Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: you wake up in a futuristic medical bay on an orbital space station with some new cyber-implants, only to realize everyone else is dead. I could talk about BioShock or Empty space or even, if you squint, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But in this case I’m talking about System shock, which was remade by Nightdive Studios. This new version reveals just how much video games as a whole owe to the 1994 classic.
Before I was deeply entrenched in the world of video games as a critic and journalist, I knew about System shock, but it was not possible for me to play it. Originally developed by Looking Glass Studios, it was a moderate hit at the time, but not explosively popular like its contemporary Demise. Over time, his legacy has grown and explicitly influenced games like the ones mentioned above BioShock And Empty spacebut also dishonored, PreyAnd Deathloop. It also popularized some storytelling techniques that now feel tired, such as the common practice of telling your story through audio logs.
I had always wanted to play System shock, to follow the lines of video game history, but as an older PC-only game, it was hard to get my hands on. Too long had passed between the game’s release and the current time System shock accessible, not only in the sense that I was used to more modern games with a better user interface and more intuitive controls, but also in the sense that it was not for sale anywhere. Much of my childhood System shock, a game so old it was originally released on a floppy disk, was distributed by fans via downloads of questionable legality. When I first looked up the game, I’d heard it had a huge influence on pretty much everything every game which came in its wake, I instead found people on forums telling other readers to just go straight to it System shock 2.
Image: Nightdive Studios/Prime Matter
You can now play the original System shock, thanks in part to Night Dive. The studio acquired the rights to the game in 2012 and re-released it as the Enhanced Edition in 2015. And you could start playing this remastered edition now and enjoy it for its many delights, even if they’re not quite the same 29 years later. The then-revolutionary physics engine originally programmed by Seamus Blackley for Flight unlimited, cannot leave the same impression on players in 2023 as it did in 1994; we’ve all seen too many physics engines scratch Blackley’s work in the meantime. If you think you can’t play a game from 1994, the System shock remake does pretty well. Sometimes it even does something remarkable and original: it really makes you understand the passage of time.
The System shock remake is beautiful. It’s not a completely reimagined game like the Final Fantasy 7 remake, nor does it completely abandon the aesthetics and art style of the original like the remake of Shadow of the colossus. But it’s like the way 1994 games appear in my memory. Smoke spews out of vents and disappears in pixels. The lighting is often dramatic, your screen saturated in a deep red with bright blue sparks emanating from the lighting fixtures. In your hands your lead pipe hangs heavy in front of your face, swinging right in front of your field of vision, sometimes a little grainy in the light. You walk slowly – oh so slowly – through narrow hallways with flickering lights, trapped in metal maintenance corridors as you try to make your way through the map. It is a dungeon crawler wearing a gunner skin.
famous, System shock is the story of the hacker, who was caught hacking into the TriOptimum Corporation. You are whisked away to its orbital space station called the Citadel and given a job: join the company and receive a fancy neural implant in exchange for removing the ethical protocols from their AI, SHODAN. SHODAN, it turns out, really needed those ethical protocols, and when you wake up from surgery, she’s killed everyone on the station and turned into mutants and cyborgs.
Image: Nightdive Studios/Prime Matter
If you’re a fan of video games, you’ve met SHODAN before, in one form or another. If you’ve played Portal, you have been in contact with a very close relative of hers. The character archetype that SHODAN would create, of a female AI who has lost his morals with a caustic, glitchy voice, is now a cliché. GLaDOS is simply SHODAN with a sense of humor and a sense of personal animosity towards the player. In System shock, SHODAN’s hatred is cold and pure, as you hate insects when they enter the house; they are below you and are not supposed to be here. As you make your way through the levels, she promises to strap you to a torture chair and that “you’ll learn more about pain than you ever wanted to know.”
SHODAN’s presence somehow still feels new – or maybe everything old is just becoming new again. What feels incredible is the way the remake’s flourishes are highlighted System shocklineage even more so. When you charge your electric guns in the charging stations, electricity dances on your fingers, and I remember how BioShock comes from this game. When System shock leans on its horror elements and pushes you into a dark room with a moaning monster, I remember why I hadn’t played Empty space; System shock is more my speed of creepy but I can see how one became the next. Playing this game in this form allows me to bring it into conversation with the entire immersive sim genre, a loose collection of games that offer open-ended gameplay to players. You can see the line from the Citadel all the way to the shores of Dunwall dishonored; the way Looking Glass, and now Nightdive, offers the Citadel not just as a space station, but as a puzzle, a map you can unfold with little to no instructions on how to proceed. Seeing this done so skillfully on a smaller scale brings to mind a kind of open world that wasn’t technologically possible until recently: Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, Elder ring.
Image: Nightdive Studios/Prime Matter
Which really turns me on when I play System shock is how little it holds my hand. You can — and probably will — eat absolute shit the first time you try to make your way through the medical bay. You can put yourself in unsolvable situations – it’s a game that asks you to pay attention, that doesn’t always tell you what to do. It rewards both your curiosity and your caution. I found my way through levels often by accident, deciding to take corridors I hadn’t taken before. There’s always a discovery – a new weapon or a vending machine or a shortcut – or at least a useful lesson lurking. It’s easy to understand why people played this game and then became obsessed with it, why you can follow some people’s careers through the game. Ken Levine, who worked at Looking Glass when it was created System shockdefinitely never stopped trying to make it System shockfinally give BioShock: Infinite an ending that suggests there are thousands upon thousands of variations on this theme.
System shock will be released on May 30 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed using a pre-release download code from Prime Matter. Vox Media has partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy here.