It's been a long road for the System Shock remake. The project began as a Kickstarter in 2016 from Nightdive Studios, a company that has made a name for itself with its work on various classic game remakes and remasters. While the campaign was a huge success -- fundraising over $1.3 million with an original $900,000 goal -- the game is still not out yet.
The team hasn't been silent about the process involved with bringing this retro game to newer platforms and audiences, however, thanks to monthly updates on the Kickstarter. The remake has been through an engine change and a few different teams, but it's finally on its way towards release. Larry Kuperman, director of business development at Nightdive, was on hand at
GDC to give updates on System Shock, and said it's "largely complete." He referred to it as being in "pre-beta"; the PC version has all of the weapons, enemies, and other elements, but the team is still working on the console versions. Kuperman noted that the developers want to release the game simultaneously across all platforms.
While we didn't get hands-on time with System Shock at GDC, we were shown a number of recorded snippets from the game, including a trek through maintenance on Level 3 and one from later on. Based on my brief time with the footage, it seems on track to hit the studio's target for later this year. It also seems to strike a great balance between old and new, between classic and modern, which has been at the core of many great remakes and remasters over the past few years.
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