If you’re a PC gamer from the 1990s, there is a short list of games that likely defined your hobby: DOOM, Quake, Half-Life, and StarCraft are but a few that pretty much everyone played. For a long time the System Shock games, while being very highly regarded at the time, didn’t quite have the same mainstream appeal of those others.
Thanks to the massive critical and commercial success of BioShock over a decade later however, the two System Shock games (the primary influence on the BioShock series, sharing many of the same developers) have gotten a second life thanks to the efforts of Night Dive Studios, a company that specializes in acquiring, updating, and releasing classic PC games for modern gamers.
While System Shock does have an Enhanced Edition available on GOG and Steam, the company that brought it over is actually working on a full remaster using the Unity Engine. Night Dive Studios has recently launched a website for System Shock Remastered, wherein they lay out their intentions:
We will keep the new game true to the classic experience, keeping all the things you loved, while updating the user interface and graphics to use a modern day engine (Unity). With the help of the original concept artist, the original vision of the Citadel Station and its inhabitants will finally come back to life.
Look At You, System Shock Remastered
In addition to the website, Night Dive has released some pre-Alpha gameplay footage (which you can find at the top of this post) to garner some interest…and man has it succeeded. Granted, what we’re talking about here is two minutes of handpicked footage so it’s way, way too early to make any judgments. That said, Night Dive clearly knows the source material as well as anyone and appears to be doing a fantastic job so far of recreating Citadel Station with more contemporary visual design and a more accessible user interface.
According to the site, the project will be coming soon to Kickstarter. In the meantime, the website invites you to submit your Email to receive updates.
