Cease me for those who’ve heard this one earlier than: You get up in a futuristic medical bay on an orbital area station with some new cyber implants, solely to appreciate that everybody else is useless. I could possibly be speaking about BioShock or Useless Area and even, for those who squint, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However on this case, I’m speaking about System Shock, which has been remade by Nightdive Studios. This new model reveals how a lot video video games as a complete owe to the 1994 basic.
Earlier than I used to be deeply entrenched on this planet of video video games as a critic and a journalist, I knew about System Shock, nevertheless it wasn’t attainable for me to play it. Initially developed by Trying Glass Studios, it was a average hit on the time, however not explosively standard like its modern Doom. Over time its legacy has grown, explicitly influencing video games just like the aforementioned BioShock and Useless Area, but in addition Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop. It additionally popularized some narrative methods that now really feel drained, like the final follow of telling your story by way of audio logs.
I had at all times wished to play System Shock, to hint the traces of online game historical past, however as an older, PC-only sport, it was laborious to get my fingers on. Too lengthy had handed between the sport’s launch and the current day for System Shock to be accessible, not simply within the sense that I used to be accustomed to extra trendy video games with higher UI and extra intuitive controls, but in addition within the sense that it was not obtainable to buy wherever. For a big a part of my youth, System Shock, a sport so outdated it was initially launched on floppy disc, was distributed by followers through downloads of doubtful legality. After I first seemed up the sport, having heard it was an enormous affect on just about each sport that got here in its wake, I as a substitute discovered folks on boards telling different readers to simply go straight to System Shock 2.
Now you can play the unique System Shock, additionally because of Nightdive. The studio acquired the rights to the sport in 2012 and re-released it because the Enhanced Version in 2015. And you can go and play this remastered version proper now and luxuriate in it for its many pleasures, even when they don’t hit fairly the identical manner 29 years on. The then-revolutionary physics engine, initially programmed by Seamus Blackley for Flight Limitless, can’t depart the identical impression on gamers in 2023 because it did in 1994; now we have all seen too many physics engines that cribbed Blackley’s work within the meantime. When you don’t assume you’ll be able to play a sport from 1994, then the System Shock remake does fairly properly. Typically, it even does one thing outstanding and unique: It makes you actually perceive the passage of time.
The System Shock remake is gorgeous. It’s not a totally reimagined sport just like the Last Fantasy 7 remake, nor does it wholly abandon the aesthetics and artwork type of the unique just like the remake of Shadow of the Colossus. Nevertheless it appears like the way in which video games from 1994 seem in my reminiscence. Smoke spouts from vents and dissipates into pixels. The lighting is commonly dramatic, your display screen saturated in deep purple with brilliant blue sparks emitting from the sunshine fixtures. In your fingers, your lead pipe hangs heavy in entrance of your face, swinging instantly in entrance of your sight view, generally barely pixelated within the gentle. You stroll slowly — oh so slowly — down slim hallways with flickering lighting, trapped in steel upkeep corridors as you attempt to make your manner by way of the map. It’s a dungeon-crawler carrying a shooter’s pores and skin.
Famously, System Shock is the story of the Hacker, who was caught hacking into the TriOptimum Company. You’re whisked away to its orbital area station, referred to as the Citadel, and given a job: be part of the company and get a flowery neural implant in alternate for eradicating the ethics protocols of their AI, SHODAN. SHODAN, it seems, actually wanted these ethics protocols, and while you get up after surgical procedure, she has murdered everybody within the station and turned them into mutants and cyborgs.
If you’re a fan of video video games, you’ve met SHODAN earlier than, in some form or kind. When you’ve performed Portal, you’ve interacted with a really shut relative of hers. The character archetype SHODAN would create, of a feminine AI that’s misplaced its morals with an acerbic, glitchy voice, is now a cliche. GLaDOS is simply SHODAN with a humorousness and a way of non-public animosity towards the participant. In System Shock, SHODAN’s hate is chilly and pure, the way in which you hate bugs after they get inside the home; they’re under you, and never imagined to be right here. As you make your manner by way of the degrees, she guarantees that she’ll strap you to a torture chair and that “you’ll be taught extra about ache than you ever wished to know.”
SHODAN’s presence nonetheless feels new, someway — or possibly, the whole lot outdated simply turns into new once more. What does really feel unbelievable is the way in which the thrives of the remake spotlight System Shock’s lineage much more. Once you cost your electrical weapons within the charging stations, electrical energy dances in your fingers, and I keep in mind how BioShock descended from this sport. When System Shock leans on its horror components, thrusting you right into a darkish room with a groaning monster, I keep in mind why I hadn’t performed Useless Area; System Shock is extra my velocity of creepy, however I can see how one grew to become the following. Enjoying this sport on this kind helps me deliver it into dialog with the whole lot of the immersive sim style, a unfastened assortment of video games that supply gamers open-ended gameplay. You’ll be able to see the road from the Citadel all the way in which to the shores of Dunwall in Dishonored; the way in which Trying Glass, and now Nightdive, affords the Citadel to you not simply as an area station however a puzzle, a map so that you can unfold with little to no directions on proceed. Seeing this carried out so expertly on a smaller scale makes me consider a sort of open world that hasn’t been technologically attainable till fairly just lately: Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring.
What actually excites me once I play System Shock is how little it holds my hand. You’ll be able to — and possibly will — eat absolute shit the primary time you attempt to make your manner by way of the medical bay. You may get your self into unsolvable conditions — it’s a sport that asks you to concentrate, that doesn’t at all times signpost the following factor to do. It additionally rewards your curiosity as a lot because it does your warning. I usually discovered my manner by way of ranges largely by chance, by deciding to show down hallways I hadn’t gone down earlier than. There’s at all times a discovery — a brand new weapon or a merchandising machine or a shortcut — or at the least a helpful lesson mendacity in wait. It’s simple to grasp why folks performed this sport after which grew to become obsessive about it, why you’ll be able to hint some folks’s careers by way of the sport. Ken Levine, who labored at Trying Glass when it making System Shock, definitely by no means stopped attempting to make System Shock, finally giving BioShock: Infinite an ending that means there are 1000’s upon 1000’s of variations on this theme.
System Shock will likely be launched on Might 30 on Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed utilizing a pre-release obtain code offered by Prime Matter. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought through affiliate hyperlinks. You could find further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.