System Shock 2016 KS Updates #13-18, $1,304,755 and Counting

With only six more hours to go for the crowdfunding campaign for the System Shock remake,now is as good a time as any to write a new round-up of its latest updates. It’s worth noting that the campaign has just reached its second stretch goal, though the stretch goals themselves have been recently changed. The “RPG Elements” stretch goal in particular has been removed, and in its place, we’ve got a new additional locations and narrative stretch goal, as listed in update 14:

1.4m Goal Changes

We’ve altered the 1.4m stretch goal to something a bit more manageable from a game development standpoint. Before, it was vague and misleading regarding “RPG Elements”. That lead to a bit of confusion and unease with our backers, and to be perfectly honest, deep system features like that are pretty dangerous as stretch goals. We have an awesome vision for the game and setting a bunch of features we deeply believe in to a stretch goal stifles our own creativity since we can’t fully plan for things.

Now, the 1.4m stretch goal is something much safer for us to scale if we don’t make the goal. It’s to add content in the form of more maps such as Groves, floors of Citadel Station, and Cyberspace content. This will make it better for us to properly execute on our core vision of the game, while still being able to offer some more awesome content if we hit the stretch goal.

So the RPG Stuff…

As I mentioned before, we have a pretty good vision of where we want to take things and what RPG systems we’ll be leaning towards within our budget. Also, RPG systems can imply a lot of things, so I’ll go over some core concepts that we’re following with the overall systems design.

• Stats are boring – Instead of letting the player feel stronger with stat boosts and level identification, we’re more in favor of ability and skill depth. As the player progresses, they will get more abilities/weapons, which will take skill to master (player skill, not skill points)
• Things should make sense – We want to have vending machines, but they’re mainly for food/drinks that the player can get to help heal themselves or provide a slight boost to their abilities. You won’t hack a vending machine to get a gun, since why would a vending machine on a space station have a gun?
• Upgrades are good in moderation – Throughout the game, the player will find upgrades to their abilities and find better weapons. We’re not going to get crazy with this one since the point of the game is to have fun, and not noodle around in your inventory. If something is tedious, don’t expect us to do it.
• Multiple ways to solve a problem – We’re going to assume our players are smart and want to find creative solutions to problems/enemies. We’ll provide the tools/weapons/abilities, and the player will decide how they want to solve the problem given their playstyle.

I know that isn’t very detailed, but it’s still early in the game’s development, and things can change. Those rules above are what we’re confident in delivering. At the end of the day, we always ask ourselves “What would Looking Glass do?” and strive to carry on their tradition of innovation and quality while being as faithful as we can be to the original game.

Meanwhile, update 15 introduced Zardonic, one of the musicians for the tentative remix of the original soundtrack, update 17 introduced a number of very high stretch goals concerning VR and modding support that probably won’t be reached (unless the developers continue the campaign after the Kickstarter ends and market it far more aggressively), and the other updates I didn’t list served simply to announce giveaways and livestreams.

If you want to pledge some money to this Kickstarter, this is really the time to do it.