Highly anticipated 'System Shock' remake on hiatus indefinitely

After raising over $1.3 million on Kickstarter from over 20,000 backers in 2016, the developers behind the remake of System Shock announced that the project is now on hiatus.

Nightdive Studios, a development team known for remaking classic games, announced Friday that its project to remake System Shock is on hiatus as they try to get the project back on track. The announcement, written by CEO Stephen Kick, says that the studio strayed from its development path and tried to do too much.

When System Shock originally came out in 1994, it was regarded as one of the most innovative first-person shooters of all time and served as inspiration for later games like Bioshock and Dead Space.

Nightdive Studios originally promised to remake System Shock in 2016 with a Kickstarter goal of $900,000. The studio gave relatively frequent updates on the progress of the game, so the revelation that the project is going on hiatus may have come as a bit of a shock to backers.

Kick, who takes responsibility for the status of the remake, said the team's vision began to change during development.

"We moved from a remaster to a completely new game," he wrote. "We shifted engines from Unity to Unreal, a choice that we don’t regret and one that has worked out for us. With the switch we began envisioning doing more, but straying from the core concepts of the original title... The more that we worked on the game, the more that we wanted to do, and the further we got from the original concepts that made System Shock so great."

Unfortunately, the statement did not include any details about how long the hiatus will last, but Kick wanted to assure backers that the project is not canceled.

"We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project," he wrote. "Please accept my personal assurance that we will be back and stronger than ever. System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled."