Should older games be remade?

[Jaime Lannister]

Fallout and Arcanum have shitty graphics but I wouldn't trust a developer not to change the art style in the remake. The IE games are all fine as they are.

 

[Ogg]

Strangely, I've never heard of a remake in paintings, music or photography.

 

[oldschool]

No remakes. They would suck as much as movie remakes do.

 

[KazikluBey]

I'd like to have MotB and SoZ remade in a decent game engine. The Infinity Engine would suffice, even.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

I'd like to have MotB and SoZ remade in a decent game engine. The Infinity Engine would suffice, even.

Or they could fix the camera and UI issues, but yeah, remaking it would be easier.

 

[denizsi]

Strangely, I've never heard of a remake in paintings, music or photography.

Strange indeed, for history of fine arts is choking full of "remakes", and even more so in contemporary music. The first example that comes to my mind for paintings: Picasso's interpretation(s) of Les Meninas by Velazguez (which -the original- was "remade", or reinterpreted by many other artists as well).

 

[Hory]

Strangely, I've never heard of a remake in paintings, music or photography.

Aren't cover versions like remakes?

Also, FO didn't have bad graphics.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Strangely, I've never heard of a remake in paintings, music or photography.

Dunno much about paintings, but remixes and shoops are getting pretty common these days.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Also, FO didn't have bad graphics.

No, compare it to the Infinity Engine games made around the same time. It's pretty bad.

 

[Black Cat]

@Topic

The old times gave us some pretty amazing games, and then technology moved forward. I do not see anything wrong with remaking those old games with new technologies and, maybe, refinements.

I am, however, talking about very old games there. Not Fallout or Planescape but things so old that really are hurt by by their age like Hard Nova, Sentinel Worlds, Space Rogue, and the like.

To just think about any of those games with intact gameplay, modern UI, and Mass Effect's graphics makes me want to cry.

 

[denizsi]

To just think about any of those games with intact gameplay, modern UI, and Mass Effect's graphics makes me want to cry.

Another day, another next-gen boy. Game play wise, many older games have only more features and pluses than anything else. Often times, it's really the interface that has fucked everything up, even back then. After all, who the fuck did ever come up with the concept of dragging and dropping graphical items in a graphical inventory at some point, right? So, what's the plan 50 years from now; graphical drag&drop inventories declared obsolete? Nope. Likewise, many old games are a chore to play only due to the hindrance of the interface, where lots of things are as good as in any modern game, if not better.

Also, the whole remake business is a big hit or miss, statistically favouring the latter. But anyway, you can't make faithful remakes of games so much removed from present time. That much old games were products of very few people, of very specific mindsets and ideals that only were in such a specific time of history. Even if the same people are willing to come together for a remake, even if you fund them to remake their own game, it won't matter because the people will have changed, and the remake will most likely be completely different and will almost assuredly suck.

Regardless of who owns the IP or what you choose to call the new game, you can, at best, only make a "spiritual" remake or re-imagining, ie. what Fallout is to Wasteland.

Why? Here's an example: Picasso remaking Velazquez's Las Maninas didn't "redefine" a new Las Maninas. The original Las Maninas didn't somehow get lost to history, just because Picasso made a new one. You can't take someone's painting, song, sculpture; reinterpret it in your own style AND have the original/previous one become obscure. Because what you did is just a new interpretation.

The concept of "remake" is almost completely a commercial fallacy of mass consumption habits, and rarely a thing of passion and intelligence. Do you ever see "remakes" of literary works? Can you ever imagine "remakes", or rather "rewrites" of Shakespeare? Imagine that, you walk into a book store one day and see all your classics have been "remade". WTF? No, but you see it where licenses are controlled by corporate scum.

Licensing certain individual forms of artwork like books and music are rather restrictive compared to products of collaborative/collective works, like movies and games. You can see a 1000 covers of any particular song, but the original song will never be "replaced". Public conscious at this point wouldn't adopt such a mentality anyway. Not really so with movies and games due to technological dependency and fucked up laws, but corporates are slowly making it to other areas as well. After all, the trend of passing new books by using dead authors' names is relatively new.

Anyway, when someone will take Wasteland and set out to make a "remake", lots of neat things I love and remember from the original game will be missing. And mind you that a lot of stuff, a lot of features, abilities etc. got lost even between Wasteland and Fallout, and for 20 years of separation, a lot more is bound to be lost because of the so called "modern" graphics. Many games lost lots of abilities between each sequel or remake because shit got more complicated to realize in new games. We lost many cool things like climbing rocky mountains or city walls, digging through earth, setting environments to fire, destructing environments etc. why? Because it takes significantly more work to pull these off with all the animations, level design and the such, and to be able to play anything remotely similar, you have to have insane high-end configurations.

Fortunately, that's where the "spiritual" part kicks in. The guys making Fallout has upheld Wasteland as their guide, but they also had their own vision, which made the game stand on its own brilliance. A rare kind of occurrence. Very rare. So, fuck remakes. I'll be more than happy to see spiritual remakes, in case someone gets it right, but don't desecrate IP names with game elements superior to most modern games by making shitty and castrated remakes.

 

[goatvomit]

Total Annihilation with an engine that could actually handle 5k units on each side without path finding going to hell would be damn spiffy but otherwise it wouldn't need that big of an overhaul. Metal heck 3 would be pure bliss then.

 

[bhlaab]

I'd love to see those old gold box games given a slight graphical update and more manageable interfaces.

 

[dan32]

Id like to see a Demons winter remake,wouldnt need the latest graphics,just needs to make the game bigger and add some more spells.

The only problem is it wouldnt appeal to a mass audience enough to make it finacially viable,it probly needs someone with time on their hands.

Unfortunatly i lack the knowledge to do it but i think it would make one hell of a game.

 

[Luzur]

To just think about any of those games with intact gameplay, modern UI, and Mass Effect's graphics makes me want to cry.

Another day, another next-gen boy. Game play wise, many older games have only more features and pluses than anything else. Often times, it's really the interface that has fucked everything up, even back then. After all, who the fuck did ever come up with the concept of dragging and dropping graphical items in a graphical inventory at some point, right? So, what's the plan 50 years from now; graphical drag&drop inventories declared obsolete? Nope. Likewise, many old games are a chore to play only due to the hindrance of the interface, where lots of things are as good as in any modern game, if not better.

Also, the whole remake business is a big hit or miss, statistically favouring the latter. But anyway, you can't make faithful remakes of games so much removed from present time. That much old games were products of very few people, of very specific mindsets and ideals that only were in such a specific time of history. Even if the same people are willing to come together for a remake, even if you fund them to remake their own game, it won't matter because the people will have changed, and the remake will most likely be completely different and will almost assuredly suck.

Regardless of who owns the IP or what you choose to call the new game, you can, at best, only make a "spiritual" remake or re-imagining, ie. what Fallout is to Wasteland.

Why? Here's an example: Picasso remaking Velazquez's Las Maninas didn't "redefine" a new Las Maninas. The original Las Maninas didn't somehow get lost to history, just because Picasso made a new one. You can't take someone's painting, song, sculpture; reinterpret it in your own style AND have the original/previous one become obscure. Because what you did is just a new interpretation.

The concept of "remake" is almost completely a commercial fallacy of mass consumption habits, and rarely a thing of passion and intelligence. Do you ever see "remakes" of literary works? Can you ever imagine "remakes", or rather "rewrites" of Shakespeare? Imagine that, you walk into a book store one day and see all your classics have been "remade". WTF? No, but you see it where licenses are controlled by corporate scum.

Licensing certain individual forms of artwork like books and music are rather restrictive compared to products of collaborative/collective works, like movies and games. You can see a 1000 covers of any particular song, but the original song will never be "replaced". Public conscious at this point wouldn't adopt such a mentality anyway. Not really so with movies and games due to technological dependency and fucked up laws, but corporates are slowly making it to other areas as well. After all, the trend of passing new books by using dead authors' names is relatively new.

Anyway, when someone will take Wasteland and set out to make a "remake", lots of neat things I love and remember from the original game will be missing. And mind you that a lot of stuff, a lot of features, abilities etc. got lost even between Wasteland and Fallout, and for 20 years of separation, a lot more is bound to be lost because of the so called "modern" graphics. Many games lost lots of abilities between each sequel or remake because shit got more complicated to realize in new games. We lost many cool things like climbing rocky mountains or city walls, digging through earth, setting environments to fire, destructing environments etc. why? Because it takes significantly more work to pull these off with all the animations, level design and the such, and to be able to play anything remotely similar, you have to have insane high-end configurations.

Fortunately, that's where the "spiritual" part kicks in. The guys making Fallout has upheld Wasteland as their guide, but they also had their own vision, which made the game stand on its own brilliance. A rare kind of occurrence. Very rare. So, fuck remakes. I'll be more than happy to see spiritual remakes, in case someone gets it right, but don't desecrate IP names with game elements superior to most modern games by making shitty and castrated remakes.

yeah, but i am not demanding Oblivion graphics in my reworks, just update those early 80's RPG to the 90's pre-3d graphics and perhaps "slim" those klunky old interfaces abit/add mouse support.

 

[Relayer71]

It's not so much that the graphics need to be changed to modern eye candy but that those older engines and interfaces were clunky as hell.

Arcanum's interface and combat system instantly come to mind. The graphics are completely acceptable to me though.

But come on, graphics do a whole lot for immersion. Not so much the quality in a technical sense but in an artistic sense and in some cases the technical aspect limit what can be done artistically.

 

[Carceri]

Also, FO didn't have bad graphics.

No, compare it to the Infinity Engine games made around the same time. It's pretty bad.

IE games have very detailed pre-rendered backgrounds, indeed, they still look astounding, however, the characters look like shit(except Planescape).

 

[Deleted member 7219]

The only game remake I think I've played is Tomb Raider Anniversary, and I really liked it.

I don't know of any other remakes. There have been reboots, like Prince of Persia. But they aren't remakes.

 

[WalterKinde]

I'd love to see a Crimson Skies remake and sequel for the PC myself.
Updated/extended Ultima Underworld (run into some of the gargoyles that were rumored to be in the Stygian Abyss with founder of the project, just who did that lizard on the third level really work for?) and Ultima Underworld 2 (this time you can explore more of the alternate universes in 2)
Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters updated 3d engine but keeping and expanding the side quest storylines.

 

[Squeek]

Daggerfall -- not only should it be remade, the entire game-making community should pitch in to make it happen. And a fan representative should be a member of the development team and have his desk positioned ten feet away from the programmers. And he should have a club in his hand (a big, heavy one).

Everyone getting together to remake Daggerfall would be a little like everyone getting together to build the missle that's needed to save the Earth from the asteroid thingie that's eventually going to smash into it.

Do it. Do it now.

Yeah, I'm a Daggerfall fanboy.

 

[JarlFrank]

Daggerfall should be remade not only as the game it was, but as the game the developers ultimately wanted it to be.

 

[MLMarkland]

I'd love to see those old gold box games given a slight graphical update and more manageable interfaces.

Yes.

 

[xuerebx]

Daggerfall should be remade not only as the game it was, but as the game the developers ultimately wanted it to be.

This.

 

[denizsi]

And I must be the one to make it. Nobody else would make it justice, nobody else could! Anybody else would make it an Oblivion clone! But I'll never be able to do it, and should nobody else!

 

[Tails]

Daggerfall -- not only should it be remade, the entire game-making community should pitch in to make it happen. And a fan representative should be a member of the development team and have his desk positioned ten feet away from the programmers. And he should have a club in his hand (a big, heavy one).

Everyone getting together to remake Daggerfall would be a little like everyone getting together to build the missle that's needed to save the Earth from the asteroid thingie that's eventually going to smash into it.

Do it. Do it now.

Yeah, I'm a Daggerfall fanboy.

Dungeon Hack