Experience the Best of Both Worlds With System Shock Remake Demo!

I, for one, did not anticipate seeing a PC demo for the System Shock remake this week. Since the unveiling of Citadel Station over seven years ago, I have been eager to once again encounter its malicious Intelligence. After spending a few hours in the game’s prologue, I can say that I am impressed overall, but I do wonder about the reasoning behind some design choices and the game’s primary objectives.

If you enjoyed the first game, you should definitely try out the demo and probably buy the full version. You can access the medical storage locker by entering the code 0451, just like you did in 1994, only now you can do so in high definition and with smooth framerates, using controls as natural as a gamepad.

Although you can still shoot and pipe-bash your adversaries, they no longer appear to be 2D sprites like in Wolfenstein games of old. You don’t need to track down a CD-ROM anymore; just fire up the game on Steam, GOG, or Epic.

An improved UI allows for quicker access to auxiliary weapons and health packs. There may be some changes here and there, but the game’s essential elements—the plot beats, puzzles, adversaries, and traps—remain intact. Even in the middle of a catastrophe that threatens the survival of civilization, it is possible to waste a great deal of time on trivial activities like inventory management and scrap collection for garbage credits.

It’s important to note that I was a heavy player of the original back when Looking Glass was still around. I learned a lot about computers by configuring them to work on my dad’s Gateway business PC. In 2016, I supported Nightdive’s Kickstarter campaign for the game, anticipating its release by the end of 2017. What I’m trying to communicate is that I’m an easy target.

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Seeing the shabby mutants, the Picard-as-Borg-like cyborg drones, and the trash-can-looking robots with flailing arms was a treat. Yet, I have also discovered a few aspects that have me wondering if the final product still needs additional tweaking. However, the melee combat is still as ponderous and lifeless as it was in the mid-1990s. If it made more sense in the story for enemies to keep respawning in the same locations I’d already been to, I might not have bothered with that mechanic.

A lot of the original’s screen-eating HUD has been removed, but there’s still more fiddling than I’d want to see in a modern game. The demo’s use of the gamepad controls came across as half-baked, albeit serviceable. It’s still mainly played with a computer mouse and keyboard.

The visuals are the most exciting part. To be honest, I wasn’t anticipating a AAA shooter of any kind, but the jagged pixel edges of certain objects and textures drew my eye. I’m using a mid-range Nvidia RTX 3050, and even with all the visual settings cranked up to “Ultra” and the resolution cranked up to 4K, the game looked about the same. Simultaneously, with all visual settings at their highest, the game ran at a smooth 70 frames per second.

When I had a question about this, I went to Nightdive’s marketing department. Is there a deliberate attempt at recreating the original’s grainy textures through the design? Give thought to those who don’t have the most advanced graphics card. Working in fields other than AAA game design? Perhaps a combination of these?

In response, they told me it was “a purposeful design choice.” With this knowledge, I continued to play, and the sights began to blend together in my head as a kind of knowing throwback. Nightdive’s initial level features more color, significantly more shadow, and light, but not an excessive amount of detail thanks to thousands more pixels compared to what Looking Glass had to work with.

To some extent, you are still expected to use your imagination to fill in the blanks regarding the inner workings of this space station, the daily lives of its inhabitants, and the horrors that ensued once something went wrong. It will be interesting to watch how the developers deal with the organic elements and vivid colors in the later levels.

It’s less difficult to praise the sound quality, which has greatly improved. The music, background noises, and the cyborgs’ frightening yet sad dialogue have all been updated to enhance the mood. After catching a peek of me, hearing a cyborg stalking me mumble “Nothing… nothing… nothing” was both nice and creepy. The deceased people leaving voice memos for the living, a staple of survival horror, hit the mark, albeit with less drama than I recall.

The Protracted Trip Back to Wonderland

The origins of this updated edition of System Shock go back over a decade. There was rainfall in Guatemala, an insurance business in Michigan, and a French programmer with mysterious access to lost source code. The resulting Kickstarter initiative ballooned out of control five years ago, prompting yet another start-over.

That’s why the announcement of a completely playable first level and a supposedly certain March 2023 release date during Steam’s Next Fest demo week caught many followers off guard. (Furthermore, OtherSide Entertainment, led by Warren Spector, a veteran of Looking Glass, announced a System Shock 3 in 2015; however, it was canceled the following year, in 2019.)

When it comes to first-person shooter/role-playing games (FPS/RPG) with dynamic settings, interesting player options, and control over more than just where you aim your crosshairs, System Shock is one of the games that helped pave the way.

Looking Glass never became a major player in the industry, but the studio’s ideas and employees had a profound impact on the video game industry as a whole. There might not have been a Deus Ex, BioShock, Dishonored, Gone Home, or even a Rock Band without the inspiration provided by System Shock and Looking Glass.

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Nightdive is not presenting a new version of their game or a remaster, but rather a remake (or a low-key enhancement, which they already offer). If Nightdive is successful, the themes and stories in Looking Glass will stand out more sharply. While if System Shock is still technically playable in the year 2023, its gameplay mechanics, aesthetics, and systems will likely feel familiar to players due to the game’s many descendants.

Nonetheless, the game’s players should find it less difficult to tap into the original’s sense of dread, of being slightly overwhelmed and under-resourced, of feeling like there truly is a rogue AI working against them. That’s the goal I’d like to see achieved in this game.

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