The video game remake problem -- trying to articulate my frustration with the trend
Enter the survival horror.
In 1996, Capcom released Resident Evil, a survival horror game with solid production value and a well-crafted setting.
The uniquely surreal environment, taking advantage of the limited presentation of the original PlayStation, made for a game that still doesn't quite have a visual equivalent today. It's a really, really solid game in a sea of mediocre or rushed early 3D games. It spawned a lot of other franchises like Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, and Devil May Cry (if you include the franchise as a whole).
Resident Evil is a product of the time period it was made in, and while it has some mechanical issues, the idiosyncracies like fixed camera angles, tank controls, pre-rendered environments, and inventory scarcity allowed it to become a genre-definer.
The Nintendo GameCube had been making its first strides. A limited first-party lineup was going to be bolstered by a rush of Capcom titles.
Shinji Mikami wanted to use the new console's hardware to explore ideaas and concepts they couldn't the first time around.
In 2002, Capcom released Resident Evil, a survival horror game with solid production value and a well-crafted setting.
Resident Evil's remake was paving relatively new ground -- during an era where the "old RE" style was faltering in popularity, a freak-of-nature passion project came out that understood the original's goals and expanded upon them. It doesn't invalidate the original, but trades off lines like "Jill Sandwich" for an oppressive, more realistic darkly-lit mansion. The pre-rendered environments are drop-dead gorgeous and the feeling of scarcity is ramped up by improved puzzles and mechanics like the Crimson Heads.
Literally everyone agrees this is a great example of a gold standard for remakes. While I think it could have benefitted from being even more distinct from the original, I'm not gonna dispute that.
Resident Evil (2002) sold like shit.
Video games are expensive to make. They take longer to make, there's more moving parts, and there's more at stake if games don't do well. Since the Wild West of the 90s and 2000s, games have reached a solid formula and largely plateaued in terms of drastic graphical and mechanical evolution. Games from 2014 aren't that different from 2024.
When publishers have profit-seeking and audience reception down to a science and the uncertainty of early game development has disappeared, the AAA industry has decided to play it safe. Rather than try your hand at a new IP or new concept, revisiting old projects is a better idea.
Nobody wanted REmake. It wasn't a "cashgrab", quite the opposite. It's an incredibly "weird" project that bucked the trend of action-horror during the 2000s.
However, we're not in 2002 anymore. Both the original game and its remake are dated, unplayable garbage at this point. Take off the nostalgia goggles and embrace the Singularity. Grovel at Capcom's feet for the streamlined pathway through the series. Really, just skip over it and play the RE2 remake.
Resident Evil 2 Remake
I like this game quite a bit, but I view it specifically as the beginning of the end. Notice how both remakes I've named are from this one series.
RE2R took the tank controls and fixed camera angles of the original, and adapted them to play something like a modern Resident Evil 4. Over the shoulder gameplay and a modern engine popularized by the best-selling RE7. 7 is a solid game that tries some creative new ideas, but I feel it melts with a lot of other modern horror games. It did sell great, though, and it's an ORIGINAL GAME. 2 Remake took the industry by storm with its "modernized" control scheme -- everything is streamlined and presented in such a way that's comfortable to most modern gamers. Strangely enough, people started insisting these were necessary changes needed to "fix" the original game. You can't possibly expect Normal People to play such an old game -- it MUST be modernized!
We're seeing a lot of modern classics with almost unanimous love receive "modernized" refreshers. And to me, considering how mediocre game preservation and engagement is, it feels dishonest and frustrating. It's an insistence games are toys or just consumer software that can get "2.0" releases. This old toy is obsolete, it's disposable trash that you don't actually like. Take off your nostalgia goggles!
Video games become simple product that must be fixed. They become vague gestures at recalling the past -- remember this product from your childhood?
Being able to segment out nostalgic experiences with a sheen of Modern Standards and memory hole away alleged "dated-ness" of what you really played as a kid is the appeal here. It's what most reviewers fundamentally believe even if they won't admit to it.
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill is the moodier, more viscerally scary younger brother to Resident Evil. Konami's franchise centers around a mining town with a deeply entrenched cult and mythology. It's more "artsy" and less blockbuster, and the best titles are handled with great love and care.
2 is the golden child of video essayists and Backloggd users alike. It's got the movie homages, but it's also a distinct product on its own, with its own fundamental weirdness and unsettling vibe. It's a David Lynch game not just in cheeky references to his classics, but in surrealistic dialogue and liminal spaces. It's a game where visually and texturally everyone was firing on all cylinders -- the Portishead-esque soundtrack, grimy PS2 look, Japanese Americana during an era where defined standards in horror game design weren't present.
The combat and gameplay loop are sloppy, the puzzles can be a bit obtuse, and the boss fights are... questionable, but it's a flawed product that has gained a lot of artistic insight from years of deliberation over its design. Like any good art, it's more than just toy, it's the closest video games have to a time capsule of design and ambition during the era. It's incredible.
The toy vs. experience distinction is what I feel is the fundamental disagreement here -- a large amount of people just want a Silent Hill 2 that's more in line with Modern Standards. They want one where its embarassing quirks and idiosyncracies are replaced with something less frictive -- something more "playable". When it's just a toy or product to evolve upon, it becomes reasonable to try and rerelease it without the baggage of old design.
Ultimately, what I'm scared of is a world where everything has the same texture. I don't want a world where everything is Perpetually Modernized the satiate nostalgia sentiment.
Bloober Team
I haven't actually played any Bloober Team games. I'm aware a lot of people aren't a fan of their handling of mental health and disability, but I have nothing to based my hatred off of. Really, for me, it's not a matter of WHO'S working on a project like this, but Konami greenlighting it in the first place.
And that's why, seeing the initial glowing reviews for the game, I can't help but feel frustrated. We're stuck in this loop of low-investment rehashing over the old and tossing it into the gray soup of "streamlined" design. There's not engagement with the design philosophies and mindsets during an era, but a level of unspoken disregard.
It doesn't actually matter how technically impressive Silent Hill 2 Remake is -- it's the perfect representative of a BROKEN culture within the games industry.
We have to come to terms with how fucked this is.
Persona 3 Reload
The original Persona 3 was a monumental title as it represented the old guard of Atlus passing the torch onto new blood. With cheesy rap and a Sakura Wars-esque time management system, P3 was a really well thought-out project. The grindiness in its main dungeon Tartarus, the prickly cast members that you grow closer towards over time, the increasing allure of death. It's an absolute classic that stands tall even today and is quite mechanically sound.
One of the big, distinct design choices is not giving the player direct control over party members. It's a choice Persona fans seem to despise, and I feel this is simply partly because it breaks the fantasy of being entirely in control of your environment as the protagonist. Persona 3 wants to make clear that the world exists outside of you, and yet you need to pour into it. The prickliness of it all reinforces this idea.
Every rerelease of Persona 3 has walked back on this idea, giving up AI tactics (i.e., game is not balanced around them anymore, AI is literally broken and dumber), balance, presentation, sauce. Portable axed the original cutscenes, handled by the incredible Yukio Takatsu, and replaced them with in-game PSP graphics.
Portable can be forgiven as UMD discs can only hold so much, but Reload cannot.
Reload is, at the developers' admittance, a version of 3 more like Persona 5. The party control and combat is indistinguishable from Persona 5. The garish UI and loud, boisterous style is present. The dungeon goes from intentionally monotonous rat races to wide, open area that presents no real challenge in terms of enemy encounters. The original soundtrack is gone and redone with slightly worse instruments, the cutscenes are stiff generic anime by Studio Wit.
People will scream at your face 'til they turn blue that none of the aforementioned elements stripped from the original game were worth preserving anyway. The original game is a slog that should be booted out of public conscious for a new, shiny fixed version.
I'm not going to link it here -- I want YOU to watch the "awakening" scene in Persona 3 Reload and compare it to the original's.
Metal Gear Solid Delta
Metal Gear Solid 3 stands as one of the most mechanically awesome games ever made. It's weird, and viscerally espionage film. It's drowned out in yellow color grading and fresh political conspiracy. It's a very Kojima game in how blatant its movie pastiche is. That's what makes it so great. It's a time capsule appreciative of time capsules and fundamentally a nostalgic work. Somehow it manages to punch above its weight and be incredibly fresh. It's a game you can pick up and play RIGHT. NOW. and have a great experience with! It's a literal absolute classic, one that benefits from increasing comfort with 3D design during the PS2 era and yet bursts with creativity and insight.
I've never denied technical prowess as a huge reason behind the quality of the game -- video games are uniquely art that has the elements of groundbreaking software design. It's a game you love to stare at.
Metal Gear is not solely Kojima's work. Presenting this is a huge disservice to the ensemble team working on the projects with love and dedication. There's a clear throughline from the original MSX game to Metal Gear Solid 4 -- a surge in creative energy and freshness. Even the godforsaken r*make with a littany of issues has that creative flair and uniqueness to it. You seriously can't tell me Twin Snakes isn't -- at minimum -- a lot of fun to contrast with the original.
Tossing MGS3 into Unreal Engine 5, showcasing updated graphical advancements, and gutting the saturated look off the bat is literally beyond parody. It's a perfect distillation of where we're at -- nothing can just exist as a fresh and unique product of its time, it must all become part of the same grey sludge. It's not necessarily going to be bad PRODUCT, but as art, what does it have to offer?
Are we gonna look at MGS3 after it all and insist it also needs to disappear to time?
When does it end?