Here is a game that I’d never expect to get the remastered treatment, the 1998 console and PC shooter Forsaken is coming back thanks to Nightdive Studios, the same team responsible for the recent remaster of System Shock and Turok 1 and 2.
According to Nightdive’s founder and chief executive Stephen Kick, Nightdive is taking care to remaster the work in a way that will remind fans of the game rather than just give it a modern-day makeover. The game will feature the original polygon counts of objects in the game, however thanks to the Kex engine, it will now perform at 60 frames per second, something that the original could never do (and struggled to match even half of that.)
“This is how the developers saw themselves,” Kick told Polygon in an interview, “this is the goal they had in mind, they just didn’t have the hardware at the time. I feel like it’s the ultimate experience for Forsaken.”
Forsaken was developed by Probe Entertainment and Iguana Entertainment with Acclaim acting as a publisher. The game itself was a First Person Shooter which offered “Six-degrees-of-movement” which was a first for the console crowds.
“It was one of the first games I remember playing after getting my first 3D accelerator [card],” Kick said during the interview. “It did an exceptional job of introducing people to things like dynamic lighting. I want to say it was the first console title to do the whole six-degrees-of-movement [concept], which people had been enjoying on PC with games like Descent. I think that’s why it became kind of a classic, the first of its kind on Nintendo 64 and then PS One.”
Forsaken Remastered will launch on July 31st and will be priced at $19.99 on Steam and GOG as well as Xbox One with Pre-orders available now. The game will also feature widescreen and 4K monitor support, as well as OpenGL 3.2 and DirectX 11. All levels and enemies unique to the Nintendo 64 edition (Forsaken 64) will also be included in the Remastered, and Online Multiplayer will support up to 16 players across all original modes (Free for All, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, One Flag CTF, Bounty Hunt and Team Bounty Hunt.)