Galvanising the past will not protect it from rust
Who are all these expensive game remakes for anyway?
Resident Evil 4 is an incredibly special game for many of us. Whether you think it a bold risk that paid off or a divergence of gameplay paradigms that led a series astray, it's hard to argue that its launch on the Gamecube way back in 2005 wasn't a pivotal moment in gaming history.
Part of the ambitious but hubristic Capcom Five, its place in the hall of fame is a given, and for good reason. A singular, focused action horror romp.  A seamless stressful rollercoaster of big guns and fucked up beasts that refuses to let it’s audience get bored for even a second.
In a few days, Capcom’s shiny new remake of the game will launch, and initial impressions sound rather positive. Certainly from the demo I played last week there's a lot of care and polish that has been put into it. Nice little touches here and there designed to appeal to both new and returning players, while feeling very much like it’s own thing, for better or worse.
However, with the context of an ever tightening circle around contemporary IP, and rights-holders able to remove whatever they own from public consumption at the drop of a pin, now more than ever do we need to examine the relationship between remakes and the greater issue of games preservation, which leads me to rather foolishly attempt to answer the burning question:
Who are all these remakes for, exactly?
One problem faced by long term fans of the things that are getting remade is that the language around the marketing for these games so often treats them as a replacement for the original thing. As long term fans of the things that are getting remade know all too well, these ‘replacements’ inevitably miss something in the translation. Small unassuming features, quirks of the original architecture, or striking visuals built upon technological constraints that get wholesale abandoned as soon as more processing power becomes available.
Resident Evil 4 Remake certainly to me feels like a faithful interpretation of the original both visually and mechanically but it is not a carbon copy, nor should it be treated like the definitive version of the game by anyone, regardless of how you feel about either iteration.
I'm far from concerned about the future of the original Resident Evil 4. Its ubiquity on almost every console under the sun as well as its current continued presence on digital distribution platforms means that we all should be able to play a version of Capcom’s original vision of the game whenever we want. You can currently play both versions on the same console if you wish, and for me this should be the standard.
But this is not always the case.
A number of remade classics have effectively replaced their originals by virtue of accessibility. While I really loved Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus remake, it’s paramount that it be treated as an entirely separate game. It's never a simple case of improvements across the board, there are things I think it does better, but also things that have been lost in the transition. While I have no experience with either, I’m sure the same will be true for EA’s recent Dead Space remake.
Many will argue until their voices are hoarse that the small changes in art direction fundamentally change the tone of the whole experience, and while I don’t agree with this in totality, I certainly don’t think of the modern versions of these games as the ‘definitive experience’. The changes may not bother me as much as they do some of you, but I do understand what they are and why the distinctions matter.
The problem with Shadow of the Colossus in particular is that the PS2 original remains locked to that console. The digital version of its HD remaster will soon vanish with the closure of the PS3 store. It’s not available on modern platforms, so unless you have a physical copy and original hardware, good luck, buster! I hope you understand why this is a problem.
Not all remakes are made equal. Developer intent plays a huge part in how we approach these things. If we take last year’s Live A Live as an example of one end of this spectrum and Final Fantasy 7 Remake as the other, we will inevitably find more remakes taking the form of the former rather than the latter.
Live A Live was a fantastic update of a lost classic, very clearly made to be *the* version of the game that exists for most people. And in a way it’s faithfulness was not only integral, but the only way they could have done it. With most of it’s audience being new, there’s no substantial frame of reference from which expectations can be subverted. For all intents and purposes it is a ‘new’ game.
The same is not true for Final Fantasy 7, a game that I’m very intimately familiar with, as I imagine the other 14 million of you are. I’m certainly every single one of us were surprised when Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out and was this unhinged meta version of the classic RPG staple, a story turned inside out, slowed down, full of weird little tonal shifts and a plethora of surprises, resulting in a wildly divisive experience, one I loved with complete totality in a very different way to the way I loved a game so integral to my current tastes that it should rightly be canonised.
In both situations, however, I feel the exact same way: They should not be considered definitive, but rather as their own thing. Not only is it disrespectful to the artistry of their source material, but it makes their own efforts seem lesser in comparison. To me a good remake is something that not only understands the responsibility bestowed upon it, but also has the conviction to make bold artistic choices of its own.
‘Faithful’, in a vaccuum, is a meaningless term.
I return to that original question: Who are these remakes for exactly? Rather boringly the answer is simply, whoever wants them. Certainly new fans who came on board later in a franchise’s life, and haven’t had the chance to properly experience the classics in their original context, will get a kick out of these new versions; i’m sure those long term fans too will get something out of visiting a different vision of the thing they have historically adored, but does anyone benefit from one being bid to replace the other?
The problem is not the product itself, but rather the language being used to market it. It conflates the expectation of legacy with a need to usurp it, when that’s far from the desired outcome. We generally don’t think of other mediums this way, despite what people might say about Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt.
Overwhelmingly games are seen as this thing to be built upon, to be improved and ‘fixed’ and this is just a really depressing way to look at any artistic form, even ones created with financial incentives rather than artistic ones.
I hope Resident Evil 4 Remake does enough to set itself apart from it’s predecessor. I hope Capcom are responsible enough to let both visions of the game sit nicely side by side. I hope people understand that there is value in something existing beyond the desire to knock something else off a pedestal.