Developer Night Dive Studios’ remake of the original System Shock is coming to Kickstarter on June 29, revealed a post on the studio’s Facebook page. We first learned about it in November, before it was given the enormously befuddling label of System Shock Remastered, which doesn’t work since it’s a remake of a game Night Dive already remastered.
Still, it’s happening, and though its title is likely to confuse a great many people, at least you and I can take comfort in knowing its true identity. So long as System Shock 3 doesn’t start going by System Shock 1 + 2: The Not Bundle, or whatever, we should be fine.
But seriously, this industry needs to properly define these two easily and often misused terms before someone gets hurt. A remaster improves the original game while sharing many of the same assets, while a remake is built from scratch using the original game as a blueprint.
The former is connected to the original by the assets it borrows, and a remake is conceptually connected to the original game.
So yes, System Shock Remastered is a remake. The series has been dead long enough that you could also consider it a reboot, a revival, and maybe even a rejuvenation.
