Nightdive offers hopeful update on System Shock 3’s future

Nightdive Studios has said it could soon clarify the future of System Shock 3, the immersive sim sequel that disappeared from the public domain in 2020.

System Shock 3 spent several years in development at Austin, Texas-based Otherside Entertainment – the studio helmed by original developers Paul Neurath and Warren Spector – before disappearing in 2020.

Eventually, a statement was published on Otherside’s website claiming that Tencent would be “taking the System Shock franchise forward”, but nothing has been heard of it since. Otherside has now moved onto another game, immersive sim Thick as Thieves.

Remaster specialist Nightdive holds the rights to the first two System Shock games, and has released a System Shock remake, with a SS2 remaster planned for June.

However, it clarified to VGC in 2022, the rights it licensed to Otherside for System Shock 3 had been sold on to Tencent, meaning it was now up to the Chinese conglomerate if the third game gets made.

Asked for an update on the situation at GDC this month, Nightdive’s director of business development Larry Kuperman admitted that System Shock 3 remains in a “very complicated” situation, but indicated that fans could receive clarification on its future “potentially within a year”.

“The situation around System Shock 3 is very complicated,” he said, adding that Nightdive did not yet have a concrete update for fans.

“Not as yet, not as yet. I don’t know when it’s going to clarify, but it could potentially be within a year. It could be, or it could take longer. That said, what I can say is that we have visions of what we can do within what we control.

“You’re going to see a remaster of System Shock 2. I’ve been asked twice earlier today why we didn’t do a remake, and I said, ‘are you somehow under the impression that because we do a remaster that we won’t be able to do a remake in the future?’ That might be something that I can either confirm or deny. But there’s going to be content coming out.”

Asked about the future of System Shock beyond the System Shock 2 remaster, Kuperman said: “We’ll see what happens. I mean, there’s stuff that we can do within the first and the second.”

Nightdive previously indicated that Tencent could also make additional System Shock sequels in the future, if it were to develop the third game and decide to continue. However, Nightdive could pursue cross-media projects, such as a previously announced live-action series from streaming platform Binge.