System Shock Remake Still in the Works, Not Due Till 2020

Nightdive Studios, the studio behind the anticipated System Shock remaster recently shed some light on their successful Kickstarter project and where the future of the game lies.

As development begins to resume, Nightdive Studios original intention was to remaster the classic Looking Glass Technologies first-person sci-fi horror from 1994, but after a massively successful Kickstarter raising $1,350,700 in backer money, the studio escalated their workload, until things got out control, resulting in the project being put on hiatus.

After some time of reflection and regrouping, Nightdive CEO, Stephen Kick and development director Larry Kuperman spoke with PC Gamer at the recent GDC event, providing more details into what went wrong.

According to them, the reason was that the path they were taking was hampering the vision of the original and wasn’t true to the System Shock vision. Essentially they weren’t going in the right direction.

So now, after a lot of reconsideration, the team at Nightdive Studios have decided o revert back to the studio’s original pitch and “ship exactly the game that was promised, with as much of the features that were promised as we can, in a timeframe that will get it out as fast as we can."

To that end, it does mean now, that the game according to Larry Kuperman, will release in “Q1 of 2020”.

Rather a bit of a blow for fans expecting the game to release sooner, after all, two years is a long wait. Fortunately, the studio is adamant that the longer development time isn’t due to financial difficulties and is neither is it a risk for future development.

In the meantime, starting from April, Kickstarter backers will be provided insight into the new development with a look of the game’s starter rooms, built in the new chosen engine, Unreal Engine 4.