Remakes: How Different Should They Be?

[Nz17]

How faithful should a remake or "re-imagining" of a game be to the original game? How different should it be for it to be worthwhile? Should companies that want to make remakes just focus on sequels instead of rehashing the same story and gameplay of the original? Should companies instead put their efforts into making sure the original games can be played on today's consoles via faithful emulation of the originals instead of higher-priced remakes? Should things be more like the early old days when innovation was seen as the key to success instead of sequels and remakes - kind of like during the golden age of Activision and Imagic? And what about the same for movies, TV shows, books, comics, or other series?

[YoshiM]

Oof...tough question to answer with some objectivity. Personally, it'd be nice if companies DON'T crank out the remakes or reboots and give people something fresh. If you're going to dive into the back catalog, then bring the originals back BUT make them more accessible to the modern audience, like the NES/SNES/GEN/TG16 minis do with save states. That way we folk that grew up with the games who don't have the same amount of time as then can enjoy these titles and go back to them where we left off and new folks have that save state in case they get their rears handed to them. Resist the urge to redo the game with a fresh coat of paint. That's my thought anyway.

However, playing on nostalgia is big business and it's a "safe bet" to do something that's already been treaded on. It's just doing it right is the hard part to try to keep the old and new audiences.

[Gameguy]

It depends on the game, and how the remake turns out. Plenty of remakes are better than the original, others are worse or overall pointless. I'm pretty sure the first Leisure Suit Larry was a remake of a text adventure. There's also enhanced versions like early VGA upgrades to earlier 16 colour games on PC, these are usually good. Other old arcade games like Pong or Centipede were remade into new games, these don't really replace the original versions and are also good.

It mostly depends on how badly the first game played whether a remake is really worth playing over the original, usually I prefer to play the original version.

[ArcadePerfect]

I feel the Resident Evil remake on GameCube and the more recent Resident Evil 2 Remake on PS4/Xbox One captured the essence of the originals perfectly while updating visuals & controls to a modern standard.

[kupomogli]

I've actually been enjoying these brand new remakes better than what we've received as a graphical remake. If I want to go play these older games, I can go back and play these older games on pretty much any of the systems that I have them on. A graphical remake is fine, but honestly they're just the same game.

The remakes follow the same game sure, but you're having an overall different experience, so whether it's Resident Evil, Wild ARMs Alter Code F, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Final Fantasy 7, DmC Devil May Cry, Castlevania Chronicles, Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals, Ys Oath in Felghana, etc, they're all new games and that interests me more.

[mailman187666]

I'm okay with sequels, I'm not really that big on remasters of games that were already on HD systems. Something like Medevil went for PS1 to PS4, I liked that. A PS3 game remastered on PS4, not so much. I don't think I'm the target audience for remasters though. The only time I really get into them is if it's a game or series that I missed the first time around, such as the first 3 Uncharted games. I didn't play the PS3 versions, so I picked up the trilogy on PS4. I think it was worth waiting to play those on PS4.

[Edmond Dantes]

I feel the Resident Evil remake on GameCube and the more recent Resident Evil 2 Remake on PS4/Xbox One captured the essence of the originals perfectly while updating visuals & controls to a modern standard.

Can't say I agree personally. For me a big problem with the RE remakes is that they take games that originally had more of a fun/silly vibe, and go all edgey/dark on them. This is a bigger problem with RE2 I feel, but overall Resident Evil as a serious psychological horror that could compete with Silent Hill just doesn't work.

In general, I think there's only ever one reason to do a remake: that being if the original creator feels the original screwed up. Even this is tenuous though, and could lead to George Lucas situations where even the remake just isn't as good as the version they have in their heads.

[Niku-Sama]

i think thats kinda loaded for different reasons most people think.

I think it depends on the game...

for instance i think if you were to remake superman or ET they would have to be ground up for what the og creator really wanted

but on other games like say ridge racer or ace combat, as long as you update the way the game looks for the modern era and kept controls and music as close as possible to the originals you'd be safe

[kupomogli]

In general, I think there's only ever one reason to do a remake

Now two things I have to say to this, first off, I don't give a crap what the original creator wants, they don't own the IP, more on that in a bit because I'm going to go through some thorough examples.

The other though is that people state "the original creator" like that has any real meaning. Now the director does have a hand in directing where the project goes, obviously, but many ideas and aspects of the game aren't theirs and too many unknown developers are left unknown for only one person to very often receive the credit. Often times this can be seen as a fluke, I mean look at Tabata who was the creator of Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 who really just used influences from the previously created Parasite Eve to trip and actually make a good game, because not only was Type 0 a brand new game he was allowed to direct a pretty bad game, but also Final Fantasy 13 which he had three years to take what was already created and make a good game. Three freaking years for what we got. Is it fair to say that Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 is a good game for the most part due to Tabata? I would say so because everything else he directed was trash, but the people under him before he quit the company to start his own studio as some super star developer are never going to be recognized.

However, being the director also means that if it's a bad idea, those ideas are shot down and the director determines what is in the game or not, and as much as I love Matsuno games, he makes near perfect games in every single way and then complete and utterly broken in one aspect making them truly unplayable, but this really depends on the game. And this is where I don't think they should care whether the original developer gives their blessing or not, because I'm going to point out several game breaking issues on many Matsuno games. The original Tactics Ogre is one of my favorite games of all time, but when you are literally two levels below the enemy, the enemy has a MASSIVE advantage over you, and the experience system is worse than it could have and should have been to be honest, it's not completely unbalanced, as they did add training mode and it takes no time at all if characters are more than one level under the highest level character to get everyone on the same level. Let's not forget how agility effects both speed and accuracy, dexterity has no use whatsoever, and you're required to cross class with Ninja or Archer to make people hit the enemy, and everyone knows just how broken these characters are.

Now, who do they have to develop and rework a remake of the same game on the PSP? Matsuno. Now, again, nearly everything in the game is perfect. Of course it was already a nearly perfect game, but there's not one, not two, but three major issues with this release that make it completely broken. Every time you get a new class it starts at level 1 and the class is useless. This requires an unbelievable amount of grinding if you ever want to use new classes. Weapons and armor have a level requirement, which a character even one level below is worthless compared to everone else because they can't equip equipment on par with everyone else. Tactics Ogre has some pretty huge maps compared to some of these games, and on the original game movement was good. Movement on the PSP version however was reduced. This means mages move three spaces at a time, nearly everyone else moves four, with Ninja moving five. This makes it an incredible slog to get anywhere on the map, putting far more time than it should take and despite reducing the power of archers, making archery even better than before.

If a developer wants to make a new game and they get the okay from the owner of the IP, I don't think it matters who develops it as long as it's good, because just because they're a veteran of the industry means nothing. IGA who is falsely branded the creator of SotN, he's not he only co developed it, has made several games much worse, and his first one Harmony of Dissonance, despite enjoying is a very broken unbalanced game that is nothing more than a rip off of the card system from Circle of the Moon with the different books and weapons as well as what SotN hoped to achieve. He happened to create a game that was on equal footing with SotN with Aria of Sorrow again, but instead decided that what if every enemy gave a unique spell or skill which was a great idea and it worked well. It worked well in the second game Dawn of Sorrow, again, a game on equal footing to SotN. However it was Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia that, while not bad, show that IGA really has no clue what makes a good game because these games were full of straight hallways with little variation, and both of these games, especially Order of Ecclesia were heavily effected by weapon type damage making the games even worse. Again, good and decent games, but major issues between both, oh, and once again reusing assets aka SotN as a sort of way to extend the game as both games had nearly half the assets reused atleast once. Let's not forget Lament of Innocence which had a good combat system was nothing but hallways, and then Curse of Darkness he felt the hallways were great so he made hallways even longer with these long, long, long hallways with nothing in between, only to make the combat even more repetitive(although the combat wasn't bad, it's like Dynasty Warriors yes, but good with some of the mechanics they added.) Don't even get me started about NanoBreaker. That game was complete trash.

So yeah. Excuse me if I don't have faith or give a rats ass what sort of permission that these directors give games. It's the development teams behind the directors, a good director will only guide the game to be a bit better than it would be otherwise.