KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[ciox]

Do you think we might be able to play this by 2025?

Months with no update, then basically a few textures and a bang average enemy model...

It's ages since I played the original SS, but the wiki lists 12 distinct locations. Nightdive have shown one.

The Kickstarter started in 2016, so being generous and assuming Medical is "finished", that's one deck every 5 years. Only 11 more to go, so this should be finished in 2076 at their current run rate, 4 years after Citadel Station was blown up IRL.

System Shock Remake demos came out in 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021.

In all of these you can only play through Medical, with some cyberspace in the later demos.

But hark, there is a scheduled event where a never before seen level will be revealed!

 

[randir14]

Interview and some new gameplay footage. Kinda awkward with a tranny and hosts who sound like they've never heard of the game before.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The footage shows the research level.

 

[randir14]

 

[Trithne]

Oh good. Text messages telling me I'm out of ammo, in case I couldn't tell what the helpful fucking LCD display on my weapons was for.

 

[HansDampf]

Looks like a typical tutorial message that can be disabled.

 

[SharkClub]

I'm just glad they're actually using the original map design layout, or at least something very close to it - from what I can see. The complaints from zoomers like "I've never played System Shock 1 but muh mazes NOOOOO you have to reimagine the entire game instead, it's not fair!" can get fucked.

When I played SS1 for the first time I never got lost even once mostly because I'm not a room temperature (celsius) IQ moron but also because despite the maps looking like mazes when you look at a literal 2d map of them, the locations contained within are extremely distinct from eachother in actual gameplay and full of landmarks.

When the fuck is this vaporware coming out?

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The issue I see here is that the level seems quite empty.

 

[ironmask]

Still looks too dark in some areas.

 

[JDR13]

The issue I see here is that the level seems quite empty.

Populating the levels is one of the last things they do, so I wouldn't go by what we're seeing in these demos. The finished game could be significantly different.

 

[Max Heap]

Coincidentially, I re-played SS2 yesterday and I gotta say, this seems a lot less.... engaging? A big part of it is probably the soundtrack. Or rather the lack thereof. Dropping the original soundtrack was probably a bad choice. Makes the whole thing feel a lot less captivating.

As far as I can see this is the R&D level, so I tried watching it with an HD remake of that soundtrack and - at least to me - it seems more interesting:



When I play SS1 I want that feeling of controlling a half-human-half-robot cyborg super-soldier with illegal military tech augmentations. Everything is just stitched together and plugged in with the surgery wounds barely healed.
Things gotta be grungy and technical down to the very controls of the game. That's the only reason why you'd sit through the interface of SS1:EE - cause it just looks and feels cool. And the music just helped immensely with that.

In their defense: Industrial electro and techno music are two very cheap ways of making games seem more thrilling than they really are.

Still, this here feels... eh.
Guess it's fine.

 

[gurugeorge]

Coincidentially, I re-played SS2 yesterday and I gotta say, this seems a lot less.... engaging? A big part of it is probably the soundtrack. Or rather the lack thereof. Dropping the original soundtrack was probably a bad choice. Makes the whole thing feel a lot less captivating.

Yeah, very much agreed. Although I do like the look of this, and quite enjoyed the demo last year, the changed music annoys me. The original music was quirky, spikey and original, really contributed to the atmosphere. The new music sounds rather generic.

(I had a Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard on my AWE32 when I first played SS, and it sounded pretty damn good at the time; also on Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri )

 

[JDR13]

I could be wrong, but I thought they said something about including the original soundtrack as well.

Personally, I don't think the new music is bad at all.

 

[Latelistener]

The sound is really bad. Worse than Void Bastards. No reverberation or any sense of space. They should consider using Wwise or something similar.

 

[schru]

The new music isn't bad on its own, it's actually quite nice and would be fine if it were for a new game. But the original music is one of the defining and best aspects of the original game, not just for how nice and unique the tracks are, but also because they fit the old cyberpunk theme and gameplay so well. The fact that NightDive continue to insist on having a new sound track that mostly consists of an ambient drone shows that they feel the need to change something about the game for the sake of changing it and that their judgement isn't very good. They have reverted to the original level design and æsthetics, but the original music was no less part of that style and personality of the game. It's also worth remembering that the original composer, Greg LoPiccolo was a member of Tribe along with Terri Brosius and Eric Brosius, the voice of Shodan and the composer for System Shock 2 and the Thief games. Wouldn't it be perfectly ridiculous if NightDive went about remaking Thief with more generic ambient sound and some newfangled electronic cues?

Their promise to include the old music as an option doesn't change much as they nevertheless give preference to the new sound track, and the remastered sound track they released recently isn't that good either as the SC-88 Pro (or one of the later 88s) rendition isn't as good as playing the tracks on SC-55, which seems to be the module they were composed on; the inclusion of Sound Blaster versions also smacks of retro fad-chasing.

The one area they should focus on is reinventing the combat as obviously that was the most limited aspect of the game for technological reasons. But streamlining the user interface is a bad idea because it was again an important part of the cyberpunk theme, as Max Heap said above, and having it be actually a bit over-complicated and awkward was interesting in its own way, though of course it shouldn't go as far as making the experience frustrating. Replacing it with a modernized immersive sim HUD misses the point. And so far what we've been shown of combat gameplay was quite trivial.

Edit: Then there's also their take on the cyberspace which looks much less interesting than the original design. They rely far too much on the current and by now quite tired vaporwave style, even though the game is grounded in that eighties–nineties cyber style in a much more authentic way.

 

[Trithne]

Honestly, other than the generic ass shit that plays when there's more then 4 enemies near you, I don't remember the current demo having music.

I remember an earlier one had a more ambient interpretation of the original theme that I kinda liked, and they were talking about using layering so make the same theme more active in combat.

I was looking forward to seeing their interpretation of the "washing machines having sex" of Reactor.

 

[Ash]

What the fuck is with the shitty music? Such a goddamn travesty. It's not like the original soundtrack is amazing and I welcome something new if good but this sounds so uninspired, generic and BORING. Why did good music/video games/movies have to die? As a millennial I hate to admit boomers & Gen x fucks had way more talent than the subsequent. It's either that or contemporary creators get forced to pump out shit by higher up older money grabbing cunts. I think it is both in a feedback loop. Oldfags pumped out shit, younger generations consumed the shit, thus their tastes became shit and then they go on to create even worse shit, yet older generations still in senior positions force even further atrocities (e.g how microtansactions came to be). So it only continually gets worse.

The issue I see here is that the level seems quite empty.

um...just like the original game then?

 

[cvv]

It's not like the original soundtrack is amazing

 

[Ash]

OK I admit it I love this shit too:



Though it sounds like something one of those old school kids toys you'd find at a dollar store or street market would play and I wouldn't dare play it with anyone else around lol.

 

[kangaxx]

OK I admit it I love this shit too:



Though it sounds like something one of those old school kids toys you'd find at a dollar store or street market would play and I wouldn't dare play it with anyone else around lol.

If you find one of these "toys" at a dollar store I'll take it off your hands, no questions asked! Just PM me.

 

[Ash]

 

[cvv]

OK I admit it I love this shit too:

Though it sounds like something one of those old school kids toys you'd find at a dollar store or street market would play and I wouldn't dare play it with anyone else around lol.

The original DOS version of the intro theme is one of my favourite bits of computer music ever. It's incredibly raw, computery and wiry, exactly how a hardcore cyberpunk should sound. The various MIDI, Roland, Mac and other versions are tamer, milder and worse.

 

[schru]

The Roland SC-55 version is the original one, though.

(closely related module)



Tribe's mix included wit the Mac release (the composer was a member of the band):

(2:15)

 

[cvv]

The Roland SC-55 version is the original one, though.

Are you sure? There was an original floppy disc version and later a CD version. I think the original shipped with a basic Adlib/Soundblaster music only, that's how I played it for years. But there could've been other versions and I just had a crappy sound card.

Still, the basic SB version is the best.

 

[schru]

I don't think there was a difference in supported MIDI devices between these versions. It'd be hard to find the specific spot now, but there was a developer let's-play with several participants including Greg LoPiccolo, the composer, where the latter said he used SC-55 to compose for the game. The other versions are derivative. I think it's only on that module that the more interesting elements of the cyberpunk style come through, such as the computer-module and malfunction-like sounds coming in and out in various tracks.