2023 is fast becoming the year of remakes, with the likes of Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, and soon joined by Silent Hill 2. But there is one remake which has largely been overlooked, having been in development Hell for quite some time. That is indeed Nightdive Studio’s remake of the 1994 classic System Shock. The original was considered a game changer and indeed is held in high esteem to many gamers and critics. While a remake was always possible, bringing such a beloved and elaborate FPS back into the 21st century could also be considered highly risky.
So, did Nightdive Studios, a company famed for their remasters finally make that bold new leap forward with the System Shock Remake? Read on and find out.
What is the System Shock Remake? 
System Shock back upon its original release back in 1994 continued the uprise of the FPS genre, expanding its scope both mechanically and thematically. DOOM brought about the era of the BOOMER Shooter, featuring 3D worlds, complex level design and more interesting aesthetics. System Shock, which was originally meant to be an Ultima Underworld sequel, decided to take a plunge into the Sci-fi genre, but instead of fighting demons from Hell, pushed forth into the Immersive Sim subgenre, focusing on labyrinthian world design, complex task management, resource management, and high octane combat. It was bold, it was cool, it was revolutionary and totally 90s.
Since then, it has had one main sequel, which differed much from the original game, yet laid down the foundation for many other immersive sims, including Bioshock and PREY. And while System Shock 3 is meant to be in production (possibly), back in 2008, there was meant to be a System Shock 3 which soon became the foundation for Dead Space.
It is indeed a highly influential series in one way or another. And this is why Nightdive Studio decided to bring the 1994 techno, sci-fi adventure game to a new generation, in the purest way possible. By sticking to 100% to the original framework of the game, including all enemy placements, tasks/objectives, puzzles and of course, the often-nightmarish maze-like layout of the game world.
A Shock to the System
Everything from the original is kept in this remake, with next to nothing being changed. This is fine by me as the original story was quite neat, giving us gamers back then a captivating setting, story, and antagonist. Set in the year 2072, our nameless protagonist is caught attempting to steal blueprints for a highly advanced upgrade. They’re brought to Citadel Station, a technologically advanced space station; owned by the TriOptimum Corporation, that deals with all manner of pioneering scientific projects.
The hacker is Taken before Edward Diego, a TriOptimum executive, and all-around slime ball. Diego offers to forget everything the hacker has done, in exchange for a small favour which requires hacking the SHODAN, the artificial intelligence of the Citadel station known as SHODAN and turning off all ethical constraints. And yes, AI and No ethical constraints are very, very bad. This is how we get ants and Terminators people!
Our hacker does the deed and SHODAN is without ethical protocols, making her the most cold-blooded AI since Chatbot. With the task done, Diego keeps to his word and grants the hacker a permanent upgrade to keep and sends them off to heal up in the med bay. Upon awakening a few months later, with Citadel Station having pretty much gone to hell, with mutants running rampant, robots craving blood and SHODAN thinking their God! Sounds like a typical day at the Twitter HQ.
It's now up to the hacker to stop SHODAN from destroying the Earth and escaping from this cyberpunk nightmare.
Story-wise, System Shock is simple yet has plenty of great world-building, lore, and such an underrated villain who deserves more praise. SHODAN is truly an amazing villain, with an unnerving presence, and pitch-perfect delivery that will send chills down your spine when she goes off on one of her God-complex-infused monologues. Her mockery of you as you progress and the references to humans as insects really fuel your hate for her, but also admire just how well-written and acted she is. SHODAN is truly one of gaming’s best villains.
The setting of the Citadel station is a vast, elaborate maze of death, with many different biomes and plenty of interesting little details that really add up to an immense location. Even small touches such as the multitude of different doors really add layers to the world's design and visual architecture. I’m a sucker for small things like this, from all the different doors in old Resident Evil games to the epic door animations in Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol.
Aside from the small details, there is a lot to discover in System Shock’s world, and it’s a marvel to the eyes too. Fitting between retro and modern sleek, System Shock’s art style is quite unique as it does feature some pixel art elements, and retro edging (much like how Alien Isolation captured that 1970s future look) but also has a pristine shine, great depth of colour and detail, all the while running smoothly (especially as it’s on the Unreal engine).
Like any classic adventure/survival horror game of the time, there are plenty of voice logs and documentation infused with tales of depression, and horror lore and all infused with sadness and dread. All of these are brilliantly voiced and add an immense amount of gravitas to the situation. Plus, much of the context for what you’ll be doing will be contained in these documents. System Shock is very much at the roots of 90’s video game storytelling, which never had the most compelling narrative or plot, but did have plenty of character and soul, with its world-building and small details.
Also to add, I played the original demo of this back in 2017 (which feels like a lifetime ago), and do see the noticeable upgrade to the visuals. Plus the music and sound design are immensely brilliant, taking the same high bar as that of Dead Space.
Shockingly good, or shockingly convoluted? 
System Shock is a game all about exploring, solving a multitude of problems, and making sure you don’t get turned into a horrid mechanical mutant. It’s also a game that doesn’t make things easy for you that’s for damn sure, in more ways than one.
There are a lot of elements shared by System Shock to that of the older Resident Evil games and various immersive Sims. Where players will embark on a singular goal of escaping the Citadel Station by completing a various string of tasks, whether it be hacking a mainframe to gain access to a lockdown area, finding numerous key cards to unlock sealed doors or destroying items of interest to stop SHODAN’s diabolical plans.
Our nameless hacker will be exploring the multiple levels of the station, finding key items, hacking panels and dealing with the ever-threatening presence of SHODAN, by avoiding and lowering the security rating of each floor, in order to traverse more smoothly. But don’t be fooled, this ain’t no picnic and there are plenty of things that want you dead on the station, so you’ll be locking and loading and dealing with them in due course.
It all sounds very straightforward forward I know, but System Shock comes from that era of video games where level design was more about maddening complexity and lack of linear logic. Games like Resident Evil and Half-Life helped pave the world for more focused and realistic game worlds that made structurally made sense. And System Shock definitely does not!
The world is immensely labyrinthian, with all manner of rooms and corridors interlocking and intertwining with each other with much rhythm or reason. It would be a kind of place that if actual people worked there, they would spend a good hour trying to find the bathroom. But this is really the charm of System Shock and the older era of gaming. Yet, it’s really not for everyone. At times, it can be a massive pain in the butt when backtracking the many times, you will be doing, especially when you have to crawl through areas and tight spaces littered with massive death-traps. It doesn’t help that many of the objectives or the clear goals aren’t well pointed out.
I get that many gamers really dislike handholding and that’s totally understandable, but a game either has to make the objective clear visually, or naturally in a manner that’s highly understandable. Or provide some clear direction (even the old Resident Evil games this well). System Shock does indeed give hints and a direction to go in, via a helpful ally over the comms. But knowing the exact thing to do will often be a mystery for the most part. One of the first sets of objectives you have to do is on an audio log which can be easily missed. This, along with many key cards and other audio logs being easily missed, as they blend too well into the world itself, is another major problem.
Hacking, backtracking and never slacking
While the world overall can be quite a handful considering the immense exploration, and complexity of the world design. What you’ll be doing inside it is quite thrilling and enthralling.
Players will indeed be exploring the massive Citadel station for all manner of key items and of course to complete their quest. But along the way, you’ll be destroying mutants with a range of cool sci-fi weapons, solving neat puzzles, and figuring out how to deal with the many hazards Citadel Station has for you.
On the lateral side of things, the bulk of puzzle solving is through finding key cards (a staple of the FPS genre in its early days), finding door codes and fixing various electrical panels that need to be rewired in a neat little mini-game. System Shock has many of the tried and tested staples, which we’ve seen done to death over the last 30 years. Yet does mix things up to various degrees of success. Key cards and door codes are generally inoffensive and sometimes a little annoying to discover, as some of them can be missed easily.
But System Shock excels in the lateral department when it comes to other tasks such as hacking and dealing with numerous environmental hazards. The panel puzzles are that typical naff mini-game fun, by rerouting power via dials and electrical paths which do get much harder and change structurally later. I also loved finding new gear and items that would allow me to explore areas which were highly dangerous due to radiation and other elemental effects. Feeling like something ripped straight from the Metroid games.
I do wish the UI for these, and the UI for the inventory come to think of it, was much clearer. I’ll talk about accessibility in more detail later, but for those like me who enjoy playing games from their sofa, seeing the fine details in some of these puzzles and the inventory was a bit of a headache. For the console ports, I hope the developers tweak the UI to be more friendly to the eyes from afar.
The hacking ventures are pretty cool, where you enter the mainframe, fly around and have to attack virtual enemies in a VR-like space. It's really cool, but some of these sections can last quite a bit of time, ranging from 5 to 15 minutes! And there are no checkpoints whatsoever.
The nature of combat for System Shock is not too dissimilar to that of DOOM but at a slower pace with more emphasis on tactics. You’ll use a variety of melee weapons at first, from the classic pipe to an awesome laser sabre, but will soon get your hands on the likes of a pistol (no more dart gun), magnum, sub-machine gun and much more! There’s even a cool little nod to System Shock 2 as you can find early on a large yellow wrench as used in the sequel. Combat is intense, thoughtful and while a little janky in some points, it’s really engaging throughout. But the best thing is the grenades, which cause a lot of damage and react well with the new gore system which is visually very cool.
However, it’s not just a case of running everywhere guns blazing, but rather you think through your situation and plan. You’ll find yourself having to explore surrounding areas for much-needed resources, but also for other means of traversing the environment and vital items to progress further. There’s also the presence of SHODAN who watches you through the many cameras dotted around. Destroying these will help reduce the number of enemies that hunt you down.
But the great thing (while the world is maze-like) is that System Shock offers multiple paths and different solutions for the many problems on hand. While the key card hunting and code finding aren’t too exciting, there are some cool little objectives which feel much akin to any classic Resident Evil game. This was, and still is a brilliant mixture of FPS action, RPG-like exploration, and some elements of survival horror, too. There is a neat mechanic where you can recycle anything you find and pick up, such as old junk and random bits. Recycling these items will give you coins which you can spend (like in PREY), which is a nice system to have here.
While System Shock will rightly and surely kick your butt, and make you work for its love, Nightdive Studios have made sure anyone can access and enjoy the remake. You can choose the level of enemy presence, SHODAN’s presence, and the puzzle difficulty and maybe have a little hint here and there for finding your mission objectives. It’s fantastic that Nightdive while sticking to their guns and keeping the remake's true form to the original but thinks of those who might be overwhelmed by the old-school charm. You can enjoy this mainly as a game to figure out the problems and explore or focus on combat and SHODAN’s intense hunting.
Overall?Personally, I grew up with these types of games, and understand it’s all about figuring out the problem, no matter how convoluted they are, and piecing it all together. System Shock is a game that does require patience and while I understand not everyone will gel with it, it is totally worth the time and effort. There are indeed some elements which are really outdated and I’m thankful modern game design, and game design from the late 90s/00s were implemented more and more. Yet I do feel System Shock has its rightful place in gaming history, and most certainly the remake deserves its place next to the likes of Dead Space and RE4 remake.
The remake is visually stunning, the sound design top notch and all the main elements from exploration to combat, while not perfect, do add up to a highly engrossing and enjoyable sci-fi adventure. Plus, I love the story, setting and SHODAN which are truly timeless. I can highly recommend the System Shock remake to those like me who love old-school games and fancy something quite challenging to master. Now Nightdive, please remake System Shock 2!
++ Great setting, lore and antagonist
+ Awesome exploration elements, and problem-solving
+ Cool dismemberment system and weapons
+ Visually stunning and great sound design
-- Can be very complicated and mind-numbing
- UI can be much better and hopefully will be for the console
- Easy to miss key items
A Steam review key of the System Shock remake was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
