Nightdive shows VR controls for System Shock 2 Enhanced Edition

Shodan, the villainous AI from System Shock

(Image credit: Irrational Games)

When Nightdive Studios ran a Kickstarter to fund a remake of the original System Shock in a new engine, it fell short of a three-million dollar stretch goal for VR support. While that remake is still in development (fingers crossed for a 2021 release), Nightdive are working on an enhanced edition of its sequel at the same time. We hadn't heard much about progress on that lately, until this tweet from Nightdive.

Our Notifications: "Is System Shock 2 EE still a thing?"Us:🐒🔧 pic.twitter.com/nYgX0xnVBaJanuary 10, 2021

That's System Shock 2 being played with a controller from Valve's virtual reality setup, the Index. Seems like it has some nice one-to-one arm-swinging action, knocking down a ladder and killing a psychic monkey with the wrench while shouting, "Die, monkey!" If you played System Shock 2 back in the day, you'll understand the feeling.

There are several parts of System Shock 2 that would be amazing in virtual reality, like being menacingly monologued at by Shodan. It's a pretty scary game thanks to its impressive sound design and though, I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that in VR, as cathartic as it would be to brain a screeching monkey.

As for System Shock 3, which was being developed by Otherside Entertainment, since it was announced that publisher Tencent had taken over in May there have been no new developments.

Now, when can we expect a VR edition of Thief: The Dark Project?

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.