There is a thread on the official forum that talks about how the devs want to "streamline the game" which almost made me lose my shit, but I am going to keep positive for now. Some stuff concerns me though.
One minute they say it will be SS3, then they say it is basically just a remake of SS1 and show a demo that looks identical to SS1 but with new graphics, and now it is SS3 again. I wish it would be one thing or the other. I don't want SS1 again but with stuff changed, because to me that game is as close to a masterpiece as I've ever played. Either remake it accurately with a new engine, or make a new game all together. I don't like it when companies stretch themselves too thinly. If they don't have a decent budget then just remake SS1 and spend time making it spotless. If they do have a decent budget, then don't pussy out on a reboot, make a whole new game with new story, new locations, and some new mechanics.
Also better hacking would be great, but I hope they don't end up relying on gimmicks because the game needs a lot more than kewl mini games. I love the SS games and they were really revolutionary at the time, but even something awesome and ahead of its time is going to leave things to be desired to people 22 years later. The gunplay needs to be really good, there needs to be huge recoil on some older mechanical weapons and they need to feel heavy and sound loud and rip through zombies like a 357 magnum. It all needs to be balanced like the original so that bullets mostly bounce off robots, and lazer fire just gently smoulders on zombies. etc. And with very limited ammo, the player needs to play smart and the tension mostly comes from not being able to just confront any enemy you find and blow it to bits. There are already a million Doom games, this needs to be a game where you run away and hide and then decide on one location you are going to fight to first and hope you find enough stuff there to continue further. Also you should never be able to just run up to an enemy and kill it with an iron bar. It needs to require a few hits to kill stuff, and they need to hit back really hard, so melee attacks should be an absolute last resort. Dumbing down System Shock is not only gaming blasphemy but it would also be incredibly dumb seeing as Bioshock already went there and did it. Three times.
Also the whole death mechanic needs work. I think overall the first game was the best and was certainly the most revolutionary, but the death mechanic wasn't very good. As a new player it was pretty terrifying, but once you got to grips with the game (and on any future replays), you learned to just aim straight for the regeneration room as your first objective in every new area. And once you had that, the game kind of lost all tension and challenge. Death didn't matter and in fact it actually benefited you sometimes because you would respawn with about 50% health and power so if you were already lower than that and struggling to make progress, you may as well just suicide and then repop ready to roll. SS2 did it better because there was a cost for respawning and those nanites or whatever it was that got used up, were not very common. I think in SS3 they need to make it harder and a bit more unforgiving. It should be so that the respawns are rare, so if you die, you have quite far to travel back to where you originally died. Also if enemies respawn this could mean you have to fight back to where you died which uses up more ammo and resources as well as your time. Maybe make it so that you are injured or weakened for a while after respawning to. Also they need to limit saves somehow, either a limited number per location or checkpoints or something similar. Spamming quicksave every 2 seconds so you can just F9 reload when you fuck up makes games boring and dumb. Harsh punishments really work great in games because it makes people terrified of dying, and everything becomes WAY more intense and meaningful when you absolutely have to play cautiously. All the proof you ever need is in EverQuest.
Also the half assed classes system needs to be developed properly. It was cool having a FPS with some character building and custom choices way back in the 1800s, but it wasn't a well done system. There were Psi abilities but they didn't work very well so although it pretended to let you make different sorts of characters or 'builds', it mostly boiled down to playing the same way, guns. My concern with this is that it takes so much time and effort (and money) to make a system like this that actually works well. Say for example you let the player have Fallout style perks and one will boost your explosives expertise. What tends to happen is that someone will focus on that, load up on rocket launchers and grenades and stuff, and either the game becomes too easy because already powerful weapons now because OP. And/Or what happens is that they quickly run out of rockets/grenades and then discover that perk was a total waste of time and they should have just chosen to boost something boring like hand guns which have the most common ammo. And of course, you can never respec in most games so it is just a big let down. It takes major effort and skill and beta testing to get this all balanced and I prefer it when games just don't bother. Imo they should just split it and make only 2 build options. Both should be able to hack and shouldn't need to balance points into fundamental gameplay things like hacking vending machines or whatever. All players should get all the basics and the game can then be balanced around knowing just how many vending machines there are and how much ammo they are going to have etc. Then just add some specialisation stuff on top of that which is mostly superficial. It could be that one build is typical guns, and the other build is PSI. Make it so that psi abilities do similar damage to whatever a gun build can do and job done. Just don't go making multiple options because it gets messy and ends up with stuff that sucks, stuff that is OP, and everyone googling for which cookie cutter build is best or most fun.
TL-DR: Don't fuck this up like every other reboot ever.
p.s. Don't come up with a new conversation system..... This isn't Dragon Age. The whole reason the SS games were so creepy is because there were no other living people in the entire game. You spend the whole time by yourself, creeping around, listening to audio logs of dead people. The only other moving things are haywire robots and stuff out to kill you. It made the whole thing feel so isolated and scary and made you so paranoid and on edge. Having people to chat to will ruin that, and if it just a few choices at the start of the game or something, then don't waste time trying to come up with a new system. Numbered line choices is fine.