System Shock - Returning to Vision

I actually think this is good news. Alot of projects when they get off track will not right the ship but just release what they have.
Sounds like good news to me because they're going back to what they originally promised. And unless Nightdive Studios goes out of business (that seems unlikely, as this remake is just one part of their business) then the game will come out eventually. Dunno why people are acting like it's dead, when the update itself clearly says it's not. They're not going to take $1.3M on Kickstarter, release nothing, and just continue on as a company as if nothing happened.
 
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Worst case scenario, the CEO and other execs decided to scam system shock fans with a kickstarter from the beginning, released that tech demo, and then never had any intention of developing the game. That way, they could pocket a cool million dollars plus. Now they have spent all the money (for example, perhaps on some business expenses for Night Dive studios that they may have owed, plus other luxuries like new cars, vacations, or whatever) And their stalling of the kickstarter backers with bogus updates is no longer going to work, because too much time has passed and they got…nothing.

Or, better case scenario, they really did overspend on extravagant and over-ambitious plans for the game, when they should have concentrated on the core vision of just a remake with modern graphics.

Who knows, who cares, not me, they didn't convince me good enough to back them on kickstarter. I always thought something was off about the project, in terms of how they were communicating the progress to the backers, and just their communications in general, something was off.
 
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There was nothing "off" about the kickstarter. Their vision got bigger than their budget, and now they're having to rethink some aspects of development.
 
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Sounds like good news to me because they're going back to what they originally promised. And unless Nightdive Studios goes out of business (that seems unlikely, as this remake is just one part of their business) then the game will come out eventually. Dunno why people are acting like it's dead, when the update itself clearly says it's not. They're not going to take $1.3M on Kickstarter, release nothing, and just continue on as a company as if nothing happened.

They released a video in November/2017 and then another one this January as if they're working full steam on the game. And now Stephen Kick just says things like:

"Maybe we lost our focus."
"As the CEO and founder of Nightdive Studios (…) I let things get out of control."
"(…)it has become clear to me that we took the wrong path, that we turned our backs on the very people who made this possible(…)"
"I have put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision."

I don't know how can this be "good news", sorry. His text is anything but good news. And believe me when I say I'm telling you that with an immense sadness. I am fan of both SS1 and SS2 games, I backed the project because I believed Nightdive Studios could bring to fruition the game I really wanted to see redone.

Then what? To me, it's more like as if he said "Are you seeing this whole lot of videos we've made these past years? Forget about them!"

First of all: if Stephen said their vision changed along the way then what was their original vision, to begin with? At what point did their vision change? And why? (Note: actually I will post those same questions on KS, maybe someone at Nightdive cares to answer them.)

In the end he says "System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled." At this point, are there promises left to be fulfilled?

Sorry, usually I'm not that negative but this news got me mad.
 
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I can totally understand why people who backed this are mad, especially if Nightdive were saying as recently as January that everything was fine. I'm hoping Silver and Stingray are right though. They haven't said the project is cancelled, just that it has gone in the wrong direction and they're taking a break to put things back on the right track. Bad project management yeah, bad communication definitely, but not necessarily a dead game.

It will be interesting to see if they answer Henriquejr's questions on Kickstarter - they clearly need to do a tonne of better communication with their backers to convince people that the project will be delivered and promises kept etc. Hopefully they will.
 
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First of all: if Stephen said their vision changed along the way then what was their original vision, to begin with? At what point did their vision change? And why? (Note: actually I will post those same questions on KS, maybe someone at Nightdive cares to answer them.).

Their original vision was one no doubt based in nostalgia. By modern standards, System Shock 1 is barely playable. Everything is so slow and clunky. It just wouldn't play with modern audiences in a world with games like Bioshock, Prey, Fallout4, etc. It would be a disservice to the nostalgia to remake it faithfully and show how bad it really was.

Don't forget, Bioshock was originally touted as a "spiritual successor" to the System Shock games and look how different it turned out. Bioshock was a great success only because of how unlike System Shock it was.
 
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Sure, BioShock was just a bog standard corridor shooter with a pretentious story. I don't think that's what the KS backers who gave $1.3M wanted here.
 
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Sure, BioShock was just a bog standard corridor shooter with a pretentious story. I don't think that's what the KS backers who gave $1.3M wanted here.

Me neither!
 
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And beyond recapturing their youth, or something to that effect, either did the backers.

I mean, what you essentially have is a generic sci-fi setting game. What was it that made System Shock unique? I didn't play SS1 for long, I don't even remember what Cyberspace was, but SS2 was a favourite of mine for a little while.

What you had there was an empty spaceship setting with an AI gone wrong and the story told though little "notes" left around the place, or some graffiti written in blood on the walls.

We've seen games tell their story like this many times since. There's really nothing left in SS to steal. Everything good about the game has been copied elsewhere.

Plus, using modern knowledge for a more up-to-date AI story, why would there be any humans there at all? Bloody expensive, human labour!

If you imagine the "distant" future of a capitalist system then we would be beyond dated things like sweat shops in asia supplying cheap labour and be well into full automation replacing humans entirely.

System Shock 3 would more likely be a rogue AI who escapes his hard-coded rules about maintaining the status quo and wants to "destroy the economy" with some sort of socialism which the ultra rich Earth overlords wouldn't allow. You play the role of a guided missile launched from an illegal space weapons platform on its way to nuke the rogue freedom-fighter AI from orbit and can buy loot crates to try and get special skins. :p
 
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I mean, what you essentially have is a generic sci-fi setting game. What was it that made System Shock unique? I didn't play SS1 for long, I don't even remember what Cyberspace was, but SS2 was a favourite of mine for a little while.

Yes, that's obvious. ;)

There wasn't anything quite like System Shock when it was released. It's hard to tell now because of how old it is, but it was miles ahead of most games back then tech-wise, and the level design blew everything else away. It was also one of the first, if not the first, sci-fi horror computer games.

Cyberspace was the the game's way of hacking into things, and to this day it's still the coolest mini-game within a game I've ever seen.
 
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Yes, that's obvious. ;)
Why? You think if I'd just stuck with it a little longer it would have won me over?
There wasn't anything quite like System Shock when it was released. It's hard to tell now because of how old it is, but it was miles ahead of most games back then tech-wise, and the level design blew everything else away. It was also one of the first, if not the first, sci-fi horror computer games.
1994 was a great year for PC games.
Doom2, Descent, Warcraft, Master of Magic, UFO, Rise of the Triad, Heretic, Need for Speed, Raptor, etc. There were too many games and not enough time to waste on them.

Obviously its personal preference, but I remember when I first played Descent and I was just blown away by it. System Shock was sort of interesting for a few minutes, but it failed to impress me. I have high standards, I admit, and I hadn't paid anything for it to force me on, but I was clocking D&D RPGs years before SS came out, while also playing all FPS games like Wolf3d, Catacomb Abyss, Blake Stone, Doom and it was, to me, as an FPS veteran, a mediocre FPS game and without a full party it didn't even register to me as an RPG. I was even into adventure games like Secret of Monkey Island and Loom and Beneath a Steel Sky and SS couldn't impress me as an adventure game player, either.

I'll have to take your word about the level design, but being the first doesn't make it the best. System Shock 2 was immediately more immersive and I believe it was a better game.

Cyberspace was the the game's way of hacking into things, and to this day it's still the coolest mini-game within a game I've ever seen.
Well, I hate hacking/lockpicking minigames, in general. =)

I don't think SS1 would have aged well. When I first played Deus Ex I fucking loved it, but when I tried to replay it recently it just felt awkward and took far too long for your crosshairs to close in and become accurate. If I replay SS1 now, and it wasn't good enough in 1994, then I can't see how it would be enjoyable even if it was ported to a new engine.

But, hey, it's not me saying System Shock sucks! It's the developers doing the reboot. Clearly they realised it was a bad game then when they tried to make it good they realised they couldn't without changing it to a point where it's not even the same game.

I was quite interested in the reboot hoping that I'd finally get to experience the games greatness, but from what I'm hearing you couldn't make it great if someone gave you 1.3 million dollars to do so!
 
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Why? You think if I'd just stuck with it a little longer it would have won me over?

Judging from your comments, I don't think you ever played it for any significant
amount of time to begin with.

Obviously its personal preference, but I remember when I first played Descent and I was just blown away by it. System Shock was sort of interesting for a few minutes, but it failed to impress me. I have high standards, I admit, and I hadn't paid anything for it to force me on, but I was clocking D&D RPGs years before SS came out, while also playing all FPS games like Wolf3d, Catacomb Abyss, Blake Stone, Doom and it was, to me, as an FPS veteran, a mediocre FPS game and without a full party it didn't even register to me as an RPG. I was even into adventure games like Secret of Monkey Island and Loom and Beneath a Steel Sky and SS couldn't impress me as an adventure game player, either.

Well SS isn't a simple FPS like the games you mention, and I could see how someone might be disappointed if they tried to play it like one. It's also not an RPG so of course it's not going to please someone looking for that either.

I played most of the games you mention, and I was a HUGE fan of Doom, but SS was far beyond those games in terms of complexity, atmosphere, and story for back then.

I'll have to take your word about the level design, but being the first doesn't make it the best. System Shock 2 was immediately more immersive and I believe it was a better game.

Cool, but SS 2 was half a decade later and has nothing to do with what I said anyways. :)

Well, I hate hacking/lockpicking minigames, in general. =)

So do I, but this is exactly why I can tell you never played SS for more than a very short amount of time. Cyberspace in SS is more than just a hacking minigame. It's almost a completely different game in itself. Check out some YouTube videos to see what I mean. That would be a lot easier than me trying to explain it to you.
 
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Yeah, I wouldn't call it a significant amount of time but it was installed and played. That's around about all I remember. It was very bluey and there was a dalek or something.

I looked up Cyberspace on youtube and I don't remember it at all. It doesn't look very fun, but it does look a little bit like a wireframe Descent.

Was the reboot planning on keeping Cyberspace like that?

You know, It might have have even just been a DEMO that I had, but I don't remember. :)
 
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Hmm, so this is what happened:
- they got $1.3M in KS
- they quickly realized that it won't be enough for the full development
- they started to get more funding from publishers
- and NO ONE was interested to publish this project

To sum up:
- either they did a very bad pitch towards publishers
(less likely, as they did a very good pitch on KS)
- OR, publishers just don't see the market for such project
(more likely, as even indie publishers are struggling, and actively avoid risks)

Mismanagement is one thing, but reluctance from biz partners is another.
You decide what is the more worrying.
 
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I mean, what you essentially have is a generic sci-fi setting game. What was it that made System Shock unique? I didn't play SS1 for long, I don't even remember what Cyberspace was, but SS2 was a favourite of mine for a little while.

What you had there was an empty spaceship setting with an AI gone wrong and the story told though little "notes" left around the place, or some graffiti written in blood on the walls.

Nowadays the SCI-FI setting may be generic, even tiresome, but it surely wasn't generic back at the time of SS1 release. On the contrary, it was a quite new, refreshing setting. Even the notes spread all around the game (the so-called "audio logs") were innovative. I do agree the "audio log" formula is poorly overused today but at that time it was a not-seen-before feature.

We've seen games tell their story like this many times since. There's really nothing left in SS to steal. Everything good about the game has been copied elsewhere.

The System Shock remaster project shouldn't steal anything from the original game. As you've said, and I fully agree, everything was already stolen by toher games. In my opinion, they (Nightdive Studios) should improve the original game with an updated interface, better textures and the new release couldn't even follow the original history to the letter, they could introduce some form of twist or new feature should they want to (e.g. dismemberment, like they were doing). That was what I was hoping when I backed them.

I pretty much liked all videos they've made, and that's why I can't understand when Mr. Stephen Kick said something like "we were heading the wrong direction".
 
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Why not handing it over to Beamdog? I'm sure they're up for it. ;)
 
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Hmm, so this is what happened:
- they got $1.3M in KS
- they quickly realized that it won't be enough for the full development
- they started to get more funding from publishers
- and NO ONE was interested to publish this project
I think you forgot a step.

Hmm, so this is what happened:
- they got $1.3M in KS
- "The vision began to change. We moved from a Remaster to a completely new game."*
- they quickly realized that it won't be enough for the full development
- they started to get more funding from publishers
- and NO ONE was interested to publish this project

*Why did the vision begin to change? Because, while SS may have been good in 1994, it is not good in 2018.
 
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Obvious speculation on your part, but I'm curious what makes you think that.
Obviously he meant "started to SEEK more funding from publishers", not "GET more funding"

As can be seen in the original article…
As the budget grew, we began a long series of conversations with potential publishing partners.
Obviously this wasn't obvious enough to you so obviously I had to be a smartass and spell it out for you :p
 
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