Maybe I'm an outlier, but I feel like all these games from the golden years, (FF7, RE2, SH2, MGS3) etc. don't need remakes and are fine as is.

FF7R is at least enough of a different thing. Kind of like how the Evangelion Rebuild movies are different from the show/comic/old movies.

I agree, though, straight up remakes are kinda boring.

Yeah I think my irkness is more towards straight remakes especially for what I consider "modern" games, that's shit made in like 2002. It's still very playable today!
- I know what you mean, but those games are as old as Pac-Man and Zork were to us back in 2002. To a certain extent, it takes some intentionality and patience to engage with older media that you weren't there for.
  
  Shit, I sometimes struggle to engage with older media that I was there for lol.

Remakes are always okay because they're completely new games based on old ones. It's like a theater group doing a play their own way.

Where this conversation gets confused is in the difference between remake/remaster

Additionally FF7 should have been called a sequel because it's a completely different game. No spoilers but it's a different game and plot.

oh what a good way to put it, I never thought of it in such a manner.
Yeah? I thought it was more of a retelling of the same story (FF7r), from what I was told. Is it actually stuff that takes place after the events of FF7?
- spoiler
  
  time travel
  
  Also it extends the timeline of events during the Midgar chapter such that its playtime is like 5x longer and characters are fleshed out that were at best ancillary in the original.

Anything Konami does is particularly unnecessary.

I think there’s something to be said for remasters adding in quality of life features (fast travel points, quick saves, online play, accessibility features). But yeah, a lot of full on remakes are cash grabs.

This may be an even spicier take than the OP but I think most of the time “quality of life” changes are unnecessary and can undermine deliberate game design choices. Adding accessibility features (actual accessibility, as in features that allow disabled people to enjoy games they otherwise would not be able to play, not accessibility in the way Consumers use it) are obviously good changes, but otherwise I don’t think added features in remakes often make for a better experience. Most games that get remade are games that were beloved in their day, and it’s not like those games got worse or anything, people just have different standards that lead them to expect a game from 20-30 years ago to play the same as one that came out today. And tbh, if I wanted to play games that feel like modern games, I would just play modern games…
This was nice in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters. I'm not a damn child playing muh vidja games on summer vacation anymore; just let me fast forward through the grindy bits like I would probably do if I were playing on an emulator.
- I appreciated the maps and treasure counts too. The earlier games were especially maze-like and it saved me the hassle of a search

(Insert picture of that moron goon Asmogonad saying MGS3 better not have "politics" in it.)

I like remakes/remasters/rereleases if they make it easier to just play the damn game. By that I mean I don't want to have to track down a physical copy to play it legally just because EA/whoever decided to take it off their store. Of course I can always pirate those games, but then I have to track down a decent torrent and deal with that bs. I'd rather just pay a reasonable amount to easily play an older game but they like to make that difficult (I'm looking at you Mercenaries 2)

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.

I, on the other hand, will not be satisfied until there's more remakes of FF4 than mainline entries

Monkey's paw curls and you get Remakes and sequels to The After Years
- I'd try out an After Years sequel just to see how bad it can get but I also know I'd regret it the entire time

I agree, luckily the "FF7 Remake" is actually a late era sequel with a big meta-narrative component which means it's thoroughly its own thing and doesn't take away from FF7 (which still totally holds up on its own) at all.

The others are just "rerelease the game in modern Unreal Engine" which is blah

Resident Evil 2 Remake was a fuckin masterpiece though - completely different presentation and style of gameplay but faithfully captured the spirit of the original. The original still has value and is distinct enough to not be eclipsed by the remake IMO.

I hard 3 wasn't as good though?
- It was very different than the original - Nemesis wasn't this free roaming randomly encountered enemy, he had several setpiece battles that were very well presented and tuned (Mr. X and Nemesis basically switched their OG roles in the remakes)
  
  RE3 Remake is much more of a destruction of Raccoon City action experience than the original, using the now available tech to make the entire thing into this very fun action spectacle. Because it changes a ton from the original and is very different than the more slow-paced exploration centric RE2 Remake, a lot of fans of both RE3 OG and RE2 Remake were unhappy.

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 dunno if I could play the original FF7 at this point, while I do look back on it fondly I also remember grinding out high end materia for probably days because I really wanted to beat Emerald and Ruby.

I’m not a big gamer anymore but I played FF7 remake and it was one of the best games I had ever played.

I don’t think MGS3 needs a remake, not sure what they can upgrade besides graphics but FF7 remake (albeit a cash grab for only being 1/4 of the first of 4 cds) is fucking amazing

Re-releasing them for newer consoles isn't profitable enough on it's own, gotta add new content so people who loved the original can get FOMO about it.

I think RE2 and RE4 remakes hit the sweet spot of being accurate enough to the original while also being new enough that it's not just a cashgrab. They're different enough that other than being named remakes they're essentially different games, especially RE2 which is radically different than RE2 remake.

Yeah, but there are people who outright refuse to watch movies from before color. Likewise there are people who'd refuse to play those games on the grounds that they don't look as good as newer games.

Not that this is a good thing, but some folks demand only the freshest treats.

i-think-that

The original Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask versions looked and played better than the 3DS remakes

Those 3DS remakes are goofy af

I think RE2 remake is wrranted just for the fact that you don't have to rooted to the spot while aiming down the sights. I also appreciate that they took the creepy fanservice out of it.

I just want the classics with modern QoL features. Even just basic stuff like autosaves are great because I don't ever want to lose 4 hours of progress to a power outage or just forgetfulness.

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.

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.

RE2 is the platonic ideal of a remake. Essentially does the original but has changed enough about the gameplay, sound and graphics that it feels justified.

I don’t understand the hype about FF7 remake. The story seems to now be written by people who unironically like Advent Children and the game is so goddamn bloated. It does have salmon the dog though.

The main draw for FF7R for me is the gameplay. It's absolutely perfect IMO, and there's nothing like it - which is funny since old school Final Fantasy used to be exactly the opposite where the gameplay sucked but the draw was the storytelling.
- Hey! I'll have you know that clicking the attack command over and over again on generic random encounter mobs is the height of gameplay!

I guess it mostly depends on quality of the remake. FF7 is basically a new game, that kind of remake i would love, well except the infinite development time and scummy practices with cutting game into three. No point in playing untill entire game is finished and packaged into one, hopefully mostly seamless, but i don't hope for that.

On the other hand we have some real shit like the recently played tactics ogre "remake" where they didn't even bothered to remake the fucking sprites and everything looks like utter shit.

All that said, i fucking crave for Final Fantasy Tactics remake.

Ff7 did not need KH treatment but the update was really appreciated. I tried ro get my sicko-zoomer nephew ro check out 7 and he dismissed OG 7 for being too dated and cartoony looking.

I have yet to replay OG 7 with the newish voice acting mod, which I hear a lot of praise from, but I want to save that till after the new trillogy is completed lest it be redundant and damned it come out on PC qlready rebirth it is difficult to navigate away from spoilers. yells-at-cloud NOMURA!

I think the current landscape is rife with unnecessary remakes of great games, but I can't deny that that stupid Pachinko machine gave me a taste for Snake Eater with modern graphics and I still haven't been able to shake the desire to see the entire game like that. The selfish monkey part of my brain is very much looking forward to delta.

But honestly, I think people should be trying to remake failed games that had a good premise or world if you're going to remake. But that would mean prioritizing a guaranteed profit over art. Instead they pick their biggest cash cows and try to improve upon the already great.

Pa_removedo

No, you're right

The main issue with the MGS3 remake is that all the faces just look wrong. It looks like a ripoff done in unreal by some unofficial project.

They don't look like I'd have expected. Especially The Boss.