But on the other hand, I don’t want to take away from people’s fun.
I’ve been saying this for years. A good game is always a good game. It’s not like we’ve evolved into a different species from the humans who were playing these games in the 90s. If the game sucks now it sucked then too, if it was good then it’s good now.
Drives me up the wall when people talk about how they just “can’t” play older games. Yeah you can, you’re just a shallow loser who doesn’t have any interest in the art form and needs cutting edge spectacle to consider an entry worthwhile
Older games definitely operate differently i.e. they don’t assume you need constant dopamine hits to maintain your focus so there is a lot more “breathing room”
I love playing my old favorites but when playing a classic like FF7 for the first time now I found myself getting frustrated even though it operates on similar principles to like Ocarina of Time for example. I definitely looked up what I was supposed to do to get past that snake thing and how to get a Chocobo etc. but back then it was just kind of expected that you would talk to all the NPCs and check out all the areas to get this information.
I definitely don’t disagree with your point though. Somehow, the genwunner thing in Pokemon has now come all the way around and people rag on it far too much. Like, you think Pokemon Red and Blue, the biggest video game phenomenon I’ve still ever seen, is a bad boring game? Every kid in America was addicted to it. Similarly, the endless pursuit of “realistic” graphics is fucking stupid. I thought the graphics looked great on the 64, GameCube, PS2, etc. it’s not like everything magically keeps getting better, I enjoy everything the same amount.
Older games definitely operate differently i.e. they don’t assume you need constant dopamine hits to maintain your focus so there is a lot more “breathing room”
Recently we have a discussion about Final Fantasy Tactics where some person got quite offended by the idea of some grind. In tactics game. Japansese tactics game. Released 28 years ago. Which i’m still baffled about since most modern crpgs also include grind, and i’m not even mentioning mmo’s.
Also grind apparently gives tons of dopamine considering gacha games exists and are popular as hell.
A lot of it is games are tied to proprietary hardware unlike something like movies or album making for a sort of inaccessibility for a lot of people. Like yeah you could set up an emulator but that is still many more steps then me typing in pet sounds on youtube and finding an upload instantly. Another reason is of coarse remakes being the more risk aversive avenue than making a new ip or even a sequel.
ff7 and re2’s remakes are so technologically different and play so differently that I just think of them as entirely different games just based on the same design notes.
I think its kinda fun to see a re-imagining of a classic game, but its actually super, super hard to stick the landing. I don’t think you can ever be as good as the original (that you played when you were a kid with some flicker of imagination still left in your soul) but you can give it a fresh coat of paint and try your best not to ruin the classic moments.
I think FF7r is a travesty in ruining the originals’ emotional beats. Dead Space remake does a pretty good job, RE4R is also pretty good.
What i think would actually be a way better way to go is to do a remake, but also release the source code of the original game, so the big fans can do something special with the original instead.
The remake of ff7 is interesting because unlike a lot of game remakes it does radically alter the source material instead of being like a shot for shot remake that updates the visuals and adds quality of life adjustments. It’s messy of coarse and has a lot of nomura bullshit with the ghosts and deviations which feel like fanservice but i can still think of it as its own beast unlike the re4 remake where the original and remake just blur together for me.
Funnily enough I read that Nomura actually wanted to keep the remake very faithful to the original story. The ghosts and deviations are actually ideas from the other writers, Nojima and I-forget-the-other-guy.
