Back in March, we reported that the successfully-crowdfunded System Shock remake was rebooting growth with a brand new central aesthetic. We’re beginning to see that call bear fruit, as the newest replace for Kickstarter backers incorporates a good chunk of recent footage displaying off the refreshed visuals, some new idea artwork, and a peek at a few of the enhancements they’re bringing to fight.
After the bounce: A generously-portioned developer vlog video, giving us a broad peek at how growth on the sport is progressing, adorably offered in official Citadel Station audio-log format.
The greatest change from the final time we noticed System Shock in motion is a broad tonal shift in the direction of extra trendy sci-fi. While elements of Citadel Station nonetheless look vaguely acquainted, it not seems like they’re including greebles to the unique blocky environments with the intention to gown them up as convincingly human-inhabited environments. The new medical deck foyer proven within the video seems to be simply shut sufficient to a real-life hospital to make the blood-splattered youngsters’s play space particularly chilling.
The ideas for the brand new and revised cyborg enemies look considerably extra intimidating than the unique designs too. Rather than simply being TriOptimum grunts with some robotic bits slapped on, they give the impression of being extra like the results of Shodan’s informal disregard for humanity, repurposing no matter items of flesh she has seen match to protect whereas changing the remaining with items of salvaged robotics nonetheless bearing the corporate branding, giving them a vaguely improvised look. I can’t wait to see what they’ve finished with Edward Diego’s design.
We additionally get a take a look at some fascinating test-room footage demonstrating the brand new geometry-shattering know-how and its purposes on flash-frozen mutants. They’re additionally engaged on a gore system permitting enemies to be picked aside limb from limb. Possibly just a little a lot, however my mind tingles pleasantly with the potential for choosing aside cybernetic enemies one harmful element at a time.
Adding all that up, I’m abruptly reminded of Dead Space, which appears unusually applicable contemplating that Visceral’s sci-fi horror trilogy started life as a non secular successor to System Shock, earlier than diverging from the design after Resident Evil four left its mark on gaming. After all these years, it’s humorous to see that we’re nonetheless carefully orbiting the identical thematic touchstones, iterating, tuning and refining.
The current plan over at Nightdive Studios is to finish a Vertical Slice of growth – a single, fully-featured phase of sport – after which construct outwards from there. The initially deliberate December launch for System Shock’s remake is now nicely out of attain, however you may sustain with growth by way of the updates panel on the Kickstarter project page, which is totally open to the non-backing public.
