Including controller assist to the System Shock 2 remaster meant re-recording decades-old voice performing

System Shock 2 opens with playable character creation that additionally features as a tutorial. Your trainee goggle-wearing badass walks off the road right into a recruitment heart and indicators as much as be a marine, or an engineer, or a psychic black ops agent. You then select the place you will be posted for every tour—selections that alter your stats—and an teacher teaches you the way to use your talents.

Which created an surprising downside for Nightdive when it got here time to do certainly one of its Kex engine remasters, as lead producer Daniel Grayshon defined in a latest episode of Nightdive’s Deep Dives. As a result of System Shock 2, not like a few of the early FPSes Nightdive has remastered, was absolutely voice-acted.

“We might not likely ever finished a voice recording session in any respect for a Kex sport,” Grayshon stated. “We might by no means actually wanted to. These older video games would normally simply have textual content prompts on the display saying ‘press X to leap’ and issues like that. Shock 2 doesn’t have that. If you go into the coaching heart you get informed, ‘To leap merely press the spacebar. And you may have to reload this gun, press 2 on the keyboard to equip your gun, after which press the R key to reload the gun. Press this key on the keyboard to alter ammo varieties.’ It is like, oh my goodness, this isn’t going to work in any respect. What can we do?”

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“Optimized Controller assist” is likely one of the System Shock 2 remaster’s key options, however you’ll be able to’t have gamepad gamers being informed to right-click on a bag of chips to eat them. The remaster would not have voiceover telling you to press the right-trigger both. As a substitute, the brand new voice performing performs for everybody and avoids mentioning bodily controls altogether. “To drop an merchandise,” it says, “spotlight the merchandise and select ‘Drop’ from the actions menu.”

Which, for those who’re taking part in with keyboard and mouse, you can’t do. Objects solely spotlight you probably have a controller. Proper-clicking makes use of them and left-clicking allows you to drag them round, which is how one can drop gadgets out of your stock with a mouse. This has confused some folks on the Steam dialogue discussion board. It would not appear to be an ideal resolution, and whereas I respect the trouble put into this transformation, I sort of want the unique voiceover would play if you do not have a gamepad plugged in.