interview
This article first appeared in PC Gamer Magazine Issue 380 in February 2023. From behind-the-scenes previews to incredible community stories, engaging interviews and more, we publish a special monthly feature exploring the world of PC gaming.
Nightdive Studios’ System Shock remake has been in development for about eight years. Originally announced in 2015, it’s been through a longer development cycle than his existing System Shock games combined, including the gaps in between. But the cyber baby that Nightdive has been hatching for so long is now finally ready to give birth, due to be released in March this year. But after so long, what kind of remake have we got, and how does the final version compare to Nightdive’s original vision?
“The games we’re about to release are the ones I think we’ve all dreamed of making, but never intended to make in the first place.” Stephen Kick, co-founder of Nightdive Studios, System Co-director of Shock. “If you look at that early prototype and what we have now, it’s a completely different game, but it’s essentially the same experience, the level of quality and polish and what we were able to put into it. All levels are the same.” A level that was unimaginable at the time. ”
It can be a little confusing, but don’t worry. The reason System Shock has been envisioned for so long is that Nightdive has always struggled with what to say in its remake. Everything that should be, should be, what the fans want, what Nightdive wants is in many ways built into the design. Striking the right balance is so difficult that the whole project was restarted after he was three years into development.
In this context, the question arises as to why we should go to such lengths to remake System Shock. “A lot of people have played System Shock 2 instead of its predecessor because System Shock 2 is so pure, it’s about getting into the game and controlling characters and using interfaces. It’s even harder,” says Kick. While System Shock is now classified as an immersive his sim, it was designed as his sci-fi successor to the fantasy RPG Ultima Underworld, using many of the same rules and conventions that border on D&D. System Shock also came out just before his 3D graphics advancements and first-person gameplay exploded, so when the sequel released in 1999, the fidelity gap between the two was huge. .
So there’s a clear rationale for remaking System Shock, and Night Dive is in many ways the ideal studio for this project. Kick himself began his System Shock journey with a technologically advanced sequel. Kick, who was in middle school at the time, said he was obsessed with Half-Life when his friend asked him if he had played System He Shock 2. “The next day he came in with a big box and was just lying there.” He was very dramatic,” says Kick. “I went home that night and installed it, and I remember being immediately immersed in this world and Von Braun. Hearing Terry Brosius’ voice as SHODAN still sends chills down my spine. Become.”
Alongside Kick’s personal history in the series, Night Dive as a business was founded in the wake of System Shock 2 after Kick regained the rights to System Shock 2 from legal insolvency. Since then, Night Dive has established himself as a specialist developer of remasters, releasing improved versions of many of his 90’s titles such as Quake, Blood, Powerslave and Shadowman.
Moving from remaster to remake might seem like a logical next step. But as Kick explains, that change involves a leap rather than a step. “Our remaster team, or KEX engine team, mostly deals with things like reverse engineering and code work,” he explains Kick. “To do this, we had to hire designers, animators and character artists who were familiar with the current pipeline and game development techniques.”
System Shock is old, so the challenge in remaking it was to stay true to the spirit of the original while modernizing it well enough. In this, Nightdive had two of his design pillars on which to base the remake. The first of these was visual. “We wanted to bring Rob Waters, the original artist back in ’94, onto the project,” Kick explains. “Basically, we let him look at every aspect of the game and put his own twist on it, which in itself helped lay the groundwork for familiarity with the original. ”
The second ground pole was mechanical. “What we saw [System] Shock 2 did, and it’s an evolution from the first game, bringing their system back to System Shock 1. In that way, even though we were changing and updating, it still felt like it was part of the system. It is a genealogy of system shock. “
Nightdive hoped that such an appeal to System Shock’s history would ensure the remake remained authentic. But as the project switched from Unity to Unreal 4 and the game’s vision expanded, new features began to trickle in. In 2018, when he pushed an update to his Kickstarter backers, Nightdive was in a different kind of shock. faced. ’ The feedback was, ‘Hey, this is not what we endorsed. It wasn’t what we wanted,'” says Kick. “I had to take a really long break and reassess the team we had built up to that point and our goals.”
Nightdive has begun the process of rebooting System Shock with a fascinating project to reconstruct the original game’s entire Citadel Station to exact dimensions in Unreal 4. This took him seven months and much of the project was streamed live on Twitch. . By rebuilding the Citadel, Nightdive revealed just how faithfully the original level design could be replicated, and where changes needed to be made. “Take a door, for example. It’s paper-thin in the original, but that would have an amazing ripple effect,” says System Shock co-director, producer, and level designer Daniel Gration. said. “This hallway was very close to this other hallway, but this door needs to be 3D, so it needs to be shifted back a bit. It was a really interesting and fun process.”
Combat was the more difficult element to redo. Moving from 2.5D to modern 3D graphics and animation will inevitably require some changes. But Nightdive also looked at what tools the original game gave players and how they fit into modern standards. “It was a case of looking at something and thinking, ‘How can we change it while still being interesting?'” says Gration. “For example, the game has a grenade launcher, and that grenade launcher comes with perks, but that grenade launcher also comes with a cost and takes up space in your inventory.”
One of the most controversial areas Nightdive has reworked is the soundtrack. Kick describes the original soundtrack as “a lot of beeping and beeping,” which is “somewhat jarring” given that System Shock is his sci-fi horror game. However, the System Shock community loves the original soundtrack so much that it’s a difficult prospect to change it. “Our composers have gone back and forth quite a bit to find a balance,” says Kick. “To create an oppressive atmosphere suitable for a horror game, but with a throwback to a soundtrack that is lighthearted, fun, and dancey.”
There are even parts of the game that are probably more authentic than they used to be. Kick points out that when Looking Glass released his CD-ROM version of his System Shock with added audio, “the audio part didn’t match the written part.” Nightdive therefore used this as an opportunity to re-record the game’s audio log and hired his narrative designer to expand on some of the characters heard at the Citadel Station. According to Grayshon, it contains “dialogue that wasn’t used in the original game,” and that Nightdive “utilized quite a few” in the remake. “The beginning of the game will be fresh for everyone,” he adds Larry Kuperman, head of business development at Nightdive.
The debates and decisions around modernization and authenticity are interesting, but it doesn’t touch on how System Shock will ultimately play out as an RPG/immersive sim, whether “true” to the original or not. Is not … “There’s a lot going on under the hood,” Gration says. “Facing a cyborg that is part machine and part human, it really depends on where you aim at a particular part of the body and what ammunition you use. Penetrating bullet that deals .
Grayshon also shares an anecdote from a recent playtest. “I was facing two enemies in a hallway and one tried to throw an EMP grenade at me, but he missed me and ended up hitting my friend who was also attacking me. I’ve been neutralized. I thought, ‘Okay, I can do it.’ Use this to your advantage.”
The System Shock remake may have been a long wait, but it looks like it will be worth it. And given how long it’s been since System Shock 2, System Shock fans are used to waiting. Of course, there are also spiritual successors like Irrational’s Bioshock and Arkane’s Prey. But what about OtherSide Entertainment’s System Shock 3 project? “I encourage the press and fans to wait and see,” says Kupelmann when asked about the match. “Now let’s see what happens after the System Shock game is released.”
