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This week Disney released a live-action remake of the cartoon. MoanaThis is a wonderful animated film. Moana he’s barely 10 years old and he’s struggling. It plays constantly in every household that has a Disney Plus subscription. It doesn’t need a re-imagining, nor does it have one: Dwayne Johnson reprises his role as Maui, and the digital rendering of the fantastical ocean looks exactly the same in the remake as in the original. Critics are unimpressed and confused by its existence. A lot of people will still go see it.
Also this week, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed black flag resyncedanother sea remake. Original Black flag it’s relatively ancient (checks notes), 12 and a half years old, and it’s beating. But, unlike Moana (2016), no one still plays it. Critics are somewhat divided on the remake’s successes and failures, with some mildly questioning its need to exist, but for the most part they seem to really like it. Resync everything will probably be fine.
The reasons why Disney and Ubisoft remade these two projects are likely similar in many ways. Creating completely new things at this scale for this giant mass market audience is exceptionally difficult, expensive, slow and fraught with risk. Meanwhile, the release schedule needs to be filled, and popular entertainment brands like Moana and Assassin’s Creed need reasons for people to engage with them again, to keep the financial wheels turning and the merchandise flowing. Moreover, for reasons too deep, complex, and perhaps frightening to go into here, nostalgia is exerting an increasingly powerful influence on culture. People want going back while still feeling like they were moving forward and experiencing something new…sort of.
However, these two types of art are not the same. The practical and technological barriers to watching a decade-old film are zero, and while storytelling fashions may change, there’s nothing about the experience that has deteriorated over time. This is not entirely true for games. Ten years in gaming is quite a long time in terms of technology and design, and many great games age very quickly. Compatibility issues with current systems arise quickly. (although the original Black flag does not suffer from this; it has versions for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which are easy to play on modern consoles.)
Image: Ubisoft
So, aside from our perhaps dubious desire to wallow in nostalgia and see even recent memories remade and re-presented to us, gamers have legitimate reasons to want remakes. Well-executed remakes can keep great works of the genre relevant and accessible, which is not a problem for classic films, books or albums.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time it’s a perfect masterpiece, and I’m terribly worried about how Nintendo’s upcoming remake might ruin or simply fail to capture its magic. But let’s be honest, like many early 3D games, it’s pretty creaky these days. A new generation of Zelda fans, nurtured Breath of the WildAre you really going to have to put up with the original’s clunky camera, terrible frame rate, and muddy graphics? Wouldn’t it be great if they played this version in a version that feels smooth and fresh and is able to evoke the same thrill that we (well, me; I’m old) felt in 1998?
There are many pitfalls when remaking a classic—or anything, really. People want different things from them. Some people just want compatibility and modern graphics. But, hmm, maybe we could fix those clunky UI elements and faulty camera while we’re at it. And hey, what about that line of dialogue everyone hated? And this boring set of side quests – let’s abandon them. Combat in this genre has gotten better since then, so it could use an update. Where do you draw the line?
Image: Team Ico, Bluepoint Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment
Even a very faithful remake might go too far for some players. For example, take another remake of a perfect masterpiece: Bluepoint Games’ 2018 version. Shadow of the Colossus. It looks absolutely gorgeous, but by lifting the heavy veil of fog that hung over the original, has Bluepoint revealed its true beauty or destroyed its melancholic mystery? Was the fog in the 2005 original an artistic choice or a technical limitation? Does it matter? On the other hand, you’ll have to work hard to find fans who are annoyed by it. Dragon Quest 7 Update mercilessly shortens the endless initial segment of the original. Sometimes we want what we think we remember rather than what we actually got.
WITH Black flag re-syncedSome feel that too much has been changed, such as the almost complete removal of modern structure, which radically changes the tone, if not the essence, of the adventure. For others, this is not enough. If you’re going to make changes, perhaps the answer is to go all the way and completely recontextualize the story in a new genre, like Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7 remake project. But doesn’t it become a completely different game at this point? Perhaps the gold standard of reimagining is Capcom’s bold series of Resident Evil remakes, which don’t so much update and reimagine classics as ask the question: What would these games look like if we made them now?
The formula for the perfect remake will be different for each game and perhaps each player. Perhaps we would like to have something truly new; Perhaps, deep down, we wouldn’t. We’re going to get remakes anyway, so we have to ask ourselves what we want from them.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced adds superbly enhanced graphics to the classic game, but little more.
Josh Broadwell sings the old shack: “Leave her, Johnny, leave her!”
Disney’s Moana remake has an identity, but it never quite finds its own
Tasha Robinson doesn’t know who we are, who we are
Plus this:
It turns out that Xbox wasn’t too big to fail, it was too big not to fail.
Oli Welsh really hopes he can stop writing desperate Xbox analysis, but today is not that day
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