Tendo City

Curious little buggers...  But you know, they'd have found out EXACTLY what fans wanted in a remake if they hadn't shut that fan remake down several years back.

For my part, at this stage I'm not sure I really need a straight remake but-in-3D.  I also don't think I need some kind of meta-narrative where they try to avoid the consequences of the first game (murderers of whole timelines).  What I would like to see, if I were asking for a modern remake, was to turn the game into a CRPG with lots of real choices that dramatically affect more than just a bunch of joke endings.

I don't know if I want it remade. I'm kind of tired of all the remakes.

(8th March 2024, 12:40 PM)Weltall Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if I want it remade. I'm kind of tired of all the remakes.

Someone suggested that the last chapter in the FF7 remake might stay a PS exclusive after releasing the first two already on PC. And I was like oww. Well someone is a terrible terrible stain on humanity then. Like you take bits from the left over puckered buttholes pile and you shove some bird beaks here and there. Then you get that asshole.

(5th March 2024, 6:18 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: [ -> ]Curious little buggers...  But you know, they'd have found out EXACTLY what fans wanted in a remake if they hadn't shut that fan remake down several years back.

For my part, at this stage I'm not sure I really need a straight remake but-in-3D.  I also don't think I need some kind of meta-narrative where they try to avoid the consequences of the first game (murderers of whole timelines).  What I would like to see, if I were asking for a modern remake, was to turn the game into a CRPG with lots of real choices that dramatically affect more than just a bunch of joke endings.

It's interesting.  A few years back, it was refreshing to see a remake that was actually a remake and not just a port with the rendering resolution turned up a few notches.  Now, the industry is all over these full on remakes, which have been done to varying quality.  Heck, I recall absolutely resenting the notion of splitting up a game like FF7 into multiple games, until I realized it went beyond a remake to a reimagining with a meta-narrative where midway through the first "chapter" the characters find out how the story is "supposed to go" and then KILL FATE to break away from the original story.  Now an alternate reality Zack is... anyway point is I'm glad to see some creativity and actual graphical improvement being applied to these things, but yes it's rather sad that the few games that are actually games and not just slot machines with a game skin wrapped around it are just remakes of what gaming was before the whole of industry decided products themselves had to be sub-monetized. It does get to be "a bit much".

Quote:A few years back, it was refreshing to see a remake that was actually a remake and not just a port with the rendering resolution turned up a few notches. 

I think what has surprised me a lot is that some of my very favorite games have been given critically- and fan-acclaimed remakes that have significantly re-built the entire game from the ground up and have even re-imagined some concepts. FF7, RE2, RE4 being three major examples. I have copies of all three remakes. And, I have never made it even 20% into any of them. I can't even really say why. They all look good, they all seem to be fun, if anything, the gameplay in each one is significantly improved, from a user experience standpoint. Nonetheless, I found myself losing interest quickly and I've never finished these remakes.

Part of the reason may be that, as I've ventured into my 40s, I have discovered that I'm not a very nostalgic person for the most part. I have zero desire to build a time machine and relive the past, and I don't miss being a kid at all. I love the games I loved as a kid, and I will still play them sometimes. I actually do still vibe pretty hard with the music I grew up liking. But, I feel like my generation has been having its nostalgia commercialized to an insane degree, and very quickly. Like, I didn't even really have time to forget and miss these things. I find even high quality remakes to be retreading sacred ground a lot of the time. I think a lot of it is because I have very limited free time, so when I can enjoy a game, or a movie or whatever, I crave a novel experience.

Heck I'm utterly terrified of what Bloober is going to do with Silent Hill 2, so I can only imagine what your worries may be there.

The total reimaginings of past games are a unique thing we're seeing now, but I can understand where you're coming from.  Frankly, the speed of how they're bringing back "nostalgia" is rather sickening.  Was it always like this?  It may have been... but there's a LOT more cash thrown at these things now than there used to be.  "Too big to fail" indeed.  Now, I still pull out lots of old games and play through them rather often.  Heck, just check my recent reviews over in the review threads.  I've been on a real Donkey Kong kick lately and am currently working through Donkey Kong Country 3, remembering that while I may prefer a lot of the level design from DKC2, DKC3 was still a good game.

Anyway, yeah, the industry is reselling us our childhood and really...  all I need them to do is keep their own past accessible.  Movies, books, and music have FAR better preservation in place than games do.  It's a shame how hard it is to keep even purchased emulated ROMs around for more than one generation, and the end result is the fans end up doing far better a job preserving gaming past than corporations do.  Piracy provides a superior product all too often.

I would like to mention that there are exceptions. I'm playing the demo for Star Ocean: Second Story Remake, and I have to say that, so far, I am really enjoying it. A big reason is because of their idea to take the beautiful pre-rendered environments from the original PS1 title, and crafted 3D environments which do such a great job of preserving that look and feel (the original game feels kind of like a storybook, visually). Most of the changes, thus far, have been QoL updates (which I dig), but it is a remake which doesn't radically re-imagine the core concepts or feel the need to turn it into an entirely new and different experience which merely hearkens back to the original.

The issue of remakes is interesting.  One the one hand, they make sense for two reasons: something being a known property helps with sales as opposed to a new game or particularly a new IP, and second, because we live in a time of improving technology, a remake of a game is going to be materially different from the original. 

Even a remake that is mostly the same as the original except with enhanced graphics and maybe a bit of new content, such as Nintendo's recent remakes of Metroid Prime, Super Mario RPG, and most recently Mario vs. Donkey Kong, are different from the original enough visually to be worth considering, at least, even for someone who has the originals.  I will say that of those three I only own the Metroid Prime remake, but I might get the other two eventually even if MvDK isn't anywhere near as great of a game as DK'94.  As for the Star Ocean The Second Story remake, I did get that and yes it's very very good, building off of the original but improving on it in nice ways.

But the FF7 remakes are something different, complete re-imaginings of the originals.  I haven't played them so I don't know what I'd think, and I understand why some would prefer something entirely new, but making such a gameplay-different remake of a classic is an interesting idea.  Obviously it's being done at least in part because they think this will sell better than a new game would and by having the basic scenario already written they save some development time (theoretically), but it's a fine idea.  There is a fair question about how many new people it brings in, though -- how many people who aren't old enough to have played the original FF7 are going to play these remakes?

Even so, I think it's nice that Square is making this remake series even if I'm not interested enough to actually play them.  A remake of Chrono Trigger or FF6 would be interesting.  The hard part though would be making something that a new audience would be as interested in as people now in their 40s, and you'd need to do that to make something generally popular...

Weltall Wrote:, I feel like my generation has been having its nostalgia commercialized to an insane degree, and very quickly. Like, I didn't even really have time to forget and miss these things.

This is very true, there's no question about it.  The commercialization of nostalgia has become a huge thing, and a lot of media basically has become "hey, here's a reference!  Don't you remember that, doesn't that make this cool!" But like, you aren't doing anything actually new by just referencing something that was popular several decades ago... yeah, I'm not a fan of Ready Player One, heh.  I do like remakes and franchises I liked in the past, but I would prefer something actually stand on its own and not just be propped up by pop-culture references or what have you.

Quote:Heck I'm utterly terrified of what Bloober is going to do with Silent Hill 2, so I can only imagine what your worries may be there.

I'm not worried one bit. The original Silent Hill 2 is more than a game to me. It was an obsession. I wrote my own novelization, which I completed 18 years ago, but still gets likes and follows to this day. I traveled the world. I met my wife, got married, moved to Kentucky, with a career and a passion, all because we both moderated a Silent Hill forum together real sexy like, and therefore, my entire life for the last 12 years would not have happened the same way, at all, if not for Silent Hill 2. Nobody could ever remake that.

(31st March 2024, 8:15 PM)Weltall Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Heck I'm utterly terrified of what Bloober is going to do with Silent Hill 2, so I can only imagine what your worries may be there.

I'm not worried one bit. The original Silent Hill 2 is more than a game to me. It was an obsession. I wrote my own novelization, which I completed 18 years ago, but still gets likes and follows to this day. I traveled the world. I met my wife, got married, moved to Kentucky, with a career and a passion, all because we both moderated a Silent Hill forum together real sexy like, and therefore, my entire life for the last 12 years would not have happened the same way, at all, if not for Silent Hill 2. Nobody could ever remake that.

The god-emperor of Dune could, by finding and replicating behavior patterns over generations to reproduce the experience dozens of times over.  That sort of diminishing of the human soul is kind of why he's the villain of the later books.  Wow that was an out-there response no one asked for... sorry there.

Back on... sort of topic...  The remake of Alone in the Dark is pretty amazing in fact, even if I was very wary of it's decision to turn the old mansion into an asylum, they were far more subtle than most western "psychological horror? That means we should have psychiatric reports and straight jackets right?" interpretations of the genre go for.  No straight jackets, no padded rooms or audio tapes of deranged patients, just a few people who are sick or mentally tired in some ways staying in what amounts more to a rest home and who are portrayed as actual human beings and not dangerous murderers.  The real madness is the Lovecraftian horror underneath it all and it puts the focus there instead, WITHOUT silly sanity effects or a "sanity meter".