Video Game Remakes Won't Stop Anytime Soon, But That Might Not Be a Bad Thing
Learning from the past.
If there’s a single trend that’s dominated all of media in the last decade, it’s trying to harness nostalgia. Disney has endlessly pursued the idea with live-action remakes and trying to recapture Star Wars’ feeling, and TV shows like King of the Hill, Scrubs, and Malcolm in the Middle are all getting revivals. Of course, video games are also no strangers to capitalizing on nostalgia, as this year alone has seen well over two-dozen remakes or remasters.
Earlier this year, my review of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater questioned why we remake games in the first place, and what purpose they’re supposed to achieve. Inverse’s Remade series tries to answer that question by talking to some of the best and brightest in the industry — from Final Fantasy 7 Remake to System Shock. But a single thread I found running throughout all of these conversations was the idea of “comfort,” for both the players and those making games.
In particular, something said by Larry Kuperman, VP of business development at Nightdive Studios, has really stuck with me.
“There’s always been an emotional element to games, right? Games as art forms have always been capable of evoking emotions from us,” Kuperman says, “I think that, when you look at remasters [and remakes], in a period of uncertainty and change, there’s true comfort in playing something that is both familiar and new.”
Delta represents a distinct approach to remaking, leaving the original creator’s vision entirely intact.
The feeling of nostalgia has always been something tough to describe, but I think that warm sense of comfort is a pretty apt descriptor. And it’s exceptionally easy to see why “comfort” would be something in demand right now. Even if you look past the state of the world or rising cost of living, the video game industry itself is in an incredibly tough position right now — tens of thousands of layoffs, studio closures, cancelled projects, and more. This has had a drastic effect on the landscape of the industry, and although they might not feel it directly, players see it nonetheless. And amidst economic hardship as it is, that makes it harder than ever for players to be willing to invest in new unproven IPs, gaming hardware, etc.
But that’s not the case with something established — something that has the name Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid. Something that so many people instantly know they’re likely to enjoy. From the consumer standpoint, remakes and remasters are a “guaranteed” win. You have an attachment to the original game, so you know, at least to some degree, you’ll enjoy something in it.
From the more cynical business side of things, then, it makes sense that companies would be heavily investing in remakes — less concepting and prototyping, sometimes, and a more guaranteed return on investment. And indeed, we have plenty of examples of “cash grab” remasters that are just churned out; you’re always going to have that to some degree.
But perhaps what most surprised me about conducting these interviews for Remade is how consistently and confidently developers felt like remaking games was creating innovation, or real food for thought on the future of these franchises. The reason for remaking games is a drastically multi-faceted answer.
For Falcom, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter provided the chance to let newer developers experience the “roots” of Trails, while simultaneously working as an investigation into what the series had left behind. In its storytelling ambitions, Trails has undoubtedly lost some of the more quaint narrative touches — concise stories that feel contained and personal. In a way, the Trails in the Sky remake let Falcom rediscover that comforting feeling that made the series so popular, the “coziness” it became beloved for.
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter was a chance for Falcom to find the series’ simplicity once again, and why it became so well-loved in the first place.
For the team on Age of Mythology: Retold, the remake not only provided the chance to update a classic and make it play better than ever, but deliver on the game’s ideas in a new and exciting way. Expansion like Pillars of Eternity and Heavenly Spear add brand new Chinese and Japanese pantheons, major gameplay changes, and new campaigns. Retold still has that comforting feeling of the original, but is bristling with a new energy.
For both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the respective developers emphasized that these remakes provided a chance to “delight” fans, while forging a new path for the future. And a big part of that is studios and developers seeing what they can do when older ideas mesh with new technology.
“In the 1990s, gaming hardware evolved very rapidly, which gave birth to countless masterpieces. Thirty years since then, technology has dramatically advanced, which allowed for an even greater range of what can be expressed,” Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi says, “I believe that using these advancements to reconstruct titles from that time creates new experiential value.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake still feels unprecedented in terms of video game remakes, splitting the experience into three parts that can grow as a kind of sub-series.
Even with Metal Gear Solid, the remake that launched this entire interview series for me — hearing directly from the producer of the game, Noriaka Okamura, shifted how I viewed Delta a bit. Fascinatingly, the entire ethos of the Delta project was to create “a remake that was too faithful.” This is a remake to pay the utmost respect to the original game, which is why there are so few changes across the board. And while I might personally want something else out of a remake myself, I have to commend the development team for having a vision and sticking to it. Even in this case, with a remake that changes so little, Okamura feels like it can be the right step into creating something more innovative.
Every single developer I talked to said a version of the same thing. Some, like Hamaguchi, are fans of the original game, now bringing their talents and ideas to redefine it. And that’s where this idea of “comfort” comes in again.
With remasters and remakes, you already have a known quantity — you know the gist of each game, the series’ strengths, etc. That gives the people who make games a solid foundation to start with, and then layer new interpretations and elements on top of that. And it’s only through this process that we could get things like Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s incredible combat system, or Nightdive getting to resurrect content cut from the original Shadow Man.
Remasters and remakes are two sides of the same coin — both important to learning from the past.
Because video games are so iterative, by their nature, it feels like remakes serve a much larger purpose than most other entertainment mediums. In an industry that is still young comparatively, learning from the past is more important than ever, especially with the rapidity of technological improvement.
There’s a lot you can likely take away from this series of interviews, but first and foremost is that the trend of remakes and remasters isn’t going anywhere — and arguably, that’s a good thing.
