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“The whole project started because we had been working with a moderator on the forums, who implemented a mouse look feature for the original game. You actually have to drag the mouse around the viewport. That’s your first insight into what you’re getting into. They can’t figure out the controls.” Kick speaks directly from experience: “I went into thinking I could move the mouse to look around. “It’s not uncommon to talk to people who played System Shock 2 but have never touched the first one. The original System Shock is a significant landmark in game design: released in 1994, just a year after Doom, it was conceived as a more cerebral alternative, challenging players with taking down a malevolent AI on a space station where they could explore freely while scavenging for resources, unearthing clues in messages recorded by the deceased crew, and fighting twisted cyborgs on autonomous patrol around the station.īut as Kick explains, System Shock’s sequel is the one that broke through: people aren’t so familiar with the original, because it is harder to grapple with. System Shock is Nightdive’s most ambitious project, a ground-up remake designed to give players the same feeling that Kick experienced in the 90s. In 2012, Kick negotiated the rights to System Shock 2, rescuing it from legal limbo, and it became the first release in Nightdive’s now-thriving business of resuscitating old games. System Shock 2, launched in 1999, is one of Kick’s most treasured childhood games and the whole reason Nightdive was founded. Making System Shock more accessible is the main goal of this remake.

It is one of the reasons for the studio’s existence. For Kick and Nightdive, System Shock is more than just money-spinning digital necromancy. Even though video game remakes are enormously popular, as demonstrated by the success of this year’s reimagining of Resident Evil 4, spending eight years rebuilding another studio’s game is a considerable commitment.

Happily for Nightdive Studios, when System Shock was released this week, it became an instant top seller – and critics liked it, too. “Because it took so long … financially, it was the most expensive project that we’ve ever done.” “We don’t yet know how this is going to be received,” he says. A remake of the 1994 cyberpunk shooter that inspired lauded games from Bioshock to Deus Ex and Dead Space, System Shock was announced in 2015, but was delayed again and again at one point it was started again from scratch. Terrified.” That’s how Stephen Kick, chief executive of Nightdive Studios, was feeling when I spoke to him last week, before the launch of System Shock.