Remake Expectations

[CriticalGaming]

So over the past few years, the gaming industry has been absolutely in love with Remaking and Remastering games. Remasters are fairly straightforward and are little more than graphical improvements on a game.

Remakes are a bit more contentious than that. Many beloved games have had Remakes recently, from Resident Evil 2 and 3, to Final Fantasy 7 and so on. These releases have all been announced to great hype, but upon release I don't think there has been a single remake that hasn't come with baggage. Resident Evil 2 saw fans upset that tank controls and fix camera angles were gone and replaced with an obviously better gameplay design. Final Fantasy 7 has had people dramatically upset in regards to it's story, as well as episodic nature.

The question I want to pose to the Escapist Forums is this: What are people entitled to expect from a Remake? And what makes a Remake different from a Remaster if all people want is a 1-to-1 recreation of whatever game except with a shiny coat of pain?

Here's my opinion. Remakes are an opportunity for the game to be reimagined into a modern era of gameplay and storytelling. Resident Evil 2, for example, is something I already hinted at in the changes they made to how the game worked. While people were upset, the number of upset people for RE2Make in terms of the gameplay where far fewer than the amount of people I see upset with FF7's story changes. Some people will argue that the reason for that is RE2Make's change was good, and FF7's changes were shit. Which I suppose is a fair outlook but I think it boils down to a matter of expectation of experience.

Resident Evil 2 had the benefit over FF7 in that I don't think too many people gave a shit about the story, because RE as a whole is like a straight to DVD B-list horror movie and tells a shit story almost on purpose. It's the gameplay that people liked about the series, and so with a change to how the core gameplay worked people would have been very very very upsetabout RE2Make......if the new gameplay hadn't turned out to be awesome. But because the gameplay change was a good one and they did justice to making it still feel like RE2 in terms of survival horror, the game got a pass.

FF7 on the other hand is a story experience. The original gameplay for FF7 is not super great, and frankly JRPG gameplay is such a cluster of intermixed systems that either work or don't but usually are just serviceable enough to carry you through the story line, so as a result I think people are mostly happy with the new combat system presented in the Remake. What people are upset about here is the story, and how the story explodes the FF7 cannon at the end. People feel lied too, saying that it isn't a Remake of FF7 if you change how the story plays out and that this was all just a bait and switch for Square to make it a sequel or whatever the feeling is. The point is that because it didn't follow the story beat for beat, with concessions made for expanded moments and charactization, then in the eyes of the fans FF7Remake fucked up.

The way I feel personally about the FF7 situation is this, the game is being Remade....not Remastered....not Copy Pasta'ed. Remade. Which means that they can go back over the story and retell it in a different way if they want too, if they feel like the story needed to shift for a modern audience. They made FF7 new again and not many Remakes can say that, and personally I think it's a good thing. Because if you only want to see the story play out the way it does in the original game, you can go play the original game. The Remake is a new thing, a rebuilding of the mythos that ties into all the events of the original game, and reenacts most of them (thus far). And I think it is frankly unfair to say that the game has to do X,Y, and Z or it's shit.

Which brings me to point out last week's Jimquisition. Where he points out that the people are only upset with the changes to a story, when they feel that the changes are bad. Meanwhile those who liked the changes don't mind them. Which I guess is......obvious really.

What do you guys think? What do you think a Remake SHOULD be? What separates a Remake from a Remastering to you?

 

[Casual Shinji]

I feel like I'm in a very privileged position with FF7 Remake, as I never played the original but I still loath the ending. Nobody can accuse me of hating it because of nostalgia.

Anyway, I'm sure there's people that hate FF7R because it's not the same exact game, but a large majority that have a bone to pick with this game seem totally fine with every change that isn't the ending. Not only does it use the bluntest of force to draw attention to itself as a remake, it completely shifts the theme of the game in the final hour/hour and a half. It feels like it's only there for the developers to feel clever about, and for original fans to chase there own tail over. It doesn't serve the story as it's being told within this iteration of Final Fantasy 7, it's meta-narrative for the sake of being meta-narrative.

If the developers actually wanted to drastically change things, remake things, they should've done so without this pointless showing off how clever and bold they are for doing so. Don't waste my time and the story's integrity talking about how you're going to remake the plot, just remake the plot. As it is now it feels crowbarred in for the sake of shocking fans.

 

[meiam]

I just don't see the point of remaking something if you're going to fundamentally change it. At that point, why not just make a new game? I read somewhere someone was glad they changed FF7 story because they didn't want to play FF7... then shouldn't they be pissed SE is wasting time/money making FF7 sorta remake rather than FF16?

This is made all the worse when the people doing the remaking are just flat out worse at their job than the original team. Like, would anyone be excited about a citizen Kane remake directed by Micheal Bay? Maybe changing the story of FF would have been fine if SE were master storycrafter at the top of their game and Kitase was some God tier writer/director, but neither of these are even remotely true. Was star wars made better by having Han not shot first? For the original Jaws Spielberg was planning on having the shark be a lot more present in the movie, but the mechanical props was so fragile they couldn't do it. So they had to change the movie by making the shark a lot less present in the movie. That turned out to have been the best things about the movie, by not showing the monster all the time it was made scarier (something that's obviously is too complex for Kitase). Imagine Spielberg decided to remake Jaws but now with the shark being much more present. And that's still a better situation than the FF7 remake because Spielberg is way better at his job than Kitase/SE.

Like I'm playing trial of mana, a remake of the SNES era Seiken Densetsu 3 at the moment. Plenty has changed in the game, but all of it is built upon the original. The game switched from 2D to 3D, so they added jumping and platforming, that wasn't in the original but it's great and fits the game! Previously when you're character changed class their menu sprite would change pretty radically but their in game sprite would stay the same (just changing color), well now their in game sprite reflect the old menu one, a good change. The game had plenty of famous bug (some stats, skill and equipment flat out did not work), well all of those are fixed now. The story is largely the same, is it the best story in the world? No absolutly not. Could a better one have been made for it? Yes undeniably. But if they changed the story, would their new one been better than the original one? Almost certainly not, considering the last few original mana title had shit tier story and, once again, SE suck at making good story. So the story stayed the same, for the better. In fact, the biggest changed they made from a story/character point of view is making a character speak in bubbly/woobly word and it's pretty bad, that's the level of quality of the new writing staff, so less change is definitely for the better.

 

[Saelune]

Resident Evil 2 is what I expect of a remake. I want a remake that makes the original obsolete.

Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen are other remakes that did it right. It was expanded and updated, but if you played the originals, you still knew what you were doing.

I don't want a reboot. Reboots and remakes are similar, but not the same. Certainly don't want a reboot when it is called a remake anyways.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Resident Evil 2 is what I expect of a remake. I want a remake that makes the original obsolete.

I don't think it makes the original obsolete, unfortunately. Even when you have the original soundtrack option turned on. It does get really close though.

 

[Dick_The_Birthday_Boy]

I don't think it makes the original obsolete, unfortunately. Even when you have the original soundtrack option turned on. It does get really close though.

In preparation for RE3make I did a marathon of all the RE games after playing REmake 2 and the original RE2 felt like a completely fresh game. Whereas the OG Resident is completely unplayable and obsolete when compared to the 2002 Remake.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I see them more as glorified, expensive music covers really. Ain't no biggy if it change, the original still exists if change bad, and no problem if change good. Ain't no biggy if not much change, as long as the people doing it actually put the effort and passion in. Maybe I don't care enough to care. It's all just a distraction from inescapable entropy.

 

[Ghostrick Dorklord]

I'm probably going to be the weird guy in the room but I want a remake to go above and beyond the original was. Improve the game in many ways, from a gameplay and/or narrative perspective.

I know a Pokemon example was made but I think the best remake is definitely HeartGold/SoulSilver for how much they did for the originals. Besides the fact newer Pokemon introduced in the gen are available and not locked behind a Pokedex like in FireRed/LeafGreen but there's a lot to do in the game. They added the Pokelathon which is a series of minigames that gives you points that you can spend towards stuff, namely Evolution Stones which were extremely hard to get as well as a new Safari Zone which fixes the problem the originals had, the lack of "new" Pokemon until Post Game. These were much needed because it made a lot more Pokemon accessible. Also there's the entire Battle Frontier which was directly lifted from Platinum that gives the player a ton of stuff to do as well. And this is the only game that fully takes advantage of the hardware where the bottom screen acts as a menu, giving direct access to everything you need. Oh and your lead Pokemon follows you around too which is a very cute but minor touch. Overall I really love what they did for HG/SS because of the new changes that I was a bit disappointed the next games didn't include any of them.

As a narrative example that I can think of well I might as well bring up FF7R as an example. I'll get the gameplay out of the way first but yeah making it a more action RPG is good for it but I love how they went out on their way to make everyone feel unique in some way, like Barret being the long range character for example. Anyways I actually like the changes they did towards the story of FF7R. They did change the context of a few scenes like the Mako Reactor explosion into something new but different where instead of it being treated as a minor thing, FF7R makes it more where Shinra was setting up Avalanche's downfall to the public eye. Another narrative change is that Reno and Rude have a guilty conscience over dropping the Plate as well where Reno just does it, no questions asked. The game does add in new stuff in the story, namely more backstory to minor characters like Jessie and gives us a new character named Roche who I found to be a fun character.

However the narrative of the game is that its being a remake in a meta context. The characters are trying to deny their destiny and what not. The game is being "remade" because the villain wants to win. My only gripe with this is namely the fact that you have to know about Final Fantasy 7, iconic as it is I know, and its spin offs to really get it. I'm actually ok with the additions because I want to see what they do next now that anything is in the realm of possibility. It gives the audience a new uncertainty to look forward to because they're flipping the script to give you a similar experience to what the 1997 original did. Whatever it that the next part of FF7R is planning its going do bring something new and unexpected to the table. Hopefully. We still don't know and that's what I like about it, that unpredictability from this point on. I can understand if you were hoping for a 1:1 remake and were disappointed that you didn't get that but I always try to keep an open mind about things but that's just me.

At the end of the day I don't really have an expectations going into remakes. I just take it in for what it is as a game. Most of the time I'm usually playing these games for the first time anyways. But eh I just think I'm weird since I don't share a lot of people's opinions on the matter.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Here's my opinion. Remakes are an opportunity for the game to be reimagined into a modern era of gameplay and storytelling.

Pretty much this. If you want the game exactly like the original but with better graphics, there's not much of a point in doing it honestly. You gotta change gameplay especially in the pre-PS2/Xbox/GC generation, the first gen of 3D games were trying to find out how to make good 3D games, it was a learning experience for everyone. JRPG combat was archaic when OG FF7 released let alone now. I understand story being a different beast, but how many games actually have legit really great stories and writing that you'd actually rate them 8+/10? It's not even that hard to improve most games' stories, an average writer could probably make most better. Movie remakes change stories and nobody really cares except for the small minority that claims "[insert movie] is now ruined". You always have the original to play if you want.

The one thing I don't get about the FF7 Remake is the name alone. For people that didn't follow anything about the game (which is probably pretty low but still), how would they know it's not the full game?

 

[CriticalGaming]

The one thing I don't get about the FF7 Remake is the name alone. For people that didn't follow anything about the game (which is probably pretty low but still), how would they know it's not the full game?

Well the game itself acts like a full game. With a full ending. So if you didn't know there was an entire saga beyond midgar, then you'd just think that they are sequel baiting.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Well the game itself acts like a full game. With a full ending. So if you didn't know there was an entire saga beyond midgar, then you'd just think that they are sequel baiting.

Well, for the select few that played the original and didn't follow the remake at all buying it thinking it was the whole game. I'm surprised the remake wasn't like colon-ed Midgar or something.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Well, for the select few that played the original and didn't follow the remake at all buying it thinking it was the whole game. I'm surprised the remake wasn't like colon-ed Midgar or something.

Based on the ending I would have called it "Final Fantasy 7: Retold" Or some shit like that.

 

[sXeth]

I mean, there's certain level of where the company is effectively bullsh******ing with the title.


I can't speak much for Resident Evil, never was a fun of the originals, and haven't played the remakes. But a basic control overhaul ins't terrible. I can see the argument where the camera angles is potentially a distortion of the atmosphere, as suddenly you have wider awareness of the upcoming horrors, which can obviously impact a horror game (albeit, whats impacted is mostly cheap jump scare value).


IF Dark Souls had filled in Izalith, or Secret of Mana had filled in any of the 40 odd percent missing content (the game got chunked to go on SNES when Nintendo CD station got canned), probably no one would complain too much. The latter again had its game kind of skewed cause you could suddenly move on wider axis so a lot of monster attacks were much more easily dodged.



FF7-RE of course, has a multiplex of concerns regarding its status. Total gameplay overhauls, significant alterations in the story, a new story bolted on in addition to the original. The fact that its not actually Final Fantasy 7 remake, its Disc 1 (which is about 35-40%) of Final Fantasy 7 remade. Thats without getting into subjective opinions on the quality or presentation of any of the above. The fill in also isn't particularly plugging in any glaring gaps from the original (those would be in Disc 2, Disc 1 of FF7 was more of more tightly packed and paced sections of any FF game), there probably wasn't a big crowd of speculators on Cloud's day job hunting random junkyard rats (and in one of the other FF7 posts I covered why the daytimes felt like a misstep in the actual atmosphere of Midgar).


The tl;dr would be, overhaul the graphics, try to refresh any technical failings in the gameplay, but don't rewrite it. Fill in gaps that were cut due to technical or scheduling limitations. Don't try to expand the game to the point its suddenly a series. And if you're going to write a sequel/interquel/parallel tale, just market it as such.

 

[dscross]

I think the main problem with the FF7 Remake, in particular, is some people don't trust modern Square Enix (the team who are in charge of the FF series anyway) to do a better job than SquareSoft did in 1997 in terms of storytelling. So going off on their own tangent with the classic and beloved 'FF7 universe' might not be the best move in the long run. Not just with Nomura as a director. With this installment, Square have now proved they can make FF games with great combat, graphics, action scenes, and can even expand on an established story's characters and lore to a pretty reasonable level, even if there are one or two pacing issues. But they've not really proven they can tell a good story - not since the early 2000s.

Case in point, in FF15 they made you watch a film and a series to understand what was going on - and even then you didn't really get it without the DLC. And the story didn't grip you at all - even though the gameplay was fairly fun to some people - possibly because they couldn't work out how to fuse an open world with the story. The characters were good but the plot was all over the place. FF13 was also really badly told - you had to read lots and lots of text from the in-game menus because, again, they didn't explain anything properly in-game. And FF12 didn't have a gripping story either tbh - large parts were dull. FF10 was the last 'well written' (single-player) story where you could get lost in the narrative all the way through - and that was nearly 20 years ago.

On top of this, the meta-narrative angle they seem to be shooting for with FF7R hardly ever works - even with better writers. I think some fans feel like there will be a lot of lost potential with the follow-ups.

But I think there's a reason why Square did this - they possibly worked out it would be too hard to recreate what they did in 1997 for the modern-day. It's a mammoth task for them so now they have a get-out clause to cut it down without as much criticism. I think they know their strengths - I don't think they believe open worlds are one of them.

 

[CriticalGaming]

But I think there's a reason why Square did this - they possibly worked out it would be too hard to recreate what they did in 1997 for the modern-day. It's a mammoth task for them so now they have a get-out clause to cut it down without as much criticism. I think they know their strengths - I don't think they believe open worlds are one of them.

One thing I will never understand as a gripe people have with the remake is people bitching that it isn't the whole game. Like how ignorant to game development do you have to be to think that Final Fantasy 7 would be a fucking remote possibility in a single game? Give me a break, the only way it would be possible is constant loading zones as you travel through very small sections of the world to make it seem bigger than it is (FF14 for example, the game itself is really not very big but feels bigger thanks to the zone shifting). On top of that, they would have to either cut content or rush through tons of shit in order to make the whole game possible. Not to mention paying voice actors to read biblical amounts of text, the endless amounts of NPC chatter in every town, I swear people have no grasp on scope.

 

[Yoshi]

Halo did the best remaster/remake with the master chief collection.

Let's you play all the old games with better modern graphics and modern sounds AND it lets swap from the modern stuff back to the old graphics and sound on the fly if you want to

so you can experience both the old and new version however you want.

 

[meiam]

One thing I will never understand as a gripe people have with the remake is people bitching that it isn't the whole game. Like how ignorant to game development do you have to be to think that Final Fantasy 7 would be a fucking remote possibility in a single game? Give me a break, the only way it would be possible is constant loading zones as you travel through very small sections of the world to make it seem bigger than it is (FF14 for example, the game itself is really not very big but feels bigger thanks to the zone shifting). On top of that, they would have to either cut content or rush through tons of shit in order to make the whole game possible. Not to mention paying voice actors to read biblical amounts of text, the endless amounts of NPC chatter in every town, I swear people have no grasp on scope.

... I mean... you do realize FF7 was one whole game, right? Like it came out as a single game... Sure, it had 3 CD, but you brought 1 game. How is it hard to understand that people think the remake of 1 game could be 1 game... I don't even think I've ever heard of a remake splitting the original into multiple part. I don't think splitting teh game was necesserly a bad decision by SE, but it's painfully obviously why anyone would think it could be made as a single game.

I don't even know what you mean by the rest. I don't think anyone was expecting the entire world to be created as one giant open world. They could have just created a world map, you know, like this little game called final fantasy 7, might have heard of it. Or just have people go from one location to another without a world map in between, really not a big deal. And why would they need to cut content? There might have to be some asset re use, but that's not a big deal, I think everyone would have been okay with most Shinra location using asset from a shared library. Similarly I don't think anyone was expecting every NPC to be voice acted, you just do the important one, who care if random NPC#15 whose only line of dialogue is "the weapon store is over there" is voiced or not.

Seriously, no one was expecting FF7:skyrim, they were just expecting FF7.

 

[dscross]

One thing I will never understand as a gripe people have with the remake is people bitching that it isn't the whole game. Like how ignorant to game development do you have to be to think that Final Fantasy 7 would be a fucking remote possibility in a single game? Give me a break, the only way it would be possible is constant loading zones as you travel through very small sections of the world to make it seem bigger than it is (FF14 for example, the game itself is really not very big but feels bigger thanks to the zone shifting). On top of that, they would have to either cut content or rush through tons of shit in order to make the whole game possible. Not to mention paying voice actors to read biblical amounts of text, the endless amounts of NPC chatter in every town, I swear people have no grasp on scope.

I don't know if that was aimed at me or just people in general based on the quote, but my point from that wasn't really that it would be possible to make it into one game - it's more that it would be difficult to recreate the world they made in 1997 in the modern-day as they want it to look and feel as it would take so much time and expense (no matter how many parts). When I say 'cut down', I mean by not including all the places they included in the original because they believe it would be so difficult and costly. I'm only basing this on their last few games and the way they played. I haven't played the MMOs.

 

[B-cell]

Black Mesa is best remake of all time and its just made by fans.

 

[dscross]

I don't think anyone was expecting the entire world to be created as one giant open world. They could have just created a world map, you know, like this little game called final fantasy 7, might have heard of it. Or just have people go from one location to another without a world map in between, really not a big deal. And why would they need to cut content? There might have to be some asset re use, but that's not a big deal, I think everyone would have been okay with most Shinra location using asset from a shared library. Similarly I don't think anyone was expecting every NPC to be voice acted, you just do the important one, who care if random NPC#15 whose only line of dialogue is "the weapon store is over there" is voiced or not.

Seriously, no one was expecting FF7:skyrim, they were just expecting FF7.

I don't think Square do overworld maps anymore. Not been their style for a long time with their new semi-realistic anime thing going on. I also think recreating a modern version of every single town and location would be very difficult for them anyway in the style they want it to be.