Following last week’s news of a June release date for Nightdive Studios’ long-in-the-works System Shock 2 remaster, the developer’s been talking about the future of the beloved series – suggesting a full-blown System Shock 2 remake could potentially also be on the cards.
A System Shock 2 remaster was initially announced back in 2019, midway through the development of Nightdive’s System Shock 1 remake. And while the remake’s road to release was a rocky one, the end result was very positively received – to the point there’s now enthusiasm for fully fledged System Shock 2 remake too. Something Nightdive’s well aware of.
“I’ve been asked twice earlier today why we didn’t do a remake,” Nightdive director of business development Larry Kuperman told VGC in a recent interview. “And I said, ‘Are you somehow under the impression that because we do a remaster that we won’t be able to do a remake in the future?'” Kuperman’s comments could easily be dismissed as purely hypothetical, if he hadn’t then added, “That might be something that I can either confirm or deny. But there’s going to be content coming out.”
What that “content” might be is unclear, but given Nightdive owns the rights to the System Shock franchise, it’s technically free to build on the games however it pleases. Where things get, murkier, however, is the situation surrounding the series away from System Shock 1 & 2. System Shock 3, for instance, is currently in limbo, with the rights to the game now with Tencent after a complicated series of events that saw the project fall off the rails.
Speaking to VGC, Kuperman acknowledged the “situation around System Shock 3 is very complicated”, but suggested there might be some clarification on the project “potentially within a year… or it could take longer”. But regardless of how System Shock 3 plays out, Kuperman confirmed Nightdive still has “visions of what we can do within what we control”.
“We’ll see what happens,” he added. “I mean, there’s stuff that we can do within the first and the second.” Which does, of course, brings us full circle back to a potential System Shock 2 remake, or some unspecified new “content” for the first two games at the very least.
Before all that, of course, there’s Nightdive’s System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster. This long-in-the-works spruce-up of BioShock developer Irrational Games’ critically acclaimed – and hugely influential – 1999 FPS/RPG sci-fi horror hybrid promises enhancements to characters, weapon models, textures, cinematics, and animations. That’s alongside quality of life improvements, optimised controller support, updated co-op multiplayer, and achievements – all of which players can experience when it launches for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC on 26th June.