26th November 2024, 11:12 AM
May I? I shall.
I tried these out, because apparently I got "grandparented" into this mess simply because I registered my old CD keys for every game but Warcraft 1 (which didn't have any form of DRM back then) on the battle.net client thingy, which apparently MS intends to turn into their new major digital store platform? That's a scary thought. Competition is good, but if the competition is between two digital stores both owned by the same company, then it's like the so called "variety" in US grocery stores, it's an illusion.
Anyway, your criticism of the failings of these two remaster (let's say three, because the big 2.0 patch for Warcraft III also released and it's practically Blizzard's "mulligan" on that game as sweeping as their second attempt is) is all valid. But, the writing was on the wall here. Blizzard got away with deleting LAN play from Diablo II's remaster, so now they feel like they can ditch significant multiplayer features, or multiplayer entirely, so long as it's an old game. I'm not sure what to expect of the inevitable Diablo 1 + Hellfire remaster. (I'm just glad Blizzard finally acknowledged Sierra's expansion pack as official, but what about those two third party but licensed Starcraft expansions? Insurrection and Retribution?)
But, multiplayer feature removal aside, there's more going on here. Warcraft 1 originally ran in 320x200, not x240. That's not a 4:3 ratio you'll notice, unless the pixels aren't square. They weren't. Many DOS games ran in that resolution and they simply used different shapes for the pixels and stretched to make up the difference. This was fine on CRT, but obviously some kind of filtering is needed on a fixed square pixel display like literally every modern monitor. I only bring this up because I tested these two games on my old CRT, and as it turns out the WC1 remaster is missing a 4:3 aspect ratio mode entirely, opting to black bar the game's 16:9 mode instead, and in a glitchy way too where the mouse scrolls in that ENTIRE black area, including trying to click the option menu button.
So why does this matter? These are remasters with visuals redone in high res 2D assets right? Well, that's the thing. These two games offer a "retro" mode, but it's very clunky in it's implementation, again much like Diablo II's remaster. Namely, you can't just select retro mode right from the main menu. You can only enable it once you are already playing the game. It does do one nice thing, allowing you to do so in real time without restarting the match, and it will remember that setting from match to match, but it isn't thorough. The title screen won't change to reflect it, and many of the game's assets such as the in-between screens don't switch to a classic mode either. In fact, there's a visual clash introduced, because the font is also not reverted to pixel art mode. But, why would I want to play in the classic visuals? Because frankly, the high res 2D art is very badly done. I say this as someone who loved the modernized look of the Switch Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door remakes. Those show very human attention to detail. These had an "uncanny" look to them which many suspect are the result of AI. Now, I don't have confirmation that that's the case, but it's pretty bad either way. It just looks "off". They definitely AI up-ressed the FMVs, and I'd definitely love it if classic mode switched those to classic as well. Frankly, I am entirely okay with the music tracks just being the original music tracks off the CDs. They still sound great, and the alternative was most likely just going to be AI taking a crack at "enhancing" those tracks. I'd have loved a full real orchestra recorded score as a third option, but it's pretty clear these were done on a shoe string budget. That was never going to happen.
All in all, WC2 Battle.Net manages to come across as superior to the remaster, but at least WC1's remaster feels to me like the best version of that game, in spite of the shortcomings I listed above, simply because that game was just THAT far behind. It barely moved the needle past what Dune II had already done. Warcraft II moved a little further, but Starcraft (and Command & Conquer as it continued along), now that's where the genre became truly playable and backported those features into WCII Battle.net.
So now for Wacraft III remaster 2.0. That's a mouthful... They've taken a second attempt at modernizing the game's visuals, and well... again there's an uncanny feeling to a lot of it, but here's the big change! The "retro" mode is now selectable from the options menu and it applies to (almost) every aspect from title screen to in-game. The only thing missing, near as I can tell, are the old screens when you're selecting a campaign, in their place are these all-new idle screens. So, if you don't like the changes, you can still play in that retro mode. It's a strange thing to have to recommend things like that, in the face of games where the visuals are simply a pure upgrade like the modern reimaginings of Final Fantasy VII, but again, shoe string budget... It's better, but I still recommend NEVER uploading a single one of your custom maps to this version of the game's servers. Distribute them externally, to avoid Blizzard's ridiculous change to their TOS that grants them full ownership of any map you upload to their service. They were apparently very upset that they didn't get to "own" DOTA and changed the TOS with the first version of the WC3 remaster to make sure nothing like that "slips through their fingers" again.... by stealing everyone's work basically.
I tried these out, because apparently I got "grandparented" into this mess simply because I registered my old CD keys for every game but Warcraft 1 (which didn't have any form of DRM back then) on the battle.net client thingy, which apparently MS intends to turn into their new major digital store platform? That's a scary thought. Competition is good, but if the competition is between two digital stores both owned by the same company, then it's like the so called "variety" in US grocery stores, it's an illusion.
Anyway, your criticism of the failings of these two remaster (let's say three, because the big 2.0 patch for Warcraft III also released and it's practically Blizzard's "mulligan" on that game as sweeping as their second attempt is) is all valid. But, the writing was on the wall here. Blizzard got away with deleting LAN play from Diablo II's remaster, so now they feel like they can ditch significant multiplayer features, or multiplayer entirely, so long as it's an old game. I'm not sure what to expect of the inevitable Diablo 1 + Hellfire remaster. (I'm just glad Blizzard finally acknowledged Sierra's expansion pack as official, but what about those two third party but licensed Starcraft expansions? Insurrection and Retribution?)
But, multiplayer feature removal aside, there's more going on here. Warcraft 1 originally ran in 320x200, not x240. That's not a 4:3 ratio you'll notice, unless the pixels aren't square. They weren't. Many DOS games ran in that resolution and they simply used different shapes for the pixels and stretched to make up the difference. This was fine on CRT, but obviously some kind of filtering is needed on a fixed square pixel display like literally every modern monitor. I only bring this up because I tested these two games on my old CRT, and as it turns out the WC1 remaster is missing a 4:3 aspect ratio mode entirely, opting to black bar the game's 16:9 mode instead, and in a glitchy way too where the mouse scrolls in that ENTIRE black area, including trying to click the option menu button.
So why does this matter? These are remasters with visuals redone in high res 2D assets right? Well, that's the thing. These two games offer a "retro" mode, but it's very clunky in it's implementation, again much like Diablo II's remaster. Namely, you can't just select retro mode right from the main menu. You can only enable it once you are already playing the game. It does do one nice thing, allowing you to do so in real time without restarting the match, and it will remember that setting from match to match, but it isn't thorough. The title screen won't change to reflect it, and many of the game's assets such as the in-between screens don't switch to a classic mode either. In fact, there's a visual clash introduced, because the font is also not reverted to pixel art mode. But, why would I want to play in the classic visuals? Because frankly, the high res 2D art is very badly done. I say this as someone who loved the modernized look of the Switch Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door remakes. Those show very human attention to detail. These had an "uncanny" look to them which many suspect are the result of AI. Now, I don't have confirmation that that's the case, but it's pretty bad either way. It just looks "off". They definitely AI up-ressed the FMVs, and I'd definitely love it if classic mode switched those to classic as well. Frankly, I am entirely okay with the music tracks just being the original music tracks off the CDs. They still sound great, and the alternative was most likely just going to be AI taking a crack at "enhancing" those tracks. I'd have loved a full real orchestra recorded score as a third option, but it's pretty clear these were done on a shoe string budget. That was never going to happen.
All in all, WC2 Battle.Net manages to come across as superior to the remaster, but at least WC1's remaster feels to me like the best version of that game, in spite of the shortcomings I listed above, simply because that game was just THAT far behind. It barely moved the needle past what Dune II had already done. Warcraft II moved a little further, but Starcraft (and Command & Conquer as it continued along), now that's where the genre became truly playable and backported those features into WCII Battle.net.
So now for Wacraft III remaster 2.0. That's a mouthful... They've taken a second attempt at modernizing the game's visuals, and well... again there's an uncanny feeling to a lot of it, but here's the big change! The "retro" mode is now selectable from the options menu and it applies to (almost) every aspect from title screen to in-game. The only thing missing, near as I can tell, are the old screens when you're selecting a campaign, in their place are these all-new idle screens. So, if you don't like the changes, you can still play in that retro mode. It's a strange thing to have to recommend things like that, in the face of games where the visuals are simply a pure upgrade like the modern reimaginings of Final Fantasy VII, but again, shoe string budget... It's better, but I still recommend NEVER uploading a single one of your custom maps to this version of the game's servers. Distribute them externally, to avoid Blizzard's ridiculous change to their TOS that grants them full ownership of any map you upload to their service. They were apparently very upset that they didn't get to "own" DOTA and changed the TOS with the first version of the WC3 remaster to make sure nothing like that "slips through their fingers" again.... by stealing everyone's work basically.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)