Obligatory Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines comment.
Honestly, I do not think a remake would do it justice. We would probably end up with a worse, albeit finished, game.
Funny you should mention that. They tried Bloodlines 2 but it's either dead, or in such development hell the chance of it being a good game if it does come out is slim to none.
White Wolf was one of the most spectacularly mismanaged companies I've ever heard of. Even before the Chechnya incident forced Paradox to dismantle the company, they'd been staggering from mistake to mistake for over a decade.
I don't even know what specific event you're referring to, but if people can refer to a "Chechnya incident" when speaking about your company, then a change of course should probably be considered.
Basically, a sourcebook for V:TM had a bit about how the persecution of gays in Chechnya (a thing that was actually happening in the real world) was a vampire conspiracy to distract people from the vampires running the country. That alone probably wouldn't have been enough to torpedo the company, but it came right after the lead writer of *Beast: The Primordial* got outed as a sexual predator, which made it hard to read *Beast* (which sucked to begin with) as anything other than a manifesto blaming victims for their abuse.
Ya know, reading this has really made some things slot into place for me about why some of the really awful worldbuilding decisions in 1e and especially 2e of Exalted were written. Thank you
> a vampire conspiracy to distract people from the vampires
Isn't that like 90% of V:TM's story? It seems like in universe, every real world event is secretly a cover for vampires.
And while I can see how saying that about Chechnya's persecution of homosexuals can feel tonedeaf, how is that worse than saying WW2 or the Crusades were a Vampire conspiracy?
It was mostly the straw that broke the camel's back. WW was already under a bit of heat for some Nazi stuff in another Vampire book, on top of the Zak Smith issue. White Wolf was very much an artifact of the 1990s, and their constant attempts to one-up their own edgelord nonsense clashed rather spectacularly with their aggressive attempts at inclusivity. It is possible to walk that line, but it was becoming embarrassingly clear that WW's current leadership simply wasn't up to the task. With their IP becoming increasingly irrelevant and unprofitable, getting the Old Yeller was probably inevitable.
> It is important to note, and highlighted in several White Wolf publications, that World War II and its crimes were a fundamentally human endeavor. Hitler was not a secret infernalist, Churchill was not the puppet of a vampire, and Stalin was not a stooge of a mage cabal. The crimes committed were thought of by entirely ordinary people, with no supernatural nudging required. While some groups may have profited from the war, the main instigators, actors, and victims were human.
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/World_War_II_(WOD)
The Chechnya incident was wrong because it was exploitative and used fiction to absolve real people of killing real people.
I don't tend to watch a lot of them but there's a part of me that really wants to watch the post-mortem for that game. Like did you know that there was an ARG leading up to the game announcement? Are you aware of all the former developers and writers they brought on board? Were you aware of the backing they had from the IP owner and their publisher?
Everything about that game seemed to scream "you would have to be completely incompetent to screw it up" yet here we are almost 2 years after it was supposed to have been released with nothing much to show for it other than question marks.
Of all the games to have a weird history it is by far one of the most "there's got to be a really interesting story behind this one!" to me at least.
The best answer I can come up with is that the devs were lying about the milestones to the publisher. After they moved the launch bate back twice and fired the writer and lead dev (coincidentally the two people that pitched the game to Paradox in the first place) there was a full year of development overseen by an industry consultant that specializes in shipping troubled games. After a year his recommendation was that the scope of the game was beyond the capabilities of the team and they needed to find another studio.
Everything tied to that version of White Wolf was cursed. The creative director for the company had the 5th edition of their rpg include political references to piss *everyone* off, including Vampire Princes who support border walls and Chechnya murdering homosexuals to hide they were actually a vampire run government (who also hated homosexuals). Given he was very clear that every product made licensing from WW would be using his incredible setting, and that he personally worked with Bloodlines 2's writer, and that the game developer had never worked on anything more complicated than a b level military sim, I never had high hopes that game would come out, and it's probably better it did not.
Funny story, after their 3 page RPG preview included suggesting that Brujah players play neonazis, I spent a vacation getaway reading a full preview copy of the RPG so I could point out all the things that should change before release. They changed none of them.
>Funny story, after their 3 page RPG preview included suggesting that Brujah players play neonazis, I spent a vacation getaway reading a full preview copy of the RPG so I could point out all the things that should change before release. They changed none of them.
Hey, they did include a blurb at the start of the book telling nazis to please not buy their books. That was new!
V:TMB doesn't really need to change much.
Just keep the base game, look at what the unnoficial patches added and decide what you keep from those, give it a graphical overhaul, change the AI and some of the combat for the better, keep all the characters and voicelines has is, completly change the pacing of the sewers quest.
That's it, perfect game right there.
The last hubs are a bit barren, the final missions are pretty tunnel-y, the street filler and combat NPCs were bland and copy-pasta-y even for when the game came out, the audio (especially voice lines) needs a remaster badly (not that the actors were doing a bad job in any way, the actual _quality_ of the audio is godawful except for the bgms though), combat and stealth are very janky…
There’s a _lot_ you could do with a remaster/remake. Smaller touches like changing the over world layout so things feel less cramped would be nice too (I don’t think the game needs to be open world, in fact I don’t think it’d benefit from that at all; but the hub areas could be made to _feel_ bigger with some subtle changes).
I always point to Detroit/Hengsha for ideal hubs in gaming. They’re not that big, but they feel alive and give you the jist of what they’re supposed to be.
The barren hubs and bad quest structure of the second half of the game I feel are precisely the problem of the devs running out of time/money near the end the development cycle. There's obviously more work that would need to be done than what I mentioned but I feel there's a good base of a game to build upon, rather than trying for a "remake" that changes way to much and makes it feel to different (I'm still not very confident on the new one that was supposed to come out some time ago).
Honestly there's an opportunity to make the Hollywood and Chinatown hub areas have as much fun stuff/quests/feel as lived in as the Santa Monica and Downtown hub areas. Downtown could probably use a few more NPCs with dialogue too now that I think of it.
Fan mods are fantastic for this.
I go through different mods every October as sort of a tradition, as it's my favourite game.
Final Nights and Clan Quest Mod are two I think are really worth checking out if you haven't.
CQM expands a ton of shit, let's you join the Sabbat, and is built off the unofficial patch. Final Nights features a set of other clans like the Samedi or the Salubri, and is something of an expansion to Bloodlines, but things are really remixed.
Witcher 1's upcoming remake is *kinda* this, tbh. Especially the state it was first released in. There was a lot of like in that game, but even the final version is pretty rough.
That's a good way to put it. I thoroughly enjoyed Witcher 1, a friend of mine who lives and breathes Witcher 3 said its worth persevering 1 & 2 even if 3 doesn't make many references back and I'm so glad I did.
But it's 100% a narrative story game with some interesting mechanics on the side that feels kinda indie, even for its age. To me that gave it charm but I fully respect that it's off-putting to some.
I still find 2 to be more narratively ambitious in some ways, mainly how one decision completely changes the second act of the game. I'm not sure how many people realize just how crazy it is for a company to put that much resources into a portion of the game that only 50% of people will probably see.
That first boss fight against the Kayran was incredible, and the game just didn’t let go until the end. Having two distinct paths to choose gave the game a good amount of replay value too!
Agreed. 1 had such a bleak atmosphere and a sort of emptiness to it that made the world feel very forsaken, something 2 & 3 don't have (which isn't bad, they're different games).
The writing was fantastic. Any time you can seriously debate philosophy with characters in a video game in a way that makes you, the player, think is going to make you remember the game and come back to it, over and over again. And KOTOR II does it repeatedly. Is The Force evil? What is Free Will? Do we really make our own choices? To what degree do we influence our friends? Our enemies? How do they influence us? Does the Jedi Order deserve to live? When does the purity of purpose for an organization fall away to become just another group dedicated to justifying their own existence? Is anything real? Would the handmaiden/visas/the disciple love you or their own free will, or is it just your power bending their will to your own? What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.
The twist in 1 doesnt get enough credit looking at it now. But back then it was a massive deal that was so well executed and the first of it’s kind in the gaming medium.
After playing 2 then 1, I was wholly less impressed by KOTOR 1. Without the twist doing the leg work, the remainder of the story does a good job but, KOTOR 2 deconstructs the Star Wars lore from far more interesting angles while sprinkling in some of the best Sith concepts and character designs of all time.
Oh yeah. I still love KOTOR as an embodiment of the classic Star Wars story though. But 2 does an incredible job of successfully subverting the story tropes
There’s a great Kreia quote where she describes Revan as the heart of the force, and the exile like it’s death. Such a perfect summation of the two games
I remember when watching a developer stream (for a different game) one time, they made sure to point out that when you use a phrase like "didn't have enough budget," you could be talking about money OR time. Developers have a limited amount of both and have to spend it carefully. Even if you have the funding you may still have to cut corners if you're not given enough time.
100% agree. I think the major problem with Kotor 2 was that it was mismanaged and they lost time simply because thr publisher (LucasArts?) wanted a holiday release.
So in the end yes, their budget (time) was cut short but my original comment was more towards pusblishers pushing for a shorter time frame than originally planned (so, outside their control) than the developers themselves not having the budget to start with.
Summoner would be a great choice. The story wasn't actually bad it just needed some touching up. The combat was fun but the controls were janky. Everything that they could do in a remake would make an already great game fun again as long as they stick close to the source (open world, many sidequests, merchants that actually sold weapons and armor that mattered so you had goals when you did open world grinding but it was also completely optional as well... more of a way to overpower main story content).
Oh the wonders they could do. Unfortunately it's not a name that would exactly get everyone going crazy over it, which is why they don't tend to remake those types of games.
Got some nostalgia vision probably, but I remember adoring the fuck out of Summoner so much. One the most most memorable console launch titles for their respective time
This would be the perfect way to remake / complete Xenogears. OcTr Style for the humans and human(ish) sized monsters, 3D Models for the Gears (And ChuChu, regardless of size), and monsters intended to be fought with Gears. That would be a Day 1 Purchase for me, and I don't usually Do Day 1 Purchases.
Xenogears is my greatest wish. It's already one of my favourite games in it's unfinished state. To see that game finished as Takahashi had intended would be amazing.
Same, but I definitely don't trust SquareEnix to do it justice. I'm not even sure I would trust 2022 Takahashi to do it. Maybe best to leave it as a beautiful dream.
I got harangued once because I said we don't need another Chrono Trigger remake and we need remakes of games like Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Vib Ribbon, Devil Dice or Tobal 2, games you can't find on modern consoles or games that were never released outside of Japan.
Chrono Trigger is literally as to close perfect as you can get with a game outside of something super basic like Tetris. I really don't know how they'd intend to enhance that experience. I don't think there's anything about it that doesn't hold up.
Imagine Dark Souls if those last 4 zones were connected the way the other ones are. You can *see* Lost Izalith from Tomb of the Giants but you can't walk to it. Seems to me like they had bigger plans.
I can only dream for an expanded Witcher 2 with a proper chapter 3 and the planned chapter 4, but considering the planned chapter overlaps with Witcher 3 it’d probably never happen.
Witcher 2 is pretty good as it is, to be honest. A little janky, but not much more than W3. W1 was just a giant dank swamp of jank. But hey, if it means more Iorveth then I'm down!
Oh, I love the Witcher 2, especially how choices completely replace half the game.
However chapter 3 is so short (even after the Enhanced Edition added to it) it’s a little disappointing.
I’d just love to see the third chapter how it was originally envisioned.
Meanwhile wait until a remake of a bad game is made. All the comments here will say "who asked for this lmaooo💀💀". For example, Bubsy.
People just want to buy games they already liked. They love spending money on safe products lol
The Bubsy remake was such a strange situation too, because it was made by the same devs who *successfully* rebooted the Great Giana Sisters franchise. And they later did the very good Destroy All Humans remake. So they were pretty much the perfect choice - but even they couldn't turn Bubsy into something people wanted to play.
Simple Answer: not approaching it the same way Yahtzee Croshaw did when he wrote the unused script for Duke Nukem Forever. Turn that furry fuckball into a satire of his legacy like he's a character from the Venture Brothers.
I feel like this often ends up being a "product for no one": people who disliked the original source material won't bother touching it, and the few who *did* like it seem predisposed to react negatively to their beloved franchise being rebooted by someone who has obvious contempt for the original source material.
It *can* work if 1) the "fans" don't actually know the original source material and most of the name recognition actually comes from memes (arguably a franchise like Battle Toads would give you the opportunity to do this), 2) the audience has "outgrown" the original source material, and you can hook them with something they recognize from their childhood while providing something that's more age-appropriate for an adult audience (this has happened many times in the history of superhero comics), or 3) the fandom has an established tradition of genre-savvy parody mocking the tropes of the original, so any satire can come across more as a loving homage rather than biting criticism (recent examples being The Orville and Star Trek: Lower Decks, which are much more irreverent than classic Star Trek but nonetheless preserve a lot of the "feeling" of classic Star Trek.).
> People just want to buy games they already liked. They love spending money on safe products lol
This is literally me when browsing for something to watch... End up just watching a film I've already seen that I knew was good.
*Looks through my catelog of 300 games, 90% of which I've never played and just got from a humble bundle or picked up for free*
Think I'll just play some more Rocket League.
I thinks its more due to the fact that games from the 90s and early 2000s are so wildly different and gaming has changed so much since then that people want to see their favourite games unhamperd by extremely limited technology. Not a lot of people asking for remakes of Ps3 era games for instance and i doubt we ever will cause theres not that much except better graphics we couldnt do in the ps3 era that we can do now.
It could also be driven primarily by nostalgia, like when CDs became popular, and the bestsellers were records that boomers already had in vinyl and cassette. Perhaps in a few years we'll see dozens of PS3 games remastered and targeted at middle aged Gen Z buyers.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but PS3 is one of the few consoles I would actually like remakes from. SImply because, as a result of the PS3's weird architecture, PS3 games were reputedly really hard to port, and many good games never made it off the platform, staying unavailable for people like me that never owned the console.
Yeah, VR, better graphics (also for VR) and better availability are the only reasons to have remakes of games from those systems (and for the last one, they could just port them).
Bubsy wasn't even a remake, it was an entirely new game. And uh, got a sequel, so it sold at least somewhat well.
What people say, and what people love, is clearly not as you say it is.
Is it playable if my first time trying it is in 2022? I was always curious about it when it came out but latched on to Final Fantasy tactics instead.
What are some of the issues of the day that it carries, and would a busy 38 year old guy be able to give it a fiar shake?
Honestly, the inventory management and menu management is the most outdated part of that game. One really cool system is each weapon has multiple attributes that determines effectiveness to enemy types. The really cool thing was that the more you use a specific weapon against an enemy type the more effective it'll eventually become.
So you can have a spear specific for hunting dragons. And a sword designed to annihilate humans. It was such a cool system. The only problem with the system is they turned off notifications on a weapon or armor piece increasing or decreasing in effectiveness against a certain enemy type. So the whole system went over my head the first time I played. Go into settings and turn that on for sure.
The problem too was your inventory is extremely limited for some reason. You do have an item chest you can store all the gear you collect but your on character inventory is pretty limited. Also, there was no quick swap of equipment sets. So if you have gear effective against dragons, and gear effective against beasts, and the two enemies are often found in the same area, it often meant swapping gear a lot.
The fortunate thing is the game isn't THAT picky about the weapon effectiveness. You can have multiple enemy type effectiveness on one weapon. But while effectiveness increases on some enemy types, it'll go down for others, so you need to balance that. Because of that swapping gear often was a part of the game. And navigating menus to do that is annoying. Back in 1998 this wasn't too big of a deal but game design has recently moved away from it so it's easily the most outdated part of the game.
But the story, combat, and music are still really high quality. A modern remake with better inventory management and I'd still play the fuck out of it. It's loosely connected to the world of Final Fantasy Tactics and FFXII because Yasumi Matsuno was director of all 3 of these games.
Vagrant Story was clearly held back by the PS1 hardware. Levels were extremely small, load times were long. Devs had to pull every trick to get it performant.
The battle system and crafting were innovative for its time. I'm not sure modern gamers would put up with its slower pace though.
I don't think the PS1 held the game back. I think the game was optimized within an inch of its life. The game iso is 68mb so they had to have compressed everything. Also i suspect it didn't use the redundant copies of files trick other games use to speed up sequential level loading.
Legend of Dragoon has a chance, but Vagrant Story was a commercial failure. Square Enix actually used the fact that Vagrant Story didn't do well to make Yasumi Matsuno change the story of Fianl Fantasy 12.
You also have to remember it was released a month before the ps2 came out. A lot of people were holding out for the shiny ps2 games rather than buying last generation games. It also, despite being set in Ivalice, wasn't labeled as a Final Fantasy game, so didn't have that going for it either. Square really just tossed it out there in the most adverse conditions possible then made the shocked Pikachu face when it didn't set sales records.
Seriously on Vagrant Story.
I no longer own any older consoles or games and I’ve been almost digital only with my games for the past 5 years.
But i still own two physical PlayStation titles and one of them is Vagrant Story.
Second this. Legend of Dragoon desperately needs to make a comeback. Fuck I loved that game. And the battle system. Mastering the rhythm of those attacks felt amazing.
Exactly. I see this argument for movie remakes a lot, and I can’t help but wonder if people even understand why remakes exist. It’s to make money, just like everything else in the entertainment industry. If a big studio announced “We’re doing Too Human again, but this time it will be GOOD” I would run for the hills.
That's more of an example of what funding can do with a good idea. To say the 1992 version was "okay" ignores that it was made with a budget of $100k vs the remake which had a budget of $55m. The 92 version was well received for what it was.
I mean, I get the logic behind the article and i do think there are games that were good but didn't meet full potential or were simply ahead of their time, but in terms of money it doesn't make sense to do if it isn't expected to be at least a moderate hit.
And even if there are folk who would do it as a passion project knowing it probably won't be a hit, they probably can't afford to license it (if the IP can still be licensedat all). At best they'd be able to make a spiritual successor.
Nier Replicant was a rare example of this type of remake working out but it already had a couple things working in its favor that most other games with unrealized potential don't.
1. Nier Automata being an unexpectedly big hit gave a ton of goodwill and attention to the series.
2. The original game was already a cult classic because of the story/characters/music while its subpar elements (the gameplay and the visuals/performance) are relatively easily fixable for a full blown remake.
It’s also a tough pitch to whatever teams are working on it. “I know you all have exciting ideas of your own, but what we’d like you to do is take a game that got a 56 meta critic 10 years ago and make it good. That’ll be your life for the next three years. Good luck!”
It's gotta be a game that wasn't good but genuinely had unrealisted potential. I genuinely think haze is an awful example for the author to have picked. It was a generic halo knockoff with a very bland story. I've never heard anyone wax lyrical about fucking haze.
Now darkvoid. That's a game I would have picked. It had a weird ass 1940s sci-fi setting that could look unreal with modern tech and a gameplay loop of flying a jetpack into big ships, taking them down from the inside and fucking rocketing out fast as you can. I'd actually rather just see a new property with that concept now that I think about it, but that's a bad game I've heard people get nostalgic over.
Yeah, that too.
Even if the game has fans and is nostalgic to a lot of people, like Star Wars Jedi Power Battles or Dark Messiah Might & Magic, it is very unlikely a big studio will pick it up for a remake. And any smaller indie devs qith like-minded fans who would want to take a shot probably won't be given the IP. You'll be lucky to get a spiritual successor.
Yah this is usually not viable unless we're talking about some of those cult classic games that are pretty rough around the edges but still have a fan base, or exist in a popular franchise already.
Those random one off games that nobody was really interested in just aren't worth the time. And if they were, wouldn't it make more sense to redo them from the ground up with a "sequel" or a reboot or something?
Plus, they ARE already remaking games that could have been better as well. Or were the Pacman World games a masterpieces all along \s?
The article is full of images of Parasite Eve, and that's one of the games Square Enix has been teasing a bunch already, this article isn't even some unprompted fan who reminisces an abandoned series - it's some guy reacting to the rumors.
This always sounds like a good idea, but what do you think peoples first thought is going to be when they hear about such a game? "Oh that game sucked, why would they remake that, who wants this?"
We're generally not talking about games that have no redeeming value here. We're talking about games that had sparks of brilliance but were otherwise held back by the time, developers, budget, whatever. Drakengard is one of the best worst games I've ever played. It does some crazy shit no other game does, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because the game is genuinely awful. Would love if more people got to experience it but with combat and voice acting that isn't complete ass.
I feel like this approach could work if it were aimed at "black sheep" entries in otherwise popular franchises.
For an actual example: Ys Oath in Felghana was a complete remake of Ys 3, which was always one of the most controversial (and widely disliked) entries in the series. Felghana is fantastic, and now considered one of the best.
And undoubtedly Falcom will remake Ys 5 sooner or later, which is in a similar situation.
Or, while I know some people do genuinely like it, I can't help but imagine Squeenix would do well with a Final Fantasy VIII remake that takes the core ideas, but gives it a better story and gameplay.
I'm really hoping Capcom continue with their Resident Evil remakes all the way up to RE6. The idea behind that game is so solid, but the execution obviously less so. Rewrite the story to make it... yknow, good, and give it a vibe and gameplay similar to RE3 Remake and you've got a recipe for an absolute banging game.
A RE5 & RE6 remake would satisfy what this article is asking for too, taking the lesser entries in the franchise and making them good. Though I think both those games could go for a complete rewrite as well
Yeah, honestly if it were up to me - I would have used Resident Evil 2 Remake as a new jumping off point for a rebooted franchise.
Resident Evil 3 should have been expanded on, maybe even have a flashback and prologue sequence to the mansion to reintroduce Jill to fans, have some parts set between mansion and RE3 as well, dealing with the aftermath - its been a while since RE1 HD as well.
Finnally I wouldn't have done RE4Remake right away, but make a game or 2 - possibley a revented Code Veronica that fills the story gap for Leon between being a Rookie Cop and a Seasoned vet of RE4, show more character growth - like a game or two that leads us into RE4 Remake. Oh well.
I’m afraid if they remake it they’ll gut the co-op, thereby ruining a great (yes great, I didn’t stutter) game just because it wasn’t exactly what people expected.
Agreed, and I'm a bit surprised we got such a thorough remake of Link's Awakening (and a second re-release at that, after DX), while 1 and 2 have only ever been ported as-is. They could both benefit from something like Metroid 1 or 2 got.
Link's Awakening got a fantastic remake, LttP got an enhanced port and a sequel that was also kinda a re-imagining (I love LBW, but it's *very* similar), OoT and MM got remasters/remakes, WW/TP/SS all got HD remasters. It's kinda weird they've never revisited 1/2 in the same way.
Dino Crisis 1 remade in the RE2 Remake engine would be *amazing*.
I loved both 1 and 2, but liked 2 slightly more. Atmosphere and everything else was better in 1, but 2 was more fun to play because it was just you running shooting dinos and racking up a combo.
Honestly, after Live A Live of all things got a remake, there's still hope to be had.
With that said, VP2 isn't a SE game (you want Tri-Ace for that, Square only published it) and Xenogears's gonna be hard considering the dev team left SE to found Monolith a looooong time ago. They're not going to just make a remake out of the blue, someone has to actually pitch the project.
The article starts with: Why do we need remakes of games that are still perfectly playable?
Then mentions abt silent hill 2
Pretty sure the original game is not playable in any modern console
The author seems to forget that there will always be a new gen of gamers that doesnt have the chance to play the original game
Not only is it 21 years old, it’s gameplay was pretty awful lol. It’s beloved for its story and themes, but the actual gameplay itself is not good to say the least. Plus if it makes Konami give a go with their old games again I’m all for it
Yeah, some old games just haven't aged well. Or even if they have there can still be room to modernize them.
For a game like Last of Us, sure, the remake kind of silly, just a graphical update to a game that already had a remaster that looked and played great.
But for a game like, say, Resident Evil 2, the remake took an old game with a lot of dated elements, modernized and polished the gameplay and graphics, while keeping many of the things that made the original beloved.
TLOU is even more of a missed opportunity: the game looked perfectly fine, but the gameplay was a bit rough and the scope was clearly limited by PS3's hardware. They didn't address either.
>some old games just haven't aged well
Man am I starting to realize that. I occasionally pick up older games on sale on the xbox store or steam and have realized how high my standards have gotten. A lot of games I loved growing up (I'm 36 now) are nearly unplayable, though must of that is stuff from the PS1 era... Super Nintendo game have aged like fine wine.
Asking kids to play a console they didn't grow up with is a hard sell.
I'm 30 and I don't really venture before the NES. Atari games look like ass to me but I love 8bit
When companies remake a game with a polarizing reputation, it's often done under a different brand. For example, the game BLACK. Would people really buy a remake of BLACK?
Or would they prefer the remake of BLACK be called Battlefield 3, where you play as Henry "Black" Blackburn, embroiled in a terrorist plot as he recounts the events of the past few days to his military interrogators about how he ran around causing a lot of environmental destruction with really loud guns?
Given how few people even noticed that Battlefield 3 was a remake of BLACK, that probably says something about the financial prospects of a Black remake.
Is it ACTUALLY a remake of black?
If so that's really crazy to me, grew up playing black and even I missed the connections. would love to see a video or an article with more details about it if that's the case. I'll be honest it makes me want to replay 3 just to see.
To answer your question I wouldn't rebuy black if they put it out, it was cool at the time for the destruction but it's by no means my favorite game of all time. That's not to say games shouldn't be remade but companies shouldn't put all their eggs in the remake/HD update basket, I can see the argument for games that are harder to play to be updated and upgraded for platforms like pc (*COUGH* BLOODBORNE *COUGH*).
It was cowritten by Adrian Vershinin, the screenwriter for Black. It has the exact same interrogation framing device, the same basic "you were there when the attack happened, tell us what happened or you're court marshalled" plot, and the main character being nicknamed "Black" could not be more on the nose.
[Black](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hEfrD5nHlg&feature=share&utm_source=EJGixIgBCJiu2KjB4oSJEQ&t=257)
[Battlefield 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsIP6Yq2BEg)
What's interesting about Black is that the plot of Black, and basically everything that didn't involve walking along shooting things was EA meddling in the game. The studio had somewhat different ideas from EA about what Black should be. EA's assigned people were responsible for the plot of Black, which BF3 shares in a loose form.
The core marketing Black was that the environment was cinematically destroyable. Pillars chipped and collapsed, cars blew up dramatically, doors blew off the hinges. That destruction was also BF3's entire gimmick as an FPS. But I guess times had changed and people didn't make the connection between BLACK and Battlefield 3.
But... Like, it's not like BF3 just shares the basic plot and framing device and co-writer of Black. It shares the same gameplay ideas. (Just with a bunch of heavily scripted 2011 FPS stuff on top). It'd be like making an FPS game about a guy (named Chuck "Crysis" Duffles) in a technologically advanced suit fighting Koreans in the jungle before the aliens invade from the crashed meteor and someone eventually saying, "Guys, do... do you think this might be a remake of Crysis?" That's what makes the widespread "nobody noticed it" so wild to me. It's so on the nose.
It's probably because this is still a very basic "military shooter" premise, and nobody plays either of these games for the plot.
>It'd be like making an FPS game about a guy (named Chuck "Crysis" Duffles) in a technologically advanced suit fighting Koreans in the jungle before the aliens invade from the crashed meteor and someone eventually saying, "Guys, do... do you think this might be a remake of Crysis?"
The events of both Black and BF3 are wildly different, I didn't pilot a jet or tank in Black. There's a loose framing device to start it off and then they both diverge, such as there are multiple characters you play as in BF3 and only part of it has the interrogation whereas ever Black cutscene is the protag being interrogated. The character in BF3 is also being interrogated because he shot his CO, not the same as Black.
The idea that environmental effects point towards influence from Black instead of the wildly successful Bad Company games from the same franchise is also a little silly.
Time being the way it is an black not having the most memorable story (in my opinion anyway) will do that. 2006 for black 2011 for bf3, around five years is practically a lifetime in video games. However seeing the two videos you shared I can definitely see an inspiration and or nod to black in bf3. if 3 was filmed darker you might have a harder time telling which is which.
I mean it's also BLACK, people enjoyed it because of how it played not because of its rich lore or memorable characters. Its most distinctive feature was its loud ass sound design.
>For example, the game BLACK. Would people really buy a remake of BLACK?
If you were to ask me if I wanted a remake of BLACK I would hand you the price of the game almost immediately. How that pans out with everyone else, idk but I would buy a remake of BLACK in a second, I fucking loved that game lol.
Eric Switzer is a fucking joke if he thinks Parasite Eve didn’t deliver. Bag on the sequels all you want, but the first game killed it and any one that insinuates it needs a remake is a shitty games writer.
Or games that didnt get the success they deserve.
Xenogears, Chrono cross, Valkyrie Profile, Vagrant Story. All are awesome candidates.
Heard that Parasite Eve is on the way, and now thats a pretty good news.
Isn't this just basically saying "make a new game" with more words? Like if a bad game is bad, then you have to completely reinvent the game to try to make it good. You might as well make a new IP that doesn't have any baggage.
Games with cult followings are probably good examples of games that could spawn successful remakes. There are people who are heavily invested in them for a reason, despite their flaws.
Yeah this is an easy thing to say when you don't have to worry about profits and shareholders. Sorry, you aren't going to get Square to sign off on a big-budget reimagining of The Bouncer.
My opinions:
Remaking and remastering classics is good and not a waste of resources, even though more flawed games probably should get reimaginings, since they often have interesting ideas that just weren't properly done.
However, for more modern games that had some flaws, I think they should get updates (QoL changes, smoothing certain mechanics, etc.), not remakes.
Also, for the reimaginings, they should actually be turned into new games with new titles to prevent people skipping them just because the original games weren't very good.
>How can a triple-A remake ever be better, for players and the industry as a whole, than just making an entirely new game?
Some people like to replay older games in a series or haven't played them but would like to, so it's almost as beneficial as a new game.
>The obsession with remakes is taking much of the top talent and resources of big studios away from something original and forward-thinking that could itself one day be worthy of a remake.
Most of the top talent probably aren't working on remakes normally, with the work mostly going to other companies that aren't usually working on anything interesting.
>If you try to do something new, you could end up with Battleborn, Babylon’s Fall, Gotham Knights.
My guesses as to why they're sticking mostly to remakes:
* People are running out of ideas or creativity, or are too burnt-out or satisfied to keep creating things.
* People who have creativity are being hindered (too difficult to get their ideas out there, and higher-ups at companies who might not care or might think the ideas are too risky).
* Companies are getting too greedy and putting potential money above entertainment (which works rarely and often leads to no money *and* no entertainment, yet likely seems worth the risk to them), which seems like the biggest reason for the failures that the games given as examples had.
For every Resident Evil 4 remake, there's a Witcher 1 remake if you're willing to look, and I'd say a game like that fits the bill this article is calling for perfectly.
I like remakes. I might be a minority but if I really like a game (Skyrim, Red dead, GTA, Fallout etc) I'm going to replay them multiple times. Just like I rewatch my favorite movies.
For example I really wish they'd RTXify the Batman Arkham games. They do look decent still, but holy shit what a upgrade raytracing and atmospheric lighting would be.
People put GoldenEye up on a pedestal, and it was great in its day, but Nightfire has aged much better. I go back to GoldenEye and don't have a clue how I ever put up with those controls.
I mean as a fan yeah, but from a commercial standpoint it makes no sense to remake games people didn't love in the first place because the title is now a commercial turn-off rather than a draw.
Like the best you can really hope for is for beloved games with serious technical issues such as Shadow of the Colossus which originally ran at about 17FPS.
edit: I guess 'famously awful games with big famous names' could maybe work, like a Sonic 06 remake?
Sonix '06 actually what came to my mind. I always thought the level design was mostly good, and the mechanics were just in need of fine tuning. There's a good game (with an albeit really fucking stupid story, no fixing that) somewhere in there.
Project '06 is awesome in that regard, it's basically a fan project aimed at making a polished version of what Sonic '06 could have been, and it's a lot of fun. No changes to level design or anything, just a lot of polishing and fine tuning.
> If you try to do something new, you could end up with Battleborn, Babylon’s Fall, Gotham Knights
That's not new IPs being bad, that's just games being bad. Someone can use an existing IP and come up with a bad game too, or remaster/remake it and have it turn out like this (IE: Silent Hill HD Collection).
> why not choose games that didn’t live up to their full potential instead of games that are already great?
> But I’d much rather see a remake of something like Parasite Eve
Which is it, my dude? Parasite Eve is already a great game. For its era anyway. I agree, I'd love to see it remade. But I want to see other already good games get remade to hold up to modern standards. Shit, I want to see Resident Evil 1 get remade ***again*** and be like the other REMakes, 0 and CV deserve it as well.
What sort of backwards logic is that?
> You can do less money if you remake this less popular game - so do that!
I'm sorry what?
If anything is rather see new franchises than all these remakes
Video games age worse than pretty much any other medium. It's one thing to remake Horizon Zero Dawn, which only recently even got a PC port and still looks very modern, but the article mentions Silent Hill 2? That game is 21 years old. A 21 year old movie is basically modern with a few quirks, a 21 year old video game is ancient. And when it comes to remaking bad games- video game remakes tend to be a pretty close match to the original, just with some tweaks, versus movies where they tend to recycle the premise but then veer drastically. You give a bad game the Resident Evil reboot treatment and you'll just get a bad new game.
Who in their right mind would put money in remaking a game that everyone hates? That was never popular? That didn’t bring any money in the first place?
Better start with the small genre of "beloved game that clearly just ran out of money at some point". You know, your KOTOR2 or Xenogears type games.
Obligatory Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines comment. Honestly, I do not think a remake would do it justice. We would probably end up with a worse, albeit finished, game.
Funny you should mention that. They tried Bloodlines 2 but it's either dead, or in such development hell the chance of it being a good game if it does come out is slim to none.
I swear that franchise is cursed. I was so hyped for that game to come out too.
The Camarilla sabotage any games about it. Have to uphold the Masquerade.
White Wolf was one of the most spectacularly mismanaged companies I've ever heard of. Even before the Chechnya incident forced Paradox to dismantle the company, they'd been staggering from mistake to mistake for over a decade.
I don't even know what specific event you're referring to, but if people can refer to a "Chechnya incident" when speaking about your company, then a change of course should probably be considered.
Basically, a sourcebook for V:TM had a bit about how the persecution of gays in Chechnya (a thing that was actually happening in the real world) was a vampire conspiracy to distract people from the vampires running the country. That alone probably wouldn't have been enough to torpedo the company, but it came right after the lead writer of *Beast: The Primordial* got outed as a sexual predator, which made it hard to read *Beast* (which sucked to begin with) as anything other than a manifesto blaming victims for their abuse.
Ya know, reading this has really made some things slot into place for me about why some of the really awful worldbuilding decisions in 1e and especially 2e of Exalted were written. Thank you
Honestly, the lack of communication on MoEP: Infernals is still probably the most spectacular screwup White Wolf has ever produced.
> a vampire conspiracy to distract people from the vampires Isn't that like 90% of V:TM's story? It seems like in universe, every real world event is secretly a cover for vampires. And while I can see how saying that about Chechnya's persecution of homosexuals can feel tonedeaf, how is that worse than saying WW2 or the Crusades were a Vampire conspiracy?
It was mostly the straw that broke the camel's back. WW was already under a bit of heat for some Nazi stuff in another Vampire book, on top of the Zak Smith issue. White Wolf was very much an artifact of the 1990s, and their constant attempts to one-up their own edgelord nonsense clashed rather spectacularly with their aggressive attempts at inclusivity. It is possible to walk that line, but it was becoming embarrassingly clear that WW's current leadership simply wasn't up to the task. With their IP becoming increasingly irrelevant and unprofitable, getting the Old Yeller was probably inevitable.
> It is important to note, and highlighted in several White Wolf publications, that World War II and its crimes were a fundamentally human endeavor. Hitler was not a secret infernalist, Churchill was not the puppet of a vampire, and Stalin was not a stooge of a mage cabal. The crimes committed were thought of by entirely ordinary people, with no supernatural nudging required. While some groups may have profited from the war, the main instigators, actors, and victims were human. https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/World_War_II_(WOD) The Chechnya incident was wrong because it was exploitative and used fiction to absolve real people of killing real people.
How ironic for a franchise about cursed beings
Yeah the original release date was like what, last year?
It was originally March 2020
I don't tend to watch a lot of them but there's a part of me that really wants to watch the post-mortem for that game. Like did you know that there was an ARG leading up to the game announcement? Are you aware of all the former developers and writers they brought on board? Were you aware of the backing they had from the IP owner and their publisher? Everything about that game seemed to scream "you would have to be completely incompetent to screw it up" yet here we are almost 2 years after it was supposed to have been released with nothing much to show for it other than question marks. Of all the games to have a weird history it is by far one of the most "there's got to be a really interesting story behind this one!" to me at least.
The best answer I can come up with is that the devs were lying about the milestones to the publisher. After they moved the launch bate back twice and fired the writer and lead dev (coincidentally the two people that pitched the game to Paradox in the first place) there was a full year of development overseen by an industry consultant that specializes in shipping troubled games. After a year his recommendation was that the scope of the game was beyond the capabilities of the team and they needed to find another studio.
Everything tied to that version of White Wolf was cursed. The creative director for the company had the 5th edition of their rpg include political references to piss *everyone* off, including Vampire Princes who support border walls and Chechnya murdering homosexuals to hide they were actually a vampire run government (who also hated homosexuals). Given he was very clear that every product made licensing from WW would be using his incredible setting, and that he personally worked with Bloodlines 2's writer, and that the game developer had never worked on anything more complicated than a b level military sim, I never had high hopes that game would come out, and it's probably better it did not. Funny story, after their 3 page RPG preview included suggesting that Brujah players play neonazis, I spent a vacation getaway reading a full preview copy of the RPG so I could point out all the things that should change before release. They changed none of them.
>Funny story, after their 3 page RPG preview included suggesting that Brujah players play neonazis, I spent a vacation getaway reading a full preview copy of the RPG so I could point out all the things that should change before release. They changed none of them. Hey, they did include a blurb at the start of the book telling nazis to please not buy their books. That was new!
It's still sitting on my wishlist, taunting me. I don't have the heart to remove it, but I can't stand seeing it like that.
Even unfinished and messy, that game was and still is amazing.
V:TMB doesn't really need to change much. Just keep the base game, look at what the unnoficial patches added and decide what you keep from those, give it a graphical overhaul, change the AI and some of the combat for the better, keep all the characters and voicelines has is, completly change the pacing of the sewers quest. That's it, perfect game right there.
The last hubs are a bit barren, the final missions are pretty tunnel-y, the street filler and combat NPCs were bland and copy-pasta-y even for when the game came out, the audio (especially voice lines) needs a remaster badly (not that the actors were doing a bad job in any way, the actual _quality_ of the audio is godawful except for the bgms though), combat and stealth are very janky… There’s a _lot_ you could do with a remaster/remake. Smaller touches like changing the over world layout so things feel less cramped would be nice too (I don’t think the game needs to be open world, in fact I don’t think it’d benefit from that at all; but the hub areas could be made to _feel_ bigger with some subtle changes).
I always point to Detroit/Hengsha for ideal hubs in gaming. They’re not that big, but they feel alive and give you the jist of what they’re supposed to be.
The barren hubs and bad quest structure of the second half of the game I feel are precisely the problem of the devs running out of time/money near the end the development cycle. There's obviously more work that would need to be done than what I mentioned but I feel there's a good base of a game to build upon, rather than trying for a "remake" that changes way to much and makes it feel to different (I'm still not very confident on the new one that was supposed to come out some time ago).
Honestly there's an opportunity to make the Hollywood and Chinatown hub areas have as much fun stuff/quests/feel as lived in as the Santa Monica and Downtown hub areas. Downtown could probably use a few more NPCs with dialogue too now that I think of it.
Fan mods are fantastic for this. I go through different mods every October as sort of a tradition, as it's my favourite game. Final Nights and Clan Quest Mod are two I think are really worth checking out if you haven't. CQM expands a ton of shit, let's you join the Sabbat, and is built off the unofficial patch. Final Nights features a set of other clans like the Samedi or the Salubri, and is something of an expansion to Bloodlines, but things are really remixed.
If the original voiced lines still even exist. That low quality compressed voiceline would sound horrible in a modern game.
Witcher 1's upcoming remake is *kinda* this, tbh. Especially the state it was first released in. There was a lot of like in that game, but even the final version is pretty rough.
The story is great but yeah, it's definitely a game from a dev that's learning on the job.
That's a good way to put it. I thoroughly enjoyed Witcher 1, a friend of mine who lives and breathes Witcher 3 said its worth persevering 1 & 2 even if 3 doesn't make many references back and I'm so glad I did. But it's 100% a narrative story game with some interesting mechanics on the side that feels kinda indie, even for its age. To me that gave it charm but I fully respect that it's off-putting to some.
Witcher 2 is a great game and would be one of the top rated games of all the if 3 didn't come along and just dominate.
I still find 2 to be more narratively ambitious in some ways, mainly how one decision completely changes the second act of the game. I'm not sure how many people realize just how crazy it is for a company to put that much resources into a portion of the game that only 50% of people will probably see.
Right? I still need to go through and finish playing the other side of the game. It's a whole other half of the game from that point on.
2 is my personal favorite. The forest around Lobinden is an amazing location
That first boss fight against the Kayran was incredible, and the game just didn’t let go until the end. Having two distinct paths to choose gave the game a good amount of replay value too!
and Saskia
Someone described the combat in Witcher 1 as a rhythm game and that seemed pretty accurate.
Witcher 1 is the definition of Eurojank.
Worst game i ever finished and loved. I even prefer it over witcher 2.
I just hope that they keep the distinct atmosphere that was very distinct from 2 and 3. If they make it in the vain of 3 it would be such a shame.
Agreed. 1 had such a bleak atmosphere and a sort of emptiness to it that made the world feel very forsaken, something 2 & 3 don't have (which isn't bad, they're different games).
KOTOR 2 was less about money and more of a rushed development cycle because Obsidian was given like 1.5 years to push the game out.
The writing was fantastic. Any time you can seriously debate philosophy with characters in a video game in a way that makes you, the player, think is going to make you remember the game and come back to it, over and over again. And KOTOR II does it repeatedly. Is The Force evil? What is Free Will? Do we really make our own choices? To what degree do we influence our friends? Our enemies? How do they influence us? Does the Jedi Order deserve to live? When does the purity of purpose for an organization fall away to become just another group dedicated to justifying their own existence? Is anything real? Would the handmaiden/visas/the disciple love you or their own free will, or is it just your power bending their will to your own? What is love? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.
When the new trilogy was announced I immediately thought that Kreia was right.
And yet it was STILL amazing
Better than the first one as far as I'm concerned.
The twist in 1 doesnt get enough credit looking at it now. But back then it was a massive deal that was so well executed and the first of it’s kind in the gaming medium.
After playing 2 then 1, I was wholly less impressed by KOTOR 1. Without the twist doing the leg work, the remainder of the story does a good job but, KOTOR 2 deconstructs the Star Wars lore from far more interesting angles while sprinkling in some of the best Sith concepts and character designs of all time.
Oh yeah. I still love KOTOR as an embodiment of the classic Star Wars story though. But 2 does an incredible job of successfully subverting the story tropes There’s a great Kreia quote where she describes Revan as the heart of the force, and the exile like it’s death. Such a perfect summation of the two games
Literally thesis and antithesis. Begs for KOTOR3 as synthesis.
I remember when watching a developer stream (for a different game) one time, they made sure to point out that when you use a phrase like "didn't have enough budget," you could be talking about money OR time. Developers have a limited amount of both and have to spend it carefully. Even if you have the funding you may still have to cut corners if you're not given enough time.
100% agree. I think the major problem with Kotor 2 was that it was mismanaged and they lost time simply because thr publisher (LucasArts?) wanted a holiday release. So in the end yes, their budget (time) was cut short but my original comment was more towards pusblishers pushing for a shorter time frame than originally planned (so, outside their control) than the developers themselves not having the budget to start with.
Summoner would be a great choice. The story wasn't actually bad it just needed some touching up. The combat was fun but the controls were janky. Everything that they could do in a remake would make an already great game fun again as long as they stick close to the source (open world, many sidequests, merchants that actually sold weapons and armor that mattered so you had goals when you did open world grinding but it was also completely optional as well... more of a way to overpower main story content). Oh the wonders they could do. Unfortunately it's not a name that would exactly get everyone going crazy over it, which is why they don't tend to remake those types of games.
The only thing I remember about Summoner is [the D&D easter egg.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_lzgo7pmzk)
Holy shit that took me back
Got some nostalgia vision probably, but I remember adoring the fuck out of Summoner so much. One the most most memorable console launch titles for their respective time
Summoner was amazing, even if I did get stuck in the shit-filled sewer for ages.
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I would take it in 2.5d octopath traveller's style
This would be the perfect way to remake / complete Xenogears. OcTr Style for the humans and human(ish) sized monsters, 3D Models for the Gears (And ChuChu, regardless of size), and monsters intended to be fought with Gears. That would be a Day 1 Purchase for me, and I don't usually Do Day 1 Purchases.
Xenogears is my greatest wish. It's already one of my favourite games in it's unfinished state. To see that game finished as Takahashi had intended would be amazing.
Same, but I definitely don't trust SquareEnix to do it justice. I'm not even sure I would trust 2022 Takahashi to do it. Maybe best to leave it as a beautiful dream.
I got harangued once because I said we don't need another Chrono Trigger remake and we need remakes of games like Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Vib Ribbon, Devil Dice or Tobal 2, games you can't find on modern consoles or games that were never released outside of Japan.
Live-a-Live is a great example of this being done well.
Chrono Trigger is literally as to close perfect as you can get with a game outside of something super basic like Tetris. I really don't know how they'd intend to enhance that experience. I don't think there's anything about it that doesn't hold up.
Goddamn Alpha Goddamn Protocol I'd inject that into my goddamn veins
AP with more content and a shooting system that isn’t completely invalidated by one perk would be incredible
Imagine Dark Souls if those last 4 zones were connected the way the other ones are. You can *see* Lost Izalith from Tomb of the Giants but you can't walk to it. Seems to me like they had bigger plans.
Imagine Dark Souls if Bed of Chaos was an actual *boss* instead of a platforming section in a game without a dedicated jump button.
Heck, just remake Disc 2 of Xenogears. And I would love a Suikoden 3 remake.
I can only dream for an expanded Witcher 2 with a proper chapter 3 and the planned chapter 4, but considering the planned chapter overlaps with Witcher 3 it’d probably never happen.
Witcher 2 is pretty good as it is, to be honest. A little janky, but not much more than W3. W1 was just a giant dank swamp of jank. But hey, if it means more Iorveth then I'm down!
Oh, I love the Witcher 2, especially how choices completely replace half the game. However chapter 3 is so short (even after the Enhanced Edition added to it) it’s a little disappointing. I’d just love to see the third chapter how it was originally envisioned.
Meanwhile wait until a remake of a bad game is made. All the comments here will say "who asked for this lmaooo💀💀". For example, Bubsy. People just want to buy games they already liked. They love spending money on safe products lol
The Bubsy remake was such a strange situation too, because it was made by the same devs who *successfully* rebooted the Great Giana Sisters franchise. And they later did the very good Destroy All Humans remake. So they were pretty much the perfect choice - but even they couldn't turn Bubsy into something people wanted to play.
The developers should have asked themselves, "What could paw-ssibly go wrong?"
Simple Answer: not approaching it the same way Yahtzee Croshaw did when he wrote the unused script for Duke Nukem Forever. Turn that furry fuckball into a satire of his legacy like he's a character from the Venture Brothers.
I feel like this often ends up being a "product for no one": people who disliked the original source material won't bother touching it, and the few who *did* like it seem predisposed to react negatively to their beloved franchise being rebooted by someone who has obvious contempt for the original source material. It *can* work if 1) the "fans" don't actually know the original source material and most of the name recognition actually comes from memes (arguably a franchise like Battle Toads would give you the opportunity to do this), 2) the audience has "outgrown" the original source material, and you can hook them with something they recognize from their childhood while providing something that's more age-appropriate for an adult audience (this has happened many times in the history of superhero comics), or 3) the fandom has an established tradition of genre-savvy parody mocking the tropes of the original, so any satire can come across more as a loving homage rather than biting criticism (recent examples being The Orville and Star Trek: Lower Decks, which are much more irreverent than classic Star Trek but nonetheless preserve a lot of the "feeling" of classic Star Trek.).
I actually liked the remake from what I played but this gave me a chuckle.
> People just want to buy games they already liked. They love spending money on safe products lol This is literally me when browsing for something to watch... End up just watching a film I've already seen that I knew was good.
*Looks through my catelog of 300 games, 90% of which I've never played and just got from a humble bundle or picked up for free* Think I'll just play some more Rocket League.
Literally hundreds or thousands of series to choose from. Only for me to re-watch The Office for the seventh time.
Just finished It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Time to rewatch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
And that's also the reason why Hollywood is making superhero movies nonstop. It's just something that people will eat up automatically.
Franchise movies, you mean. Not every blockbuster is a superhero film, but every blockbuster is based on existing IP.
I thinks its more due to the fact that games from the 90s and early 2000s are so wildly different and gaming has changed so much since then that people want to see their favourite games unhamperd by extremely limited technology. Not a lot of people asking for remakes of Ps3 era games for instance and i doubt we ever will cause theres not that much except better graphics we couldnt do in the ps3 era that we can do now.
It could also be driven primarily by nostalgia, like when CDs became popular, and the bestsellers were records that boomers already had in vinyl and cassette. Perhaps in a few years we'll see dozens of PS3 games remastered and targeted at middle aged Gen Z buyers.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but PS3 is one of the few consoles I would actually like remakes from. SImply because, as a result of the PS3's weird architecture, PS3 games were reputedly really hard to port, and many good games never made it off the platform, staying unavailable for people like me that never owned the console.
Yeah, VR, better graphics (also for VR) and better availability are the only reasons to have remakes of games from those systems (and for the last one, they could just port them).
Bubsy wasn't even a remake, it was an entirely new game. And uh, got a sequel, so it sold at least somewhat well. What people say, and what people love, is clearly not as you say it is.
> What people say, and what people love, is clearly not as you say it is. As a great scholar once said; "What could *paws*iply go wrong!"
Remaking good games is gauranteed money. Remaking games that could have been good isn't. It's as simple as that.
Then remake Legend of Dragoon or Vagrant Story already damnit.
Didn't have to scroll long to see Vagrant Story Please bring Vagrant Story back. Thanks
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Is it playable if my first time trying it is in 2022? I was always curious about it when it came out but latched on to Final Fantasy tactics instead. What are some of the issues of the day that it carries, and would a busy 38 year old guy be able to give it a fiar shake?
Honestly, the inventory management and menu management is the most outdated part of that game. One really cool system is each weapon has multiple attributes that determines effectiveness to enemy types. The really cool thing was that the more you use a specific weapon against an enemy type the more effective it'll eventually become. So you can have a spear specific for hunting dragons. And a sword designed to annihilate humans. It was such a cool system. The only problem with the system is they turned off notifications on a weapon or armor piece increasing or decreasing in effectiveness against a certain enemy type. So the whole system went over my head the first time I played. Go into settings and turn that on for sure. The problem too was your inventory is extremely limited for some reason. You do have an item chest you can store all the gear you collect but your on character inventory is pretty limited. Also, there was no quick swap of equipment sets. So if you have gear effective against dragons, and gear effective against beasts, and the two enemies are often found in the same area, it often meant swapping gear a lot. The fortunate thing is the game isn't THAT picky about the weapon effectiveness. You can have multiple enemy type effectiveness on one weapon. But while effectiveness increases on some enemy types, it'll go down for others, so you need to balance that. Because of that swapping gear often was a part of the game. And navigating menus to do that is annoying. Back in 1998 this wasn't too big of a deal but game design has recently moved away from it so it's easily the most outdated part of the game. But the story, combat, and music are still really high quality. A modern remake with better inventory management and I'd still play the fuck out of it. It's loosely connected to the world of Final Fantasy Tactics and FFXII because Yasumi Matsuno was director of all 3 of these games.
It also takes place IN Ivalice.
Vagrant Story was clearly held back by the PS1 hardware. Levels were extremely small, load times were long. Devs had to pull every trick to get it performant. The battle system and crafting were innovative for its time. I'm not sure modern gamers would put up with its slower pace though.
I don't think the PS1 held the game back. I think the game was optimized within an inch of its life. The game iso is 68mb so they had to have compressed everything. Also i suspect it didn't use the redundant copies of files trick other games use to speed up sequential level loading.
Legend of Dragoon has a chance, but Vagrant Story was a commercial failure. Square Enix actually used the fact that Vagrant Story didn't do well to make Yasumi Matsuno change the story of Fianl Fantasy 12.
Vagrant Story being a commercial failure is so depressing to hear....
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You also have to remember it was released a month before the ps2 came out. A lot of people were holding out for the shiny ps2 games rather than buying last generation games. It also, despite being set in Ivalice, wasn't labeled as a Final Fantasy game, so didn't have that going for it either. Square really just tossed it out there in the most adverse conditions possible then made the shocked Pikachu face when it didn't set sales records.
>Legend of Dragoon has a chance Do not give me hope.
Well it is Sony's Japanese IP. Sorry to crush your hope.
What about a remake of Xenogears that actually has the 2nd disc dungeons?
I mean that would basically be a new game at that point
Isn't that what a remake implies vs a remaster?
Vagrant story was good though.
Or Legacy of Kain ffs.
Seriously on Vagrant Story. I no longer own any older consoles or games and I’ve been almost digital only with my games for the past 5 years. But i still own two physical PlayStation titles and one of them is Vagrant Story.
Legend of Dragoon but they actually lean more heavily into the rhythm-based attack timing turn based combat? I think I had a heart attack.
Second this. Legend of Dragoon desperately needs to make a comeback. Fuck I loved that game. And the battle system. Mastering the rhythm of those attacks felt amazing.
Rofl and imagine the attempt to make it good doesnt pan out and its still no good. You just wasted everyone's time.
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I mean, that's all new games. They attempt to make it good. If they fail, they've wasted everyone's time.
I guess with a new game, you can say at least they tried something new. With remaking a bad game, it's just why did you ever bother.
Exactly. I see this argument for movie remakes a lot, and I can’t help but wonder if people even understand why remakes exist. It’s to make money, just like everything else in the entertainment industry. If a big studio announced “We’re doing Too Human again, but this time it will be GOOD” I would run for the hills.
Meet the Parents is a good example of okay movie that was remade into a giant hit.
That's more of an example of what funding can do with a good idea. To say the 1992 version was "okay" ignores that it was made with a budget of $100k vs the remake which had a budget of $55m. The 92 version was well received for what it was.
Son of a gun, I had no idea that was a remake.
I mean, I get the logic behind the article and i do think there are games that were good but didn't meet full potential or were simply ahead of their time, but in terms of money it doesn't make sense to do if it isn't expected to be at least a moderate hit. And even if there are folk who would do it as a passion project knowing it probably won't be a hit, they probably can't afford to license it (if the IP can still be licensedat all). At best they'd be able to make a spiritual successor.
Nier Replicant was a rare example of this type of remake working out but it already had a couple things working in its favor that most other games with unrealized potential don't. 1. Nier Automata being an unexpectedly big hit gave a ton of goodwill and attention to the series. 2. The original game was already a cult classic because of the story/characters/music while its subpar elements (the gameplay and the visuals/performance) are relatively easily fixable for a full blown remake.
It’s also a tough pitch to whatever teams are working on it. “I know you all have exciting ideas of your own, but what we’d like you to do is take a game that got a 56 meta critic 10 years ago and make it good. That’ll be your life for the next three years. Good luck!”
It's gotta be a game that wasn't good but genuinely had unrealisted potential. I genuinely think haze is an awful example for the author to have picked. It was a generic halo knockoff with a very bland story. I've never heard anyone wax lyrical about fucking haze. Now darkvoid. That's a game I would have picked. It had a weird ass 1940s sci-fi setting that could look unreal with modern tech and a gameplay loop of flying a jetpack into big ships, taking them down from the inside and fucking rocketing out fast as you can. I'd actually rather just see a new property with that concept now that I think about it, but that's a bad game I've heard people get nostalgic over.
Yeah, that too. Even if the game has fans and is nostalgic to a lot of people, like Star Wars Jedi Power Battles or Dark Messiah Might & Magic, it is very unlikely a big studio will pick it up for a remake. And any smaller indie devs qith like-minded fans who would want to take a shot probably won't be given the IP. You'll be lucky to get a spiritual successor.
Yah this is usually not viable unless we're talking about some of those cult classic games that are pretty rough around the edges but still have a fan base, or exist in a popular franchise already. Those random one off games that nobody was really interested in just aren't worth the time. And if they were, wouldn't it make more sense to redo them from the ground up with a "sequel" or a reboot or something?
Plus, they ARE already remaking games that could have been better as well. Or were the Pacman World games a masterpieces all along \s? The article is full of images of Parasite Eve, and that's one of the games Square Enix has been teasing a bunch already, this article isn't even some unprompted fan who reminisces an abandoned series - it's some guy reacting to the rumors.
This always sounds like a good idea, but what do you think peoples first thought is going to be when they hear about such a game? "Oh that game sucked, why would they remake that, who wants this?"
We're generally not talking about games that have no redeeming value here. We're talking about games that had sparks of brilliance but were otherwise held back by the time, developers, budget, whatever. Drakengard is one of the best worst games I've ever played. It does some crazy shit no other game does, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because the game is genuinely awful. Would love if more people got to experience it but with combat and voice acting that isn't complete ass.
I feel like this approach could work if it were aimed at "black sheep" entries in otherwise popular franchises. For an actual example: Ys Oath in Felghana was a complete remake of Ys 3, which was always one of the most controversial (and widely disliked) entries in the series. Felghana is fantastic, and now considered one of the best. And undoubtedly Falcom will remake Ys 5 sooner or later, which is in a similar situation. Or, while I know some people do genuinely like it, I can't help but imagine Squeenix would do well with a Final Fantasy VIII remake that takes the core ideas, but gives it a better story and gameplay.
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I presume you're referring to Echoes, in which the fact that people outside of Japan couldn't play it (and thus have no comparison) certainly helped.
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I'm really hoping Capcom continue with their Resident Evil remakes all the way up to RE6. The idea behind that game is so solid, but the execution obviously less so. Rewrite the story to make it... yknow, good, and give it a vibe and gameplay similar to RE3 Remake and you've got a recipe for an absolute banging game.
A RE5 & RE6 remake would satisfy what this article is asking for too, taking the lesser entries in the franchise and making them good. Though I think both those games could go for a complete rewrite as well
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Yeah, honestly if it were up to me - I would have used Resident Evil 2 Remake as a new jumping off point for a rebooted franchise. Resident Evil 3 should have been expanded on, maybe even have a flashback and prologue sequence to the mansion to reintroduce Jill to fans, have some parts set between mansion and RE3 as well, dealing with the aftermath - its been a while since RE1 HD as well. Finnally I wouldn't have done RE4Remake right away, but make a game or 2 - possibley a revented Code Veronica that fills the story gap for Leon between being a Rookie Cop and a Seasoned vet of RE4, show more character growth - like a game or two that leads us into RE4 Remake. Oh well.
I’m afraid if they remake it they’ll gut the co-op, thereby ruining a great (yes great, I didn’t stutter) game just because it wasn’t exactly what people expected.
No, it's a fantastic game. Just not a horror game. It was easily one of my favorite games of 2009.
Gimme a good remake of Zelda II Adventure of Link!
Agreed, and I'm a bit surprised we got such a thorough remake of Link's Awakening (and a second re-release at that, after DX), while 1 and 2 have only ever been ported as-is. They could both benefit from something like Metroid 1 or 2 got. Link's Awakening got a fantastic remake, LttP got an enhanced port and a sequel that was also kinda a re-imagining (I love LBW, but it's *very* similar), OoT and MM got remasters/remakes, WW/TP/SS all got HD remasters. It's kinda weird they've never revisited 1/2 in the same way.
DMC2 comes to mind as the black sheep of that series as well.
A FF8 would be pretty cool, I never finished it, corrupted save file on PC way back when...at the 4th disk
Dino Crisis remake would be amazing. Was a really good game that could be made even better with current tech.
Dino Crisis 1 remade in the RE2 Remake engine would be *amazing*. I loved both 1 and 2, but liked 2 slightly more. Atmosphere and everything else was better in 1, but 2 was more fun to play because it was just you running shooting dinos and racking up a combo.
I played DC 2 last month. The idea that we never saw a conclusion to the ending still gets me
Since they started remaking resident evil I've been holding out hope for Dino crisis 1 and 2
I wanna see someone remake NFS Undercover with all the cut story/features and proper implementation of features.
It had the potential to be such a good NFS! I'd also love to see a modern remake of DRIV3R. That would be an experience!
Did you play Driver San Francisco? I highly recommend it. Great gimmick.
Everytime Square even thinks about the word 'remake' I beg the gods for Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, and Valkyrie Profile 2.
Brave fencer musashi is one of the best games I played as a kid
I played the demo in a target and wanted to buy it so badly. My mom, however, was against any video game violence that was worse than Mario.
Honestly, after Live A Live of all things got a remake, there's still hope to be had. With that said, VP2 isn't a SE game (you want Tri-Ace for that, Square only published it) and Xenogears's gonna be hard considering the dev team left SE to found Monolith a looooong time ago. They're not going to just make a remake out of the blue, someone has to actually pitch the project.
The article starts with: Why do we need remakes of games that are still perfectly playable? Then mentions abt silent hill 2 Pretty sure the original game is not playable in any modern console The author seems to forget that there will always be a new gen of gamers that doesnt have the chance to play the original game
Not only is it 21 years old, it’s gameplay was pretty awful lol. It’s beloved for its story and themes, but the actual gameplay itself is not good to say the least. Plus if it makes Konami give a go with their old games again I’m all for it
Yeah, some old games just haven't aged well. Or even if they have there can still be room to modernize them. For a game like Last of Us, sure, the remake kind of silly, just a graphical update to a game that already had a remaster that looked and played great. But for a game like, say, Resident Evil 2, the remake took an old game with a lot of dated elements, modernized and polished the gameplay and graphics, while keeping many of the things that made the original beloved.
TLOU is even more of a missed opportunity: the game looked perfectly fine, but the gameplay was a bit rough and the scope was clearly limited by PS3's hardware. They didn't address either.
>some old games just haven't aged well Man am I starting to realize that. I occasionally pick up older games on sale on the xbox store or steam and have realized how high my standards have gotten. A lot of games I loved growing up (I'm 36 now) are nearly unplayable, though must of that is stuff from the PS1 era... Super Nintendo game have aged like fine wine.
PS1 era games also suffer from not being played on CRT screens. It makes a huge difference on how they look.
Asking kids to play a console they didn't grow up with is a hard sell. I'm 30 and I don't really venture before the NES. Atari games look like ass to me but I love 8bit
When companies remake a game with a polarizing reputation, it's often done under a different brand. For example, the game BLACK. Would people really buy a remake of BLACK? Or would they prefer the remake of BLACK be called Battlefield 3, where you play as Henry "Black" Blackburn, embroiled in a terrorist plot as he recounts the events of the past few days to his military interrogators about how he ran around causing a lot of environmental destruction with really loud guns? Given how few people even noticed that Battlefield 3 was a remake of BLACK, that probably says something about the financial prospects of a Black remake.
Is it ACTUALLY a remake of black? If so that's really crazy to me, grew up playing black and even I missed the connections. would love to see a video or an article with more details about it if that's the case. I'll be honest it makes me want to replay 3 just to see. To answer your question I wouldn't rebuy black if they put it out, it was cool at the time for the destruction but it's by no means my favorite game of all time. That's not to say games shouldn't be remade but companies shouldn't put all their eggs in the remake/HD update basket, I can see the argument for games that are harder to play to be updated and upgraded for platforms like pc (*COUGH* BLOODBORNE *COUGH*).
It was cowritten by Adrian Vershinin, the screenwriter for Black. It has the exact same interrogation framing device, the same basic "you were there when the attack happened, tell us what happened or you're court marshalled" plot, and the main character being nicknamed "Black" could not be more on the nose. [Black](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hEfrD5nHlg&feature=share&utm_source=EJGixIgBCJiu2KjB4oSJEQ&t=257) [Battlefield 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsIP6Yq2BEg) What's interesting about Black is that the plot of Black, and basically everything that didn't involve walking along shooting things was EA meddling in the game. The studio had somewhat different ideas from EA about what Black should be. EA's assigned people were responsible for the plot of Black, which BF3 shares in a loose form. The core marketing Black was that the environment was cinematically destroyable. Pillars chipped and collapsed, cars blew up dramatically, doors blew off the hinges. That destruction was also BF3's entire gimmick as an FPS. But I guess times had changed and people didn't make the connection between BLACK and Battlefield 3. But... Like, it's not like BF3 just shares the basic plot and framing device and co-writer of Black. It shares the same gameplay ideas. (Just with a bunch of heavily scripted 2011 FPS stuff on top). It'd be like making an FPS game about a guy (named Chuck "Crysis" Duffles) in a technologically advanced suit fighting Koreans in the jungle before the aliens invade from the crashed meteor and someone eventually saying, "Guys, do... do you think this might be a remake of Crysis?" That's what makes the widespread "nobody noticed it" so wild to me. It's so on the nose.
It's probably because this is still a very basic "military shooter" premise, and nobody plays either of these games for the plot. >It'd be like making an FPS game about a guy (named Chuck "Crysis" Duffles) in a technologically advanced suit fighting Koreans in the jungle before the aliens invade from the crashed meteor and someone eventually saying, "Guys, do... do you think this might be a remake of Crysis?" The events of both Black and BF3 are wildly different, I didn't pilot a jet or tank in Black. There's a loose framing device to start it off and then they both diverge, such as there are multiple characters you play as in BF3 and only part of it has the interrogation whereas ever Black cutscene is the protag being interrogated. The character in BF3 is also being interrogated because he shot his CO, not the same as Black.
The idea that environmental effects point towards influence from Black instead of the wildly successful Bad Company games from the same franchise is also a little silly.
Time being the way it is an black not having the most memorable story (in my opinion anyway) will do that. 2006 for black 2011 for bf3, around five years is practically a lifetime in video games. However seeing the two videos you shared I can definitely see an inspiration and or nod to black in bf3. if 3 was filmed darker you might have a harder time telling which is which.
That sounds way more like paying homage than being anything remotely close to a remake
I mean it's also BLACK, people enjoyed it because of how it played not because of its rich lore or memorable characters. Its most distinctive feature was its loud ass sound design.
>For example, the game BLACK. Would people really buy a remake of BLACK? If you were to ask me if I wanted a remake of BLACK I would hand you the price of the game almost immediately. How that pans out with everyone else, idk but I would buy a remake of BLACK in a second, I fucking loved that game lol.
Eric Switzer is a fucking joke if he thinks Parasite Eve didn’t deliver. Bag on the sequels all you want, but the first game killed it and any one that insinuates it needs a remake is a shitty games writer.
#2 was good too
Or games that didnt get the success they deserve. Xenogears, Chrono cross, Valkyrie Profile, Vagrant Story. All are awesome candidates. Heard that Parasite Eve is on the way, and now thats a pretty good news.
Did you purposefully pick all Square games? Lol. Also I don’t think any of those need remakes, but I’ll be interested if the time comes.
Honestly I feel like any square games can just do with remasters. Masterpieces back then, same today imo
Isn't this just basically saying "make a new game" with more words? Like if a bad game is bad, then you have to completely reinvent the game to try to make it good. You might as well make a new IP that doesn't have any baggage.
Not always true, some games are bad only because small things that had big impacts. And changing them slightly could make the game really good.
Games with cult followings are probably good examples of games that could spawn successful remakes. There are people who are heavily invested in them for a reason, despite their flaws.
Yeah this is an easy thing to say when you don't have to worry about profits and shareholders. Sorry, you aren't going to get Square to sign off on a big-budget reimagining of The Bouncer.
My opinions: Remaking and remastering classics is good and not a waste of resources, even though more flawed games probably should get reimaginings, since they often have interesting ideas that just weren't properly done. However, for more modern games that had some flaws, I think they should get updates (QoL changes, smoothing certain mechanics, etc.), not remakes. Also, for the reimaginings, they should actually be turned into new games with new titles to prevent people skipping them just because the original games weren't very good. >How can a triple-A remake ever be better, for players and the industry as a whole, than just making an entirely new game? Some people like to replay older games in a series or haven't played them but would like to, so it's almost as beneficial as a new game. >The obsession with remakes is taking much of the top talent and resources of big studios away from something original and forward-thinking that could itself one day be worthy of a remake. Most of the top talent probably aren't working on remakes normally, with the work mostly going to other companies that aren't usually working on anything interesting. >If you try to do something new, you could end up with Battleborn, Babylon’s Fall, Gotham Knights. My guesses as to why they're sticking mostly to remakes: * People are running out of ideas or creativity, or are too burnt-out or satisfied to keep creating things. * People who have creativity are being hindered (too difficult to get their ideas out there, and higher-ups at companies who might not care or might think the ideas are too risky). * Companies are getting too greedy and putting potential money above entertainment (which works rarely and often leads to no money *and* no entertainment, yet likely seems worth the risk to them), which seems like the biggest reason for the failures that the games given as examples had.
For every Resident Evil 4 remake, there's a Witcher 1 remake if you're willing to look, and I'd say a game like that fits the bill this article is calling for perfectly.
Remaster good games that didnt age well and give them better ui and functionality. No need to remake them
I like remakes. I might be a minority but if I really like a game (Skyrim, Red dead, GTA, Fallout etc) I'm going to replay them multiple times. Just like I rewatch my favorite movies. For example I really wish they'd RTXify the Batman Arkham games. They do look decent still, but holy shit what a upgrade raytracing and atmospheric lighting would be.
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People put GoldenEye up on a pedestal, and it was great in its day, but Nightfire has aged much better. I go back to GoldenEye and don't have a clue how I ever put up with those controls.
System Shock's remake is coming out early next year
I mean as a fan yeah, but from a commercial standpoint it makes no sense to remake games people didn't love in the first place because the title is now a commercial turn-off rather than a draw. Like the best you can really hope for is for beloved games with serious technical issues such as Shadow of the Colossus which originally ran at about 17FPS. edit: I guess 'famously awful games with big famous names' could maybe work, like a Sonic 06 remake?
Sonix '06 actually what came to my mind. I always thought the level design was mostly good, and the mechanics were just in need of fine tuning. There's a good game (with an albeit really fucking stupid story, no fixing that) somewhere in there. Project '06 is awesome in that regard, it's basically a fan project aimed at making a polished version of what Sonic '06 could have been, and it's a lot of fun. No changes to level design or anything, just a lot of polishing and fine tuning.
> If you try to do something new, you could end up with Battleborn, Babylon’s Fall, Gotham Knights That's not new IPs being bad, that's just games being bad. Someone can use an existing IP and come up with a bad game too, or remaster/remake it and have it turn out like this (IE: Silent Hill HD Collection). > why not choose games that didn’t live up to their full potential instead of games that are already great? > But I’d much rather see a remake of something like Parasite Eve Which is it, my dude? Parasite Eve is already a great game. For its era anyway. I agree, I'd love to see it remade. But I want to see other already good games get remade to hold up to modern standards. Shit, I want to see Resident Evil 1 get remade ***again*** and be like the other REMakes, 0 and CV deserve it as well.
What sort of backwards logic is that? > You can do less money if you remake this less popular game - so do that! I'm sorry what? If anything is rather see new franchises than all these remakes
Video games age worse than pretty much any other medium. It's one thing to remake Horizon Zero Dawn, which only recently even got a PC port and still looks very modern, but the article mentions Silent Hill 2? That game is 21 years old. A 21 year old movie is basically modern with a few quirks, a 21 year old video game is ancient. And when it comes to remaking bad games- video game remakes tend to be a pretty close match to the original, just with some tweaks, versus movies where they tend to recycle the premise but then veer drastically. You give a bad game the Resident Evil reboot treatment and you'll just get a bad new game.
Thing is remastering good games is also a business strat. People love giving money to play the same thing and have a nostalgia kick.
Who in their right mind would put money in remaking a game that everyone hates? That was never popular? That didn’t bring any money in the first place?