KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Fowyr]

The tricky thing about nostalgia titles is just how much we forget their faults. I remember the game as looking cool. I remember the sounds being spooky. I remember the gameplay feeling frantic. But then I launch the game twenty years later and discover the visuals are so blocky I can’t tell what things are, the font is illegible, the gameplay is awkward, and the interface is an abomination. I didn’t notice those problems at the time because all of the technology was new and nobody knew how to do better.

Video game journalists in a nutshell. I just recently replayed System Shock for third time and it was no less awesome than first two times.

 

[Ash]

Eh I think that's all fair criticism. Doesn't mean the game isn't awesome despite those traits.

"The tricky thing about nostalgia titles is just how much we forget their faults."

Well, no. We don't forget because we play good old games on the regular, as all things considered they are far superior generally speaking.

 

[Fowyr]

Eh I think that's all fair criticism. .

But then I launch the game twenty years later and discover the visuals are so blocky I can’t tell what things are, the font is illegible, the gameplay is awkward, and the interface is an abomination

I don't think that it's fair criticism. He describes some shovelware Steam game made in Paint and Java script.

 

[Ash]

Well, it is a little exaggerated I'll give you that. Illegible font? Abominable interface etc etc? Each aspect has its problems but he's making them out to be completely broken. Shock's font is hard to read at times, and the interface a pain to get accustomed to, but they still frickin work.

 

[Fowyr]

Shamus is rightfully thrashed in the comments.

Ignoring your ludicrous questioning of whether or not I’ve played he game: Obviously I played it in 1994, long before the enhanced edition. I’ve only dabbled with the EE long enough to get the above screenshots.

And now that I’ve looked, I see it does indeed have mouselook, but not an option to invert the mouse, making it useless to me.

Even ignoring that, you can’t rebind keys, and the entire interface is ridiculous. I’m glad YOU found it playable, but many people do not.

Yes, I know about UU. Two things:

1) I tried it. (Around 2003 or so.) Hated it. Interface got me down.
2) I was using the games as examples to explain things to readers who were perhaps young and not familiar with the game. “This obscure game is like this other game you may have heard of” is a better analogy than “this obscure game is like this other even more obscure game”. (Although I admit Rise of the Triad isn’t exactly well-known either.)

 

[Grauken]

What a tool

 

[Roguey]

So Shamus has to play his first person perspective games like a flight sim?

 

[Nano]

In that case he should give this game a shot.

 

[Latelistener]

So, basically after getting the money from Kickstarter, they decided that System Shock is actually a shit game for dirty oldfags, and consoles are top priority.
Since SS is shit, they need to make a new concept of a better game, more suitable for consoles, call it System Shock, and show it to publishers to make even more shekels.
But then it turns out that Starbreeze already has System Shock 3 with Warren Spector, and other publishers don't really give a shit about the genre (the reason why Night Dive came to Kickstarter in the first place).

 

[Ash]

Consoles smonsholes. Boiled down, this is what it is: Backer's money was used as a gamble in the primary interest of growing the status of Night Dive as a business. They blew it.

 

[Norfleet]

So Shamus has to play his first person perspective games like a flight sim?

What? This is a perfectly natural way to do things. How does one look up in real life? Tilt head BACK.

 

[JBro]

I don't look up by moving my thumb back.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

So Shamus has to play his first person perspective games like a flight sim?

What? This is a perfectly natural way to do things. How does one look up in real life? Tilt head BACK.

So you change horizontal controls also?

you tilt your head left to look right...

 

[RoSoDude]

For what it's worth, I used to prefer inverted Y controls when I played console games using a Southpaw control scheme (left stick camera control), but when using my right hand on a thumbstick or a mouse I prefer non-inverted. There's some aspect of what your basic intuition is here, and it's not totally clear to me why I prefer one over the other in each case. Somehow when my left hand is in control of the camera, I get the flight-sim intuition of tilting your head forward or back to look down or up, but when my right hand is in control of the camera I feel like I'm controlling my character's eyes and viewpoint directly.

Shamus Young may be a bit on the dopey, "muh narrative" side when it comes to his preferences in video games (as evidenced by the fact that he thought System Shock had problems which would be improved through novelization), but I think he really got to the heart of the matter as it concerns the development of Night Dive's reboot...thing. Namely, that none of their development decisions made any sense if you were still fooled into thinking that they had any intentions of producing the promised faithful remake, but that they made perfect sense if you understood that they were using the Kickstarter money to try to make a pitch to big publishers rather than to actually make the game. The guy doesn't have to have a deep understanding of the design of classic games to recognize the remake's trajectory towards mainstream AAA that would produce an inherent decline from the original pitch. Rightfully shit on his taste all you like, but he's on our side here.

Also, his DM of the Rings webcomic is pretty entertaining.

 

[Spectacle]

1. Raise money to make thing
2. Decide to make other thing
3. Turns out other thing was too hard/stupid for them to make
4. People who gave money are obviously upset because that's not what they gave the money for

What was Nightdive thinking?

They were most likely thinking that they could raise money from one group of people for a specific product and then use that money to instead make a different product to sell to another group of people, but that would still technically qualify as what the original group paid for. Clever plan that could have made them a lot of money if they hadn't fucked up the execution.

 

[Average Manatee]

They were most likely thinking that they could raise money from one group of people for a specific product and then use that money to instead make a different product to sell to another group of people, but that would still technically qualify as what the original group paid for. Clever plan that could have made them a lot of money if they hadn't fucked up the execution.

I don't think you can really call it a plan. A plan is something that is likely to succeed and will do so based upon the skill of those involved. By far the majority of proposals are going to be rejected by the AAA suits (who tend to do so based less on the actual gaming merits and more on whatever is fashionable or making money right now, which games like SS1 aren't). It was a pure gamble, hoping that they could get lucky and rake in 10s of millions as a AAA game rather than produce the game as promised and make only a million or so.

 

[Viata]

I think this is my favorite thread in rpgcodex, related to a game I love. One could see the moment fanboys souls are crushed by false promises while Darth Roxor posts "I told you" over and over again. Can't wait for the next dev to promise to (((remaster))) some great old game.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I think they can still make it, like Kintaro. If from now on they code night and day they can still make a better game than System Shock. They can! In BASIC!

 

[Norfleet]

So you change horizontal controls also?

you tilt your head left to look right...

No you don't. Grab your hair and pull. Which way do you pull to do that?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

No you don't. Grab your hair and pull. Which way do you pull to do that?

left if I pull right. The controls are on the back of the head, not on top. if you grab a handful of hair from the back of the head, and pull to the left, you will face left, since we are talking about camera controls, and your neck will rotate. Do not mistake camera controls with Q and E as leaning keys. If you have your hands on the top of the head, pulling right will make your read lean right, but you still face the same direction.

The thing is, to be like a plane, tilting the control left right would be like a barrel roll, in an FPS that means leaning. To rotate the camera, the analogue button should have a 3rd axis, in which you could rotate the stick.

 

[Norfleet]

Well, here's the thing: You don't normally grab heads by the back because you only do this with children, and they're too short for you to grab anything but the top. And trying to grab the back of your OWN head is just awkward.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Well, here's the thing: You don't normally grab heads.

Fix'd that for you.

 

[Ash]

Hey, don't distract yourselves from this major fuck up. Remember to:

 

[Grauken]

I think this is my favorite thread in rpgcodex, related to a game I love. One could see the moment fanboys souls are crushed by false promises while Darth Roxor posts "I told you" over and over again. Can't wait for the next dev to promise to (((remaster))) some great old game.

I'm quite happy about the result, either people have to play the original or not at all

(remasters are one of the four horsemen)

 

[Fowyr]

I cross my fingers for sources being released. I would be best outcome of this clusterfuck.