The long-anticipated remake of System Shock has finally arrived after nearly a decade, bringing modern graphics and mechanics to the sci-fi classic. The original title was released in 1994, going on to influence a myriad of other immersive sim games that would follow in its footsteps like Deus Ex and the BioShock series. System Shock's reboot comes from Nightdive Studios, which specializes in releasing enhanced versions of classic games, and publisher Prime Matter.
System Shock follows a hacker protagonist who's brought to the Citadel Space Station to override the ethical constraints of its AI, SHODAN. After awakening from a cryogenic sleep on the station several months later, things have devolved into chaos, and players must utilize a combination of exploration, puzzling, and combat in order to stop SHODAN's plans to wipe out all human life. The System Shock reboot has received critical praise for striking a balance between modernized graphics and controls while still maintaining the core difficulty and feeling of the original.
Screen Rant sat down with Nightdive Studios CEO and System Shock Director Stephen Kick and Director of Business Development Larry Kuperman to discuss the creative process behind the game, exciting Easter eggs, and what fans can expect from the reboot.
Screen Rant: Can you talk a bit about collaborating with the initial developers, and what's been the most important elements for both you and the original developers that you wanted to be sure to preserve from the original game in this new version?
Larry Kuperman: Let me take the first part of that, Stephen, and then I'm gonna throw the technical stuff over to you. I have to do the usual disclaimer, let's just be really clear for everyone that OtherSide is a completely separate and different company than Nightdive; that's the part that I really want to be clear about.
That said, both Paul Neurath and Warren Spector have been wonderful in their of the System Shock project. And Warren has provided some along the way, having Warren Spector say, "Yes, you're going down the right path, that's the right direction," was really important to us. That said, perhaps we should talk a little bit about those of the original team that are on the current team, and I'm going to kick that over to Steve to talk a little bit about Terry Brosius and Robb [Waters].
Stephen Kick: So when we first were kicking around ideas to do this remake, the number one thing that would kind of ultimately decide its fate was whether or not we could get Terry Brosius on board to reprise her role or SHODAN. Fortunately, when we reached out, she was very happy to do so. And we even had the added benefit of her husband, Eric Brosius, who was also part of that original Looking Glass team to do the processing on her lines, so that when we got them back and had them ready to plug into the game, they were already SHODAN-ized, so to speak. So that was an incredible benefit that we couldn't have been more happy with.
On the other side of things, we had Robb Waters, who is the original artist for System Shock 1, and also one of the main artists on the Bioshock series and a number of the other Looking Glass and Irrational [Games] titles from that time. And what he was able to contribute was basically looking at all the stuff that he had designed for System Shock 1 back in 1994, and then apply the last 25 years of his experience, reimagining those same art designs and those same characters and everything else for the remake. Truly, there's no more of a pure example of System Shock than what we have in the remake.
And I know that this reboot meant that you could include some things that couldn't be done in the original due to the technical limitations of the time period. What kind of modernizations has the game seen and what would you say are the biggest changes in that regard?
Stephen Kick: Probably the biggest change is just the way you control the character. In the original, pre-Enhanced Edition, you had to move the mouse cursor around the field of view in order to move the character, which is not the direction the industry went in 1994, they went with mouse look, being able to just freely move the viewpoint around. And that was something that we discovered very early on when we did the Enhanced Edition is that when you give the player modern controls for that game, you almost have an entirely new game on your hands, and that's what made us inspired to do the remake to begin with.
So the whole control scheme's been totally redone. The interface, the experience has all been modernized to be more familiar to a gamer now than in 1994. Just on a base level, everything's been overhauled, reexamined, reevaluated and reimplemented in some way that harkens back to the original but still feels new at the same time.
Larry Kuperman: Our goal has always been - if you play the original System Shock it's, to put it mildly, inaccessible, it's really difficult to play. And for anyone that's used to modern games, it's frustrating. We wanted this to be intuitive both in the way that you move, in the inventory system, how you manage those things, we wanted it to allow the player to really have a seamless and immersive experience. So updating those areas was key.
What have the biggest challenges been in of recreating a game so many years later?
Stephen Kick: We were presented with a lot of unique challenges. You have the OG players who have championed System Shock ever since it came out that don't want anything changed, and then you have everybody else. So you have to strike a balance between what made that original game so memorable and such an important part of the industry with something that a lot of people can just pick up and enjoy like any other game that you would pick up off the shelf.
So really just finding that balance, not going too far into one camp than the other, being conscious about the decision-making of even simple things like, "Are we going to change the level layout here to be less labyrinthian and more of like a space that people would actually use? Should we change the music so that it doesn't sound like you're in a techno dance club and more onboard a space station where unspeakable horrors have been committed?" Larry, do you have any?
Larry Kuperman: Yeah, the other thing that I think is just a general principle of all of Nightdive's games, we always like to say that these games play the way you them playing. You forget about how difficult it was to look to your left in it and those kinds of simple things, but to still capture the horror, the eeriness, the sense of being alone in the station that were really important and that made it so immersive. We've changed a number of things about the way that you view the hacker, the protagonist, that I think our fans are really going to enjoy, that people that have not played the game before are gonna go, "Oh, this is why it was so great," because you really do get that feeling that it's you there.
Were there any sort of big pivots during the development period where maybe you were pursuing something newer and then decided against it because it made the game too different or anything like that?
Stephen Kick: Yeah, we had a really big one a number of years ago, where after the Kickstarter had been successfully launched we switched engines from Unity to Unreal. And the first iteration of the game that we had developed using Unreal with a different team than we have now went off into a direction that after a while, we became really uncomfortable with, as did backers, so we had the very difficult decision of basically starting from scratch at that point.
I'll be honest, our entire budget and 10s of 1,000s of man hours were basically left on the cutting room floor as we looked to deliver something that was more closely aligned with what we promised on Kickstarter. So that was one of the major reasons why the game has taken so long is because we had developed something that we didn't feel rang true with the legacy that the game had created, and that was our number one goal.
Larry Kuperman: Let me say that it wasn't anything bad. It wasn't that they did something terrible on that. It was just that the game that they envisioned, was not going to be System Shock.
In of any new small details, I'm curious if there's any Easter eggs in the new game for veteran fans of the original that you can talk about?
Stephen Kick: Yeah, there's a lot of Easter eggs.
You're both really smiling mischievously.
Stephen Kick: [Laughs] Yeah, I don't know how much I want to say. But that was one of the fun conversations that we had with the developers like, "Hey, everybody gets their Easter egg, what do you want to hide in the game? What do you want to put a nod to?" I would say that there's probably less Easter eggs that have to do with the original and more that just have to do with things that we like. But I had a really wonderful opportunity to work with the guys over at RiffTrax - who, as you may or may not know, they originally got their start on Mystery Science Theater 3000 - and they had a very special contribution to the game and I'll leave it at that.
What are you most excited to see players react to in general with System Shock?
Stephen Kick: The first couple of moments were really important for us to just capture the player's imagination and their attention. And so there was a great deal of effort put into that opening cinematic that echoes similarities from the original, but this time around is more or less fully playable, and that's been a really big wow moment that we've seen from a lot of people who have played the game. It's our hope that that sets the stage for the rest of the experience, that it hooks you right away and doesn't let go.
Is there anything that you guys just want players to know about System Shock who maybe didn't play the original game?
Larry Kuperman: It's a hard game, I want to disclose that. We don't do a whole lot of hand holding, because that wasn't the way that games were made in the 1990s. It's going to be challenging. I will tell you that on a personal level, I'm really grateful that hard games - not gonna mention Elden Ring - but that hard games have already kind of set the stage for us, that people understand that games that are really challenging are fun.
In watching people play, I had a great time at last year's PAX showing off the game. It was fun watching people get frustrated. It's funny seeing them get frustrated, reach a point, pause for a moment, and then dive back in. Because it's kind of on that balance; if it doesn't have some moments of "Where's the key?" then it's not fun.
Stephen Kick: We were strongly in that camp, too, where we didn't want to over contextualize everything and flood the player with tutorials right off the bat. So while there are a couple of very simple pop-ups that teach you the basics, it really just lets you go after the first couple of minutes. And it has been kind of a wake-up call for the people who have played it because they have to rely on their own instincts and their own smarts to get around and to achieve the various objectives.
You get to see their eyes light up when they figure something out on their own, and I think that's something that we're missing from a lot of games these days is we're not putting a lot of trust in the player, we're just holding their hand through the experience. So yeah, there's going to be some frustration like Larry said, but ultimately, when the player figures something out, and they learn the mechanics, and they understand the game better as a result of experimentation, I think that's where we're going to find people really falling in love with the game.
Obviously, the biggest influence on the new System Shock is the original System Shock, but since the original there have been so many other immersive sim games that have really helped define the genre. I'm curious if you guys found yourself taking inspiration from any other games in particular.
Stephen Kick: Yeah, a lot of Looking Glass and Irrational's catalog. Because the veterans of this System Shock went on to do other really amazing games that kind of are part of that legacy. So the BioShock series, of course with Ken Levine, Arkane Studios' Dishonored 1, Dishonored 2, Arx Fatalis, Deus Ex, of course, from Ion Storm and our friend Warren Spector; even the later entries by Eidos, as well, like Human Revolution. We all took a look at what they did, and you can clearly see the lineage that goes all the way back to System Shock. And what was fun was going to those titles, playing them, and experimenting, and taking elements from them and bringing it back to where it originated.
Source: Nightdive Studios/YouTube
System Shock releases today, May 30, for PC. The release date for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S is TBD.
