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I couldn't disagree with this more. "The sanctity of the art" argument is so awful. Things age, and in the media of video games, they age poorly. These things are 100% tech limited and tech moves so fast.
Let go of nostalgia. The OG Silent Hill 2 is laughable unless you genuinely can pretend it's not cheese dialogue and hideous to the eye. I can't. I also can't go back to tank controls. Demons Souls was so fucking Grey and brown and clunky.
As a 31 year old gamer, I've only seen a remake that was worse than the OG once, Resident Evil 3. And that's simply because they cut the game in half and made it on the rails. It's insane to think, personally, that Silent Hill 2 having combat in the remake takes away from what the game was and still is, a deep story. If you're in the camp that thinks the OGs are better, then we just simply won't agree on much.
To each their own, but the movie industry has been doing it forever and chances are, you're favorite movies are adaptations or remakes of a century old play or half century old movie. Your favorite food is probably a modern take on a classic cuisine. Your favorite clothes are updated fashion from decades ago.
Progress is good, and we shouldn't lose the best things to time.
Well I didn't say remakes suck but nice meme, there were 3 remakes on my top 25 list. It's incredibly dismissive to say that games age poorly as a blanket statement. I do believe in the sanctity of art, why is that so laughable and cringe? I think games are art. You're smart enough to know the difference between movies adapting centuries old plays, compared to remaking a game that came out 20 years ago.
To say that games age poorly as a blanket statement is crazy to me. Why do they age poorly? The graphics? Who gives a fuck. Halo will always be a beautiful game because of the timeless art style. They didn't have the technology to emulate reality in 2001, so everything is stylized. It will always be pleasing to look at while remakes that nuke the art style and only go for photorealism will look like shit in 10 years, since we will simply be better at emulating reality. Is it the mechanics? Obviously varies game by game and is heavily subjective but I think most of these games being remade play just fine. Halo and RE4 as an example again, the originals are well preserved and received QOL changes like high resolutions and frame-rates to make what is originally there shine through better. Which honestly is only happening because Capcom is an exception in terms of putting effort into preserving their old games in close to their original state and Halo MCC is there because frankly 343 needs these older games playable to hold the intrest of Halo fans to any degree.
Obviously it's subjective but I think some remakes are better and some are worse.
The ones that are downgrades imo are RE3, SH2, and Demons' Souls out of recent or more well known ones.
RE4 and RE2 are probably side-grades. RE4 is awesome and added a lot of things that are better than the OG like the parry mechanic, but it is less responsive and consistent as a gameplay experience. RE2 is better mechanically but the story was diminished, but it's such a great game that it's ok to me.
Some are strict upgrades like Dead Space and RE1.
They're not all strict downgrades but I wish that the talent that went to making them went to new ones. I don't think the original silent hill 2 aged poorly and the fixed camera angles added significantly to the atmosphere. The story is still deep but not as good imo, but we don't need to argue that, I'm glad you like it, genuinely.
Saying that we don't want to lose the best things to time is very ironic to me since that's what's happening. We get an inferior remake of Demons' Souls instead of just making the PS3 version playable on PS5 natively. at 4K 60FPS. I say inferior because the graphical changes ignore the lore and make no sense design wise - but it looks pretty. It's not made for fans of Demons' Souls, it's made for zoomers who can't play old looking games. That is a bad remake. I can go into much further detail and I'm prepared to defend why this remake sucks beyond the handful of mechanical improvements.
I'm worried that the REAL SH2, Demons' Souls, MGS 3, and a lot of these other games that have been or will be remade will be lost.
TL,DR: Remakes can be good or bad like every game but I wish people were more skeptical by default. It makes celebrating really good ones like the Resident Evil remakes possible, while still being able to point out cash grabs that miss the point of the OG like Demons' Souls. I'd much rather see developers go the God of War 2018 or Doom 2016 route instead of a straight up remake - although sony has sadly done a horrible job preserving classic God of War.
