System Shock Remake

[-HP-]

 

BETA Demo download

https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/

 

 

https://www.alphabetagamer.com/system-shock-remake-beta-demo/

Quote

 

A new demo for the upcoming System Shock remake has been released, with around an house worth of gameplay as you fight mutants and robots aboard a space station that’s been taken over by a self-aware AI.

Previously featured on Alpha Beta Gamer a year ago, the System Shock remake is a from the ground-up remake of the 1994 classic cyberpunk horror adventure that is a spiritual precursor to the Deus Ex and Bioshock games. In the game you take on the role of a hacker who awakens from a six month healing coma following surgery, but when you wake up you find the space station to be filled with dead bodies, mutants and hostile robots. The station is now ruled by an AI called SHODAN, and it doesn’t take kindly to your intrusion!

The previous demo build of the System Shock remake was very impressive, but this build is a much more polished experience, with superior audio design and better lighting effects, re-recorded dialogue and a lot more audio-logs. It isn’t perfect (it’s prone to crashing and there are no auto-saves), but it’s shaping up very nicely. It manages to take the classic 26 year old gameplay and update it for the modern era, while still maintaining the vibe of the original. Highly recommended.

 

 

[blackdog]

 

[FMPONE]

22 hours ago, blackdog said:

 

I'm gonna buy this because it's a high resolution version of a good old game, but man this has the worst lighting. "Using every color at once" is not art direction...

[dux]

I'd also argue that the System Shock 2 Trailer was far superior in terms of audio as well. The remake trailer has too many pauses. It sounds janky.

 

Edited March 19, 2021 by dux

[Buddy]

You can't compete with SS2 audio, it is a true masterpiece.

 

They did pick some weird ass clips to showcase gameplay tho  

[will2k]

@FMPONE Not sure if my eyes are deceiving me, but it looks like they toned down the lighting color variation to shades of blue and red, or it's maybe only this particular map? 

[FMPONE]

1 hour ago, will2k said:

@FMPONE Not sure if my eyes are deceiving me, but it looks like they toned down the lighting color variation to shades of blue and red, or it's maybe only this particular map? 

The lighting does look better but the environments still seem like a massive weakness. There just isn’t the kind of character you’d fine in Bioshock 1 or 2, it’s painfully generic and claustrophobic, geometric (block rooms) with noisy tech-walls, slow moving and anemic seeming enemies. It doesn’t feel like a real place at all.

[blackdog]

I feel it looks better in this lates video.

It’s one of those projects where you can never win as a developer.

You’re gonna be harshly judged by the nostalgia brigade.

At the same time, so much time has passed that you could slap a completely different name on and it would be just as fine. Swap criticism for how “not right” it feels for a System Shock game with “how too much inspired by” System Shock it would be.

[text_fish]

I really like what they've done with the aesthetics so far. I want it to feel like a game space rather than a real place. I feel like the Bioshock games over-relied on visually impressive set-pieces which is fine because it's a different IP, but I wouldn't like to see SystemShock's design focus move in that direction.

[Buddy]

Nightdive is good people.

[Radu]

Love the atmosphere so far! 

[dux]

I'm having a real hard time with the lighting and contrast coupled with the environment's detail/business. All together it comes up as a really busy setup that I find hard to concentrate/focus on and slowly start to get a headache.  Feeling this way often with new games or hd remasters. Halo master chief collection is a good example. TAB is AWESOME but playing halo 1 and halo 2 then switching between OG and remaster, it demonstrates perfectly how you lose readability and composition when you jam in a load more detail and contrast the lighting too much. I think SS has the same issue. This is of course subjective and many people love it, that's great. Pass me the paracetamol.

Edited July 5, 2021 by dux

[text_fish]

I guess it's a Marmite issue! I feel like the original SS already had very busy visuals with its repetitive tiled textures and cramped environments. Looking at screenshots of the original I can see why the lighting could be causing you readability issues. Maybe Nightdive should allow users to toggle some sort of readability mode that makes the environments full-bright (or at least more simplistic lighting) and gives items and monsters a very slight shadow around their edges to make them pop.

[Pampers]

sponsored by Corsair RGB

like the music though

[-HP-]

Dunno if you noticed, but there's heavy use of screen motion blur in this game, for these kind of environments you can afford to stick to object motion blur man.
Also the look of the game goes from blurry to overly contrasty sharp look in less than a second as you play, that doesn't help either and it's head ache inducing. Specially where there's so much strong red and green, one trick I often use to get away from deep red is to just slightly hue it back towards deep orange, your mind still registers as red and it has a much softer and natural read to it.

I've noticed they slowly started to introduce fogged lights into the environments, which helps giving the sense of depth a little bit, but it's not enough imho, they could have fogged it up a tad more, it really helps reading farther away stuff a bit better.

 

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Alien isolated nailed this, environments are really dark but usually soft on the eyes and they never get any pixel get to pure black through good post tweaks.