Remastering the remaster

 Keep polishing and you'll burn a whole through the disc.

There are certain games throughout history that have a very important impact on the artistry of video game development for how innovative, polished, or creative that they are. Glittering jewels of their time that transcend the rough confines of week-one release metrics and review aggregates and go on to become legends in their own right, regardless to the opinion of the day. Critics were somewhat lukewarm on 'Fallout: New Vegas' back when it first released, calling it "More of the same" and punishing it severely for the many bugs that the base package launched with; only for New Vegas to go on and be regarded as the single best game in the franchise even now to this day. Why? Because that game nailed the concept of what Fallout was supposed to be in a way that resonated with an audience who understood Fallout better than the critics did. New Vegas remains in perpetuity within our hearts for that reason. Do you know what we don't need in order to continue loving that game? A bloody remaster!

Yet in the world we live in today, it seems that every single publisher is possessed by this errant fancy that the success stories of yesteryear just vanish into the ether unless they get touched up by some up-and-coming studio, slapped with a more expensive price tag than what they original launched with, and ported to modern day hardware. Now in one sense; yes, I think it's very cool that smaller studios have a new avenue to cut their teeth, more players in the big leagues is good for the overall health of the industry without doubt- but good lord is this remaster problem getting out of control. Are we going to remaster every single big release for the next generation because backward compatibility isn't exploitable enough? Is that what we're doing, Sony? Because let's be honest with on another; this here is mostly a problem with the way that Sony wants to do their business!

We've got the Sony Remake for The Last of Us Part 1 which is a remake only in the strictest technicality because they made it on a new engine, The Uncharted Remastered collection and now, to throw atop the dung heap, a remaster of 'Horizon: Zero Dawn'. Why? What even is a remaster? Well typical definition would be a sprucing up of visual fidelity through way of lighting improvements, texture resolution, maybe even rendering techniques, all to make the product look better. But with art there really isn't anything as simple and objective as looking better, now is there? The remaster of Final Fantasy X back in the day sparked up some conversation about the philosophy of remasterings as it bought textures into sharper focus, but robbed the intention out of some of the original art. A sprawling bazar of goods who's background shelves would melt into the haze of the middle-distance became a simple shop with products that stretched a bit back until it hit that clearly defined wall back there. THe Last of Us Part 1 Remake noticeably brings down the colour saturation of the original to the levels of the sequel, despite that colour palette better fitting a story like Part II, rather than the more deceptively hopeful narrative of Part I. It's not always quite so cut-and-dry.

And then we have the real reason that remasters are even mounted, the politics and financial incentives bubbling behind the scenes driven by people who just want to make their extra buck off a game they don't have to make from scratch. I get it, creating something from nothing is very difficult and not even worth it when you can work off of what's there; but when you're already on your third rerelease after 10 years there really has to be a point at which someone stops you from making a fool of yourself. In a time where money is becoming tighter and games are, inexplicably, forcing themselves to be more expensive; it really is getting a little insulting to see our back catalogues exhumed from their gentle graves and shoved back onto our store shelves with a bit of lipstick slapped on top. The Switch release of Skyrim Anniversary Edition is shaping up as $70 for god's sake! That game came out 11 years ago! This kind of exploitation, at a painful financial time around the world, should be criminal! 

But I'm dancing around the stars to rant at the cosmos; let me bring this down to the catalyst of my little aneurysm; the recently announced, and thus lamentably upcoming, remaster of 'Horizon: Zero Dawn'. Guerrilla Games' epic game about a post-apocalyptic new age sci-fi fantasy story with robot dinosaurs. A triumph of overly-elaborate and complex visual design matched with spectacular animation and character models, in it's time Horizon was the belle of the visual ball. It was a must-have PlayStation exclusive game that Sony wanted people to know about in their lull between Uncharted releases, and it proved successful enough to warrant a sequel that would be released several years later. Oh, and the thing actually made it's way to PC a few years back. It's a game that lived it's life... and then faded from the pop culture sphere.

I'm not saying that people forgot about the game... actually, yes that is what I'm saying. Not long after Horizon got it's fame and appreciation people moved on entirely from the game for some reason and denied it a formative position in the pantheon of game development. Now why would that... oh right, it launched the same week as Breath of the Wild. So in that sense I can understand why the developers felt that they were robbed of the limelight; no one would allow them to push their release out of the way of a Zelda game, and they themselves could probably never have guessed just how much of a world changer that game would be. Zero Dawn would have certainly scored a more favourable spot in history had it just had a little room to release. But it's no big failure, afterall they got a sequel earlier this year that... launched the same week as Elden Ring? (I'm sorry, are these people trying to sabotage themselves?)

By definition of what's 'fair' and 'deserved'; it's probably right to say that the Horizon games got screwed by their releases and deserved better; but does that mean we need to literally rerelease the things? With a remaster that'll probably cost $70 for work that does not, in any way, justify that price tag? Uhh... no, that's pretty much where I draw the line. All the lost fame that Horizon missed out on has slowly been sucked up over the years of exposure to the Internet. Perhaps not as explosively as the team would have liked, but slow recognition is better than none. Not only did Horizon have it's time to shine, it also already lived it's life as the best looking game of it's time, just as it's sequel did and is still doing now. (I'm pretty sure no game currently is better looking than it.) Sprucing it up again just feels like a child star chasing their lost moment in the spotlight. It's all just a little sad.

The only element of this I'm not upset by is the idea of these games over-riding the number of new games that could be coming our way, because contrary to popular belief, most of these remasters aren't manned by the core team. Can you imagine how insulting they would find that? Being asked to remake their own game again? No, it's new development teams that handle this stuff and I say 'good for them.' I just think this is getting a bit behind 'celebrating' and falling into 'exploitative' territory. Who was asking for a Zero Dawn Remaster? No, really! Can the culprit please step forward? They cannot, because they do not exist. I think Remasters should belong to those special few games that deserve to immortalise their place in history by another go around in the spotlight. Zero Dawn in not such a game, and I don't think I'll ever be proved otherwise. (Heck, a rerelease is just going to make the already middling combat feel even more dated.)