Game remakes

04/10/2023

Originally posted on Cohost

Read a couple of pieces from Bullet Points Monthly's issue on the Dead Space remake (which is excellent, by the way; well worth reading everything there) because they came up in a Discord server today during a conversation about remakes and the industry's obsession with them. This passage from Reid McCarter's piece "One Day, This Videogame Will Be Perfect," feels particularly potent:

That this game was remade speaks to a desire not only for safe profits but, in its glowing reception, a medium-wide grasping at some sort of wispy, Platonic ideal of every videogame yet released. The promise of the remake is the promise of another step toward that perfect version—one that’s meant to await tantalizingly just ahead in a future where better lighting techniques, artificial intelligence programming, or technical advancements we haven’t dreamed up yet await. At some point, videogames teach us, perfection hides just at the golden line of the horizon. The past has nothing to offer but dusty historical notes and an education in how to do it better next time around. The present is a series of temporary satisfactions and disappointments in the ephemeral joys of fleeting accomplishments.

I think a lot about how videogames seem especially keen to overwrite their history. It's mostly the industry at large chasing easy money, sure, but the speed and gleefulness with which people will champion remakes over the originals is just as much a problem. Can't count the number of times I've heard or seen people frame remakes as the proper realization of the ideas of the original work – the game it was meant to be, what it would have been if they had the technology they do now¹ – as though the original was a flawed attempt instead of a fully-realized work all its own that still has value. It's frustrating.

I remember the conversations around the Shadow of the Colossus remake from back in 2018 (and around the Demon's Souls remake in 2020) and how quickly some people would dismiss any sort of criticism of the remake's choice to overwrite the aesthetics of the original game (and effectively bury it as well) and make it look Expensive and Modern because it "looks better" now. The idea of the "perfect, idealized version" of a game is so ingrained that nothing else matters.

I'm not against remakes as a concept, but I do wish they'd do something interesting with it (Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a good example of this) or at least try to ensure the original work is still readily available so as not to overwrite it. This medium has a terrible memory as is.

#cohost #videogames