System Shock remake being made, and System Shock 3 is on the cards

[Xiphan]

I pretty much reacted in the same way, especially when I heard SHODAN again on the teaser site.

Well.

We'll see.

SS2 might still be worth it, as it runs on the Quake 2 engine, IIRC.

Nope, SS2 was built upon Looking Glass Studios' Dark Engine.

As much as I loved System Shock 2, I also can't in good conscience recommend that you buy it now. The gameplay is still great, but it has not aged well.

That is where the plethora of mods come in, many of which keep the game in a vanilla state while merely enhancing the resoultion of in-game textures. Here's an example from the Shock Texture Upgrade Project (SHTUP):



Then there are other mods that fix bugs or even offer hi-polygon replacement models!

On a different note, I have a theory why System Shock 2 wasn't as big a hit as the review scores suggest it should have been.

Half-Life. It was released in November 1998, while System Shock 2 was released in August 1999. Counter-Strike also came out in June.

While System Shock 2 did implement reloading and even switching to different ammo types on weapons, when you reloaded your hand just disappeared offscreen and came back when the gun was reloaded.

Half-Life fully animated the reloading. It also had alternate firing modes for weapons.

So yeah... Many of us were too distracted by Half-Life and its mods to notice System Shock 2 at the time.

Another argument is that SS2 was ahead of its time and this could've alienated people and contributed towards poor sales. While HL was considered revolutionary, it was still an ordinary FPS with a simpler gameplay experience by comparison. According to an article in PC Zone SS2 is considered a game that changed the world and even perfected the FPS/RPG hybrid, influencing many games since its release as a result.