The new year brings another update from Nightdive Studios, developer of the upcoming System Shock remake. The post opens with confirmation that the game will release in March this year, which the studio had previously announced as a target:
“This is not the first time we’ve announced a tentative launch window,” writes Nightdive (opens in new tab)“but a lot has changed in recent years: the scope and scale of the project has evolved dramatically and over time [publisher] Prime Matter’s participation in the project allowed us to focus on quality of life improvements, bug fixes and localization support – the final big steps towards releasing a game that we are all incredibly proud of.”
Nightdive goes on to detail some of the areas of the game it’s focused on, including giving Citadel “a bit of a makeover” to match the grand finale, and adding some enemy variants to introduce new challenges. create later levels. There’s also a new enemy type that is “a callback to an original that we originally left out, but decided to add”. The accompanying video just shows it being blown away and collapsing, so I’m not quite sure what kind of threat it poses.
There’s a little look at Diego (a CEO who turns Shodan into a cyborg), some nicer weapon effects, and then the final blow: ridiculous levels of dismemberment.
“As you know dismemberment has been a high priority for us and each enemy is given a fully customized dismemberment model,” writes Nightdive. “There are many enemies and the amount of effort put into this is staggering.” Staggering! Good pun.
This is accompanied by a video of a bird-like enemy, which unfortunately cannot be embedded but can be seen here (opens in new tab), where the player first shoots the poor thing in the head before individually shooting the wings, legs, and other parts. Maybe I’m the only one, but this video is unintentionally rather amusing, although I imagine if you’re serious about playing rather than trying to show off the technology, it adds a lot to the atmosphere of the game.
Reactions to this post have been mixed, for two main reasons. One is that this is a game that was announced in 2016 and has been repeatedly delayed, and those who supported it are now angry: as one answer says, “how do I change my delivery address? I’ve moved four times since 2016. ” The second is that it started out as a “faithful remake” and, whether positively or negatively, Nightdive is certainly making substantial changes.
The proof will be in the pudding with this one, though it speaks volumes that the studio is confident enough to say it will finally launch in two months. For what it’s worth, we took a look at the remake’s arsenal not long ago, and liked a lot (opens in new tab)while the most recent trailer hit all the right notes (opens in new tab).