After a look at some screenshots earlier this week, Nightdive Studios has dropped a proper trailer for System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition. The upcoming re-release of the classic immersive sim shooter will overhaul it to look a lot better than it currently does—it currently looks bad, for the record—but it’s not a full remake like Nightdive’s upcoming System Shock. That game was delayed until the end of this month, and will come out on the 30th.
Nightdive has said it would eventually like to do a remake of System Shock 2, but that’ll probably come down to how well the remake of System Shock sells. For now, however, you’ll be able to continue your adventures from that remake into the enhanced edition, which collects all the many, many graphical and performance improvements from nigh-on 25 years of modders and such digging into the code.
“System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition was created with the goal of reverse engineering the original code to port SS2 to the KEX Engine and made available on next generation consoles for the first time,” said Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick. “Nightdive has also partnered with the systemshock.org community to integrate all the best mods and updates. All cinematics, textures, characters and weapon models have been updated.”
Nightdive also says that “the Co-Op Multiplayer has been overhauled to create a seamless experience.” Co-op was originally added to System Shock 2 post-launch, and was never really in great working order, but Nightdive has tweaked it—perhaps we’ll finally be able to see what it’s like to evade Shodan aboard the Von Braun with a friend.
It’s no lie to say that System Shock was a game that changed PC games forever. Check out this feature, pulled from the PC Gamer archives of ye olde 2007, that explains why and how the revolutionary game built atmosphere in a way quite unlike anything else.
