Re: It's coming...System Shock 2 Remaster

On Sun, 23 Mar 2025 06:20:07 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

Mike S <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote at 02:31 this Sunday (GMT):

On Fri, 21 Mar 2025 15:19:14 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>

This isn't going to be a full remaster along the lines of the 2023
"System Shock" game, with an entirely new engine, new levels,
textures, sounds. Rather, it will be more akin to the 2015 "Enhanced
Edition" releases of the first system shock game; a shiny new gloss
atop the 1999 sequel. E.g., the sort of thing you can create for
yourself if you download all those fan-made patches and apply them
yourself.

Your post initially had me excited but what you describe here does not
make this remaster sound all that interesting to me. To be clear, I do
NOT want a full on reboot, but I want more then something that I can
do myself with various mods.

Paying companies for re-releases that have mods packaged in seems to be
their new favorite past time.

In fairness, it /might/ be more than just 'repackaging mods' but all
the screenshots I've seen don't make it look like the end-result will
be /much more/ than what you can make for yourself. Like I said, it's
equally possible that Nightdive will port the entire thing to their
Kexx engine, which is definitely more than just a mod-repack. I don't
know if they're actually using modded assets or making their own
either.

But the screenshots they have on GOG don't look all that much improved
over those of System Shock 2 Rebirth, and that makes the purchase of
the game a lot more of a hard sell. Visually, it seems they're selling
the convenience of not having to do all the work of finding /
downloading / installing / configuring the mods yourself, which is
cool (and, admittedly, I'll probably get the game just for that) but
is it worth grabbing it for $30?  Especially since the changes are so
minor.

Here's an example of the changes, showing a zombie in the unmodded
1999 game, what it looks like in Rebirth, and what a pre-release
screenshot from the 2025 remaster. https://imgur.com/a/cXR2YeJ