http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/04/syndicate-remake-looking-more-and-more-likely/
Bit of documentation showing that the trademark filings last year were real

Hold the phone dude it's not all bad news. Look at the other name on the list after Electronic Arts, Starbreeze! Ignoring the horrible DRM Atari used Starbreeze managed a good job on the Riddick games and they do Grimdark well which Syndicate needs.

With Starbreeze behind it I'm still somewhat confident that it won't be terrible.

So it'll be another FPS?

Way to early to say. I doubt they are even in planning stages. This is just a statement of intent really.

This has been on the cards for about a year now. Some development must have been undertaken by now. In fact it might have been in some form of development since Dark Athena.
But, when you think about it, first person tactical sections need not in any way be a bad thing. As long as they leave the rest of the game as is it could work well.

If they're going to change it from squad level RTS (which could still work using a DoW2 style system), they really need to make it a 3rd person squad based shooter/adventure

I always saw remakes in Hollywood as a lack of creativity on Hollywood's part. Now it's happening to video games. I should try and see them as an opportunity for newer audiences to play old classics with better graphics, but I seriously doubt older gamers who have played the classics in their youth will find the same thrills in the remakes that they did in the originals. They'll always have something to compare them to also.
Surely with today's technology we can make prettier and more complex games than we did yesterday but as a player or as a movie viewer, what you really remember from an experience at the theater or at playing a game is not so much the pretty pictures but how the game or movie made you feel. The level of fun and entertainment you had with a product is what really has to be surpassed in a remake to make it successful.

While what you said is true, a large part of gamer's personal favourite old games is largely emotional, and something that can't really be re-achieved. When I re-play BG, it isn't nearly as good as I remember it for example.
However while I havn't played syndicate, I loved X-com apocalypse and rebooting the series as a FPS is just disappointing. I hope it turns out good but I would rather it be a tactical game, not just because I want to play the original in a spruced up engine (and relive those great X-com moments- which I accept I can't to an extent) but because I like tactical games, X-com was loved due to the gameplay and genre, by changing it to a FPS they keep the name but abandon that which all the fans loved about it.
I accept a new X-com tactical game won't make me feel like I did when I played it when I was 13, but I would still enjoy it more than yet ANOTHER FPS.
Regardless, I hope it turns out well.

SNES Syndicate was way different to the PC version.

Me too. I guess this will be more successful than the X-COM remake, starbreeze did created a good atmosphere for the newer riddick game.
Maybe they are really still planning it, discussing it. But is going on for a year or two already, they called it Project RedLime.

Fallout, System Shock (sort-of), Sam and Max, Monkey Island, X-Com, Syndicate, Deus Ex...
All these things have come back or are coming back, with mixed reactions.
I'm not sure I like any of the new things.
Too many changes for an old-timer perhaps...
I have little hope that XCOM, new Syndicate or DE3 will be any good. DE3 has my highest hope though.

They also have a lot of love for the original. Which is certainly a lot more encouraging than XCOM's name being slapped on a generic and unrelated FPS.

And slapped on an engine and game structure that the team previously worked on, bioshock 2.
Isn't thaaat bad to be dev. by a B2 team... but we all want something unique for X-COM and Syndicate also, not a generic work.