Remakes, you either love ’em or hate ’em! Or, more probably, you like some of ’em, aren’t too keen on others, and are largely ambivalent to the rest. Whatever your perspective, it’s obvious remakes – beloved of risk-averse publishers across the industry – aren’t going anywhere. They offer the perfect maelstrom of nostalgia bait and brand recognition, meaning they’re an easier sell compared to entirely new games, and if players love them, why stop now? But not all remakes are created equally; for every Resident Evil 2 or Silent Hill 2, there’s an XIII – a remake so bad its publisher was forced to remake it. Which raises the question – you might call it the Big Question – what makes a remake great?
I’ve had remakes on the brain this week, thanks to the recent Xbox Series X/S release of last year’s very excellent Silent Hill 2 do-over. I won’t repeat myself too much seeing I’ve wittered away on the subject extensively elsewhere, but as far as remakes go I’m a bit of a (well, a lot of a) purist. My general attitude is a remake should, fundamentally, play within the boundaries of the original’s creative vision – stray too far and nobody is being adequately served. And at that point, you might as well make something else entirely. But chatter on the subject has brought out a range of opinions across the Eurogamer team. So in the grand Big Question tradition, we thought we’d toss around some thoughts before throwing the floor open to you.
Let’s start with Eurogamer’s Ed Nightingale, whose opinion on this pretty much runs counter to mine. Ed believes a remake can essentially do whatever the hell it wants, seeing as the original version still exists to be played. “The original Final Fantasy 7 is widely available on multiple current platforms, thanks to various re-releases from Square Enix,” he explains. “So if you want to enjoy an unspoiled version of the original you absolutely can. But a remake offers a developer the opportunity to bring something new and different; to create a game that feels like what you think the original is, while playing with your expectations.”
And for Ed, Final Fantasy 7 remake gets it right. “It’s a retelling of the same story that acts like a complete reinterpretation,” he says. “It’s practically a sequel! The battle system is almost entirely reworked, the visuals and sound are brought up to modern standards, and the narrative feels exciting to play through because you don’t necessarily know what will happen next, even if you think you do. A good remake turns nostalgia into a surprising, fresh experience, while leaving the original work available for purists to appreciate in its original context.”
There’s a more conservative side to remakes too, of course; an approach Chris Tapsell compares to a “preservation-via-restoration effort”. These remakes, he says, “treat a game like an antique with some cosmetic, maybe even a little functional damage” – and it’s just as valid a direction. “Great restorers know exactly how to recreate the effect of a certain lacquer, or paint a certain mould to give it the effect of a specific wood, or touch up a painting with sensitivity to light and viewing distance and the original artist’s technique,” he explains. “The purpose here is to restore something as close as possible to the original as it was at the time, and so in a lot of ways it’s basically just a remaster, rather than a remake. It’s about making it run properly today, on monitors with different proportions or with new servers going live again, and otherwise preserving something that would’ve been lost.”
For Connor Makar, a great remake is one that perhaps sits somewhere between these two extremes, “striking the balance between doing too little and doing too much”. And if you’re looking for an example, he reckons EA Motive’s 2023 Dead Space remake fulfils this criteria brilliantly well. “It changes only what it has to,” Connor explains. “It doesn’t overstep, but it twists things up in a way both old and new fans can enjoy.”
“The new mission structure enabling you to go back to old areas is a fun shift in a cool direction,” he elaborates, “as is the computer controlled enemy encounter system which throws enemies at you in new and exciting locations. It’s one of the only remakes I’ve played where, while so much was familiar, so much was different. It was like I had misremembered the original game and was thrust into something fresh and scary… Finally, a lovely little bow on top with a new alternate ending, a letter of passion to Dead Space 2 and the series diehards. To me it’s a great example of how to strike that perilous balance when it comes to remakes.”
Eurogamer’s Victoria Kennedy, meanwhile, has good things to say about Tomb Raider: Anniversary – a remake of the very first Tomb Raider that still manages to feel authentically connected to the original, despite being a fairly radical ground-up reimagining. “I have a lot of love for this remake,” she explains. “While it was by no means perfect, I think it did exactly what a remake should do. That is, revitalise a game without taking anything away from what made the original great. Yes, I knew where things were ultimately leading in Anniversary, but I did not care. I loved being able to replay a game that I already loved, but with updated controls and graphics. Rather than souring anything that came before, Anniversary enhanced my Tomb Raider experience. And that’s all I needed it to do.”
So if all these are examples of good remakes, what makes a bad one? That happens, Chris reckons, when a game fails to properly engage with the original text, “changing it without understanding it, or patching it up clumsily in a way that overrides some of the original magic (think: hidden messages in game code, bugs that became part of the fabric of the game). What’s important, ultimately, is that you can experience two things at any given time: either the original or the closest possible experience to it; or something wholly new.”
So, the Big Question then – what makes a great remake? And continuing that train of thought, where do remakes go wrong? What are the great remakes? And what about the near misses and the regrettable failures? We’ve had our say, and now it’s over to you in the comments.
