The Remastered Remake of the Re-release

[BULUPTAX]

I've been seeing a lot of people online clowning on game devs like Bethesda and Naughty Dog for their constant re-releases and remasters, etc of Skyrim and The Last of Us respectively. They get called "lazy" and "unoriginal" for "porting old games onto newer systems for a quick buck" 

Personally, I think it's a good thing that more and more devs are bringing their older games up to date and making them accessible on newer systems. I can't even begin to count how many older games I've wanted to play fully legally only to find that their not on any digital stores and/or can only be found secondhand for hundreds of dollars. It benefits old players because they have an excuse to revisit, it benefits new players because it's now accessible to a wider audience, and it benefits the devs and distributors because it brings in a new stream of revenue and lowers the risk of piracy.

I can't really see a downside to remasters and remakes, surely they can't take away too much energy from devs that they can't put as much energy in their newer games. Surely most of the work on remasters is already done and they're just tweaking them slightly? I know in cases like The Last of Us Part I, they pretty much remade the game from the ground up and only reused dialogue, sound effects and music from the original. But I'd also imagine that no additional writing or concept art was needed so no dev power was taken off their unreleased stuff? 

What are you guy's opinions on this?

EDIT: also, happy 100 threads!

[NateDog]

I like them within reason. The amount of re-releases The Last Of Us has had is a joke to me and there is no way it is justified at all. The Oblivion remaster seems like it is done well, a significant upgrade on the original graphically and with performance too. Nostalgia is a big, big draw too of course, but I don't feel like you can use that as a significant draw for something like TLOU that is only 12 years old. Nobody needs 4 releases of one game in that timeframe.

Delta is a bit of an odd one. MGS3 is one of the best looking PS2 games out there and has had the Subsistence, 3D and master collection re-releases. But it makes sense for a number of reasons especially given the dormant state of the series in the last decade and could be the key to the series continuing. There are then remakes like the rumoured FFIX where nobody knows exactly what scale they are, but the continued silence over it over a long period of time is beginning to make me wonder if it's halfway between a simple graphical remaster and the VII remakes. The latter are of course on an incredibly large scale and have added and changed things to the point where calling them remakes feels a little unfair to an extent (Rebirth in particular was incredible).

In the end I understand the need for them in the modern industry where AA-AAA games take so long, so many people to make them and cost so much money. They help fill gaps which would be felt much more strongly if they weren't there to shoulder the financial burden of fallow years for companies and publishers.

[Departed]

I'm perfectly okay with remakes if it results in a really fun game that I actually have incentive to come back to. So far, the remakes that I've been most into have been home runs.

I absolutely adore RE4Make, Silent Hill 2Make, and really liked RE2Make as well. I loved RE4R and SH2R because the former built on what was already a masterpiece and found a way to both modernize and improve upon it while simultaneously keeping all of its good ideas and building on stuff that could afford to be ironed out. It's the kind of remake that's both faithful yet so unique in its scenarios that it's almost like a brand new game. There is so much about RE4Make that's completely unique from the source material, ensuring that it doesn't completely replace it, giving us two very unique versions of the same masterpiece.

Similarly, SH2R is an example of respecting the original source material but not being a slave to it either. BT knew they couldn't get away with fixed cameras so they countered it by making the world so eerily dark and dialing up the unsettling sound design so you never feel comfortable, no matter where you are. It took what worked about the OG and improved in every area where it didn't, especially in the combat and boss fights. Eddie's boss fight in the OG is a comical farce, whereas the remake fight is one of the best fights in the whole series, and one of my favorite shootout bosses, which also manages to still feel genuinely creepy in a way the original never could.

That's why I'm honestly so excited about Delta. I absolutely adore MGS3. It's one of my favorite games of all time and it's still so insanely fun to play to this day, since I'm so used to its undeniably archaic controls. But everything I've seen about Delta has me more and more eager to get my hands on it. The combat looks really good. I love that camo swapping and cure feels so much faster. And I'm hopeful that the Bomberman bonus mode will eventually be added to PS5 down the road too the way GZ's console exclusive missions were.

[Jassassino]

I'm perfectly okay with remakes if it results in a really fun game that I actually have incentive to come back to. So far, the remakes that I've been most into have been home runs.

I absolutely adore RE4Make, Silent Hill 2Make, and really liked RE2Make as well. I loved RE4R and SH2R because the former built on what was already a masterpiece and found a way to both modernize and improve upon it while simultaneously keeping all of its good ideas and building on stuff that could afford to be ironed out. It's the kind of remake that's both faithful yet so unique in its scenarios that it's almost like a brand new game. There is so much about RE4Make that's completely unique from the source material, ensuring that it doesn't completely replace it, giving us two very unique versions of the same masterpiece.

Similarly, SH2R is an example of respecting the original source material but not being a slave to it either. BT knew they couldn't get away with fixed cameras so they countered it by

With SH2R, the way that the narrative is set in SH2 to begin with anyway, it can easily be seen as more than a remake - somewhat a second version of the same story, considering...

Spoiler:

James is heavily implied to have been in a perpetual loop, over and over, with every ending and route of the original SH2 being totally canon to SH2R through the memories you unlock and revisited places - understanding that all of this has continued on and on until the 'true'/good ending of SH2R adds a really great layer to the original IMO

I do wonder where this will stop with just straight-up remakes, though - it is slightly concerning, and suggests that we're deeply stagnating in creativity and creative freedoms provided to classic directors, studios, creators and franchises thanks somewhat to a neverending war between art and profit in the games industry. The remake in that way is somewhat a lowest common denominator cash-grab oftentimes - of course there are outliers like Oblivion and SH2R or RE2:Remake (which I got obsessed with over and over), but, on the other hand, even though I enjoyed it, did we really need Spyro: Reignited Trilogy if it wasn't going to lead to Spyro: 4 just because it made X amount of millions instead of Y amount of millions? I would've happily just taken a port of the original games in a neat package with cut content restored instead.

[Departed]

it is slightly concerning, and suggests that we're deeply stagnating in creativity and creative freedoms provided to classic directors, studios, creators and franchises thanks somewhat to a neverending war between art and profit in the games industry.

I look at it a few ways. The best remakes are made with a vision and heart. SH2R, RE2R, RE4R, and others like them, those are remakes made because in the case of SH2, it's a masterful experience that still benefits from being remade and can lend new context, like you said. And in the case of the REMakes, it's very clear that Capcom recognizes what a disaster the RE story became, so they're course correcting to create a better cohesion between the new RE games and the original storylines.

Whereas others really are just a coat of paint for nostalgia's sake and if it's fun and still holds up, all the better, I'd say.

But it is worth noting that the best remakes are coming from the companies not bottomed out by shareholders. Capcom's been soaring for over half a decade now with hit after hit. Whereas even though Dead Space Remake did well, EA is so beholden to their shareholders that "doing good" isn't good enough, so they cancelled the DS2 Remake.

Everyone I know who works in the game industry has been saying for a while that we're in for another crash because of how out of control "design by shareholder appeasement" has become. A lot of companies are going to either merge or just shut down, and the ones who aren't promising numbers they could never deliver are the ones most likely to reign supreme. It's doubly shocking then that Konami has been really reasonable with sales expectations and quite happy with SH2R's success when a decade ago, they were one of the worst offenders of the fools gold rush. I dunno if there's been a change in management or not, but I welcome the direction they've been headed, and definitely wouldn't mind seeing more of their IP's get remade, so long as there's still something new going along with the remakes.

[black king]

even though Dead Space Remake did well, EA is so beholden to their shareholders that "doing good" isn't good enough, so they cancelled the DS2 Remake.

Darn I liked the Dead Space remake. Liked the original too but I think the remake did it better.

[Null]

Sometimes maybe good

Sometimes maybe shit

I maintain the TLOU remasters are absurd.

But obviously stuff like Oblivion is good.

[Bread]

TLOU is a weird one. I have no beef with the remasters; a PS3 leaping to PS4 and a PS4 game leaping to PS5 makes sense to me and doesn't bother me.

The Last of Us Part 1 was unnecessary though. Without implementing the changes to the gameplay mechanics introduced in Part 2 and re-designing the levels to best utilise them, there simply wasn't enough reason to justify doing it. Looked very nice though.

[Sword]

I think the industry needs to properly look at a long term approach to this. Video games are a relatively new medium and we've had how many re-releases of individual games? There needs to be a library of games we can access like Google's now cancelled Stadia (they dropped the ball by not persevering with that, it could've eventually been the next Netflix). Otherwise what will gaming be like in the next 100 years? Either 10 re-releases of the one game or it's lost to history.

[2generic4you]

I see nothing wrong with the modern trend of remakes from PS360 era. But it's also a shame that most games that would actually benefit from a remake like Parasite Eve or Dino Crisis are left ignored by the developers in favor of focusing on more popular franchises.