‘System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster’ Is Absolute Perfection [Review]

Just a little over a year ago, we gave a (broadly positive) appraisal of the System Shock remake after it was ported over to consoles. To briefly recap what was said here, we admired how that update preserved the essence of Looking Glass’ genre-codifying trailblazer yet, at the same time, couldn’t help but wonder if there was room for a bit more contemporization.

The meticulous archivist behind that project, Nightdive Studios — who, incidentally, did a stellar job resurrecting The Thing license a few months back — are known for being sticklers when it comes to bringing back the oldies exactly as they were. Indeed, whenever they are entrusted with another developer’s legacy, they treat it with the same reverence that a classical scholar has for those precious texts that can only be handled with nitrile gloves.

To put it another way, they’ve never half-assed it like Konami did with its God-awful Silent Hill HD Collection, or like Rockstar peddling the so-called “definitive edition” of GTA: San Andreas. On the contrary, Nightdive take their duties very seriously and, in doing so, provide a vital service that the mainstream industry seems largely disinterested in performing for itself. It’s fair to say that, without the TLC they provide, many beloved abandonware titles would have either faded into obscurity by now or otherwise been mishandled by less attentive custodians.

Still, when it came to System Shock, they probably could have been a tad braver about making tweaks. Even if it would have gone against their traditionalist tendencies. For although it is surely a canonical great and deserving of its place in the annals of gaming history; from the perspective of a 21st-century console peasant —  accustomed to helpful yellow paint, and know-it-all NPCs that eagerly blurt out solutions to every puzzle —  the quest to save Citadel space station now feels cumbersome, obtuse and, at times, downright infuriating.

Ever the purists, Nightdive made few concessions to newbies with their update of System Shock, and instead decided to appease the masochistic old guard. Which meant leaving intact everything from the game’s fiddly UI to its awkward platforming and those bewildering Cyberspace sections. If you didn’t get on with it, you might have uncharitably described the whole affair as being “slavish” to the past.

Anyway, the reason I’m dredging all of this back up (besides the fact that I apparently didn’t get enough incensed fanboys clogging up my DMs before) is that the folks over at Nightdive have now turned their attentions to System Shock’s sequel. And with it only being a 25th Anniversary Remaster, and not a fully-fledged remake, they’ve changed even less this time around.

Age Is Just A Number

Crucially, however, that’s not an issue in the case of System Shock 2. After all, the 1999 title holds up extraordinarily well in contrast to its esoteric predecessor.

They might have only been released five years apart but, if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear there were decades of technological advances and creative innovations separating the pair. The sequel is just tighter, places a much stronger emphasis on immersion, doesn’t feel anywhere near as restrictive in its design, and is overall way, way more fun. If anything, it’s only gotten better with age.

There are many reasons why System Shock 2 has endured so well, while cracks are conversely showing in its forebear. But if I were to single out the two things that made the biggest difference, they would be that: A) it has a more confident vision and B) it benefited enormously from fresh blood in the development team.

In terms of the former, Looking Glass was cognisant that not everybody “got” the original game. At first glance, it looked like another Doom clone hoping to ride on the coattails of Id Software’s (then brand-new) hit. It boasted a very similar graphical style, a comparable sci-fi setting and an ostensive focus on the same mutant-blasting gunplay.

Yet it turned out to be a far more cerebral experience than anybody could have guessed from the promotional screenshots. Rather than indulging those with the itchiest of trigger fingers, it demanded considerable patience from the player, expecting them to come to grips with complex, interrelated mechanics, inventory management grids, and menus upon menus. Sure, there was gruesome violence along the way, but you kind of had to work for it. Wolfenstein 3D this was not, and that slow-burn nature did end up alienating some people.

Having learned their lesson, the devs wisely opted to distance themselves from the FPS label when the time came to plan a sequel; instead foregrounding other elements that had previously taken a backseat to combat. As noted in the initial pitch document, it was now intended to be more of an RPG and less of a “Quake deathmatch”. The result is a game that seems a lot more comfortable in its own skin. Indeed, it nailed those role-playing aspects so well that it inadvertently went on to become one of the founding fathers of the immersive sim genre, in turn laying the groundwork for cult favourites like Deus Ex and a certain undersea masterpiece.

Which brings us nicely to the other thing System Shock 2 had going for it in 1999: its exciting behind-the-scenes talent. Effectively the maiden voyage for co-developer Irrational Games, and the first project to be overseen by industry legend Ken Levine, SS2 feels in many (quite tangible) ways like a trial run for BioShock and even patented some of the latter’s defining ideas.

To name but a few, you’ve got: the same starter weapon (in the form of a wrench); hacking minigames; timed security alarms; respawn bays that charge a small fee upon activation; one-use-only upgrade kiosks; multiple ammunition types; resources that are coveted in-universe (and that can be spent to augment your psychic powers); alcohol that increases your HP while simultaneously draining your AP; and those ghostly apparitions that reenact tragedies of days gone by. The introductory area is even a medical pavilion for Christ’s sake!

The overlap couldn’t be more apparent. Yet the most significant way that you can observe the seeds of BioShock being planted here, is with the mature and thematically dense story.

“Prepare To Join Your Species in Extinction”

Speaking of which, System Shock 2’s narrative works as both a logical follow-up to its immediate predecessor and a self-contained episode in its own right.

In the wake of the Citadel space station incident — during which the rouge Artificial Intelligence, SHODAN, was deliberately freed of its ethical constraints and staged a coup against humanity — trust in mega-corporations has reached an all-time low. In an attempt to address this, an intergovernmental agency, known as the United Nations Nominate (UNN), has been established to hold unscrupulous private sector organisations to account, and strict prohibitions have been imposed on the development of AI programmes like SHODAN. In short, the powers that be are doing everything they can to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself here.

It’s against this fraught backdrop that the TriOptimum corporation attempts to stage a comeback and rehabilitate its public image by launching an experimental, Faster Than Light starship, christened the Von Braun.

Although fraternisation between the company employees and servicemen does occur in small patches, for the most part, their relationship is as strained as you would expect in the dicey political climate. Not to mention, the tensions are exacerbated by rampant engineering faults that keep cropping up across the Von Braun and computer systems that seem to be constantly on the fritz. Suffice it to say, it’s not the smoothest sailing.

The point at which the situation graduates from “volatile” to “full-on mayhem”, however, is when the voyagers decide to respond to a distress signal from Tau Ceti V. It’s not initially clear what transpires on that uninhabited planet, but when you awaken from your cryo sleep you find that both the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker have been completely overtaken by an alien parasite. One that’s mutated everybody into grotesque Borg-like aberrations.

Working with a disembodied voice over the radio —  which, to your knowledge, belongs to the only other survivor of this calamity —   your mission is to ascend the various decks of each vessel, fighting fires along the way and desperately trying to get the infection under control. Of course, this is far easier said than done, given that the unmaintained ships are practically falling to bits, radiation leaks are springing up everywhere you go, and the security systems have gone totally haywire. So much for the UNN preventing another Citadel-style catastrophe!

A World Worth Dying (Repeatedly) For

It’s an enthralling tale that, similar to BioShock’s, deals with heady themes of scientific hubris, unchecked capitalist ambition, and the dangers posed by political ideologues. And also like its spiritual successor, it’s concerned with a societal breakdown that occurred long before you arrived at the party.

If you’ve got experience navigating the subaquatic tunnels of Rapture, you’ll know the drill here. With hardly any friendly NPCs to catch you up to speed, piecing together what actually occurred on the Von Braun will require you to pay close attention to environmental clues and hunt down collectable logs that fill in the rest of the gaps.

Progressing this detective work, and figuring out how these fragmented snippets of storytelling all line up, is extremely gratifying. Only by scouring the decks thoroughly will you, for instance, be able to learn what’s up with those telekinetic monkeys or why there are so many dead bodies buried in the shopping mall gardens.

Straying from the golden path does more than just develop your understanding of the lore, though, as exploration yields all sorts of juicy rewards. A hidden vent in the living quarters could lead you to a stash of goodies, while the confessional recording of a lonely crew member will reveal which synthetic “love” booth he was in when he made it rain with valuable nanite currency.

These discoveries aren’t signposted and can be easily missed if you’re not looking out for them. In fact, you can probably get through most levels by only covering about 50% of the respective floor map, making it all the more meaningful when you do find something that other players might have overlooked. Even if that something is just a startling jump scare.

You’ll want to take your time enjoying this world anyway. It’s maybe not quite on par with Andrew Ryan’s objectivist dystopia, but compared to most other video game diegeses it’s overflowing with character and atmosphere. Everywhere feels lived in, there are chilling tableaus that give you an insight into what people were doing when shit hit the fan, and it generally feels very well thought out. The recreational zone is a particular highlight, featuring a coherent leisure offer that looks like it would be genuinely enjoyable, were it not for the homicidal mutants going around spoiling the mood.

On that note, System Shock 2 has some memorable foes for you to go up against as well. There are the aforementioned psychic simians, the kamikaze protocol droids, and those mumbling hybrids that still have lingering residues of their human selves. The standouts, however, are surely the harrowing Cyborg Midwives. Mechanised female corpses —  disfigured beyond all recognition and implanted with maternal instincts to make them protective of alien eggs —  they are truly terrifying figures, and you’ll soon come to dread the telltale whirring sound that accompanies their patrols. Their rictus grins alone are the stuff of nightmares.

Putting the “Immersive” in “Immersive Sim” 

No matter what body horror monstrosity you are facing, or what objective is next on your to-do list, there will be tons of options for securing the desired result, as Irrational never once railroad you into a specific course of action here.

You see, whereas the first System Shock was basically a thinking man’s FPS (with some scope for experimentation), its follow-up set the gold standard for what we now know as the immersive sim. Popularising a design ethos that would later be adopted by Prey (2017) and Dishonoured, every problem you come across in this game has several viable solutions. So, creative thinking can often be just as effective as a shotgun slug to the head.

In fact, it’s entirely possible to make it through the whole campaign without emptying a single pistol clip or even equipping a firearm of any kind. Take my playthrough, for instance, during which I invested heavily in psionic abilities and neglected anything to do with conventional ballistics. Sure, I did keep a crystal sword at hand for close encounters but, otherwise, I relied pretty much exclusively on my Scanners powers to get the job done. I could hypnotise mutants into turning on each other, hack turrets from afar, set enemies ablaze with the flick of a wrist, or employ telekinesis to draw out-of-reach objects into my grasp.

These tricks were so satisfying to pull off because I knew they were tied to the path I chose for myself. Had I distributed my skill points differently, I wouldn’t have been able to so much as make a coffee cup wobble, but in my playthrough the mind was the only weapon I ever needed. Which was fortunate, seeing as how I was completely locked out of using the garden variety assault rifle, due to a pitiful lack of training, and was similarly hopeless when it came to performing rudimentary maintenance tasks.

What’s important to understand is that the game encourages precisely this type of specialisation, as jack of all trades won’t last long in the world of System Shock 2. And therein lies its innate replayability! You’ll want to try it again and again and again to see how else things can go down aboard the Von Braun when you choose different disciplines.

Speaking of which, this roleplaying concept is slickly introduced via one of the most ingenious tutorial sections I’ve ever experienced. Taking place at the UNN recruitment centre, it gives you a taste of what it’s like to be either a marine, a naval officer or a psychic spook and then asks you to enlist in your preferred military branch. Though the distinction between these vocations might not be immediately apparent to newcomers, they essentially translate to those RPG staples of warrior, thief and mage. From there, you will get to flesh out your character even further by customising the itinerary of their tour of duty, equipping them with skills that are relevant to their postings.

That’s a lot of depth right off the bat, and yet it only scratches the surface of how malleable System Shock 2 can be if you push it to its limits. At the time of release, much fuss was made about the fact that you could drop an item on one deck of the ship and then return to it hours later and find that it was still where you left it. A quaint yet impressive feature to be sure, but one that pales in comparison to some of the other things you can do here.

Case in point, I augmented my speed implant with an acceleration hypo to sprint through a tricky environment, and gained so much momentum in the process that I ran headfirst into an automatic door; bludgeoning myself to death. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, I wasn’t even mad, just amazed at how sophisticated this 25-year-old game was proving itself to be.

Indeed, like the best immersive sims, System Shock 2 is a fantastic anecdote generator. The quest to restore power to the engineering deck —   which you might tackle as, say, a trigger-happy jarhead —   could be a chaotic clusterfuck for you, but a comparative breeze for a player approaching that same scenario as a master technician or an egg-head researcher.

Even something as simple as negotiating a radioactive corridor can be approached from multiple angles, whether that’s by donning a protective hazmat suit, overriding security doors in search of an alternate route, or simply risking prolonged exposure to the fallout and then pumping yourself full of meds afterwards. The brilliance of the design is that there’s no right and wrong answer here. Only possibilities.

A Low Key But Effective Remaster

Given how gracefully System Shock 2 has aged, and how in keeping it already feels with modern sensibilities, Nightdive were wise not to tamper with it too much for their 25th anniversary remasters.

In terms of what they have done, the visuals have been lightly touched up —  now running in 4K resolution and at 144 frames per second —  your options for customising certain technical preferences have been expanded, there’s support for ultra-widescreen monitors, and crossplay functionality has been added to the existing co-op mod. Oh, and they’ve also bundled in an impressive amount of extras, including digital scans of the original PC instruction booklet and the official Prima guide.

Other than that it’s pretty much the exact same title that debuted at the turn of the millennium. Which, to reiterate, is no bad thing when the original source material is as sublime as this.

A proper remake (with a graphical overhaul akin to the one that the first System Shock received at the hands of Nightdive) certainly wouldn’t go amiss, but it’s nice to just have an upscaled version of the classic that’s readily available. For fans who’ve been there since day one, it’s an excuse to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane. For everyone else, it’s the ideal opportunity to jump in and see what all the fuss is about. Either way, it’s an absolute must-buy.

System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster is available now on PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, and Humble Store, while the console launch for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch platforms is expected for early July. Review code provided by publisher.

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