KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Netch]

Brigand? Cruelty Squad? Stay Out of the House? Prey wasn't indie but it was a recent game. Ctrl Alt Ego I ended up finding irritating but it's certainly an interesting game and a lot of people loved it.

This isn't even mentioning all the upcoming immersive sims

 

[SharkClub]

Brigand? Cruelty Squad? Stay Out of the House? Prey wasn't indie but it was a recent game. Ctrl Alt Ego I ended up finding irritating but it's certainly an interesting game and a lot of people loved it.

This isn't even mentioning all the upcoming immersive sims

Bro the genre gets like 5 games every 10 years. As someone who actually plays video games instead of just waxing lyrical about them on a nazi larper free speech message board that is not all that much and that number was never going to dissuade me from playing this remake.

 

[Netch]

that number was never going to dissuade me from playing this remake.

I wasn't trying to suggest you shouldn't have played the remake, I was just saying that it seemed like you were underestimating the amount of quality immersive sims that have come out recently/are coming out soon.

 

[SharkClub]

that number was never going to dissuade me from playing this remake.

I wasn't trying to suggest you shouldn't have played the remake, I was just saying that it seemed like you were underestimating the amount of quality immersive sims that have come out recently/are coming out soon.

But I'm not underestimating the amount. Brigand Oaxaca released 6 years ago, Prey released 6 years ago, Cruelty Squad is already 2 years old. Gloomwood is vaporware that isn't going to be released for 5 years because the developer is too autistic to finish his game. I think you're actually underestimating how many games actually qualifies for a genre being healthy. I'm not saying imsims need to be open world survival craft levels of oversaturated but there is like 10 retro-style boomer shooters for every indie imsim released. It's not hard to fit a 20 hour thorough playthrough of the SS1 remake in there somewhere between waiting for releases that are multiple years off. Your definition of recent and coming out soon are very suspect.

 

[anvi]

I am enjoying this so far.

 

[Netch]

But I'm not underestimating the amount. Brigand Oaxaca released 6 years ago, Prey released 6 years ago, Cruelty Squad is already 2 years old. Gloomwood is vaporware that isn't going to be released for 5 years because the developer is too autistic to finish his game. I think you're actually underestimating how many games actually qualifies for a genre being healthy. I'm not saying imsims need to be open world survival craft levels of oversaturated but there is like 10 retro-style boomer shooters for every indie imsim released.

That's fair, although I think that if we're using retro shooters as an example a lot of those end up being kind of shit or forgettable. There's probably a similar amount of actually good retro shooters being released as there are good immersive sims. And yeah I guess a good portion of the games I listed did come out over half a decade ago already... Though there's a lot of upcoming games I've got my eye on (Gloomwood isn't one of them, tried the demo and found it boring). Peripeteia, Monomyth, Shadows of Doubt, Corpus Edax, Core Decay, Skin Deep, Neverlooted Dungeon, RetroSpace... I would say that qualifies as a fair amount of games.

 

[SharkClub]

I've learned to stop trusting release dates for indie games (the game this thread is about is a good reason why), so until those games come out as far as I'm concerned they're in early access limbo and may as well not exist tbh. There's at least 5 games on my steam wishlist that were supposed to come out "Summer 2021" that still haven't been released.

 

[Netch]

I've learned to stop trusting release dates for indie games (the game this thread is about is a good reason why), so until those games come out as far as I'm concerned they're in early access limbo and may as well not exist tbh. There's at least 5 games on my steam wishlist that were supposed to come out "Summer 2021" that still haven't been released.

I get what you're saying. Personally, I have little optimism about the games industry in general and even I've been very content with the state of indie games lately, so I guess I just have a different outlook. In any case, even if I'm not interested in playing this remake myself due to some of the design decisions/changes I do appreciate that it could potentially bring some more interest to the genre. Maybe we'll get some more AA immersive sims in the future if this does well.

 

[jebsmoker]

any reviewer who thinks the levels in System Shock are too hard should play Downwind Thieves' Guild from Thief: Gold or Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap from Marathon

they know *nothing* if they haven't played those

 

[anvi]

My main issue with this game so far is the graphics, they are fugly. I don't get why you would remake an old game and then the graphics end up pixelly and low tech. When you look at walls and things close up it turns into Minecraft. At a distance things look ok, but it is mostly bad looking. Also the music in the original was much better, atmospheric music etc. Also the frame rates are terrible, especially considering it isn't good looking.

But other than that it is pretty faithful. Some slight layout changes, there is a fluid-pipes minigame, I hope that didn't replace cyberspace but I think it did. Also the audio log voices all seem to be new. Not sure why they would do that... Licensing issue or something? But the ones I listened to so far were well acted. So far it feels like I'm playing SS again, but I'd probably just recommend playing the original with mouse mod. But at least it's better than Bioshock.

p.s. Sucky graphics, maybe there could be some texture mods or something? Also the UI is shit. Anyone who thinks you use a compass indoors is retarded. Also you can't resize the goofy UI.

 

[Naraya]

When you look at walls and things close up it turns into Minecraft.

I know what you are talking about and I have a hard time believing it wasn't done on purpose. Personally I like it, it's a nice "retro-touch" IMO. This art style reminds me of Prodeus.

 

[Eisen]

any reviewer who thinks the levels in System Shock are too hard should play Downwind Thieves' Guild from Thief: Gold or Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap from Marathon

they know *nothing* if they haven't played those

Or A Converted Church in Italy, Venice from Marathon Infinity

 

[Jenkem]

guarantee you all the people in here claiming there are no good indie immersive sims or acting surprised like JDR13 still haven't played CTRL-ALT-EGO, the fucking COWARDS.

"So many", though?

there are many in production like peripiteia, core decay, fortune's run off the top of my head
edit: just remembered monomyth by looking at my badges and then there's neverlooted dungeon which is similar in theme, and there's that punching game (corpus edax?) etc. Netch listed a bunch more I see..

 

[Netch]

there are many in production like peripiteia, core decay, fortune's run off the top of my head
edit: just remembered monomyth by looking at my badges and then there's neverlooted dungeon which is similar in theme, and there's that punching game (corpus edax?) etc. Netch listed a bunch more I see..

I've had Fortune's Run on my wishlist but honestly forgot it was an immersive sim (I've been thinking of it as just a retro shooter for a while whenever I scroll past it). Thanks for reminding me it is... Gonna have to keep an eye out for its release.

 

[RoSoDude]

Nameless Voice also made a mod to filter the textures. Strangely, this required an automated batch process to toggle filtering individually on every single texture because of how it's implemented in Unreal.

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=8642.msg148164#msg148164

]Perhaps unsurprisingly, re-enabling texture filtering makes it quite obvious how low-res many of the textures are.





Mod attached. Should be pretty much every texture in the game, though there might be a few outliers where the filenames didn't follow the naming conventions I was searching for.

It's also worth reading the thread, the community members get into an argument with an NDS environmental artist about the pixelated art style.

 

[Trithne]

Honestly, I like the level of graphical fidelity it has. It hits that sweet spot for me where my brain fills in the rest and convinces itself it's real enough. Yes, if you stop to examine the walls (or have one if those damn canned animations play) you can see the pixels, but I think I'm just wired not to mind.

 

[SharkClub]

guarantee you all the people in here claiming there are no good indie immersive sims or acting surprised like JDR13 still haven't played CTRL-ALT-EGO, the fucking COWARDS.

"So many", though?

there are many in production like peripiteia, core decay, fortune's run off the top of my head
edit: just remembered monomyth by looking at my badges and then there's neverlooted dungeon which is similar in theme, and there's that punching game (corpus edax?) etc. Netch listed a bunch more I see..

Jenk my brother in christ, you of all people should know never to trust release dates for indie games after all of the shitposting about Ion Fury's expansion pack (2 more weeks, trust the plan, the Summer 2021 release date is almost here). All these indie imsims that are all "almost finished" according to developers could be years away for all we know.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Anyone who thinks you use a compass indoors is retarded

you do realise it's not a literal compass, right?

 

[Tweed]

I finished it, I don't know how, I don't know why, and I sure as hell don't know what they were thinking with this outro music. I also wonder how a long boring boss fight is cyberspace where you shoot at a giant carrot that doesn't do anything is any better than a short, frantic fight in cyberspace where a giant carrot bumps into you a lot.

 

[cvv]

there are so many interesting and innovative indie immersive sims coming out these days that I think the genre is doing better than it has in decades.

By this point I'd really like to know what are people's definitions of an immersive sim.

People ITT seem to insist a traditional RPG like UU is an immersive sim. Is Gothic an immersive sim then? Kindgom Come? Outward? ..........Skyrim with mods?

I feel the immersive sim is just retarded newspeak because we already have labels for most games usually shoved into this bad - RPGs, stealth, survival etc.

SS, Stalker and maybe a tiny handful of others may be the only games this label is perhaps useful for (maybe weird shit like Kenshi or Bannerlord?).

(as for Arkane's milquetoast offering, supposedly the pinnacle of the immersive sim genre, I played Dishonored and Prey for a bit and Dishonored seemed like a bog standard stealth game to me and Prey is just a weird shooter. Don't see much "simulation" in them).

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

By this point I'd really like to know what are people's definitions of an immersive sim.

People ITT seem to insist a traditional RPG like UU is an immersive sims. Is Gothic an immersive sim then? Kindgom Come? Outward? ..........Skyrim with mods?

Yeah it's wack. People will be like "System Shock 2 isn't an immersive sim, it's a survival horror" and then think things like fucking Disco Elysium and Fallout New Vegas are immersive sims.

Immersive Sim is a meaningless term at this point, and I really hate when people try to classify games as "good" or not based on whether they fit their particular definition of an imsim.

It's basically people just finding ad-hoc justifications for liking the games they like and disliking the game's they don't. "Oh, I have defined this game as an imsim using <wacky definition>, therefore I am justified in liking it, and the game you like which doesn't fit my definition is therefore inherently bad. I like imsims not crappy games, because I'm an intellectual gamer with a big brain and a high IQ".

It's the most arrogant form of argumentation. Have different value criteria to someone else? Just redefine reality to make your choice "objectively" better than theirs. Even your own post does this to throw Prey under the bus because you don't like it. It somehow doesn't count as an immersive sim because you think it's bad, and if you didn't like a game that was an immersive sim, then you'd have bad taste. Vis a vis, it must not be an imsim.

TL;DR everyone who uses the term "immersive sim" unironically is too stupid to have a real argument.

 

[Jaedar]

still haven't played CTRL-ALT-EGO, the fucking COWARDS.

this made me look it up on steam (hadn't heard about it before). But I must admit I am deeply cautious of a game that got good review score at kotaku, and proudly displays "John Walkers top 10!" on the store page.

 

[lightbane]

One thing I found funny of System Shock is that between SS1 and 2, people realize that corpos with unlimited power is a bad idea and they strike back, eventually forming a strong government that limits corpos. Granted, it's a totalitarian state with secret agents who are literal psychic killers, but hey, baby steps!

 

[DJOGamer PT]

There's nothing i hate more in a game than losing control ... and i even despise stuff like animations when climbing stuff etc, which supposedly is there to make you feel like you are doing the action in question where as for me it has the opposite effect since your controls are locked for the duration of the animation which takes me out of the immersion.

Limits and constrains need to exist so a game can have rules and a challenge
This implies certain loss of control for the player
In regards to game design imo, knowing what to remove and not include, is as important as knowing what to add and polish

Animations besides being another part of the above, also and specially for games with action mechanics, set the pace of the game
And while "immersion" may be a reason some devs include it, I think an inteligent dev implements such animations because they know it will change the way the player plays the game

the community members get into an argument with an NDS environmental artist about the pixelated art style.

Honestly I got used to it rather quicker than I expected
It looks fine, it's only when examining objects up close that in the worst cases it becomes slightly jarring
But since it's a big reason why the game is under 10gb and runs silky smooth, I give it a pass

 

[Neuromancer]

I'm interested in seeing how this remake handled some of the more character-driven moments in SS1.

The stories of Abe Ghiran and Biancha Schuler.

Being contacted by Anna Parovski's group of survivors.

Consulting with SHODAN's original programmer near the end of the game.

Meh.
You get some logs that you can sense are there to provide more meaningful story, than other logs; but you are not interested really in who is who or who made how far by investigating their bodies because of the retarded KS id tags.
There is also at least one KS log that mentions cat "Whiskers" and I really stopped caring after that.
The only meaningful bit is the Flight Deck resistance.

Is there a way to distinguish between real game audio logs and KS fanfiction before listening to them?