System Shock Remake

DOOD had this, too, early on. Really a turn off, especially since that 'menacing stance w/ scream' is so fucking generic at this point. I just got done playing Call of Pripyat and there was none of that shit and still ended up leagues scarier snork pack sneak attackthat is all

Why don't you fuck off?

Relax, user. It's a legitimate question.
System Shock was lying dormant for years then all of a sudden we're getting overwhelmed with System Shock games.

It's not even like Bioshock brought it back into the limelight. Bioshock Infinite feels like ages ago.

How? That enemy model is absurdly cartoony and so is their depiction of SHODAN. The textures have almost nothing going on, too. This is something I'd expect from an amateur group of modders or a maybe a mobile reboot of System Shock, not something with the prestige this remake has going for it

This is going to end up like Duke Nukem Forever, isn't it?

tbh at this point, reusing SHODAN again just loses the magic of the first SS game. everytime it just feels less 'menacing' than it does 'chopped n screwed in audacity and my guitar pedals'
underwhelming/10

I don't even get the triggering.

Quints

Nah, it's gonna end up like DOOD.
A watery game that's not particularly terrible but fails to deliver on its promises and fails to deliver on the key features that made the originals great, ultimately becoming a mediocre piece that would be "well it's alright I guess" by its own merits but crumbles under the shadow of its predecessors.

Quite the shock isn't it?

The lack of flinching and staggering animation in CoP's mutants make them feel like annoying bullet sponges.

I think it's BioShock 2?

ayyy

Using Unreal Engine was a mistake, it just looks like Killing Floor 2 now.

You had one job, nigger.

Anyways, why was SS2 so loved? I was playing the first level and all that happened was constant respawning enemies.

Really turned me off so I didn't keep going.
Never played SS1 if that's meant to be better.

I'll get accused of being bait or a newfag, btu I'm legitimately curious as to why anons shit on games like CoD for having respawning enemies but not SS2 for spamming those shitty, easy to kill monsters at me while I'm trying to do a task.

Mind you, the experience/character gen at the start was really well done and I enjoyed it immensely.

I was hoping they were gonna stick with the simplified unfiltered/nearest-point sampled, low-res art style. They could've gotten away with less mesh detail too going that route.

But, now they're gonna have to double or triple their texture resolution AND model detail if they want to avoid looking fresh outta 2004.

Yeah, there is no point for that during combat. If you were out of reach and the mutant couldn't find a way too you then it might make sense for it to ook and eek at you in frustration though.

Sense of horror I guess and that you're always being hunted / in danger / resource management, I do usually hate respawning enemies but I think it's pretty minor compared to the rest of the game and it's definitely not as bad as CoD's stupid get over this line mechanic.

I don't know either, I played SS1 and SS2 for the first time a couple weeks ago, really enjoyed SS1 and still haven't been able to force myself to finish 2. SS1 is basically Doom with some backtracking and inventory management and how free you are to explore every area and discover shit is great. Then in 2 it's just tiny constrained corridors with branching paths that are locked off by story progression and more than half the shit you find you can't use because of stat restrictions.

To be fair, SHODAN looked pretty cartoony in SS1. They should have stuck with something similar to that or the way they showed her in 2. This version is way too minimalist sci-fi.

The respawning enemies isn't as bad as it is in other games. You're talking about a ship full of people who've almost all been infected, so there has to be more than just a handful per deck, but at the same time you can't have 50 at once. It's a compromise, and it can be annoying, but the alternative would be an almost totally empty ship, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
It also keeps you on your toes and, especially with later levels, forces you to watch your ammunition and inventory.

Is that such a bad thing though? The main path that's blocked for you when you start is using the elevator, but that's logical because in a deteriorating ship full of mutants there's nobody to keep the power running, and parts of the ship have been rendered useless by the Many. You don't have to wait very long before you can use it though, and once you finish with Hydroponics you can go back and forth as you please. The story progression makes sense because you need to fix things before you can start using them, and since you're just a grunt with maybe some above-average tech knowledge or psy ability, you're reliant on being given instructions.
It also offers a lot of freedom to get around certain things, like hacking containers for better equipment early on, and skipping the part where you get the code for the armoury on the first level by just hacking the door.
Some of them are more annoying than others. Needing high strength to use heavy weapons makes sense, and there's items like the ICE breaker or the auto-repair thing so you can still use those skills without being highly trained in them. But it is a bit annoying needing a certain amount of Repair skill to even attempt fixing certain weapons. What would have made more sense would be to let you try but give you a much higher chance of failing or even breaking the weapon. Same with Hack, if you fuck up badly enough you get permanently locked out.

...

SHODAN sounds pretty much the same as she did in 2, which was only slightly different from 1.

there's alot more emphasizes on every word and the glitch talk goes on for much longer then needed

It's more than just obvious stuff like the elevator though, the most egregious example would be when you get to maintenance and you have the big maze of radiated tunnels to go through. You can explore them and find a couple closets but you cant get into any of them so you have to take the one path through to get to fluid controls. Then from fluid controls you have to go into cargo and you have the choice of central core, cargo bay 1 and cargo bay 2 except 2 is locked needing a key from 1 and core is a dead end with just a computer needing shit from one of the locked lockers in the rad tunnels that needs a code from cargo bay 2. All along the floor you're presented with a bunch of areas that seem like they're optional stuff there to reward exploring but then it turns out they're all mandatory and you can only access them in a linear fashion. Hydroponics does the same with only like two rooms on the whole floor that are truly optional. 4th floor bumps that up to like 3 rooms. It's not until recreation that you're really able to wander around the whole floor in whatever manner you want with lots of optional rooms like basically every floor in SS1 was.

The stat stuff just makes that little bit of exploring you get later in the game feel disappointing when you stumble across something you have zero ability or intention of using. If you explore in SS1 and you find a railgun you think "oh fuck yeah a railgun" and you pick that shit up and shoot some fuckers with it. If you explore in SS2 and find some random heavy weapon and you're already invested into standard or energy weapons you think "well I'm not going to spend 50+ points in heavy weapon proficiency to equip this so I guess I'll just leave it here". It saps the enjoyment from exploration when you know a large portion of the loot you can find isn't even going to be worth picking up.

Played both SS1 and 2… only beat 2 because the interface in one was too fucky to enjoy, but really appreciated the amount of detail and doo dads in it. SS2 was cool and all, didn't care much for the crafting. What I really would like to see for the remake is to make it Angrier, bloodier darker and faster paced

the interface once you get a hang of it is really intuitive tbh, sucks it was too much for you

Fair point, they have hammed it up a bit, and she shouldn't be as deteriorated as she was in 2.

You can get into them if you have enough Hack skill though, and that radiated Engineering section is meant to set you on edge. But I do see your point with the cargo bay stuff, and you can't really use any of the special items in the Engineering tunnel closets until you know what to do with them.
The first time I played I went full marine and invested mainly in weapon skills, with a handful of points in other useful areas, and as soon as I was competent with Standard I started dropping points into Heavy and Exotic so I was ready to use the stuff you get later on.
But I agree, that isn't really good game design. Since you don't really know what Heavy or Exotic constitutes until you find them there's no way to know if Standard weapons compare or if the other two are much more powerful.
I can't remember if there were implants that gave you heightened weapon skills, I don't think there were. But that's what they should have used. An implant that gives you a boost to Strength and Heavy Weapons, so you can use the ones you find, but you have to be judicious with it and not waste the implant power. Then as you use them you can drop some points into those skills over time and eventually you don't need the implant any more.

got through like half the second level and never really picked it up again. It's been years since I played it. I think the pixel graphics lent it more charm and horror than the shit 3d ones in SS2

there's a general consensus that ss1 is better then ss2 when I least talked about system shock back in the day but I don't know if that's still the case

eitherway, go back and finish it you fag

it's like they played 2 and watched youtube videos of 1 then figured hey lets make it like bioshock instead

I keep listening to the soundtrack clips they've teased.
It's fucking awful, they talk about 90s sci fi with a modern twist but all I hear is instantly forgettable melodramatic shite. This is rapidly shaping up to be like nu-doom.

Is it orchestral or synthesised? I remember seeing that an orchestral soundtrack was one of the goals for the kikestarter, and being really disappointed.

synthesised
Here have a listen, it just sounds bland but somewhat sci fi, then after about a minute in it starts sounding like something like a sombre moment cut straight out of call of duty.
soundcloud.com/nightdivestudios/main-title

Well, there goes all of my hopes in Night Dive. Back to looking up vintage games.

honestly looks better than I expected.

That doesn't even sound like the same song

I'm more concerned about SHODAN's new lines in the trailer. In the trailer she came off as a generic evil AI bent on killing you who really hates you too, as opposed to the AI with a god complex who was more puzzled about your presence on the Citadel station and saw you more of an annoyance than anything.
I always thought SS1 SHODAN was more interesting than tsundere SS2 SHODAN, but if this trailer is anything to go by, they really dropped the ball on this one.

Looks like shit, this fan recreation of the SHODAN reveal scene in Cryengine was more promesing, too bad he got cucked by Warren "Violent and Sexual themes are bad for vidya" Spector and his cronies are fucking this up.

Oh, the animation and graphics is shit, wonder why encyclopediadramatica.se/Maxofs2d

Warren Spector, that fucking has been is gonna destroy her character, the so-called "Creator of Deus Ex" is gonna fuck her up.
archive.is/gb3sQ

This is after he praised stronk female protagonists in video games.

I know, it's so awful. I've no idea what they're thinking,
They've got that HollywoodTM piano tone at the start of the song just so you know this song is going to be instantly forgettable.
By the way just to clarify embed video is what the soundcloud song is supposed to be "faithfully recreating".

They couldn't find anyone any more veteran than that? That also sounds way too slow and low, SS1 was a fast paced game.

Does not compute.

That is really boring, and very disappointing.

He couldn't have made it sound more generic. The first game she wants to perform experiments, and the second one she wants to get revenge on the Many, and take advantage of the Von Braun's spatial folding thing to become an actual god. It's not just boring "AI hates mankind because reasons" she considers herself above everyone and everything, that's what influences her.

There's maybe a handful of veteran devs still around who are doing good things, the rest are shitters like Spector or they've been gone from the industry for years. It's sad. I wonder who they got from New Vegas. My money is someone like Sawyer.

Isnt having an AI performing experiments scary or motivation enough though? Especially with how the portaits for SHODAN look.

Best song coming through.

I found the spatial folding thing to be more of a worrying threat, but they didn't really develop more on that. I think it was explained that because she's an AI she possesses the intelligence to use it to get back to earth and form her own reality, but they never explain how humanity developed such a technology.

no remake worth making will ever be as good or better than the original and you will always be disappointed by it to some degree
remakes do not have an original spark to them like the originals
extended history has proven this post correct in just about every case. recent history has proven this correct in every case

it's current year. nothing is good

I'd just like to point out that 20 bucks when Monkey Island came out is roughly equivalent to 40 bucks today.

s-stop, don't say that user

WRONG

I think they should work on the color pallet they got going for the station, it looks way too fucking washed out compared to the old game.

System Shock 1 is ancient, and iirc the controls were aids. I'd still play a somewhat dumbed down remake, if it had co op. Co-oping SS2 with my buddy years back was really entertaining, even if it kills the spook vibe a bit.

Why the fuck is SHODAN the villain again? SS2 already had to go through a massive amount of asspull to wedge her into the plot again, what's the point of featuring her a third time?

Shit, there's three System Shock games coming out and the only one I'm remotely interested in is Prey.

Looks like generic UE4 shooter. They should had kept the original interface where aiming and turning are seperate actions.

You mean like the enhanced (as in, modded) edition?

I really don't get the 'SS1 has bad controls' meme
It's more than playable with the mouselook mod that came with the recent GOG release of SS1 by Night Dive, which also ditches Dosbox in favor of a native build which can run on higher resolutions without demanding a NASA CPU

It's not any more complicated than SS2 or even Deus Ex, your HUD while largely mouse-driven also features a huge amount of hotkeys to access shit which makes things easier to control, RFV for deciding your stance is fairly intuitive if you think about it, the function keys turn on and off your cyberware much like augs in Deus Ex, and controlling your HUD inventory is done by disengaging your crosshair from turning your character like the RFD menu in SS2.

It's not that hard, though I admit throwing grenades is rather fucky since I've more often than not thrown one directly into the wall I was leaning from, and most of those fuckers detonate on impact and have massive range

yeah combat looks like shit

If the Von Braun was the first ship capable of FTL travel, how did Citadel Station get to Tau Ceti V?

Could be worse, could end up like Thi4f.

Honestly, I didn't like the low res textures myself. It was too jarring against the highly detailed models and stuff, the inverse of a minecraft texture pack that's at 4k res. Probably could have got used to it, but it had this effect of looking okay at a distance then once you get close you lost the details as the pixels became known visible.

Could be fun to have it as the 'low res' texture option though.

To an extent it was a product of the time. In a world where you have something like Half-Life being viewed as the pinnacle of a fps'er SS2 was there with cleaner textures, far better sound, a genuinely scary atmosphere that can still be disturbing to a player even now and arguably better gameplay than Half-Life and certainly many games today. People complain that things are blocked off to you and you can't do everything, I say to those people: you are spoiled fuckers and it loses replayability when you can do everything. The point of not being able to do everything is SS2 is to give weight to your build and your choices.
More importantly, it gives replayability. Ignoring everything but the weapon skills, if you spec for a standard weapons build your play-through is going to be very different to someone who specc'd for energy weapons or exotic weapons. Being able to do everything means you have no reason to play through the game after you've beaten it once.

You can look up and down in this game? Hold up I don't think I'm ready for something quite this advanced.

>Oh, the animation and graphics is shit, wonder why encyclopediadramatica.se/Maxofs2d
You're kidding.

The combat in SS2 was dogshit though. Very stiff and unresponsive.

The only problem with that in SS2 is that not enough content was gated for different specializations, and that hacking was so downplayed despite the game being set in a cyberpunk world.

It was certainly a step in the right direction, but I think Deus Ex largely overshadows it in every regard.

Just when I thought we were rid of that plastic glare on everything, there it is.

She thinks of herself as a god. She considers humans to be literal ants to be fucked with at her leisure. We're a resource at best and an annoyance at worst. She doesn't need a reason. This should not be hard to comprehend.

Because apparently the defining trait of the series is that the antagonist is a super-intelligent AI with a god complex.
Huh? Gameplay mechanics? What's that?

Combat was hardly stellar I agree. I did like some things, like how recoil from guns actually kicked the gun. It was disorientating but it meant you didn't/couldn't hold the crosshair over the target and keep firing until the firing cone let you hit it. The way the kick decreased with your skills made it fun too, since it meant the better you were the more reliably you could empty the gun on someone and actually hit them. However I said gameplay; the combat was hardly brilliant but the way you kept momentum, could lean, the hacking/modifyting system, the enemies, ect all together were arguably better. I personally think it was, though I agree combat was the weakest point-possibly a hangover from using the Thief engine.

I agree but I see why it was done; if you don't put points into hacking skillpoints in it are mandatory, then you may as well make hacking and the hacking skill mandatory/built in (like the protag in SS1) or you get shit like… well, the repair skill, and how if you don't have enough points/a certain item you're fucked at one point of the game. It also means a player who wants to make themselves a more stealthy/thiefy style character has something to put points on. Ultimately setting is cyberpunk/scifi but it's a game where you can play a gunslinger or what is functionally a mage. It needs to allow that type of character to work.

God yes. I like(d) how SHODAN is "I'm a god. Why am I doing this? Because God, fuck you."
I always wanted a system shock 3 to be you playing shodan as a human, and she learns to live with being a fleshbag. The 'good' ending would her getting back into a computer system again and getting back into the saddle as it were with tones of "thank fuck I'm out of that disgusting thing and perfect again". The 'bad' ending would be accepting her fate as a fleshbag and staying human.

Well, I guess you could assume that the garden grove that was jettisoned from Citadel Station floated to Tau Ceti V. But it was only 42 years between the destruction of Citadel and the creation of FTL travel, but unless the garden was somehow travelling at light speed or faster, there's no way it could have gone 14 light years in 4 decades.
Maybe there was a deus ex machina wormhole or something.

I don't get why they won't focus more on Tri-Optimum. There's writing in the SS2 manual about the state of earth before and after the events of SS1, with it basically being your standard cyberpunk dystopia until SHODAN gets released. Then the UNN (or maybe it was something else before that, whatever the collection of governments was at the time) grows a backbone and starts investigating all the megacorps, discovers similarly worrying experiments with AI and cracks down hard on megacorps. I'd love to see something taking place on earth, or maybe a colony, with you playing as a mercenary for Tri-Optimum trying to weaken the UNN's grip so they can freely expand as they please.
Or the other way around, a UNN soldier infiltrating Tri-Optimum or another megacorp, you discover they're trying to build another AI that they think they'll be able to control, even without ethical constraints, and you have to prevent it. There's potential in this universe, but none of these devs have the originality to actually use it.

found the page from the manual

And some more, should have read the next page before posting the first one.

FLY IN ROCKET BOOTS never failed to amuse me

I prefer the PC DOS version tbh.

You can patch mouselook and up the resolution to make it easily plpayable unless you have some sort of brain tumor.

Yeah, the one they took from the SS forums and then DMCAed them to hell and back.
Not the first time Night Dive did it, and probably not the last one either.

They actually hired the creator of the mod.
Like they did with with the guy developing DoomEX whos working on the Turok Remasters and ExumedEX.

Make way fucker

My problem was never the controls - a couple minutes adjusting myself and I was fine. My problem was the level design, everything is so incredibly labyrinthine that it's difficult for me to formulate a somewhat cohesive layout of the maps in my brain. I get lost all the time, everything looks roughly the same, but them sometimes they look incredibly different and I'm not sure if I'm on a different level or what.

The level design needs to be changed, that I agree with, but the controls were always fine.

Shit taste.

I think you linked to the wrong song, user.
Or did you mean to post the second best song?

...

There is your problem, part of the fun is that you're in a fucking maze.

no

You can put notes on the map to help you along the way.

First day here shill?

Coming up with a new one or two word title for a sci-fi game is hard. Maybe to justify the acquisition of the rights? Obviously the real reason shit companies acquire rights is to deny them to anyone else.

lol

You do know you can display a minimap on your HUD to help with that, right?
Though if that's a persisting problem and you can't navigate around in a game like Descent without running in circles, it probably means you have brain problems.

You a masochist, bud? I don't mind challenge, but at least try not to make your level design out to be some sort of abstract art project.

That's handy to know, thanks

Yes, I'm quite aware, and no it still doesn't help every room looks nearly identical to one another

Pal with maybe two exceptions every floor of Citadel Station is either a cross or a square.

inb4 voiced by burch

that would be frightening

...

Why is it so difficult to do remakes right? Has there ever been a remake or reboot that wasn't worse than the original?

The only 2 things that ever have a chance of being upgraded as opposed to downgraded are controls and something graphics related like resolution and detail.

Because making good games takes talent, and the modern gaming industry sorely lacks talent.

It's DOA, fucking difficulty is a stretch-goal.

lol the manual has a better backstory than most games that have come out recently. That's not even considering the dozens of different stories in the actual game going on explicitly through voice logs or implicitly through corpse and item placement.

I'm replaying 2 again modded to hell and back and it's like an old friend. I play it quicker than I remember doing in the past but it it's still a blast and the atmosphere is unbeatable.

Yeah, I thought SS1 was a lot easier to jump right into than SS2. But then again, I've only ever played the game with mouselook.

The Magnificent 7, Clash of the Titans, The In-Laws, Ben Hur to name a few.

As far as games, REmake, Goldeneye (Though, this is more debatable), Star Fox 64, Klonoa, Metroid: Zero Mission, Ninja Gaiden, Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider…that's all I got.

I'm afraid that is the best one user.

Just remembered another one, Mugen Senshi Valisl: The Legend of a Fantasm Soldier.

One last one I want to add, ZombiU. That is a reboot of Ubisoft's extremely old Zombi IP.

I'd like to point out that incomes of consumers have not risen in line with inflation during that period.

Can you achieve maximum comfort and use a controller through 3rd party means at worst?

holy christ, I don't know user. I wouldn't dream of it but it could be worse I guess. Just seems sacrilegious to not be doing M&K

...

s'cool. I'm only asking because I fucked up my elbow pretty badly and I can't play M&K games for a while. I managed to get a handful of pc only games up and running and was just curious if anyone knew about a controller mod/workaround.

You used that exact same excuse last year

looks like you might be in luck user, someone else was asking the same question:
systemshock.org/index.php?topic=1147.0

take it easy with the power jerking, dont want to throw out your back next time