System Shock Revival Revived

A Kickstarter update from Nightdive Studios has the latest on their plans for a System Shock remake following February's news that development was going on hiatus to reevaluate the project's direction (thanks Task). It seems they've cut some staff, or as they put it, they've said "goodbye to some of the developers that you’ve come to know through past updates," saying this leaves them with "a concentrated team that consists of the original developers who worked on the Unity demo." At the time they took a break, they noted the game's crowdfunding success lead to an expansion of their vision, but now they say they are returning to their original vision to simply modernize the action/RPG. They also offer reassurances they are not starting over. Here's word:
So what does this mean?
It means we’ve gone back to the original vision we shared with you at the start of our Kickstarter campaign - this time with more reliable performance and higher fidelity visuals thanks to the Unreal Engine.

Are we starting over, is this all that’s done?
No, we’re not starting over. We have been able to re-use the majority of work we’ve done over the past year and we’re making significant progress in a very short amount of time. With that said we’ll be inviting our highest tier backers to privately test the game beginning in September at which point we estimate that the game will be fully playable, from start to finish. The majority of the art won’t be finished, but we’ll be ready to start high-level testing.

What else is changing?
Along with the return to the previous art style and overall direction, the audio department is also re-re-re-examining their priorities, and drawing new conclusions.