The System Shock Remake Is OUT NOW

[Vinyadan]

After a long wait, the UE4 System Shock remake has been published for PC! Console and Linux versions will follow at a later date.

The game is an FPS with a strong emphasis on exploration and narrative, as well as inventory management. You are a hacker who wakes up after 6 months of cryostasis on Citadel, a large orbitating station, to discover that the base AI, SHODAN, has had its ethics subsystems hacked and has been turning Citadel into its own domain, hunting and turning humans into subservient cyborgs, while aiming a massive laser at planet Earth. You must explore the various levels of the station and destroy equipment to loosen SHODAN's control.

A free demo can be downloaded from Steam and GOG (https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_demo). It contains the first level and I think it's the best way to understand if this is a game for you.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAFlKvHm9vg

[Jasdoif]

The game is an FPS with a strong emphasis on exploration and narrative, as well as inventory management. You are a hacker who wakes up after 6 months of cryostasis on Citadel, a large orbitating station, to discover that the base AI, SHODAN, has had its ethics subsystems hacked and has been turning Citadel into its own domain, hunting and turning humans into subservient cyborgs, while aiming a massive laser at planet Earth. You must explore the various levels of the station and destroy equipment to loosen SHODAN's control.

A free demo can be downloaded from Steam and GOG (https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_demo). It contains the first level and I think it's the best way to understand if this is a game for you.I'll note that the first level in the full game does in fact have some differences from the demo; the demo cleaved much closer (though not completely) to the level design of the original, back when the genre was so nascent as to basically not have conventions. The full game is far less likely to have situations you couldn't have the resources to deal with...and more likely to throw situations at you where skill makes a noticeable difference.

More importantly, I'll note for anyone who (like me) is a big fan of the original that this is not just a glorified port with modern graphics: the reworked/unified inventory system, and reworking of weapons in particular, augment the immersive horror feel...On top of having an accessible interface and the improved level design alluded to earlier.

[MinimanMidget]

More importantly, I'll note for anyone who (like me) is a big fan of the original that this is not just a glorified port with modern graphics: the reworked/unified inventory system, and reworking of weapons in particular, augment the immersive horror feel...On top of having an accessible interface and the improved level design alluded to earlier.

The original is one of the only games I've ever tried to play and decided it was just too old to pick up 30 years later. I loved System Shock 2, though, so I'm excited to play the remake.

[Whoracle]

Having played through the original (enhanced because screw the originals controls) a few weeks back: the remake is very much the original with better graphics and a few minor QoL features, mostly controls and inventory. Horror wise it's about on par, I'd say. Levels are VERY close to the original, omitting only irrelevant details.

Puzzles are good, gunplay is solid (though nothing to write home about). Voice acting is great - Terry Brosius really went to town. I'm about 8 hours in, just finished the first mission while taking my time.

So far totally worth the money if you liked the original way back when, but might be out of touch with modern sensibilities, what with the lack of quest markers and tutorials and such.

ETA: Remake is way darker then the original. While it works quite well, I hope there'll be a mod that restores the lighting of the originals somewhen down the road.

[Artanis]

Words cannot properly relay my feelings about even the possibility of a System Shock remake (much less the reality of it), so instead, I leave this gif:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FreeImpeccableCod-size_restricted.gif

[Whoracle]

Finished it. Had a blast. 0-secced and 100% explored all maps, except beta grove because screw beta grove, and exec because I didn't yet go back with the last access card for the last few doors that I presume can be opened with it. Just didn't feel right at that point.

Game ran fine and was nice to look at, if as I said was dark at times.

Only thing that sucked: Game was crash happy in the mid section. Engineering and especially the groves crashed continuously. At times every 3 minutes or so, which made beta grove even more sucky than usual.

Took me 23 hours in 3 sittings, with knowledge of the game from the original. All difficulties at 2.

9/10 game, would recommend. Inssssect.

[warty goblin]

Played the first maybe fifteen minutes this afternoon, and quite liked it. Controls feel good, I really love the way the graphics look like a person remembers old games looking, and it's nice to have some room to explore.y only complaint is I find it hard to read the old style pixel font at smaller sizes.

[NRSASD]

How's the inventory management? I remember being confused on what's useful vs what's junk in the demo, especially since some junk is huge and bulky.

[Whoracle]

Everything that's junk/vendor trash is labelled as such, both before you pick it up and once it's in the inventory. You also see how much scrap value it has as opposed to what you get out of it if you refine. Hint: scrapping usually halves the value. I made a LOT of recycler runs in the first three levels, and basically stopped afterwards.

[Jasdoif]

Having played through the original (enhanced because screw the originals controls) a few weeks back: the remake is very much the original with better graphics and a few minor QoL features, mostly controls and inventory. Horror wise it's about on par, I'd say. Levels are VERY close to the original, omitting only irrelevant details.

Puzzles are good, gunplay is solid (though nothing to write home about).So far (most recently got to Alpha Grove) it does seem like the largest structural level change has been changing the corridor of drone alcoves on the first level (both original game and demo) into a room with the drone alcoves in the corners. The most significant non-structural change being...finding a sparq in the second room, instead of being limited to beating things with a lead pipe for a short while.

I feel like you're underplaying the impact of the inventory changes, though. Going from being able to carry several different weapons, no limits on ammo/explosive/patch capacity, and a dozen-ish utility items; to all of them fighting for the same inventory space (especially with weapon sizes, less obviously with stack sizes)....It's definitely more of a resource management/scarcity feel. Running low/out of ammo wasn't something I ever needed to worry about in the original, past the first half of the first level or so; this has not been the case here.

Though to be fair that's probably more to do with the FPS genre's existence in the intervening decades. Not that weapons and enemies vary wildly this time around; but the original had very clear "same behavior but bigger numbers" categories among weapons and enemies....I want to say the original feels arranged like a more conventional CRPG, using inventory exclusively for player progression rather than experience/levels, with combat having a stronger emphasis on resources than realtime player skill. Of course, with the original interface and the number of times I'd accidentally clicked the "drop" instead of "throw" region with a grenade, that may have been for the best.


I guess what I'm trying say for anyone who happens to come across this: If you've never played the original or weren't impressed by the original's gameplay; or found it too inaccessible even with the Enhanced Edition's addition of mouselook, a feature so ubiquitous in the past quarter-century that it's taken for granted and you can be forgiven for not knowing it has a name: Give the remake a shot, it's different enough that you'll get a new/better experience out of it.



So far totally worth the money if you liked the original way back when, but might be out of touch with modern sensibilities, what with the lack of quest markers and tutorials and such.Admittedly I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention at the difficulty screen, but didn't the reduced "mission" difficulty setting say it enabled something like quest markers?

[Whoracle]

So far (most recently got to Alpha Grove) it does seem like the largest structural level change has been changing the corridor of drone alcoves on the first level (both original game and demo) into a room with the drone alcoves in the corners. The most significant non-structural change being...finding a sparq in the second room, instead of being limited to beating things with a lead pipe for a short while.

I feel like you're underplaying the impact of the inventory changes, though. Going from being able to carry several different weapons, no limits on ammo/explosive/patch capacity, and a dozen-ish utility items; to all of them fighting for the same inventory space (especially with weapon sizes, less obviously with stack sizes)....It's definitely more of a resource management/scarcity feel. Running low/out of ammo wasn't something I ever needed to worry about in the original, past the first half of the first level or so; this has not been the case here.

Fair enough, although I have to note that with my playstyle I didn't have any ammo problems except for during Engineering and Beta Grove, and I distinctly remember the same problem in the original. Granted, I scoured the first three levels for scrap until I had roughly 350 TriCoins, and lived off that and the land for the remainder of the game.

Also, I just did not feel the Ion Rifle, MagPulse and the Shotgun and I had LOADS of Ammo for those during the whole game, just didn't feel like backtracking and exchanging my weapons. If I played more optimally (and made a stash for weapons somewhere accessible, instead of making 3 stashes on different levels), I wouldn't even have the ammo problems I had during Engineering and Beta Grove.


I guess what I'm trying say for anyone who happens to come across this: If you've never played the original or weren't impressed by the original's gameplay; or found it too inaccessible even with the Enhanced Edition's addition of mouselook, a feature so ubiquitous in the past quarter-century that it's taken for granted and you can be forgiven for not knowing it has a name: Give the remake a shot, it's different enough that you'll get a new/better experience out of it.

This. 100%. Only qualifier: Wait a few days for patches. The Crash Party I experienced during the mid game wasn't fun.



Admittedly I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention at the difficulty screen, but didn't the reduced "mission" difficulty setting say it enabled something like quest markers?

Quick googling seems to corrobate this. Didn't check myself, I just played on the default difficulty settings.

[Jasdoif]

Also, I just did not feel the Ion Rifle, MagPulse and the Shotgun and I had LOADS of Ammo for those during the whole game, just didn't feel like backtracking and exchanging my weapons.It's probably not a coincidence that these are the weapons that became hazardously sad.

The magpulse and shotgun are very similar in this regard: The magpulse's projectile is slow and the shotgun spreads, so they're not good at distance; and the magpulse's projectile can collide with surfaces and the shotgun spreads, so you have to peak out of cover considerably to get reliable shots off, during which things shoot back (which is more dangerous with more dangerous enemies). I also discovered, to my dismay, that the magpulse is damage-over-time; nearly every robot managed to fire off a shot (usually an explosive) just before it died. The damage is respectable enough for early as you get them, but they fire too slowly to overwhelm moderately stronger enemies by surprise (unlike the real classic magpulse, which kills Security-2 bots faster than the laser rapier due to the damage and rate of fire)...and, well, the laser rapier obviates most things at close ranges.

Compare to the Magnum 2100; which does comparable damage per shot, has a much faster rate of fire, works at distances, behaves perfectly fine when leaning out of cover, and generally does not bring shame to its namesake.


The ion rifle has a similar problem with its charging mechanic. A charged shot is fine if you can get the timing down, but you can get the maximum damage from the sparq with one click. The front-loaded delay requires a more specific playstyle...and it takes more inventory space, so if you're mainly using an energy weapon for destroying cameras you're still better off with the sparq.


The Crash Party I experienced during the mid game wasn't fun.Yeah I just hit a "fun" one...consistently crashing at the last wide area in Maintenance cyberspace, after a period where sounds cut out and visuals froze. I finally managed to get bypass it by intentionally getting disconnected at the start of the room to get the autosave...and then it crashed later that same session. Those are the only times it's actually crashed on me though, so I'm guessing there's something akin to a memory leak somewhere (the pre-crash behavior makes me think "repeated garbage collection").

[GloatingSwine]

I found the magpulse good as an ambush/initiator weapon. Double load it and hit a robot with it first then duck into cover or switch to something else to finish it off.

[Vinyadan]

And there already are a few mods available on Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/systemshock2023/mods/

[Jasdoif]

Just completed the game....
That spot in Maintenance cyberspace remains the only time the game crashed on me...which seems a little strange, but I'm not complaining.
At the very end I was running out of ammo for the railgun and magnum...but never had any ammo issues with the skorpion, unless you count reload frequency.
Pleased to see the entire team of the original System Shock in the credits.
I still hate the autobomb maze.

[Rynjin]

Seems like the consensus is "game is good, but wait for a patch"?

[Whoracle]

That, or take the gamble and hope your win the crash lottery - which, to be fair, is entirely possible. There's quite a few crash reports on steam, but nowhere as egregious as my experience was, and my windows install is not exactly the most pristine out there, so some of that crashing might very well be on my end, specifically.

But if you're allergic to gambling on such things, definitely wait a bit - the console releases should be more or less around the corner, and I'd guess that they'll release a stability update for PC when those ship.

[Jasdoif]

That, or take the gamble and hope your win the crash lottery - which, to be fair, is entirely possible. There's quite a few crash reports on steam, but nowhere as egregious as my experience was, and my windows install is not exactly the most pristine out there, so some of that crashing might very well be on my end, specifically.

But if you're allergic to gambling on such things, definitely wait a bit - the console releases should be more or less around the corner, and I'd guess that they'll release a stability update for PC when those ship.I'll be honest, the only reason I preordered is for the free System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition when it comes out; even the possibility of that co-op not being riddled with "oops, we crashed on level transition and your saves are corrupt; time to restart!" was worth not waiting for a sale.


ETA: Apparently my crash wasn't that strange, as it was explicitly called out in today's patch notes.