Nightdive's smart remake proves System Shock has still got it

There’s a dilemma to remaking a 30-year-old game, and it’s how much do you remake. If you build it completely anew and reimagine everything, then how much of the original game do you still actually have? Then again, if you don’t change enough, how much of a remake is it?

This System Shock remake is an attempt at the answer, and an intriguing one, because I think if you showed it to someone unaware of the original, who was judging it purely in a 2023 context, they’d look at it and wonder what the fuss was about.

To them, I’d hold up images of the original, which I’ve included in this piece from a quick playthrough earlier. And as you can see, the difference is dramatic. The lighting makes a massive difference to the mood, and there are clearly decades of technological advancement on show. And yet, somehow, the game still looks old.