But on the other hand, I don't want to take away from people's fun.
FF7R is at least enough of a different thing. Kind of like how the Evangelion Rebuild movies are different from the show/comic/old movies.
I agree, though, straight up remakes are kinda boring.
Yeah I think my irkness is more towards straight remakes especially for what I consider "modern" games, that's shit made in like 2002. It's still very playable today!
I know what you mean, but those games are as old as Pac-Man and Zork were to us back in 2002. To a certain extent, it takes some intentionality and patience to engage with older media that you weren't there for.
Shit, I sometimes struggle to engage with older media that I was there for lol.
I agree with this mostly, but I think the lessons devs learned over the history of video gaming means that they become exponentially more accessable and intuitive. A game from 20 years ago (a late PS2 game) takes getting used to, but a game 20 years before 2004 (so 1984) basically requires a college course in how to play it. I’ve seen some comments online about how 2009 games are so old and obtuse and I’m like, they play almost the exact same as today’s games because developers had figured out a formula that works by then!
Remakes are always okay because they're completely new games based on old ones. It's like a theater group doing a play their own way.
Where this conversation gets confused is in the difference between remake/remaster
Additionally FF7 should have been called a sequel because it's a completely different game. No spoilers but it's a different game and plot.
oh what a good way to put it, I never thought of it in such a manner.
Yeah? I thought it was more of a retelling of the same story (FF7r), from what I was told. Is it actually stuff that takes place after the events of FF7?
spoiler
time travel
Also it extends the timeline of events during the Midgar chapter such that its playtime is like 5x longer and characters are fleshed out that were at best ancillary in the original.
(Insert picture of that moron goon Asmogonad saying MGS3 better not have "politics" in it.)
I think there’s something to be said for remasters adding in quality of life features (fast travel points, quick saves, online play, accessibility features). But yeah, a lot of full on remakes are cash grabs.
This may be an even spicier take than the OP but I think most of the time “quality of life” changes are unnecessary and can undermine deliberate game design choices. Adding accessibility features (actual accessibility, as in features that allow disabled people to enjoy games they otherwise would not be able to play, not accessibility in the way Consumers use it) are obviously good changes, but otherwise I don’t think added features in remakes often make for a better experience. Most games that get remade are games that were beloved in their day, and it’s not like those games got worse or anything, people just have different standards that lead them to expect a game from 20-30 years ago to play the same as one that came out today. And tbh, if I wanted to play games that feel like modern games, I would just play modern games…
This was nice in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. I'm not a damn child playing muh vidja games on summer vacation anymore; just let me fast forward through the grindy bits like I would probably do if I were playing on an emulator.
I appreciated the maps and treasure counts too. The earlier games were especially maze-like and it saved me the hassle of a search
Yes! This definitely got me down an achievement-hunting rabbit hole, though. I've been stressing over FF5 because I'm up to the timed bit with several missable chests.
Oh yes that's a tricky part. There's a couple of blue magics to pick up too but that's just more stress lol
I like remakes/remasters/rereleases if they make it easier to just play the damn game. By that I mean I don't want to have to track down a physical copy to play it legally just because EA/whoever decided to take it off their store. Of course I can always pirate those games, but then I have to track down a decent torrent and deal with that bs. I'd rather just pay a reasonable amount to easily play an older game but they like to make that difficult (I'm looking at you Mercenaries 2)
Resident Evil 2 Remake was a fuckin masterpiece though - completely different presentation and style of gameplay but faithfully captured the spirit of the original. The original still has value and is distinct enough to not be eclipsed by the remake IMO.
It was very different than the original - Nemesis wasn't this free roaming randomly encountered enemy, he had several setpiece battles that were very well presented and tuned (Mr. X and Nemesis basically switched their OG roles in the remakes)
RE3 Remake is much more of a destruction of Raccoon City action experience than the original, using the now available tech to make the entire thing into this very fun action spectacle. Because it changes a ton from the original and is very different than the more slow-paced exploration centric RE2 Remake, a lot of fans of both RE3 OG and RE2 Remake were unhappy.
I, on the other hand, will not be satisfied until there's more remakes of FF4 than mainline entries
Monkey's paw curls and you get Remakes and sequels to The After Years
I'd try out an After Years sequel just to see how bad it can get but I also know I'd regret it the entire time
Maybe Star Trek movie rules would apply, and the After After Years game would be pretty decent, but the After After After Years one would be terrible again
I've been saying this for years. A good game is always a good game. It's not like we've evolved into a different species from the humans who were playing these games in the 90s. If the game sucks now it sucked then too, if it was good then it's good now.
Drives me up the wall when people talk about how they just "can't" play older games. Yeah you can, you're just a shallow loser who doesn't have any interest in the art form and needs cutting edge spectacle to consider an entry worthwhile
Older games definitely operate differently i.e. they don't assume you need constant dopamine hits to maintain your focus so there is a lot more "breathing room"
I love playing my old favorites but when playing a classic like FF7 for the first time now I found myself getting frustrated even though it operates on similar principles to like Ocarina of Time for example. I definitely looked up what I was supposed to do to get past that snake thing and how to get a Chocobo etc. but back then it was just kind of expected that you would talk to all the NPCs and check out all the areas to get this information.
I definitely don't disagree with your point though. Somehow, the genwunner thing in Pokemon has now come all the way around and people rag on it far too much. Like, you think Pokemon Red and Blue, the biggest video game phenomenon I've still ever seen, is a bad boring game? Every kid in America was addicted to it. Similarly, the endless pursuit of "realistic" graphics is fucking stupid. I thought the graphics looked great on the 64, GameCube, PS2, etc. it's not like everything magically keeps getting better, I enjoy everything the same amount.
Older games definitely operate differently i.e. they don’t assume you need constant dopamine hits to maintain your focus so there is a lot more “breathing room”
Recently we have a discussion about Final Fantasy Tactics where some person got quite offended by the idea of some grind. In tactics game. Japansese tactics game. Released 28 years ago. Which i'm still baffled about since most modern crpgs also include grind, and i'm not even mentioning mmo's.
Also grind apparently gives tons of dopamine considering gacha games exists and are popular as hell.
I agree, luckily the "FF7 Remake" is actually a late era sequel with a big meta-narrative component which means it's thoroughly its own thing and doesn't take away from FF7 (which still totally holds up on its own) at all.
The others are just "rerelease the game in modern Unreal Engine" which is blah
I’m not a big gamer anymore but I played FF7 remake and it was one of the best games I had ever played.
I don’t think MGS3 needs a remake, not sure what they can upgrade besides graphics but FF7 remake (albeit a cash grab for only being 1/4 of the first of 4 cds) is fucking amazing
Yeah, but there are people who outright refuse to watch movies from before color. Likewise there are people who'd refuse to play those games on the grounds that they don't look as good as newer games.
Not that this is a good thing, but some folks demand only the freshest treats.
ff7 and re2's remakes are so technologically different and play so differently that I just think of them as entirely different games just based on the same design notes.
I dunno if I could play the original FF7 at this point, while I do look back on it fondly I also remember grinding out high end materia for probably days because I really wanted to beat Emerald and Ruby.
I think RE2 and RE4 remakes hit the sweet spot of being accurate enough to the original while also being new enough that it's not just a cashgrab. They're different enough that other than being named remakes they're essentially different games, especially RE2 which is radically different than RE2 remake.
