Hope I was not missed too much. What do I have to bring today? I was playing Final Fantasy IV a little while back, and it hit me that this game has just seen too many rereleases spanning multiple consoles. While I love this game to death, I kind of have to put my foot down and say, hey, Square Enix, enough is enough. I'm interested in looking at some feedback from you guys about your thoughts regarding video game remakes and ports. Are video game remakes healthy for the gaming industry? And where should we draw the line? Is there a theoretical point where as a gamer, you think that something has been released too many times to be enjoyable?
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There clearly needs to be a line established between port and remake; ports being less expensive to make as it essentially migrates the game to a different platform, with the goal of making it more available to the general public, whereas a remake is redone from the ground up and providing a new way to experience an older game. When I look at a game like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, I see a timeless classic that should be remade for the newer generation to be exposed to it. I feel like that should have been the purpose of these ports and remakes; exposing the game to a newer generation so that they are able to experience the adventures we did back in the day. Ocarina of Time appeared as a port on the Nintendo Gamecube with the Master Quest bundle, along with a port on the Wii Virtual Console, and an "in-between" on the Nintendo 3DS which kind of felt lacking due to the presence of the older and rather outdated soundtrack. It kind of went between port and remake and updated the some aspects while retaining other aspects.
I then move on to a company like Square Enix, who as of late has severely disappointed me and seems to not be focusing anymore on unique content, instead taking previous ideas and rehashing them time after time. Gone are the days where Final Fantasy was about exploration and an epic journey with incredible storytelling. All I see now are games like Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, and Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns, which deviate little from the original game. When we look at the release of Final Fantasy IV, the game has been released on the Super Famicom, the Playstation, the Game Boy Advance, the Wii, the Playstation Portable, and the Wonderswan, and even the mobile industry. It has been ported over and repainted so many times over the past two decades that at this point it just feels old and evident that Square Enix is running out of things to work with. While it is unfair to criticize their ports, it begins to feel like that is all they have done over the past several years.
When I mentioned that it is good for remakes to expose the game to newer generations, when you look at a timeline like that of Final Fantasy IV do you find that a line should be drawn and say that the game needs to stop since it has access almost anywhere now? It is unfortunate that even Capcom is taking a similar route, one of them being the Ace Attorney franchise. The original trilogy is all over the place now; having originated from the Game Boy Advance, it is now on the Nintendo DS, Wii, coming to the 3DS, and on mobile.
When we look at games that are being ported over constantly like this, does it ever come to mind that these companies are just taking the easy way out? A little while back, I criticized the video game industry, and made comments about how developers are not taking enough risks and generating interesting content. While the overall goal of a company is solely to make money, where is it that gamers should draw the line and be able to request more, especially from a big company such as Square Enix or Capcom? Do we even have the right to legitimately criticize companies for their actions? When I see ports of the same game on every single platform (easy money), and rehashing of the same content (easy way out) it just feels like the dedicated gaming base is getting spat on. And God knows that I'll still be there to buy the next installment of whatever game, because that's the way life works. It's an interesting paradox I've found myself in. The same could be said of the Pokémon franchise, which I have been playing since I was a kid, and acknowledge that, to some degree, it could be more and more of the same.
Unhealthy? Square Enix has remade Final Fantasy VI to disparaging reviews citing how poor the graphics now look in comparison to the original.
Could it happen to be that we gamers are now getting older, therefore we don't see games the same as we did when we were young? Look at the Pokémon franchise, we used to relish catching critters as kids and now as we grow older all we think about are the analytics behind each creature! Has our age jaded us to the point that we just expect more and more out of games?
Going back to the original point, are ports and remakes in themselves healthy? For me, I find it to be both yes and no. Yes, remakes are nice because it provides new material and updated visuals and features that could not be done for the original release, due to restrictions in technology at the time. At the same time it also provides players a new way to experience an older title that has been upgraded to match the current technology available. Ports can be both healthy and unhealthy (to me at least). It could be healthy to provide a developing company the money necessary to work on future titles, yet it could be unhealthy because it takes a lot less effort to migrate it over.
For those tuning in, do you find that gaming ports and remakes are good for the industry (thinking about it in terms of games like Final Fantasy IV or the Ace Attorney series) and should be encouraged, or do you think that remakes should get minimal exposure and instead tell gamers to search for older systems to enjoy the content on, thereby giving developers more time to actively develop unique intellectual properties? Let me know what you think!
