System Shock 2 is getting an enhanced edition remake, which seems to be a trend within the industry lately, and the developers, Nightdive Studios, have now given a little more detail as to what they hope to achieve in terms of goals for this new HD version.

While there's no doubt that System Shock 2 is a classic, it hasn't aged very well, with it's models, textures and graphics engine very much showing their vintage at this point, being released as it was back in 1999, which is twenty years ago this year. 

While the company have not stated much about graphical enhancements or reworked audio, as you might expect, they have gone on record stating that updating the co-op multiplayer element to modern standards, as well as focusing on mod support, are key to their goals.

Our priority with the Enhanced Edition is to be able to deliver an updated co-op multiplayer component. As of right now starting a co-op campaign is needlessly complicated and we're going to address that by implementing features that will enable a more modern and streamlined experience.

The company's statement on mod support is interesting, and suggests to me that the re-release will be the original game engine, updated, rather than a total rebuild in a more modern game engine. That makes me wonder just how enhanced this version will be, but having seen what Doom 2 is capable of with Ray Tracing support, anything is possible.

Our other priority is to ensure that all existing mods and fan missions are compatible with the Enhanced Edition, but much of that will rely on the cooperation of the mod community. We have some other surprises that we'll be revealing in the future.

This is great news, though, as the System Shock 2 modding community will already have a solid base of work to lean on when the new enhanced edition releases. There's a lot of fan enhancements and patches out there that really add to the game, so if these can be carried over, that's great news.