E3

doing the Keith David

Wasnā€™t that guy EPA? Idk if Iā€™ve ever pegged Toll for an environmentalist

As far as interactive rollercoaster rides go that Spiderman game seems pretty alright. The only thing that made me LOL a little is his seemingly limitless supply of webbing, and I kind of never liked it when any media glossed over his limitations in that regard. Limited ammo makes it a little more tense!

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It amazes me just how badly MS are handling it and Sumo Digital are selling their own game considering the gameplay videos they have put out of Campaign. I get they put themselves in a corner with the cloud destruction thing that itā€™s multiplayer only. But Sumo completely overhauled the movement system to be way less clunky along with their take on the Nemesis system from Mordor. It sounds like what Crackdown 2 should have been.

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Iā€™m more concerned that they will add a bunch of extra stuff like unlockable flashbacks in an attempt to ā€œflesh outā€ the original but instead just take away from the original

From a preservation standpoint remakes and the like keep older games current. Most people today canā€™t watch an original copy of Metropolis because they donā€™t own a century old film projector or have a copy of the movie but they can watch a restored version on Netflix or DVD. I view remakes/remasters of video games through the same lens. The more versions of a game there are the more likely the game will survive into the future.

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I think a better analogy is colorizing

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No I like the way I said it better.

Also, some people actually prefer the colorized versions of old shows and movies.

And I think if you consider the pace of technology today my analogy still holds. 2005 PS2 SotC looks best on a PS2 hooked up to a CRT. My nephews today play games on an Xbox One and a PS4 connected to a 720p LCD.

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videogame remakes/remasters are not comparable to film restorations, thatā€™s crazy

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At this point Iā€™m not passing moral judgment; the Shadow of the Colossus remake just feels pointless given how good it already looks.

I think resolution and frame rate updates are closely analogous to restorations of particularly old movies. Wizard of Oz may look brighter and clearer but the artificeā€“the matte backdrops, the makeupā€“are also clearer in a way no one involved could anticipate. Similarly I often prefer the muddy implied look of a game before resolution knocks out all ambiguity.

A remake like the just-announced SotC remake is something more. Theyā€™re literally drawing on top of the old art; the finished product has new craftsmen and canā€™t be the same game. Subtle choices and technical feats can be lost (see GTA San Andreas ports that lose the orange haze, the inability to reproduce Silent Hill 2ā€™s fog and audio). Itā€™s impossible to cover all the millions of micro-decisions that went into the original work.

Of course the new additions might be beneficial (grass is always neat), but if the game is as good as SotC then why add errors of meaning to it for the sake of graphics?

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Nope itā€™s actually quite comparable. Of the few films that still exist from the silent movie era the only way to watch the ones that havenā€™t been restored yet is to own the original equipment required to view the actual reels.

In a few more years it will be a similar situation for the vast majority of games from the PS2/GC/Xbox/Dreamcast era (remember your average gamer doesnā€™t emulate much if at all).

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See my primary argument from preservation.

But that is an important distinction to keep in mind re: simple remaster vs. full blown remake.

Yeah itā€™s more like a shot-for-shot remake.

The difference in visual quality feels like it detracts more than it adds. Like when Wind Waker HD threw all that bloom lighting on top of the originalā€™s lovely, unique flat shading.
Wasnā€™t there already an HD remaster a few years ago anyway?

remasters that donā€™t include a pc version are pointless

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Yeah, I have a PS3 disc. I like the frame rate bump more than I miss the fuzziness.

film restorations - especially in the blu ray/2k/4k+ era - are very much focused on retaining something as close to the original viewing experience. now that digital quality is good enough there is so much time spent on retaining the grain of the film image rather than creating a ~cleaner~ digital image.

also itā€™s going from an analogue source to a digital source. film is ostensibly the better archival format because all you need to project it is a light source, but then there is the very literal risk (or existence) of damage to that print which is why restorations take place. the problem with videogame archiving is having these games in a playable format on modern systems. this sotc remake is in line with the recent comments from sony that they donā€™t care about backwards compatibility because those games look bad, and now they are making a new version of the game instead. itā€™s very clearly going to be a separate game that is built from

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Yep thatā€™s more a problem with Sony though. Now I have to backpedal a say Iā€™m making my arguments in a more general sense and that Sony is not really going to be much help in the preservation effort except for their most popular first party properties, and whether or not it actually counts as preservation is up for debate.

even the xbox backwards compatibility program isnā€™t necessarily a great answer here, those games are still being rebuilt in a way which means that itā€™s only ever going to be a (relatively) small handful that get the treatment.

Not that it applies to SotC because it has such purity of focus and minimalist mechanics, but many old and not so old games would benefit from modern recreations

I know Iā€™m poking a sacred cow here but thereā€™s no way Iā€™d ever replay Demonsā€™ Souls after experiencing all the quality of life improvements the series got over the years, So I would welcome a remake.

Iā€™m actually particularly bad at noticing quality-of-life improvement, can you elaborate for me?