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A little while has passed since we heard much about the System Shock Remake, although developer Nightdive Studios has been doing a fairly good job of keeping their Kickstarter backers updated. The latest of those updates comes with fairly good news in that they’ve entered into a partnership with Prime Matter to publish System Shock on PC and consoles next year.
The 1994 PC game is set on an abandoned space station, known as Citadel Station, in the year 2072. When an anonymous hacker emerges from a coma, he finds the space station under the control of SHODAN (Sentient Hyper-Optimised Data Access Network), the station AI that has become intent on the destruction of humanity following the removal of its ethical constraints. Now it’s planning to aim a laser at Earth and destroy as many cities as possible. Only the hacker can stop it in its tracks.
System Shock Remake will include all of the core gameplay from the original game and even includes some of the original voice actors. For example, Terri Brosius has returned to voice SHODAN. This doesn’t mean there aren’t some changes though. There will be HD graphics, an updated control scheme, an upgraded user interface, and remastered music and sound effects. Citadel Station has also been improved with new areas, traps, puzzles and secrets to find.
The game’s development hasn’t always run smoothly. A Kickstarter fundraiser in 2016 was successful, raising $1.35 million in total. The game was marked down for a 2017 release. Despite only being planned for PC intially, the team also agreed to produce a PlayStation 4 port due in 2018. However, the scope of development changed multiple times and the game was ultimately put on hiatus in 2018 while the team reassessed their vision and attempted to find a publisher to raise further capital.
Development resumed later in 2018 with another team refocusing the game to Nightdive’s original vision. The game was given a revised release window of early 2020. Delays meant an alpha demo didn’t appear on PC until May 2020, while an extended gameplay demo finally appeared this year in June. A beta will be available for Kickstarter backers early next year. After that, the game will be released on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC at some point in 2022.
[Source: Prime Matter]