*Intro*
You may have noticed how a lot of games are getting remastered this generation.
Tomb Raider, The Last of Us,
Devil May Cry 4, DMC, Final Fantasy 10 and 10 2, which is just a rerelease of a
previous remastering, all the Halo games, Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero, Wind Waker.
Heck, the last generation had a ton too. All the other Devil May Cry games,
God of War Collection, I co, Shadow of the Colossus, Prince of Persia Trilogy,
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix 1 and 2, Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2... no i said that one already
Silent Hill HD Collection, yessss, Okami, Metal Gear Solid Collection;
the list goes on and on. And these remastered games seem to be getting an
even bigger marketing budget and PR push than they used to.
In some ways this is a great thing and in some ways this could be a terrible thing.
And overall, I'm just not sure how to feel about it.
So, the reason we're seeing so many remasters, and so many high-profile ones,
is because making new content for this generation is expensive, time-consuming, and risky,
even more than last gen. Remastered games, especially remastered
games from earlier platforms that were already HD like the ps3 or 360, cost a
lot less to create. They already have a built-in fan base and they can be
updated relatively cheaply; making remasters a far less risky proposition
than making some new thing. Now, normally these games would get lost in the flood
of other high-profile, new games being released, but because of the time, expense,
and difficulty of creating really top tier content for these new systems,
we're just not seeing as many big, new triple-a titles hitting the market.
That means that there's more chance for these remasters to get attention from the
press and get noticed by fans; which, in turn, means that publishers can see a
bigger return on giving these sort of titles a bit of a marketing budget.
Besides, platform holders like Sony and Microsoft are desperate to get more
content on their platforms, especially that increasingly rare, exclusive content.
Which means they're more likely to give a little bit of love to these types of
projects than they were in the past. Which I guess brings us to the big
question: 'is this a good thing?'.
On the positive side, I like the fact that we as a community are getting used
to the idea of remastering a game not only to function, but to actually seem
appealing on current hardware.
This is an important part of preserving the best pieces of gaming history.
There are a lot of genuinely great games out there that if you don't have the nostalgia
that comes with playing them back in their heyday,
it can be really hard to go back to because they simply haven't aged very well.
They were cutting edge tech when they came out, but today they may just
look like a low-res low poly mess.
This is, of course, assuming you can even still find reasonably priced copies of
the game and hardware to play it on. By updating these games, we make them more
accessible for modern audiences and make them more approachable for future game
designers looking to understand what these games did well. This is a very good thing.
I mean it's essential that we preserve these classics in their original form too
but I'm also thrilled that more people will be able to play them because
they're on modern hardware with a fresh coat of paint.
But despite that, I can't ignore the downsides. There's always the concern
that a company doing a remaster might fundamentally misunderstands its own game,
as with the Silent Hill HD Collection for last generation.
There's also the worried that these remastering projects might claim
developer talent and resources that can otherwise be applied to crafting new
experiences, but neither of those are my main concern.
My main concern is that it's yet another indicator that we're struggling to make
new experiences at all, at least on a AAA console front.
The parallels with Hollywood are too clear. Remakes often fall into the same
category as unnecessary sequels and desperate reboots.
They sound like safe bets when discussing numbers in a boardroom, but
they're often creatively, and ultimately, financially bankrupt, and I feel even
more concerned looking at what's being remade. Many of the recent or upcoming
high-profile remakes are just from last gen.
This makes sense financially as these are the games that are easiest to up-res
to something that looks good on modern hardware, but I'd argue that
they're also the least necessary.
I mean, I love The Last of Us and DMC, but those are still quite playable in their
original forms on hardware a lot of us still probably have hooked up to our TVs.
They aren't exactly inaccessible to people who are just now getting into
games, and they certainly aren't unpalatable to those of us who are used
to the cutting edge of modern fidelity either. They don't really preserve
history; so much as simply extend the sales chart a bit. Which, I guess is fine,
but certainly doesn't seem as urgent.
This is one of the problems with remastering games to modern fidelity
standards, though. The games that actually need a graphics facelift the most are
likely to cost just as much as making a new game because none of the old assets
are usable anymore.
The original game is little more than a blueprint. Like, okay, let's talk about the
recent big announcement:
a Final Fantasy 7 remake.
The original game was released almost two decades ago.
It looked like this.
None of this is reusable. Not the art assets. Not the code. Not even the sound files.
They're gonna have to build it all again from the ground up, and all those
tricks they used back in the day to make Final Fantasy Seven's world feel expansive
and interesting just won't fly by today's standards.
All those towns and landscapes we ran through that we're really just 2-D
pre-rendered images... they can't do that anymore.
Now the development team is going to have to actually build all those towns
and fill them with all the details that our imaginations had filled them with.
And they'll have to populate them with lovingly rendered people who walk around
and talk with actual voices and these might seem like small things but these
are all the small things that add up to make a budget astronomical.
And final fantasy world maps don't look like this anymore. They look like this...
Look at this! Look at all this money just, everywhere.
All told the remake of Final Fantasy 7 is probably gonna cost just as much,
maybe more than, a brand new Final Fantasy game, and we've seen how much
time and money those take. Remember when Final Fantasy 15 was announced like
eight years ago, before Final Fantasy 13 came out, as like a sort of semi... whatever.
And this is true of most of the games that really need a modern remake and
when that's the case, these remasters suddenly moved from being a financial
sure thing to an enormous risk. Even with the original's popularity and all of our excitement,
Final Fantasy 7 might, might be profitable but only if it lives up to
the gigantic hype that such a remake has, and a lot of games that really need to
be remastered for a new generation don't even have that advantage.
This is why I'm so torn on how to feel about seeing more remade or remastered games.
I mean, I love seeing new versions of old games that have been made visually
accessible to a modern audience. But any game that's old enough to actually need
it costs just as much as making a new game, and remastering more recent games
as yet another safe bet this industry can cling to to avoid the risk of
building rich new experiences.
We gotta start finding tricks to bringing those primitive low res game
worlds to life. A way of realizing those worlds that our minds used to fill with
imagined detail, or providing us a way to recapture that active imagination today.
A method that doesn't involve just rebuilding those world's to modern
visual standards because those old games do deserve to be experienced by modern
players, but if we don't find a financially viable way to remaster the
classics;
the only realistic candidates left are the ones that don't cost that much to
upgrade and those aren't without value, clearly, but when those efforts could be
going to the creation of great new games instead, I'm not entirely sure the
trade-off is worth it.
We'll see you next week.
*Outro Music*