish now. We get sunken, terrified faces and pained slumps against walls, rather than just a comedy bone-pile on the floor. Notice how careful reboot is to even recreate the floor-tiling, by the way.

A robot-guarded room, showing off the difference more realistic lighting can make in conjuring drama and menace but also that Reboot absolutely does not ditch Shock’s trademark blue hues for contemporary browns and greys.

Shooting is, naturally, a whole lot more fluid and responsive than the first game’s light, mechanical gunplay. The only weapon Reboot does provide is appropriately under-powered though: a slow zap that affords an enemy enough time to get frighteningly close. Going on this, Shock has definitely not gone BioShock in terms of action.

Granted I’m lighting the scene a little more with a zap-o-blast, but just to demonstrate what Reboot looks like when you’re ambushed by a Repair Bot in a dark corner, compared to the almost impractical darkness of the original game.

And here are a few general shots of Reboot, just to show off how it’s doing lighting and atmosphere.

It’s a pretty thing, though inevitably not quite as high-end as a DOOM or Battlefield (it’s made in Unity, and the lazy cynic in me wants to say that I can always spot a Unity game, but I don’t really think that’s fair at all). Whether to mask this or simply in the name of tribute, it does a few things to more closely resemble the DOS game look of the original. First and foremost there’s the pervasive blueness, of course, but also check out these textures, most apparent on screens, terminals and electrical panels:



(Click for a bigger version). Concious faux-DOS right there. I half like it as a stylistic thing, and half think it doesn’t quite gel with the lovely lighting and shadowing, and becomes more of a distraction than a signature aesthetic. This demo is clearly marked as pre-alpha though, so we can doubtless expect all manner of tinkering with this style in the finished game, due this December.

There’s also a climactic moment in the demo, where it very much sets out its stall as being a beautiful, dramatic modern game, not a slavish remake. A vast view of space, planets and the outside of the citadel, as music which sounds a little like Garry Schyman’s brilliant BioShock score swells. Reboot is faithful in so many ways, but retro it does not want to be.

One thought I had while playing the Reboot demo is that it feels a little like what I think many of us believed/hoped BioShock 1 would be, before discovering that it leaned a lot more towards the FPS side of things than its System Shock legacy. There are little pop-up messages when looking at or trying to use things (though most are too brief or say ‘nothing’ for the time being), there are all sorts of items to poke at (sometimes pointlessly, but maybe that’s the point?), and the pace is slow, combat consciously awkward. That said, revisiting the first game to this extent, rather than our usual touchstone of the more RPG-infused Shock 2, reveals that, perhaps, BioShock was an awful lot closer to the first Shock than we gave it credit for. Shock is far more dialled down, yes, but there are a great many structural similarities.

I think Reboot is aiming to be Memory System Shock, recreating what the game felt like to us as young folk in the early 90s, and going on this it’s got a strong shot at getting away with it. It is perhaps in a slightly uncomfortable middleground between retro and modern and sometimes feels a touch clumsy for it, but I’m reasonably confident that polish can sort that out. Obviously anything might change in the full game, depending on how much more comfortable Night Dive are to depart from the original’s structure, but I’m certainly willing to give them my confidence based on this.

Also: there is very deliberately no SHODAN yet. A smart move, I think: an ace to be kept up the sleeve.

He's wrong about SS2 and EA.

 

[Leechmonger]

look at all the sour cunts awaken form slumber and start bashing this project!
the demo is clumsy? wtf does that even means?

It means your dad should have used a rubber.