Otherside Entertainment, currently developing the Kickstarted Underworld Ascendant, has revealed that they're developing a new entry in the System Shock series, the last of which was released in the tail end of 1999. Here's why that's a big deal.

Back in 1994 gaming was in a very different place. Game demos were passed around on floppy disks. Doom and Civilization ruled the world. Windows 95 wasn't even a thing yet. Looking Glass Technologies, which housed innovators like Warren Spector (Deux Ex), Doug Church (Thief) and Harvey Smith (Dishonored), was known for the revolutionary role-playing series Ultima and wanted to create an immersive simulation that wasn't fantasy-based. They opted for science fiction, and System Shock, a first-person adventure game that cast players as a hacker going up against an artificial intelligence known as SHODAN hell-bent on destroying Earth, was born.

At first glance, the original System Shock looks like a Doom clone. There are pixelated corridors where all sorts of nightmares lumber and roll about, such as reprogrammed droids or humans who have mutated into zombies thanks to corrupted cybernetic implants, all of them looking to turn you into red paste. However, the similarities end there, as the game reveals its role-playing tendencies by requiring you to use an inventory system to store items and to loot the bodies of destroyed enemies. Player movement is a bit clumsy and so is using the cursor to interact with the inventory or objects in the environment. As a result, System Shock is a game where you have to exercise caution to survive since you can't rely on twitchy reflexes to save the day. You have to plan your battles carefully while lurking in the shadows, learning which weapons work best against which enemies.

However, what was truly special about the original System Shock is how it delivered its story. Not wanting to develop any dialogue trees for the game, Looking Glass set about creating an interactive narrative that didn't require the player to talk to non-playable characters, opting instead to let exploration serve as the story itself. After a brief intro cinematic that sets up the game's premise, the player is dumped into a space station and tasked with recovering e-mails  that act as signposts telling them where to go and what to do.

In recent years this technique of turning collectibles into guidance systems has become one of the primary methods of interactive storytelling because it's a simple, sometimes elegant way to have the player be an active participant in an interactive experience. Picked up a note containing the combination to a safe filled with riches or details that reveal who your target is in Dishonored? Searched a house high and low for clues for the whereabouts of your sister in Gone Home? Listened to the recorded final testaments of dying crew members in Soma? All of those moments are descendants of System Shock's narrative design.

While it was once a hassle to track down a copy of System Shock, Night Dive's recently released enhanced edition solved that problem. Unfortunately, for all the game's innovations, it's still a pain to play thanks to an archaic control scheme that makes the experience feel more like a history lesson than an engaging time. 

Luckily, there's System Shock 2.