Nightdive Studios' System Shock Remake Set For 2020

Nightdive Studio's remake of System Shock is back in development after a previously-announced hiatus as reported by PC Gamer.

System Shock was originally released in 1994 and is regarded as one of the classics of gaming. Players take on the role of an unnamed hacker who is battling an evil AI by the name of SHODAN. The game saw a sequel in 1999's System Shock 2. The games were later followed by spiritual successors Deus Ex and Bioshock, each of which took some bits of their design from their predecessor.

The series had remained all but dormant until Nightdive Studios managed to secure more than enough funding to facilitate the remaking of the first game in a successful Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately, development got a bit out of hand and they ended up having to put the game's development on hiatus while they figured out how to best address getting the game made with the resources they had to hand. They have now gotten everything sorted out and are back on track with developing the remake of System Shock.

The System Shock remake was largely a victim of feature creep on the part of developers. The game's team was constantly looking at how to improve on various eras of the game, and unfortunately that passion snowballed into delays that burned through a hefty chunk of the money raised in their original crowdfunding campaign. Development was stalled out, people were laid off, and they sat down to reorganize and figure out how best to ship the game.

"Our intention is to ship exactly the game that was promised, with as much of the features that were promised as we can, in a timeframe that will get it out as fast as we can." -Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick

Mr. Kick stated that we'll be looking at a 2020 release date for the System Shock remake. While that might not be the best news to backer's ears, they believe that that is the time they'll need to get the game finished and do it right. The extra development time isn't likely to put Nightdive Studios in a financial bind thanks to renewed interest from developers and their income from other projects. Backers can look forward to seeing a portion of the game in the new Unreal Engine version sometime in early April.

What do you think of the upcoming System Shock remake? Are you disappointed to hear that it will be released in 2020? What do you think of how Nightdive Studios has recovered from their feature creep problem? Let us know in the comments below!