Nightdive Studios Releases System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition First Look Trailer

[Chrispy_]

So...I remember playing this on a windows xp x64 system. None of the modern convenience mods, none of the rose tinted glasses...because Bioshock was out.

What I remember the most is a clunky set of mechanics that weren't well explained. Access to a wrench...that seemed to do nothing until it killed a thing. Access to an inventory system that was absolutely bonkers. Most builds being possible...until you hit one of various walls that made builds entirely non-viable because of poor design. A cargo hold map with no distinctive features, and infinitely spawning enemies that would not drop ammo for weapons. Random deaths and game overs because even paying attention you were both rewarded and penalized with little heads-up. Most of all, I remember that when I finally got to the end there were infinitely spawning monsters in the places you wanted to backtrack to...and literally everything that could deal with them was finite unless you saved a ton of points for the highest tier melee weapon...which didn't have any progress to get it. Wrench or crystal...and nothing in-between to support builds.

I want to see an update to this game...but it needs a lot of the more...frustrating...bits removed. It also needs to be someone other than Nightdive...because I love them for remaking old games. System Shock II doesn't need a remake, it needs someone to fix it with enough chutzpah to burn the nostalgia out. That's going to make for a better game...but not a faithful port into the modern age. I...hope that Nightdive walks the line here, but I feel this game is just too much of an experimental mess to be great without nostalgia goggles. That nostalgia means that it will not work for new gamers...and old gamers misremember the difficulty. Sigh.

IMO it's the infinite respawns that hurt the OG game.
Playing it with infinite respawns penalises non-melee builds because your weapons require TWO resources (maintenance tools and ammo) that are scarce by design, and for the first 30% of the game neither ammo nor maintenance tools drop from those infinite respawns. The only way to play the game if you don't speedrun the game through to the end of hydroponics is as a melee-focused build, otherwise you're simply going to run out of ammo, maintenance tools, or psi hypos.

The game is definitely better IMO if you disable infinite respawns with the no_respawn user.cfg line and increase the difficulty to maintain the challenge instead. You do still get respawns when you load into a previously cleared area, but it's not quite as ridiculous as it is by default and it doesn't ruin the immersion. You're on a goddamn spaceship that had a limited population of crew and bots. When you've completely cleared a deck and suddenly more just appear out of nowhere, it kills the entire immersion and atmosphere for me by revealing a tedious, dated game-mechanic that was already ageing poorly when the game first released.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Isn't there a remade being planed for this year also?
This looks like the original with some mods, nothing special...