Remakes, what makes a good one?

[Deleted User]

Sooo. with the "recent" announcement of Skyward Sword HD and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shinning Pearl, I have been thinking about, well, remakes in general.

I think we live in a moment where, a lot of the "new" games are starting to be remakes, specially in the side from Nintendo. So I have been thinking, where is the limit?

I mean, yeah, I love Skyward Sword but, its really a good thing to pay 60 dollars for game that probably has just upscale textures and one or two unnecessary things just to try to justify the remake?
So, well, I want your opinion.
When is a good time to make a remake of a certain game, and what makes a remake a good one?

 

[Chary]

I think they need to stay true to what the original was, while modernizing gameplay elements or things that aged poorly.

Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver were amazing remakes, because they had everything the originals did, with nicer graphics, the mechanics introduced in gen 4, and a metric ton of new content, like Pokemon following you, the Pokeathalon, and a bigger Kanto, because they weren't restricted by the size of the GBC cart anymore.

Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire introduced new things that were from gen 6, but they also stripped away content, streamlined a lot of things that players liked about the originals, and didn't really update it to make it definitively better over Ruby and Sapphire.

 

[Alexander1970]

A good Remake should have everything/every Element from the Original Game.
Not necessarily the same Amount of all but everything should to be in there.

An absolute Disaster is
- to cut out Characters (seems a very common Method at the Moment...) because of "Political Correctness"
- to cut out Gameplay/Scenes (like in Resident Evil 3 Remake)

A good Choice is also to have People from the Original Game as "Advisors".

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Well Skyward Sword isn't a "Remake", it's a remaster at best. They're not going to rebuild the game from the ground up, they're just adding in motion controls and upscaling textures and that's basically it. I personally don't think remasters like that are even remotely worth the $60, they're lazy cash grabs at best and should be half priced at the least. The Spyro/Crash remasters are excellent examples of good remasters, they modernized things like the art style and controls, and only charged you $40 for it (which is especially nice, since they had to basically "remake" the games from the ground up since they couldn't get access to source codes for either).

When it comes to remakes, it depends on how they're actually remaking the games. I'm not convinced the Diamond and Pearl remakes will be worth the full $60 they're charging, given that they don't appear to be doing much more than pushing modern type/move changes and just shoving the original art style through a "Chibi-ifier" filter and calling it good. I'd much rather see a D/P/Pt remake like Heartgold/Soul Silver, where they added good new content and revamped the graphics to (then) modern standards. I'd buy a D/P/Pt remake in the Sw/Sh engine (well, a better coded Sw/Sh engine anyways) without even thinking about it.

I'd also include something like the Demon's Souls "Remake" as a disappointing remake, given that they basically did nothing at all to the gameplay (the important part of Souls) and just slapped some pretty graphics on it, called it good, then slapped you in the face and charged you $70 for it.

 

[FAST6191]

Usually. Someone gets given the task to remake a game that they could respect but did not necessarily like back when (but liked similar games -- I am never going to be able to make a compelling sports game as they all bore me to tears). Too often you give something to a superfan and you get mediocrity, over fitting, over design* and ultimately retread, even if it is otherwise competently made.

*if you have but a few polygons or are limited to 2d sprites you make it count. Too often today some hyperrealistic nonsense gets made that does not draw your eye or have any memorable characteristics.

An appreciation of the underlying themes/story beats, an appreciation of the sorts of things it tested** and perhaps doing a modern twist on those, if the series carried on then anything particularly notable from those that could be woven into it might be a thing to consider, not being afraid to trim the jank or tweak it to make it work***, maybe a few consistent twists to keep it within reason/consistent with the ideas of the thing but ultimately something a bit fresh too (almost an expansion pack or director's cut type deal), maybe something that would have been desirable back when but was too hard and now not so much.


**I assume we have all played many "the kids don't like horror/single player/co-op/replayability/... but they do like high action as evidenced by all these other games" type deals or seen franchises go down that path.

*** https://stormlightarchive.fandom.com/wiki/Sanderson's_Laws_of_Magic or his lectures. Or maybe

Bring a world up to such a standard rather than "whoo sandbox" and I will probably thank you for it.

 

[AncientBoi]

A remake of MGSPW

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Better graphics, modernized gameplay, and all that jazz(idk why but I love the phrase "all that jazz")