"Let's finish it": After a 20-year wait, Nightdive would complete the SiN Episodes shooter series if its upcoming remaster is a success

Take the fight to the moon

SiN Episodes: Emergence was supposed to be the first instalment in a series that ran for nine episodes. Instead, it's the opening chapter in a story that has remained unfinished for 20 years. But all that could change.

"I do see a world, yes," Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick told me. The studio known for its remaster work now owns the rights to the SiN series and is currently working on SiN Reloaded, a re-release of the 1998 shooter that started the series. Kick says they could even go further than remaking SiN Episodes: Emergence. "Finishing eight more episodes might be a little ambitious, but it's certainly a possibility. If the reception to SiN Reloaded is overwhelmingly positive and it reignites a good amount of interest - that's all it would take, really."

Original developer Ritual Entertainment had plans for the rest of the episodic series, but it had barely started work on the second episode when the studio leadership sold itself to casual game developer MumboJumbo. So, I clarify, the message from Nightdive is that if enough people buy SiN Reloaded the studio will produce all-new SiN Episodes? "Yeah," he laughs. "In a roundabout way, yeah".

"One of the things that we really pride ourselves on at Nightdive is being able to go back, talk to the original developers, and understand what their intentions were for the final product. And then, hopefully, make up that ground that they weren't able to achieve with the time or budget that they originally had."

In other words, resurrecting SiN Episodes as a complete series is, Kick believes, just a logical extension of the kind of restoration work they've done on past projects. He cites the example of Shadow Man Remastered, a project that saw Nightdive restore three levels of previously cut content to the game. "We talked to one of the original devs, and he said, 'oh yeah, there were levels that were cut.' And sure enough, we're going through the source code and there's pieces of the levels still in there that they just left because of timing and money and meeting their publisher's deadlines and stuff.

"And so, using the documents that he still had, and the assets that were still part of that original game, we rebuilt those levels to the specifications that they had. And essentially we shipped the game that the original team had wanted to."

So, as part of the development of SiN Reloaded, Kick and the Nightdive team have been talking with Ritual Entertainment co-founder Robert Atkins, who I interviewed at length regarding SiN Episodes. "And talking to him today, it's clear Ritual had very extensive plans as to where the episodes were going to go and how the story was going to pan out," Kick explains. "There were designs, there were level layouts and they were fully committed to seeing this thing through, but just didn't get the chance." These materials are what Nightdive would use as their template for building out SiN Episodes 2, 3, and beyond.

And so I ask Ketcherside, Emergence's lead game designer and writer, about some of those plans. "In the first three episodes, we wanted to drill into Elexis's mutation experiments," he tells me, referring to the series' antagonist/evil biochemical CEO/hyper-sexualised mascot Elexis Sinclaire. "We were toying with the idea of her having done some groundwork beforehand and having seeded folks with a mutation trigger, so to speak." This lines up with the teaser that plays at the end of Emergence, which shows the streets of Freeport City under siege from giant mutants.

"And Elexis was actually gonna move the moon," Ketcherside laughs. "And that was gonna cause chaos and disrupt weather systems on earth, and that was gonna trigger a lot of the mutations and stuff that she wanted. She wanted to 'evolve humanity', and this was her way of forcing it." There was talk of adding new mechanics and player abilities to future instalments, too, such as a John Woo-style dive that was left on the cutting room floor of Episode One.

As for plans that went beyond the first handful of episodes? My sense from talking to both Atkins and Ketcherside is that these were hazy at best. That means if Nightdive were to head into production on SiN Episodes 4, 5, or beyond, they wouldn't be restoring so much as inventing. And while Nightdive obviously has form when it comes to unlikely resurrections, I do personally find it hard to imagine SiN being able to find a large enough audience to justify a sprawling episodic future in 2026. But, with Nightdive now the outright owners of the franchise, they do have an interest in making SiN as successful as it can possibly be.

Kick explained that he's been corresponding closely with Robert Atkins, as well as a handful of other members of the Ritual team. "I love speaking with him," Kick says of Atkins. "The fun thing is, the first time we got on a call, I could tell that, there was… not exactly apprehension, but there was definitely a sense of: who are these people? What's their real motive? Are they just trying to milk this thing? And within five minutes, I feel like I've got a friend for life."

And if an Emergence remake or SiN Episodes: Part 2 does become a reality, it seems that this collaboration may yet deepen. "Personally, I would love to see it," Kick says. "It would be great to work with Robert in that capacity, and be able to say 'hey, guess what? Dig up all those design documents - you're the lead on this project. Let's finish it.' I would love to have that phone call."