If you watch a lot of video game showcases like I do, you start to notice some patterns in the chat. Casual requests for certain games tend to snowball into memes. If you were watching any streams in June, you probably noticed requests like these: Hollow Knight: Silk Song The news, even when it doesn’t make much sense. Grand Theft Auto 6 remains the king of fan begging, but has recently noticed a rival emerge. Bloodborne.
Fans of FromSoftware’s 2015 PlayStation 4 classic have been clamoring for any and every bit of news about the game for years. Some of those demands are legitimate — a PC port, an update to 60 frames per second (fps), a sequel — seem reasonable given its history. But seeing Sony’s YouTube chat flooded with “sequel” chants during last month’s PlayStation State of Play pushed me over the edge. Bloodborne Remastered or remade.
As someone who ruins the fun of careers, I’m here to burst the bubble. Bloodborne No need for a remake. It’s safe to say that very few of your favorite games need a remake.
Too many remakes
To give Bloodborne Of course, the demand for remakes and remasters is not unreasonable. The video game industry is currently experiencing a double-dip boom, with almost every major publisher, even Square Enix, reviving classics to some degree. Final Fantasy 7E.A. and Dead Spaceor Sony The Last of UsNintendo has also fully jumped on the trend, Super Mario RPG, Mario vs. Donkey Kong,others. BloodborneI suppose it’s fair to ask for some belated love from Sony.
Even more absurd is the idea that a nine-year-old PS4 game should be revisited outside of an upgrade to the latest platform. Bloodborne By today’s standards it still feels completely modern – it looks and plays great even today – and the flaws I see in this game are common in many of From Software’s more recent games. Elden RingOther than doubling the frame rate, there’s little chance that FromSoftware can fix it, much like Bluepoint did with their excellent modernization. Demon’s Soulsa grainier PS3 game that benefited from a cleanup.
The arguments in favor of a remake would seem more reasonable if copies of the original were difficult to obtain, but Bloodborne That’s not an issue for PS4. The game is readily available and can be purchased on the PlayStation Store right now for $20 (or on sale for $10 at the time of writing), and is also available with PS Plus Extra if you’re already a subscriber. A simple PC port would be welcome, but there’s no point in doubling up on a game like this in 2024.
But that didn’t stop the publishers from doing so.
When I started this piece, Bloodborne That’s not what I’m actually annoyed about, fans. Rather, the request for projects like this speaks to the state of the video game industry today, which is intent on exploiting nostalgia to squeeze as much money as possible out of players. While it can be fun to see forgotten or especially outdated games re-imagined, publishers’ current obsession with reviving anything and everything has created a jaded culture that devalues the very games the companies are celebrating, even when it doesn’t need to.
A look at the 2024 release calendar shows a profusion of remakes and remasters, many of which are head-scratching. It started in January with a completely unnecessary (and even harmful) remaster. The Last of Us Part 2 And has been going on for the past six months. Persona 3, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Mario vs. Donkey Kongand many more events will spice up the first half of the year, with many more to come. Until Dawn, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid 3,Furthermore Epic Mickey This year, all of this will be revisited. Some projects make sense. RivenReimaginings of. Others are harder to justify.
take Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year DoorFor example, Nintendo gave the GameCube classic some love this year in the form of a “remake,” but there’s not much it couldn’t have done in a port. Aside from the addition of a tutorial and a refresh of the already solid art, it feels almost identical to the GameCube version. Some would argue it’s an inferior version due to the slower turn-based battles, dropping from 60 fps on the GameCube to 30 fps on the Switch. I enjoyed the game, but couldn’t help but ask myself why Nintendo couldn’t have added the original to the Switch Online catalog instead of giving fans a full-price revisit.
Other upcoming projects make me even more skeptical. Konami’s Metal Gear Solid Delta Remaking a classic Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake EaterBut Hideo Kojima, the visionary game maker who made the original into this game, is no longer at the helm. Silent Hill 2 The remake is similarly oddly marketed, seemingly attempting to smooth over all of the wonky elements that defined the PS1-era original.
The message permeating the industry right now seems to be that old games are broken toys that need fixing. Instead of accepting their shortcomings and design decisions, we need to make everything look, sound and play better. Sometimes that can be a good thing. The Last of Us Part 1 It came with a significant suite of accessibility features, but so many of today’s remakes often feel like a way to squeeze every last bit of value out of a popular IP. Persona 3 Reloaded Is it because the original would have benefited from revisions, or is it because Atlus has found a way to squeeze money out of fans through hard times? Persona 6? (For your reference, Reload It feels like a creative step back. Persona 3 Portable(Games currently available for purchase on the latest platforms)
So I am frustrated again. Bloodborne Mania. Remakes are starting to feel more like calculated business moves capitalizing on nostalgia than artistic acts of preservation. Very few of the recent remakes I’ve played feel like they’re in dialogue with the games they’re remaking, or that they’re thinking about what it means to revive them in a modern context. Final Fantasy VII Remake Capcom’s Resident Evil remake goes one step further, Dead SpaceThe remake of Bloodborne Will it deepen your understanding and appreciation of the game in a way that simply playing it repeatedly wouldn’t provide?
At times, remakes can’t help but feel like a half-hearted compromise to what players really want: an easy, legal way to buy and play old games. Why can’t they just buy the originals? Silent Hill 2 Why it wasn’t legally possible to play on Steam Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Until last month? Bloodborne Should I just leave it in its original state on PC? It feels like every time fans believe a marketing hype, we move further away from a true preservation solution.
So I don’t want to keep playing the same classic games with better graphics or modern controls. I’m just happy to have access to the games I love whenever I want. Is that too much to ask?
Editor’s Recommendation
