Nightdive Studios is largely known as a remaster studio, one that largely focuses on obscure 90s and early 2000s PC games. Outside of its remaster work, Nightdive famously remade the original System Shock in one of the best video game remakes of all time, and there’s a hope that Nightdive will follow suit with remakes of other games.
Released in 2023, Nightdive’s System Shock Remake was the studio’s first-ever remake, and its development was so harrowing that no one could blame the studio for never wanting to remake another game. However, as Nightdive founder and CEO Stephen Kick explained in a recent interview on our FRVR Podcast, the team behind the game is still active.
“The one thing I really came away with once that was all said and done was that the people that went through that trench and came out the other side, they just had a wealth of experience and knowledge that I don’t know if we could ever replicate or find again,” he said. “And it was like, well, I don’t want to tear them apart and put them all on various KEX [Engine] projects doing remaster work.”
Far too often in the games industry, we see teams split up after their projects have completed. This leads to a severe loss in shared experience and shared knowledge, especially in the face of mass layoffs across the industry. While Kick didn’t necessarily say a System Shock 2 Remake is actively in the works, the team still exists to make another remake in the future as remasters wouldn’t “be the most efficient use of their time”.
“We’ve kept them together with the explicit purpose of doing more remakes,” Kick told us. “It’s exciting. We’re doing some cool stuff that I can’t talk about. But remasters and remakes, I think, are definitely our thing. That’s what we’re doing to do.”
As for a System Shock 2 Remake, when asked if the game needs a remake, Kick explained that the team “just did the 25thanniversary remaster, and the work that was done was just exceptional”. While a remake could happen in the future, the point is that Nightdive is keen to make the original games as playable as possible for all players across all systems, and the recent remaster is a great way to experience the game for the first time.
While we can’t say what Nightdive’s remake team is working on next, the remake team is working on something. Yes, there’s a hope from fans—myself included—that System Shock 2 is next on the block, but with the studio’s penchant for under-appreciated FPS games, we could see something entirely different.
On the other hand, Nightdive’s next remaster release is Thief: The Dark Project Remastered, a much-welcome return to another brilliant Looking Glass game. Combining everything from the original release and Thief Gold, as well as something new, the remaster is currently in the works at the studio.
For more on our chat with Stephen Kick, read about the System Shock TV show that was in the works back in 2021. While it’s now cancelled, the CEO has hope that the iconic sci-fi gaming series will, one day, make the jump to live-action.
