So right up front, for disclosure, this is a video that the PR team for the recently released System
Shock remake is paying me to create—#ad and all that. But wait! Before you click off the
video in a fit of rage, let me tell you that as with similar such videos I’ve made in the past,
the reason I even considered the deal was that I retained full creative control over the project,
with zero pressure to spin things or be anything other than honest—I was basically
asked to make a regular Writing on Games video on a particular game. And to me, that’s a move
that really shows confidence in their product. It’s also why, and take this with whatever grain
of salt you need to, I’ve been pretty glad to see that post-release coverage of the game, at
a glance, has seemingly been so positive – because it means that you don’t just have to take my word
for it when I offer this remake a rather glowing recommendation. I’ve had a blast with this thing.
It's interesting because outside of a distant appreciation for the importance of the franchise
on the larger gaming landscape, I don’t have a particular attachment to those old System
Shock games – I’m approaching this remake as a relative newcomer. But what this remake has
taught me is just how cohesive and coherent the vision behind this game really is – ya know,
the series is considered classic for a reason – as well as how far a new coat of paint really
has gone here. -
Because make no mistake, while there are a number of subtle but nonetheless appreciated
quality of life improvements here – you know, making it so that you don’t need to navigate
different mouse modes to put things in your inventory then return to freelook as was the
case in the Enhanced Edition of the original – the System Shock remake is, at its core,
a respectable effort to retain the mechanical and systemic identity of a game that really helped
put the immersive sim genre on the map—which is to say, the game really doesn’t hold your
hand beyond teaching you the basics of control. It’s not so much a game where your agency is
celebrated or you’re given all the tools and told you can do whatever you like with them.
I guess it’d be more accurate to say you’re forced to make do with what you can get your
hands on—this applies to weapons, tools, powerups; hell, narrative and objectives.
There is a path to be followed here, a really rich world to be uncovered, with writing that
legitimately holds up super well and environmental storytelling aplenty—it’s just that, by design,
the game just places it in the world and is more than willing to let you get lost in the nooks
and crannies of this cyber labyrinth trying to find it. Like the AI Shodan running amok
within the walls of the Citadel you find yourself on, there’s a deliberately cold,
distant vibe to proceedings, where you’re just placed in a hostile environment and have to assume
that your goal is to get out of that environment. But honestly, this hands-off approach is why I’ve
been having such a great time with the System Shock remake—not only is it thematically and
tonally resonant; not only is exploring these maze-like levels rewarding enough in and of
itself, with discoveries you find on the way having the potential to radically alter the
trajectory of your playthrough, but it’s the fact that it really does feel like everything
about how you play comes down to you. The game doesn’t pause, for example,
when you want to check your map (which you will be doing frequently). It doesn’t pause
when you want to rearrange your inventory. In fact, outside of creating a manual save slot,
the game doesn’t pause at all; all the while enemy presence is so sporadic that any time you’re
spending performing an action as insignificant as, say, checking a crate or looting a body,
is time you crucially aren’t spending being aware of your surroundings. Even the smallest enemies
can overwhelm you, and so the act of exploration is rendered infinitely more tense and engaging,
where it feels like every move, no matter how small, has a measurable consequence on the next.
While it’s easy to tweak difficulty options at the start based on your preferences,
on default this can be a pretty unforgiving game at times. That said, it’s remarkably well
balanced—the scope of these levels is surprisingly manageable (these maps may look huge, but you’d be
surprised at how much ground you can cover in a short amount of time)—coupled with a surprisingly
generous checkpoint system, meaning that there’s rarely a situation that can’t be surmounted
if you just throw yourself at it enough. In short, I imagine the term “old-school”
will be getting thrown around with wild abandon when discussing this game, but go back to even the
Enhanced Edition of the original (which Nightdive also handled) and you’ll see just how significant
those subtle mechanical changes are—that older game is still really fun in its own right,
but you will notice just how much more functional this remake feels. The team has carefully picked
out and refined those aspects of old immersive sims that really matter—crafting a title that just
consistently requires real focus on everything around you. It’s funny that for a game paying
such homage to a title released in the early 90s, that in a sea of titles seeking to guide
you by the nose every step of the way, this kind of gameplay experience feels downright refreshing.
- But one of the biggest,
most obvious changes between the releases is the stark visual upgrade that’s been applied. Man,
I cannot get enough of how good this game looks. I described it as a new coat of paint earlier, but
the reality is that what Nightdive has done here amounts to far more than just up-rezzing assets,
but fundamentally looking at the the specific era the original released in, and using that
information to convey tone, story and character traits that go beyond the original game’s scope.
If I could summarise the visual design in a word, it would be hazy – the team could have opted
for some form of photorealism, but instead they choose to take the visual mush of the original,
likely a result of technical limitations of the time, and manage to lovingly render it in a mix
of modern sheen, intense lighting and most notably of all, light pixellation. Insodoing,
they take a piece of media that would fit right in with any similar cyberpunk sci-fi of the 80s
and 90s—all speculating that the world would be a hovercar-riddled flaming industrial bin by the
year 2003 or something—and shift this palette into something evoking legitimate b-movie camp, in the
best possible way. As evidenced by the piles of goop breaking up your treks through sterile metal
corridors, that same goop that the unsettlingly smooth, shambling, dead-eyed enemies explode into,
this thing is glorious shlock. System Shlock. The vibe of everything here could be summed up
by the whole “computer virus as literal virus” aesthetic. There’s an almost escapist fantasy to
the game’s vision of Hacking The Mainframe that’s really brought to life here, and it’s brilliant.
This shlock extends to the game’s now expanded intro too—no longer just Shodan coldly listing
the events leading up to your awakening. You’re put in control of your character here,
you get to explore their room; you get to initiate the hack that gets you caught in the first place.
And what I love about this is how much work the little details are already doing
in establishing who you are. This is not a blank slate—this is a person with a small,
messy flat; a passion for 80s style cult media, they own a keytar; hell, they’re a gamer – they
have the original System Shock on their shelf. You get the feeling that this is someone who
appreciates the notion of being some kind of action hero hacker, that nonetheless, far from
the seven minutes Shodan originally says it takes for Trioptimum forces to find and apprehend you,
these guys bust you immediately, as soon as you start the hack for Citadel files.
Through mostly visual details—such as silent, but eminently meaningful hand gestures—this
intro frames your character as someone obsessed with those trappings of what it means to hack the
system, man, and yet someone who is also kind of bad at it, or at least not ready for the reality
of the situation they’re getting themselves into; as exemplified by the fact they offer
zero resistance when told to, say, deactivate the ethics protocols for an all-controlling AI
by a corporate executive. I get the sense there’s an understandable fear within this
character—crucially, matching up with my gameplay. -
The seemingly endless, smoky, Nostromo-esque corridors heighten that fear that something
could be lurking around the next corner or coming up behind you; the large system fans,
the shimmer of these winding, claustrophobic interiors, all of it sells the idea that you,
your character are somewhere they aren’t meant to be; your character gets to live out their action
hacker fantasies in all their pixelated glory, but in the process they become akin to a virus in
that massive computer, that the now-sentient AI, thinking themselves a god, is going to weed out
using whatever tools they can muster. They’re going to toy with you like a rat in a maze.
Because as you can probably tell from this gameplay, I’m not great at this stuff either.
This complex neural interface is a lot to get to grips with, to internalise, and so much of
the game’s tension, at least for me, comes from having to navigate it all on the fly. You have
to keep track of how many rounds are equipped, as well as what you still have left in your inventory
(because reloading doesn’t happen automatically); you have to think about what you’re going to use
if you run out of said ammo or energy; you have to think about, can you use this thing as cover;
do you have enough time and keyboard dexterity to immediately equip a medkit and use it;
can you lean out just enough that you can hit one of the many enemies on screen without exposing
too much of your own body; where even is the enemy among the blinding glow in front of you?
All of these questions need to be answered and acted upon so quickly that actually carrying out
this string of actions can be anxiety inducing – said anxiety being the thing that leads to
the countless deaths and respawns you will almost certainly encounter on your travels.
And in so tying the tension of the game to how efficiently you can navigate this interface
and process all the information it gives you in real time, something interesting happens. Your
wares themselves aren’t framed as some inherently dehumanising, profane betrayal of the flesh as can
often be the case with cyberpunk media—they’re just part of the cool action hacker fantasy
allowing you to do cool action hacker things. Rather, the question of humanity—that does form
at least part of the game’s thematic core—is tied more deeply to your own perseverance through this
world of such ferocious metal and programming. You know, to panic in these situations,
to react as a normal human being here, to not internalise these encounters as mere
input to be processed into output as your robot enemies do, is to put yourself at greater risk
of deletion—seemingly encouraging the approach that if you can’t beat the monstrously cold and
distant AI convinced they’re a god, join ‘em. On a basic gameplay level, though, by placing
you in the shoes of some shlub fundamentally unprepared for the situation they’ve gotten
themselves into, Shodan’s twisted, horrifying view of augmented existence is contrasted sharply,
constantly with your own more human, imperfect but inherently more playful,
fun use of the tools at your disposal. On top of an incredibly neat world to uncover, you also
have a really compelling gameplay narrative driven by your choices—it honestly rules.
- All this to say, I’m kind of blown away by the
care and attention that’s been afforded to this remake—not just taking the easy route of upping
the visuals and reducing the game’s mechanical complexity into the shape of some bland shooter,
but really examining every element of the source material, seeing how they could make
things more approachable, while sacrificing none of the systemic identity of the original,
wholly maintaining that trust they place in your ability to figure things out, that belief that
you don’t always need your hand held. It’s a game that requires some investment from you above and
beyond what typical games usually expect—but it’s one I’ve found is equally willing to give back
just as much as you put in. It’s made me so much more interested in really going back and examining
those older titles—the kind of result that I think any remake should be so lucky to achieve.
So yeah, thanks again to System Shock for sponsoring this video and giving me such
freedom to approach this game however I saw fit. Check it out on Steam at the link on
the description, thank you all so much for watching and I will see you all next time.