But as Kick explains, that shift involves less of a step and more of a leap. Shifting from remasters to a remake might seem like a logical next step. Since then, Night Dive has established itself as a specialist developer of remasters, having released improved versions of numerous '90s titles like Quake, Blood, Powerslave and Shadowman. Striking the right balance has been extremely challenging, to the extent where the entire project was rebooted three years into development.Īlongside Kick's personal history with the series, Night Dive as a business was founded because of System Shock 2, after Kick retrieved the rights to System Shock 2 from legal limbo. What it should be, what it needs to be, what fans want it to be, and what Nightdive wants it to be have all factored into its design at varying points.

The whole reason System Shock has been gestating for so long is Nightdive has constantly wrestled with what the remake ought to represent. If this sounds a little confusing, don't worry. 'If you look at that early prototype versus what we have now, it's an entirely different game, but essentially the same experience you would have, just the level of quality and polishing and everything that we've been able to put into it is at a level that we couldn't have imagined back then.' 'The game that we're going to be launching soon, is the game that I think we were all dreaming of making, but that we didn't initially set out to make.' Stephen Kick, co- founder of Nightdive Studios and co-director on System Shock.

System shock soundtrack composer