You’ve noticed it too. No matter how hard you try to avoid the feeling of deja vu, you live in a continuous creative Groundhog Day: not only do video games, books and popular movies increasingly resemble each other, leaving the way open for algorithms to create what the public apparently wants to consume and using the human hand only as an executor… but also, the best-selling products are remakes. Did you like this dish? Well, we’re not going to give you variations of the recipe: we’re going to give you the exact same thing. Over and over again. And what’s better: you’ll end up asking for more.
Behind you, asshole
The social networks were recently full of praise for ‘Resident Evil 4‘, the new version of the 2005 game that lengthened and changed the plot enough (but without great follies) giving one more reason to come back to that zombified Spain. The graphics are impressive, the gameplay has been improved, but, in the end, it is still the fourth installment of ‘Resident Evil’ again, a saga accustomed to that every few years their games are re-released on as many consoles as possible.
After all, a remake of ‘Resident Evil 4’ is preferable to suffer the continuous Groundhog Day with which, for years, Nintendo threatened us: Or don’t we remember the fiasco of ‘Mario 3D All-Stars’ that left the games as they came out on Nintendo 64 or GameCube and charged them at the price of novelty? Luckily, the big N learns from its mistakes (sometimes): ‘Metroid Prime Remastered’ or ‘Kirby’s Return to Dreamland’ are two of the best games of the year, partly because they were already two of the best games of 2002 and 2011, respectively.
The examples can be counted by dozens: ‘Dead Space’, ‘Lollipop Chainsaw’, ‘Bayonetta’, ‘The Witcher’ or ‘Max Payne’ have already appeared or will do so in the coming months. There are three main reasons for these unexpected returns. The first, it serves as a metadrone for the fan in the face of the morbid slowness of current developments, which mean that a game can be created for more than a decade. The second is useful to check the public’s interest in forgotten sagas with a view to launching a new installment. The third and most important, they give a lot of money with an effort that sometimes borders on the absolute minimum. The important thing is the important thing.
It is also true that this has been happening since the beginning of consoles: the very same ‘Mario Bros’, in its arcade version, had a remake with improved gameplay and graphics for NES in 1988 and the NES ‘Dragon Quest’ appeared seven years later on SNES with some of its mechanics improved. The remake is part of the DNA of video games, but we can’t deny that some of these are frankly ridiculous… And that in recent years the production has increased twenty-fold: How many consoles can we play ‘Skyrim‘ on right now?
The same thing, again, everywhere
Of course there are useful remakes, which serve to introduce classic games to a new generation, touching just enough to keep them feeling original but without leaving aside the retro touch. Monkey Island‘, for example, or the future ‘Alone in the dark’, are perfect examples of how modern gameplay and retouched graphics can help to recover jewels of the past. However, not all of them need to be recovered.
Did ‘Life is Strange’ need a remake in 2023? The game is from 2015! Was it necessary for PlayStation 5 to have its ‘The last of us, part I’ when the original is still fresh? All the remakes that are developed (from the remastered version of ‘Alan Wake’ to the already usual versions of ‘Pokémon‘) is time stolen from other more original productions, sequels capable of innovating and telling a new story: they accommodate the player in a continuous state of lethargy and nostalgia that does no one any good.
It’s one thing for a new game to take inspiration from a previous one and reimagine it for a new audience, as happened in 2009 with the fabulous ‘A boy and his blob’ or that alternate history that was ‘Dead Rising 2: Off the record’. It makes sense, it’s creative, it makes you want to see what has been created out of love. A remake, no matter how much it improves facial expressions and changes some dialogues, will never be as interesting as a new game.
We live in a world with access to everything. Literally. There isn’t a game we can’t play, from the classic ‘Arkanoid’ to the more modern ‘Dead Island 2’. And sure, sometimes you feel like going back to ‘Resident Evil 4’ or ‘Goldeneye 007‘, but it’s inevitable that, as gamers, we feel like we’re the cow that they’ll never stop squeezing over and over again by giving us exactly what they already know works.
And this is something that only happens in the world of games. How would we feel if tomorrow they remade ‘Iron Man 3’ or rewrote ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’? Would we like a remake of ‘Friends’ with more modern jokes? So why is it so accepted in video games to live the same experience over and over again? Let’s think about it: Is this really the future we want for an industry in the middle of a bubble -at first sight- with no signs of bursting? Let’s hope not.