Note that I have not played the original game, so I won’t be reviewing it as a remake. This caused multiple delays, including an apparently very dishonest summer 2021 announced release date on Kickstarter.īut now in 2023 it is finally here (after a last minute delay), and we get to review it. The Unity version received criticism for being too different from the original, so they started over from scratch on Unreal Engine 4. It had a successful Kickstarter, but this remake began life on Unity engine rather than the current Unreal Engine 4.27.0 that it uses. However, the game has had a rough development. So the System Shock remake was truly a passion project for Nightdive, which made it very interesting from the start. In fact, System Shock was pivotal in the creation of Nightdive Studios, which essentially got their start by updating and re-releasing System Shock 2 using existing community updates.

Nightdive Studios, who has created this remake, first remastered the game with System Shock: Enhanced Edition. Now System Shock has one, and I hope the Ultima Underworlds get one although there is a wonderful spiritual successor called Arx Fatalis which I have yet to review here. They have one of the strongest resumes of any game studio, but those three early 1990s titles – System Shock and the two Ultima Underworld games – badly needed remakes.

System Shock was a 1994 PC game by Looking Glass Studios, a legendary game studio also known for the Ultima Underworld series (which System Shock draws inspiration from) and Thief series.

System shock 2 difficulty settings