The Art of System Shock (Book)

[67ed159cc7608Xkilljoy98]

For the sake of the wiki and my own curiosity I got the art book (digital version) and am currently working on saving a full copy, but in the meantime I found some neat stuff to share.

[67ed159cc7902Xkilljoy98]

A few others, all I have for now

[67ed159cc7b31lævateinn]

I loveee these serv bot concepts! They really have this cool retro futuristic vibe to them that would mesh really well with the exec bots and by extent the executive deck!! Honestly wish we got more art deco and retro futurism in the remake than what we already have

[67ed159cc7ca3icemann]

If only the remake looked like those concepts. Looks awesome. Though I've always been a complete sucker for concept art. Love it.

[67ed159cc7e0cZylonBane]

The remake DID originally look like those concepts. That was the original "reimagined" remake, that they had to drop when they ran out of money.

[67ed159cc7fc7tiphares4]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WIovmdXwbc

The reimagined version looked so nice, also those gameplay mechanics like freezing enemies seemed interesting :/

I've read somewhere that people where complaining & whining :/ didn't know they ran out of money.

[67ed159cc81b6lævateinn]

Imma be real I prefer the way the final product looks honestly, it still has that industrial look and that's what made the original stand out. Sometimes straying toooo far beyond the game's original vision isn't a good idea and I think that's why nds scrapped these concepts especially the environmental ones. The environment and level concepts specifically look too sleek for system shock 1 and citadel station in general, assuming they're for medical judging by the colour palettes used. Speaking of, what makes medical in my opinion a memorable level is that it juxtaposes the purpose of the area with a brutal industrial feel, especially the pipe area that also creates an interesting conflict. It also helps characterize trioptimum more and tells us and the hacker that this huge corpo could give a shit less if their infirmary was sterile and easily accessible (which is why we see ramps near surgery beds comatose patients would sleep in and force bridges over huge drops.) That's why I think going for a sleeker look for citadel would actively harm the vision and storytelling of system shock 1, which is exactly what a remake shouldn't do.

[67ed159cc8457ZylonBane]

That's why I think going for a sleeker look for citadel would actively harm the vision and storytelling of system shock 1

Yeah, instead they harmed it by using comically low-res textures.

[67ed159cc85c8lævateinn]

low quality textures and using limitations artistically are something that games in general have been doing for years. System Shock Remake was made to be accessible to a wider group of people, accessibility includes people with craptops that can only play games that require little effort for low end hardware to run. This is extremely refreshing in the current gaming sphere with most titles tanking hardware with file sizes. And like I was saying, those chunky imperfect pixels and shapes help create a more dirtier and crunchy look which is supposed to pay homage to the original and it's artsyle. Also nightdive is still an indie studio y'all had, and honestly still have AAA expectations for what they can do.

[67ed159cc8768ZylonBane]

You know how the System Shock remake pays homage to the original? BY LITERALLY BEING SYSTEM SHOCK.

Christ, if I had nickle for every time I've seen this inane "homage" defense... well, I'd have a few nickles.

Pixelated System Shock already existed over 30 years ago. If you're gonna remake the game, update the graphics properly.

(The system requirements argument is nonsense too, since System Shock's levels use such a small set of textures per level that they could have octupled texture resolution without stressing any video card from the last decade. And again, the truly low-requirements version of SS was released over 30 years ago. There's nothing wrong with a current-gen game having current-gen requirements.)

[67ed159cc890eValet2]

I would love to play the scrapped version they did before changing the plans. Re-imagined Citadel and the game itself — everytime I watch the videos they give me shivers!

About the low-res textures — I swear I saw that part in one of the developers diary videos, where a modeler was doing a hatch or something, and he did a very polished and nice looking model, and then: "now we resize the textures to 512x512, because of the artistic style" — and suddenly it looks like crap!  It took me pretty much time to get used to this... style.

[67ed159cc8c14JDoran]

low quality textures and using limitations artistically are something that games in general have been doing for years. System Shock Remake was made to be accessible to a wider group of people, accessibility includes people with craptops that can only play games that require little effort for low end hardware to run.

I've not played the PC version of the remake (just the PS4 version), but I thought I'd read that it was surprisingly demanding, hardware-wise, for what it was. I can't remember where I read it, or if any examples were given to bear it out, so it might not be true.

Or maybe it was earlier release builds of the remake that were slow, and later releases were better optimised?

[67ed159cc90fbXkilljoy98]

As an update to this more pics can be found here:
https://shodan.fandom.com/wiki/The_Art_of_System_Shock

[67ed159ccb0f2Xkilljoy98]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WIovmdXwbc

The reimagined version looked so nice, also those gameplay mechanics like freezing enemies seemed interesting

I've read somewhere that people where complaining & whining didn't know they ran out of money.

Long story short it is a mix of running out of money, developers leaving after the direction changed, and people being unhappy that it was different than what was promised in the kickstarter

Though on cut concepts, there are some cool ones. Part of does wonder if I would have preferred these versions or not. Some of them for sure, others I'd have to see in game. Maybe having it be more different would have made it seem like more its own game

Another thing I find interesting is for awhile the remake had darker visuals, but seemingly was only changed in the later part of development

As for the reboot era of the remake I think it is a shame that we don't at least have a playable demo to see what it would have been like. Stephen Kick mentioned releasing one maybe if they found the files but that is only a maybe. At least we have tons of art and a few trailers.