There are three ways developers and publishers can release a game. Let’s look at Final Fantasy, one of the biggest franchises, as an example. During the PS3 era, Square Enix ported the original PS1 versions of games, with no features added, like Final Fantasy 7 to PSN, making the games playable on PS3, PSP, and PS Vita.
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Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles, a brand new remaster, is ostensibly the same game, albeit with new features and slightly enhanced HD graphics. Finally, a good example of a remake is Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which added a lot more content from the story to switching up gameplay. So, among remakes and remasters, the most common way to re-release games, which ones are better for the industry to help preserve history?
Remaster: Preserving The Past Through A Quick Release
Better Than Going Missing
The best things about remasters are that developers don’t need to spend as much time making them compared to a remake or even a new game. With a good studio, they can churn out remasters left and right, provided they are given money. Remasters, like all games, are not free to develop after all. It’s also great to win fans over. New games are great, but if a company like Square Enix, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco, and so on have a few misses in a row, using some sort of remaster to rejuvenate the fanbase is a good idea.
Companies can spend as much time as they want with a remaster by changing the graphics and the gameplay while still sticking close to the original game. Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles falls more on the safer side, while Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army had a lot more changes and feels more modern compared to its PS2 counterpart. Bringing games back from the dead with new control schemes can make them more enticing, even if the graphics are just touched up.
Remake: Creating Something New
Even If It Is Safe
Remakes can play it safe, too, but they are more committed to changing things. These changes can make games seem like brand new adventures to beginners, but veterans can spot the differences and similarities more easily. For example, Resident Evil 4’s 2023 remake is unquestionably good. The graphics are top-notch, beyond just a smoothing effect in a remaster; there are new mechanics, new voice actors, and so on. However, despite some side steps, the game is still beat-for-beat the same as the original.
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Another 2023 remake, Dead Space, was in the same boat. Even though it may seem less ambitious to make a 1:1 remake more or less, it’s still a clever way to get new people interested in a game. A remake, for some players, is always going to be more enticing to non-fans as they may wish to check out what all the hype is all about. Remakes definitely cost more compared to remasters, so there are cons too.
Remaster: A Look Back At The Time Period
Collecting Works Of Art
Beyond being able to play an old game, companies often work with other developers, publishers, and more to make these remasters feel like some sort of celebration. Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles deserves to be celebrated as it has been gone from major platforms for at least a decade. However, Square Enix didn’t add a lot of mixed media to help celebrate it. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, on the other hand, was chock full of content.
Not only was it packaged with a cavalcade of some of the best TMNT games ever, it also had comics, ads, box art, and more. Remasters like this are akin to time capsules, and perhaps that’s not as good an example since the pixel graphics weren’t enhanced that much. GEX Trilogy is a more recent example, which includes trailers, interviews, box art, and more. Remakes very rarely do anything to celebrate the original work besides a mention in the credits.
Remake: Going Back And Redoing A Past Work
The Ultimate What If
The aforementioned 2023 editions of Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space are examples of safe remakes, but true visionaries see remakes as an opportunity to almost make a new game. They may want to add content, change the story, switch up the gameplay even more drastically, and so on. Final Fantasy 7 Remake is a prime example as Square Enix decided to make what was once a four-hour chapter, at best, from the PS1 original into a fully fledged game on its own with nearly forty hours of content. The story was changed, while hitting similar beats, to make it 70% new and 30% old. Gameplay switched from turn-based to action, and the examples just keep piling up.
Also, it was only part one and what will be a trilogy. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the second game, which also went wild with new content, albeit safer by comparison. It’s not known if Square Enix would have been celebrated as much if they remade the original as one full game. Corners would have been cut, that’s for sure. It’s just cool that the team went for it, and most of the fan base reacted positively to both games. It’s a positive example to boost the industry with old games, but a risky one. For some companies, the risks of remakes are not worth it, even if remasters don’t always make sense, like with the only two games in The Last of Us series getting remastered multiple times in a short period.
Remaster: More Games In One Package
Remakes Could Also Do This
It’s odd that Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles was released as a “Chronicles” when there’s only one game in the package, unless fans wanted to count the original version, untouched by changes, also being available to play. For many fans, it would have been cool to also get Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, which are trapped on the GBA and DS, respectively. That’s one of the coolest parts about remasters, as they are often paired with multiple games in a collection.
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Mario fans are over the moon with Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 getting remastered, even though the price tag is high and it’s not as deep a collection as Super Mario 3D All-Stars was in 2020. Still, it’s enough for some fans just to get these games playable again and in one package. Some remastered collections are better than others in terms of what games they offer, like the aforementioned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection as well as Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. It seems unlikely that a remake collection would ever come out unless the games were already previously released. Fans can bet Square Enix will package all Final Fantasy 7 remakes together after the third game comes out, as an example.
Remaster: The Best Way Forward
Keep Games Unsullied
Remasters and remakes are both good for the industry financially and as a way to preserve history. However, when it comes down to value and representation, there’s just so much more remasters can do than remakes. Remake teams are large enough to support a new game, so why not do that instead? That’s part of the sentiment some fans had when Dead Space came out in 2023, to single it out again.
If it were just a remastered trilogy, there may have been less talk about where the fourth Dead Space game was. It would have cost less to produce for EA too. As always, the fan cry for remasters and remakes is on a case-by-case basis, but in general, remasters are here as a quick way to help keep history alive and available to play.
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