Nightdive Studios released the System Shock remake last year to a positive but not uncritical reception. However, developers are still tweaking the game. A new patch, coming April 11, reworks the ending, introduces a female gender option, and gameplay improvements.
System Shock gets a female Hacker, a reworked ending, combat changes, and more
Nightdive originally proposed adding a woman version of Hacker as a Kickstarter stretch goal eight years ago. “We knew we wanted to patch that in,” Nightdive founder Stephen Kick told PC Gamer. “It was just one of those things that we knew wouldn’t have any kind of immediate effect on gameplay, but just having that option kind of adds to the immersive quality of the game.”
System Shock is a first-person game, and Hacker is a silent protagonist. However, Nightdive still needed to record new NPC dialogue and design a new character model for cut scenes and death screens. However, Kick thinks that adding gender options makes it easier for players to step inside the character.
“It’s one of those early gaming staples, where it’s an everyman or everywoman kind of scenario,” he explained. “You could put yourself in the shoes of the character and kind of project yourself into the world as opposed to there being a preset personality that you’re playing as.”
Unfortunately, developers didn’t have as much to say about the changes to System’ Shock’s ending. However, the changes mostly seem to involve overhauling the game’s controversial final boss to play more like the rest of the game.
The new update also introduces “Mutant Combat Enhancements” and adds a waypoint system to Easy mode. However, it’s not yet clear precisely what the upcoming combat enhancements entail.
