I've never played the original System Shock. I've never even tried. It's four years older than I am, and games from that era almost never hold up. Game design is an iterative process, and while the sensibilities of the 1980s and 1990s are worth re-examining, the games themselves are little different from silent films to us today.
But I have played System Shock 2. It's one of my favorite games. I'm also a tireless proponent of Prey. I have loved Immersive Sims ever since my older brother forced me to play Deus Ex as a small child. So, circa 2015, when a remake of the that-was-eight-years-ago-and-it-was-ancient-even-then game entered its Kickstarter phase, it became one of my most anticipated releases.
One year passed. And another. And another. At some point I figured it had been cancelled and forgot about it.
Then, last week, it came out.
Shocking Disappointment
About five hours into System Shock's new remake, I tabbed over to Steam so I could write an angry negative review. This, I proclaimed, was not what we were promised. Rather than an overhaul of the original into modern sensibilities, we have received a literal 1:1 remake. New graphics, modernized gameplay, and a few tiny improvements; all else remains unchanged. The level design has not been improved. The story has not been altered. The core experience is almost identical to what it must have been like thirty years ago.
The experience of playing System Shock (2023) is best described by analogy:
Imagine that id Software remakes Doom. It has relatively realistic animations. It has detailed environments. You can now aim up and down. The enemies are fully 3D and well-modeled.
But nothing else has changed. The levels remain identical to how they were in 1993. They are still confusing, labyrinthine, nonsensical video game environments. Voice lines have been added, but no additional narrative components, so despite now looking somewhat like a real place, the levels seem to have no connection to each other. Worst of all, despite being atmospheric in themselves, it's impossible not to notice how fake, gamey, and contrived the maps are when they are given such a makeover. You will never forget that you are in a video game.
This is exactly what Nightdive has done with System Shock.
Take a look at the above screenshot. Pay attention to the walls. Doesn't it all look a little square to you? Below is another example. Everything in the environment is made out of squares. Up and down. Squares everywhere.
Talos I in Prey is a real environment. It is a place where human beings once lived and thrived. The Von Braun is contrived in many places, but its overall layout and design likewise feel like how it might actually feel to wander the halls of a futuristic spaceship.
Citadel Station in System Shock does not feel like a real place. Its layout makes no sense. Its corridors are boxy and look like something made in Minecraft; they would only make sense in a world without circles. Except for a few archways, everything on Citadel Station is square: square walls, square catwalks, square doors, square floors. Everything is square. The walls are plastered with blinking green lights, and interactable switches are in strange places that make no sense. They're also impossible to tell from the environment, because the artists have opted to use the same shade of "click me green" for interactable objects and also the wallpaper everywhere on every level.
This is environmental design from 1994. It doesn't look like this anymore...
...but under the hood, it's the exact same game. The new graphics are paint, not a rebuilt foundation.
Conspicuous as the art design is, the painted-over nature of this remake is nowhere clearer than in level and mission design. At the very least I had anticipated System Shock (2023) to add in narrative components and an objective tracker.
This game has neither. You will be given a vague objective, and your only hints at how to accomplish it will come from audiologs scattered throughout the map. The information contained within these logs will not be stored anywhere for easy recall. If you ever forget anything, tough shit.
This might be forgivable if the objectives themselves were intuitive, but they are not. The process that one must undertake to reach Beta Grove practically necessitates a walkthrough. The only way you could ever figure it out by yourself is through wandering around every level, over and over again, clicking on everything you see, hoping you haven't missed anything.
Meanwhile, if you have missed something, you will be permanently stuck until you go find a walkthrough. "Obtuse" is not nearly an obtuse enough word to communicate what playing through this game for the first time is like.
And yet, when I look at the Steam page, I see the following description:
System Shock is the fully fledged remake of the ground breaking original from 1994, combining cult gameplay with all-new HD visuals, updated controls, an overhauled interface and all-new sounds & music; it even has the original voice actor of SHODAN, one of gaming’s most iconic villains. Witness the rebirth of one of the greatest and most influential games ever created.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/
Nowhere in this blurb does it mention new level design or story. Nowhere does it say that they're taking a shit old game and making it good. In fact, the only part I can take exception to is “fully-fledged remake."
System Shock may technically be a remake, but it is certainly not fully fledged. In body and soul and spirit, it is nothing more than the world's fanciest remaster.
And is there anything wrong with that? Nightdive isn't pretending they've offered anything more than what they have. Can I really damn them for doing exactly what they promised to do? This isn't a new System Shock game; it's a prettier way of replaying the first one.
There are many things I hate about this remake. The cyberspace minigame is odious and repulsive. The Pipe Dream puzzles are utterly pointless. The inventory systems are unbearable. The dearth of tutorials leads to nothing but trial-and-error frustration. The inability to vaporize unwanted gear is baffling. The storage system is so token that one wonders why it's there at all. The core gameplay lacks any of the charm or versatility of System Shock 2 and the newer ImSims. Stealth is never viable, and the emphasis is always on shooting. The story is confusing, and there isn't nearly enough guidance, especially at the beginning. The amount of backtracking is malevolent. The level design is the worst of all: ugly, labyrinthine, and endlessly identical. You will often go exploring and receive nothing as a reward.
I could construct an entire review bitching about how badly designed this game is.
Congratulations, you've destroyed all of the cores! What we didn't tell you is that you were supposed to be writing down these little numbers all game. Have fun going back through all of Citadel Station looking for them!
But if I went back and played the original System Shock, those are the same things I would be complaining about. So is it really this remake's fault that it has them, too?
I don't know. You'll have to decide that for yourself. I don't feel the need to write an essay explaining why this game older than I am is shit; it basically goes without saying. It's shit because it's ancient. It would be like writing a diatribe on Charlie Chaplin. No one needs that.
What I can say is that the level design really should have been changed, and the environments needed to be less faithfully adapted. Some sort of simple objective tracker also seems like a mandatory addition to a game like this, even if it can be toggled on and off when creating a new game. Many more changes would have been welcome, but these are the ones whose absence makes the game so frustrating.
Yet I did beat it. And while I can't say that I had fun with System Shock (2023)--in fact I hated a lot of it--I was certainly glued to my seat. I felt like I couldn't get up until I had defeated SHODAN. And while I never want to launch it again, I am glad to have finally played--a faithful, almost entirely unchanged version of--the game that birthed my favorite genre in entertainment.
FATAL ERROR
What is absolutely unforgivable is the technical state of this remake. It is abysmal. I experienced ten fatal errors in my playthrough, two of which led to massive loss of progress.
In the first case, I played chess against SHODAN for two hours, losing over and over again; when I finally got the upper hand and was about to put her into check, she took five minutes to make her turn--and then the game crashed. From that point on, no matter what I did, any move would result in a FATAL ERROR. This caused me to lose out on an achievement, an extremely important inventory upgrade, and meant that I had wasted two hours of my limited existence. I eventually had no choice but to give up.
Another crash took place when I finished one of the final cyberspace hacking sections. Despite causing less than a ten-minute long diversion, this was even worse than the chess catastrophe, as I would have to replay the minigame.
The game is filled with bugs. It stutters and freezes constantly. If your two FoV sliders aren't set to the same number, your FoV will be reset to 80 any time you aim. Reload animations often play twice, and magazines will be empty upon quickloading for no reason.
For a AA production, I can forgive a large number of technical errors. But in a game like System Shock, the presence of so many bugs demolishes the player's confidence that he's the one missing something or making a mistake. By the end of the game, when I couldn't open a door, I was left to wonder if I had missed something--or if the door simply was bugged and wouldn't open.
This is a huge problem.
This is what you want: This is what you get.
The final song over the unskippable credits upon defeating SHODAN is a chant of, "This is what you want // This is what you get." Over and over and over again. "This is what you want // This is what you get," until any trace of music disappears, and there is nothing but those two lines ringing through your speakers.
I can't help but wonder if this is an intentional metaphor for the game as a whole, not-so-subtly inserted as a subliminal message at the end.
I wanted this game to be a full remake. I wanted it to bring the first game up to 21st century graphics, with gameplay and level design that were at least up to the quality of System Shock 2, if not Prey. This is what I want.
What I got is a brutally faithful remaster that modifies a few especially outdated things, like the graphics, and nothing else. It's a full-blown FPS that maintains nearly all of the warts and imperfections of the original, and is almost unbearable from the perspective of a Zoomer Gamer. This is what I get.
While System Shock (2023) doesn't play like a game from 1994, it absolutely feels like one. Reduce the poly count and lower the fidelity on some of the textures and I could easily believe this game was instead released c. 2000, or even earlier. I'm glad to have played it, but I never would have been able to beat it without a walkthrough, and I did not enjoy it very much at all. If you aren't familiar with the original from childhood, I think you would have to be an absolute madman to feel otherwise. System Shock is a rough, tiring, and ultimately mediocre game by the standards of 2023. The people leaving massively positive reviews on Steam are blinded by their nostalgia. I don't know what would have to be wrong with you to declare this game "ridiculously good," but it's something, really, really bad.
It is not worth $40.
I played System Shock (2023) on PC, with a copy purchased from Steam. All difficulty settings were Normal, and my total playtime was ~18 hours, or about 16 if we exclude the chess fiasco. It is available for purchase here.