How System Shock's Reboot Wrestles With Adapting Its Legacy

How much of a game's identity is tied up in its rough edges? What do you gain by smoothing those edges away? What do you lose? System Shock (1994) and System Shock (2023) serve as a nice case study for this line of thought. While 1994's System Shock is a seminal work whose impact echoes through to today it's also a game a lot of people simply refuse to play given its archaic input systems and low-fi graphics. Meanwhile, 2023's System Shock wants to bring the game to The People - but that means hammering a game that's full of awkward-but-interesting choices into something a bit more conventional. Does that smooth out the game's problems, or erase its identity? Let's take a look!