runnin' since monday, the 28th of march, 2022.
this site brought to you by: a nerd
Published 2022-06-06
Initially, when I watched the State of Play on the 2nd of June, and it opened with Resident Evil 4's remake being finally announced formally, I was somewhat cautiously optimistic about it, and that was that.
However, I woke up earlier today and realised something rather quite damning to that notion:
"Wait a fucking second. I hated the Resident Evil 3 Remake."
This, alone, is already something that should have shot any potential excitement I could have for the game in the leg. But, then, I got to thinking something else:
"Man, but I sure do love Ressie 4."
This, then, would be enough to ilicit a response of excitement, of hope, for a sort of longing for this new take on it?
"Fuck this remake, I'm hopping on Ressie 4."
And so, I did. I played about an hour of the original Resident Evil 4 later. Which got me musing even further:
"Why the fuck would I want to even touch some shitty remake when I can just play the stellar original?"
Oh, boy, here Jelly goes with her pretentious bullshit!
So, reader, a while of back-and-forth in a chat with friends eventually lead me to a conclusion - I do not like modern triple-A games all that much. Fucking shocker there, right? I only constantly drone on about how most triple-A releases in the past decade or so have been soulless cash grabs solely constructed to generate player numbers and profits for companies. But why is that?
This is likely my extended tenure as a member of both the "fuck-the-over-the-shoulder-action-games" club and the "oh-my-god-Kazuma-Kiryu-punch-me" club speaking, but I don't think I've touched a remake that seeks to actually improve upon the original experience in any grandiose manner in years. I think the most recent examples that come to mind are probably shit like Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X from, what, 2005? And possibly Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, although that's less so an improvement on the original, and more so Kojima wanting Snake to fucking flip over a missile. Frankly, I think all three of these are often painted as some sort of bold step to make a given game more accessible to newer audiences, when in reality, they're more often than not simply just cash-grabs to bank on a recognisable name, as well as roping in new audiences with the whole "perfect for beginners" spiel. Each one is execrable in their own ways, however.
I don't like remakes as a general rule of thumb as it is; I think that if you go in and try to change too much about the original, you will harm the original vision that the game's team had, whereas if you change too little, why would you not just play the original? Or, worst of all, when a remake is based off of a game that is years, if not decades older than it, yet the remake does not retain all of the content from that original game, whilst changing just about every aspect it does retain for the worse. Yes, that is me obliquely banging my raging hate stiffy against the war drum to sound out how much I despise Yakuza Kiwami 2 yet again. But that game itself is a totally different can of worms for another day.
In the case of a remaster, this is usually the more lax of these, in my experience. Yes, granted, it will require translating your code to a potentially wholly different engine framework, which will be a bastard, but most of the legwork is already put in, there. The only real thing required is to tweak and touch up a few antiquated parts, whilst ensuring that it is, at least, on par with the original. And yet, again, I can't think of many remasters that weren't fucked up recently! The most I could potentially give credit to is maybe... Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition? Maybe? However, Xenoblade is a diamond in the rough; more often than not, you get things like the Silent Hill HD Collection or Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition. And, to be blunt, if you have the absolute gall to call something 'definitive', how about trying to ensure that it is actually, again, at least on par with the game that you're remastering? In the case of GTA, especially, seeing as there was that bug in Vice City for a while where, in one mission, an NPC would constantly get themselves killed in-cutscene, leaving you entirely unable to progress. Great job there, lads.
Reboots are likely simultaneously the most ambitious and most damning of the three. It's something I find unfathomable; why take a pre-established series and randomly fundamentally change it to suit a new narrative? The series that you were burning to the ground already had fans, as well as years of world-building, games progressively improving, and generally a sense of progression amongst them. In the case of these games, things like DmC: Devil May Cry or God of War (2018) spring to mind: one is a bastardisation of pre-established characters in a misguided attempt to appeal to a newfound audience to follow trends, whereas the other is the (in my opinion) sandblasting of what once was the cornerstone of a genre, having any relation to that genre. Yet, it is not only a frequent process, but a celebrated one to entirely forego the staples of a series, in favour of making an entirely fresh take? That sounds great on paper, but at that point, why not just do something entirely new? Speaking of which:
I'm just going to say it outright; the games industry is stagnated with the same series taking up too much space in the release schedule. I hate it. I hate the culture that undoubtedly will always flock to A Series + 1, because they liked the last A Series game so much. It leads to higher-ups pushing developers to make the same things over and over again because they guarantee profits - see your Call of Dutys, or Battlefields, or however many other, for lack of a better term, spunk-gargle-wee-wee games (thank you Yahtzee Croshaw) there's been churned out over the years for proof of all that. Or, indeed, the aforementioned Resident Evils.
Want to know a great example of a franchise that should have ended, but kept going to chase profits? Silent Hill! Silent Hill 1, 2, 3 and 4 all have entirely unique vibes, stories, challenges and characters - at least for the majority of them. The one underlying thread to them all is, of course, their relation to the fictional titular town, but beyond that, each is different in it's method of execution. And do you know why that is? Because of Team Silent's ever-changing line-up of employees. Oh, yeah, Team Silent wasn't just a constant; it shifted and morphed between games, hence why the first four Silent Hill games each have such a unique air to theme. This is likely the best solution to the event of a series expanding in any capacity; change up the people working on it, like, a major shakeup, or make the games therein rely more on an underlying theme or perhaps even both; the example that I would most like to cite would be something akin to the Cornetto Trilogy, where the three films have interconnected themes and ideas, yes, but they aren't embroiled in each other's bullshit to any great degree.
This is another issue with long-spanning game series: there is way too much fucking baggage. Let's say I wanted to play Resident Evil 6: okay, so I need to be aware of the conflict from the prior games, I need to know the characters from the prior games, most of the outcomes of the prior games... and there's people who started with this one? Seriously, if you somehow managed to fumble your way into Resident Evil by way of RE6, I am so fucking sorry, you must have been scratching your head for most of the playtime.
And hell, sometimes it doesn't even have to be needing to know about them, sometimes it can be quite the opposite. The Mario series recently is massively weighed down by nostalgic throwbacks to older games - to the players who understand the reference, it's neat maybe once at most, and to those who haven't played the older games, these elements can sometimes seem antiquated. I remember having a conversation with a friend who said that 'Throwback Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy 2 is so unfitting, it feels like it's from an entirely different game', which everybody else originally laughed at, until we realised that they genuinely had no idea that it originated from Super Mario 64.
It's one thing to have easter eggs in reference to other games included as a nice surprise, but to have outright levels or god forbid essential mechanics tied into older material is just excruciating nine times out of ten. The 2D platforming sections in something like Super Mario Odyssey are a great representation of this; yeah, sure, they're cute a few times, but then it starts to feel jarring to go directly from full 3D movement to solely 2D, it's weird to have the triggers be mapped to crouch in 2D, and it's a departure from the actual regular gameplay loop to shamelessly ask the player "Remember this? Remember product?" in order to tickle that nostalgia bone.
Eventually, most games succumb to this at least somewhat, many of my favourite franchises have in at least some capacity - Sonic, Crash, Grand Theft Auto - they've all dabbled in exploiting nostalgia for their older products in order to net some sales, often to the detriment of the actual products themselves.
In an ideal world, we wouldn't be so intrinsically infatuated with Series A; we would be interested in it's creators, and their... well, creative ideas. The reason that I lament Nagoshi's departure in my Finding Yakuza post is not due to me wanting him to be stuck doing Yakuza forever, but for the creative spark that birthed Yakuza initially. I want to see more creative ventures from creative minds, taking chances to work on their passion projects, and actually having room to breathe and do so, with investments from triple-A publishers.
And of course, this is my obligatory back-in-my-day, shaking-my-fist-at-the-clouds type interjection to say that, wait, this did used to happen. Only, the last time it really was prevalent in a major way was arguably the PlayStation 2 era.
We need more auteurs to be introduced into the mainstream industry, shake shit up a bit. Gimme some more Suda51s, some more SWERYs (bless him for holding his hands up with the accidental trans misgendering in DP2, king for admitting fault on that shit, king), just give us some absolutely batshit creative writing, some talented teams behind them, and let 'em rip, dude.
Apologies if this all seemed a bit rambly, but I just wanted to blurt out a load of thoughts as they were clogging up my head. And Christ knows that I don't want Yakuza Kiwami 2 or GTA Definitive Edition in my head for any longer than they have to be.
What I absolutely do not want to be the takeaway from this is that I'm some sort of elitist arsehole who thinks that nobody should hold any sentimentality towards anything, and people should constantly be flung from series to series, forced to make new shit constantly. Of course not. There are only so many unique ideas, and some people are perfect at one thing. Or maybe not, some people only have one good game in them, sometimes not even that. Furthermore, I won't look down on anybody who enjoys these sorts of games - I appreciate that they do often help people discover what is, to them, an entirely new experience, and they may love it.
I absolutely must make clear that I do not detest any of the developers or consumers of these games that are made in these ways. No, the blame for the state of the games industry rests squarely on the shoulders of the purse-string holders - as fucking always. People with money ruin everything with absolutely zero exceptions.
That being said, reader, there has never been a better time to emerge from the shithouse that is the mainstream games industry. There's a world of indie games out there, unbound from the shackles of big companies! All you have to do to experience it is come out of the shithouse, walk for a bit, and go to the shithouse across the road from you.
runnin' since monday, the 28th of march, 2022.
this site brought to you by: a nerd