Remakes seem to be all the rage nowadays with brand-new versions of our favorite titles popping into the scene every couple weeks or so. Not all remakes are made equal, however, so let’s go over what makes or breaks a remake and which titles fit the bill.
What Makes or Breaks a Remake
Nostalgia is a powerful thing and the biggest video game developers know it. With remakes of our favorite games popping up every few weeks, it's clear that a trip down memory lane is all it takes for some folks to fork over their cash. While that’s not inherently a bad thing, not all remakes are made equal and a few of them are clear cash grabs.
That’s neither here nor there, however, so let’s go over what can make or break a remake.
Remakes, Reboots, and Remasters
We will be discussing a few examples of good, bad, and adequate video game remakes in this article, so a point of distinction must be made between remakes, reboots, and remasters. Though comprising an alliterative trio, these three concepts could not be any more different, with each one having its own distinct audience, criteria, and example. We’ll go through each definition in brief and provide examples to paint a better picture of what makes them different from one another.
Remakes: Old and New Together
A remake is a modernized version of an older game, updated to contemporary specifications, sensibilities, and themes. These can include graphical updates, new game mechanics, new audio, and other improvements designed to breathe new life into a classic title. By definition, a remake is more than just a fresh coat of paint because it incorporates new ideas into the original’s core concepts on a deeper level than the game’s presentation.
These could be anything from narrative changes to genre crossovers, game mechanics, or even new game modes. An example of this would be the recent Resident Evil Remakes, which updated the game’s visuals but also expanded upon the original game’s simplistic game mechanics.
Remasters: Take the Old, Make it New
On the other hand, you can think of remasters as a second attempt to make the exact same game using modern tools and engines. Nothing is tweaked apart from the game’s presentation, but it does serve well to lengthen the game’s lifespan. A few balance changes could be made just for the sake of better gameplay, but the game’s core principles and concepts remain exactly the same. A good example of this would be Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, which is a remaster of the original Counter-Strike that came out in 1999.
The game is pretty much the same, it was just updated to look and perform better with a few additional bells and whistles to keep things interesting. As a rule of thumb, remasters are generally easier to make than remakes.
Reboot: Make Something Else Entirely
With those two out of the way, let's talk about reboots. Simply put, a reboot is a fresh take on an old game. This level of change goes deeper than graphical updates, new narratives, or gameplay changes; the very foundations of the original game will be removed and replaced by a new idea entirely.
A great example would be Studio Sta. Monica’s God of War (2018), which continues the story of Kratos but changes everything else about the game. It’s not a narrative reboot, but you’d be mistaken if you thought the new God of War was anything like its predecessors.
A Delicate Balance of Old and New
Now that we know what a remake is, let’s talk about what makes a remake good. Of course, as with most things, there is no objective measure of how "good" something is. At the end of the day, what matters is that you enjoy the game. Consider the following to be factors that COULD contribute to a game’s quality rather than a strict guideline of how you should experience it.
The first thing that could make a remake is its faithfulness to the source material. This could be misconstrued by some as an invitation to make a 1:1 recreation of the original. The astute among you might have already guessed that that’s what a remaster is. We’ll expand more on that later, for now, let’s talk about the importance of a remake’s faithfulness to the source material. In a nutshell, it’s because the first game already did something right.
The fact that a remake of a game is being made begs the question that the original was good enough for one. This isn’t always the case, but by and large, you’re going to want to capture the magic of the original to make the remake work. Take the 2020 remake of From Software’s Demon’s Souls for example. It captured the undying majesty of the original with every swing, roll, and boss fight pound-for-pound.
Another thing that could make a remake is its innovations, or its attempts to go past the original. This is more difficult to achieve because it’s uncharted territory from here on out. Now that you have the magic of the original, what changes are you going to add to make it fit the modern audience? It could be anything, but the delicate of balance of old and new comes into play here more than anywhere else. Too few changes and the game is no different from the original, turning it into a remaster. Too many, and you’ve got a reboot.
Keeping Demon’s Souls (2020) as an example, we can run through the changes that make it distinct from the original without separating it entirely. Most of it seems to be related to quality-of-life improvement, with inventory management, dodge rolls, character re-specs, and a new photo mode standing out as major changes. All these are in addition to graphical and performance improvements that make the game run as smoothly as butter.
So that’s about it if we’re speaking generally. Every game could have its own ticket to be better or worse as a remake separate from the above-mentioned factors. Whatever that may be, sticking true to the source material and innovating past it at the same time is a surefire way to make, not break, a remake.
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