5 quality of life updates the System Shock remake desperately needs
An ingenious remake that is a few patches away from perfection
It took Nightdive Studios more than seven years, but in late May, they finally released the long-awaited System Shock remake to critical acclaim and commercial success. This may come as a surprise to those who followed the troubled development history of the team’s far most ambitious work yet. However, I never had any doubts about the quality of the title ever since I first played the amazing Medical Demo a few years ago. The game is just as fantastic as I thought it would be and it gives me something I can sink my teeth into after seriously getting burned out by Tears of the Kingdom near the 40-hour mark (same as the last time with Breath of the Wild, now my only goal is to finish its main story).
A great remake doesn’t mean perfect, though. It might be perfect at faithfully recreating an experience from nearly 30 years ago (and bringing immersive sims back from the limbo they’ve been in in the past couple of years). But the game is also not without its faults, as it lacks certain key features and has elements that feel half-baked or lack a final layer of polish. Thus, I felt the need to raise awareness of these issues, in the hope that Nightdive will step in and implement the necessary changes (so we won’t have to wait years for typical overhaul mods to arrive). Now, admittedly, some of these problems are well-known and fairly commonly discussed on the Steam forums (along with the frustrations they often provide). But I wanted to give them the space and attention they need without having to worry about them getting buried under a pile of other threads.
#1 — Vaporize items and sort inventory quickly
Let’s get right into one of the biggest problems of the remake. Recycling is the number one way to make money in the game, which can be used to buy unique weapon modifications, ammo, and different types of consumables. Not surprisingly, Citadel Station is full of items the players can pick up, so there’s an opportunity there to unleash our inner pack rat and then get rich quickly. Due to the limited inventory space, however, the most convenient way to do this is by turning unneeded items into junk by vaporizing them and then visiting a recycle station. The problem though, is that vaporizing is a really slow and tedious process, as it needs to be done with each and every item individually. It’s just barely tolerable while playing with a mouse & keyboard, but it’s absolute insanity with a controller.
There are two proposed solutions to fix this. The first is simple: there should be an option on the inventory screen to instantly vaporize all junk items. The other solution would be even better as it would remove the need for constant item-juggling in the inventory when picking up junk items. Basically, there should be an option to immediately vaporize a picked-up (junk) item, with its dedicated Key Binding (it could be Right Mouse Click or Right Mouse Click + a modifier button). In any case, this problem needs to be taken care of ASAP. Also, while it’s not as big of a problem, the ability to automatically sort the inventory should also be added, especially if the first proposed option to quickly vaporize objects makes it into the game, as this would help create space for and picking/vaporizing junk a little faster.
#2 — More cargo lift slots
The cargo lift works similarly in System Shock as item boxes do in the Resident Evil series. Players can put unneeded items in it and pick them up whenever they choose. The main difference between the two is that in System Shock, there’s a hard limit on how many things can be stored, incentivizing the players to make smart decisions on what items should they keep and what to leave behind. Or at least, that’s the idea. The reality, though, is totally different. As an immersive sim, the game remembers each and every object’s position and they never despawn, thus, players can just drop everything they’ve collected in a specific place and those items will stay there till the end of the game.
Naturally, players are taking advantage of this system and I don’t blame them — after all, no one really likes to lose the stuff they gathered as a result of deep and often challenging exploration, especially in a type of game like this. I did the same with Amnesia: The Bunker where I carried basically all items to the central save room and players are doing this in System Shock by dropping everything in Maintenance near the elevator. So, what is the solution? It’s easy. The devs just need to accept this player mindset and allow us to actually store all of our items in the cargo lift without having to rely on such clunky and possibly time-waster methods. Depending on game balance, however, a system could be implemented where it would cost a certain amount of credits to remove items from the cargo lift, or simply expand its capacity. This would also create more uses for money in the game and would make its economy slightly more interesting.
#3 — Ten-hour limit as an extra option
I love to play immersive sims on the hardest difficulty and in the most challenging way possible (e.g. never getting spotted and never killing anyone in Dishonored or Deus Ex). With that being said, I have a huge gripe with the 10-hour limit in System Shock that the game enforces on me on Mission Difficulty 3. Immersive sims are first and foremost about creative problem-solving, exploration, and getting lost and immersed in a game world. Thus, any kind of artificially enforced time limit goes against the fundamental, core design principles and spirituality of the ‘genre’. It was in the original, yes, and there was an even shorter time to stop SHODAN, but even back then, it was a strange and often disliked part of the game. Here’s the thing: the third mission difficulty actually adds a cool challenge to the game by only allowing the players to ‘respawn’ if they activated a Regeneration Bay on the floor they are on.
I would welcome this added challenge, but I simply can’t, because there’s no way 10 hours will be enough for me to finish this game — and I don’t want to, either. I want to take my time instead and explore every nook and cranny of Citadel Station. The way I see it, the developers made a similar mistake that Capcom did with Resident Evil 2 Remake. I love the limited save system (ink ribbons) of that series, but I just couldn’t bring myself to play through the game on Hardcore difficulty just to have access to this feature, because that difficulty was super unbalanced. The right way to implement features like this would be to make them available as additional modifiers/options that the players could toggle before starting a new game. Especially because I think right now System Shock does a really poor job communicating to players how different Mission Difficulty 3 could be for first-time playthroughs/players.
#4 — Better controls (lean toggle, radial menu/implants on HUD, etc.)
The game has some big problems when it comes to its controls, regardless if someone plays using a keyboard and mouse combo or a simple controller. For example, there is no option to toggle leaning, thus players have to hold down Q/E for that, which is problematic when they also want to strafe. Another key issue is how the inventory screen behaves with a controller, as the game tries to mimic the movement of a mouse instead of giving the players the ability to quickly snap between inventory cells using the D-Pad or one of the analog sticks. The biggest problem though is the lack of a radial wheel which would be extremely helpful not just for controller users, but also for those playing with a keyboard and mouse.
The game has tons of weapons and consumables that can be equipped and bound to buttons 1–8, and these are also displayed via the in-game HUD (action bar). The same cannot be said for implants, however — and there are eight of them. By default, aside from the flashlight, none were even bounded to a button when I installed the game, even though these are essential elements of the System Shock experience. And regardless of whichever buttons I’ll bind them to, let’s face it, it will be just overwhelming to try to memorize so many button-implant combinations, not to mention having to constantly get my hands off either the mouse or WASD to activate some of them. A radial menu would not just solve this problem, but would also make the whole implant switching/usage more intuitive and faster. Alternatively, the game at the very least should have a secondary action bar that would display what implants are bound to what buttons (maybe below or above the weapons/consumables action bar).
#5 — Flashlight
Make the flashlight work like an actual flashlight that casts light. That’s all. Because currently, System Shock has the worst and most unuseful flashlight I’ve ever seen in a video game. A lot of times I even wonder whether I actually turned it on, as its light radius is so narrow and weak.
