The tale of XIII's terrible remake, unveiled at last

 Care to see how the sausage is made?

Not all that long ago I was hit with an absolute blast from the past when I saw news that the cult classic first person shooter, 'XIII', was due to be remade for the modern generation post haste. Somehow this was the sort of news I'd missed for the year and few month preceding it, which meant I didn't have to hang onto the hype train too long, I could just fully fall back in the tidal wave of nostalgia that such a name bought up, in fact I even wrote a blog about my feelings for it. Then the thing actually came out... and I was lucky enough to have lost track of the title amidst the deluge of other events and products flooding the market, so I missed the release window and was instead reminded of this title by the account of someone who had actually played it. And let's just say that they were... unfavourable regarding the experience.

The title was a mess from it's utmost concept, to the point where one would have to seriously wonder if the team involved had ever made a complete game by themselves before. The game was as close as one can get to 'broken'. Crashes galore were everywhere and anywhere, basic sequencing would consistently fall apart in the first few minutes of the new game, animations for taking damage and dying sometimes didn't play or would play the wrong animation, frames would stutter so bizarrely that dying animations would be at a different frame rate than the rest of the game and AI seemed fundamentally broken at key set-piece moments. And before I didn't even mention the art style, which I was fine with, but other fans found that it utterly missed the whole thematic comic book dots-and-panels that characterised so much of the presentation and stylisation of the original game, and it would be literally impossible to exorcize that from the formula. (Which the awkward 3d models tried to do anyway)

Funnily enough, however, the launch of this train wreck did coincide with a sale for the original, which prompted people to remember and flock to that first title, which aged with some grace it should be said, rather than waste their time on a cheap garbage fire. I myself was one of those people, and I learned that the game I used to play as a kid was a lot longer and had more to it then I remembered! It's still very linear and frustrating compared to modern standards for how a game like this should be designed and constructed, somewhat similar to the first Splinter Cell game. (Although I preferred the Splinter Cell original game much more) Still the shooting feels great, the later levels which open up a bit really let you have your crazy fun and there's an arcadey delight to when you're slinging around a dozen powerful guns and flipping between them with grace that seems utterly lost even on recent attempts to mimic that style of game. (Except DOOM, of course. DOOM gets it.) I liked the game, would recommend. But that's not the point of this blog today. We're here just to ask the simple question; what happened?

We're lucky enough to have one of those fantastic exhaustive articles on the matter which is a great read and... doesn't come from Paul Tassi or Jason Schreier? Am I reading that right? I'm really not sure how to take this revelation implying that there might be other actual journalists in the industry. But I appreciate the hard work nonetheless. Especially when it comes to unravelling such an interesting face palm of a remaster. Now at the time the scape goat for 'what went wrong' was obvious, so much so that we all knew exactly what the excuse was going to be before it came out of their 'official statement' mouths, say it with me everybody; "COVID." Yes, COVID-19 personally jumped through the window of PlayMagic offices whilst everyone was home and deliberately sabotaged their flawless hardwork just minutes before release. A more despicable act of corporate espionage I dare not even speculate upon. Except no, from what Fanbyte's article has uncovered, the signs were flashing red years before the pandemic hit.

PlayMagic is an indie development studio that clearly has been struggling to make a name for itself with big projects for a while now, and has been clawing it's way up with work-for-hire jobs and building up their team and reputation that way. Unfortunately, PlayMagic's path there would be fraught with accusations of toxicity in the workplace, mismanagement, failure to keep up with pay checks, and a reoccurring habit of biting off more than the company can chew. In this article in general it would seem that a lot of the problems stem from the CEO of the company, who I'm choosing to name only by his position, and his choices which frequently clashed with what his employees would have liked. I came away from the article with the sense that we're looking at a case of ambition trumping capability, which to some degree can be respectable, although in this instance it's mostly just sad.

Firstly, the company took on the job of making XIII woefully unprepared, with a freshly depleted team from a previous high-turn over project (which got cancelled) and a severe underestimation of what they'd even be making. What started out as a remaster turned into a remake when it was realised that none of the code could be salvaged from the ancient engine. Needless to say, this should have been reason enough to be worried, and maybe even step out of the project, but the CEO launched them forward anyway, driven by that ambition. And here I can, in a twisted haze, sort of understand his reasoning. XIII is a cult Ubisoft game with a loyal following, thus making this a great opportunity for PlayMagic to cement a name for themselves, and there's the fact that this was a paying gig coming the way of an indie company who don't often have the luxury of picking and choosing because projects don't always just fall into their- oh wait, they were hired by Aspyr to make that Stubbs the zombie remake. And the CEO accepted that contract. Despite the very real struggles that XIII was having at that time, particularly with understaffing. I'm starting to doubt the wisdom of the man in charge here, just a little.

But beyond the unrealistic deadlines, the cramming of projects with little hope of finishing, the apparent problems with lack of delegation and team management, I'd say toxicity was the big problem here. Because if no one wants to stick around long enough in your company to finish a single game, you're never going to build a solid team. This CEO character plain refutes any and all claims of toxicity, and yet admits to the several different periods of pay checks being withheld and/or delayed which is a pretty toxic way to run your business on it's own. Then compound that with that cringey 'family atmosphere' this CEO was trying to cultivate, all for the predictable purpose of shunning those who tried to leave because 'that's not what proper family does.' But it gets worse. Because this guy apparently went the distance of threatening to blacklist former employees and then actually attempting to do that with their new bosses! I really do try to look at these cases, seeing as how I am an outsider, with a measured appraisal, but can't deny that in this instance it feels like Mr.CEO here is his own worst enemy. (And everyone else's worst enemy too.)

The conclusion of our story? The XIII remake was helmed by an understaffed team, prematurely promised, and sold off before it even had a sliver of a chance of being finished. The reason for the animations being crappy? The team didn't have an animator until halfway through the project. As I said, this article was a true moment of pulling the curtain back and showing the factory accident in all of it's morbid glory, I really am glad for the closure. And whatsmore, I now know about a wacky game development lunatic CEO who's the kind of guy that admits to trying to ruin his ex-employees careers by bad mouthing them to their new bosses, attempts to justify that to the reporter he admitted it to, and then, probably once the xanax wore off, attempts to threaten that journalist into not publishing that part of the story with a lawsuit. What a character! At least we know at the end of the day that XIII's butchering can be largely traced back to the many zany antics of a real life comic book antagonist. Truly the poetic secret end to this multi-branched questline.

So about that XIII remake...

 Wish I had amnesia for this one...

This isn't fair. I was really excited for this remake of the criminally under appreciated XIII and all the ways it could reignite a spark for the old one. I was so into this concept that I even went and watched videos of the old game to remind myself what was so good about it, and even found out that the original is currently on Steam for an absolute steal. (That is a PSA, look it up!) As much as I hazily remember this being a game that didn't have a full resolution at the end of it which may seem a little disappointing, (or maybe baby me just never reached the credits, that's possible too) this was one of those games that still stood out from style and experience alone. A Jason Bourne-esque adventure across glorious cell-shaded visuals with quirky comic-book-style cut in panels that echo the graphic novel roots, it was an experience that it was just impossible not to fall in love with if only just that little bit. Which is why it sucks to say that the recent remake which came out of nowhere and which I expressed genuine interest over in an earlier blog, is bad. I mean really bad.

But first, some history. XIII was a spy-action thriller released by Ubisoft back in 2003, and yes, I'm commending the ingenuity and imagination of a Ubisoft product, what times these are! But this game came out back in the days when the French studio still had something of an adventurous soul about them and made some off-the-cuff titles that would soon become beloved such as the original Rainbow Six's, Beyond Good and Evil and just so many bad Batman games... compare who they were with who they are now and it's undeniable that a whole lot of success has been generated by this current spate of 'copy and repeat' creative-dystopia that they've built, but a lot of the heart is long lost. Heck, by this point I'm 90% certain that Beyond Good and Evil 2 game is going to end up looking and feeling exactly like Assassin's Creed if it ever makes it to shelves, and if it doesn't; that was probably because it didn't fit the crowd well enough.

So with that to mind, I suppose it was no surprise that publishing rights was pushed off from the main studio to Microïds, another French studio who are probably best known for their work on the Syberia games which I've heard a lot about but have not had the chance to play. (And recent events are going to make it hard for me to justify rectifying that). Although to be fair they did get a seemingly fresh company, PlayMagic, to work on the development so perhaps the blame lies with these guys. These new devs had the pleasure of working on and revealing this game over the past year much to the surprise of everyone, as literally not a soul on earth was expecting or asking for this remake to happen, but we'd take it, because the original had so much heart in it that the memories just flooded in. So many memories, in fact, that some of us (>cough< me >cough<) may have overlooked a few of the glaring problems that were pretty visible from the outset.

Firstly was the art-style, which might seem insignificant but this was big one. Shooting games are an art in today's day and age, but back in the early 2000's it was a lot looser of a genre where more creativity  would go into it. I use the word 'creativity' as a substitute for 'games where the gun controls weren't very good to play with at all'. But in such an environment it was the games who could still make their combat stand out which really secured the hearts of the players. (If not the public, remember XIII was a cult classic) XIII's cell-shaded visuals were hyper focused on capturing the feel of comic panels being squinted over by an avid reader, as such there were heavy lines around objects, hard square edges around circular objects, a visualisation of sound effects that even had gameplay uses, (such as following the onomatopoeia of footsteps to track the enemy) and pretty much no facial details whatsoever. It made use of the limitations of the hardware and produced something timeless; so how did the remake fair up?

Well looking back this was an important blunder on their part, because in creating more detail a lot was robbed from the original premise. The hardlines are almost completely gone, (I say 'almost' because they are used infrequently on far background objects) the models look derivate from something from Fortnite rather than a unique creation and the cut-in panels are just wrong. I cannot put my finger on it, but they just don't work the way that they used to. (maybe because the other ingredients are so flawed, it's hard to say) What results is a game that looks pretty generic to those that don't remember the original and disappointing to those that do. Although perhaps the biggest insult is the way in which, instead of recreating the iconic original opening scene, this game just features one of the new FBI models strolling into a meeting room and watching it on a grainy projector. Yes, that means we have to watch that great old intro with no remaster done to it whatsoever and over the shoulder of a crappy new NPC who takes up about a third of the screen. For no discernible reason.

But the biggest issue with the XIII remake is even bigger than the art-style. Art was the nail in the coffin that kept the die-hards from being happy, but the raw construction of the game is the 5 feet of cement that keeps everyone else far, far away. Because you see this game is bad. Really bad. Like, unity store asset flip bad. (And I do not use that comparison lightly) Again, in hindsight you can sort of see this from the trailers leading up to release, but I don't think even the most astute of viewer could have imagined it would be this broken! Basically, the AI is warped to the point where enemies lose sight of the player from anything more than point-blank, ragdoll is missing from all enemies that are killed with automatic weapons and severely undercooked for all other weapons, canned death animation are stutter-filled, NPC aim is pathetic, bodies easily and consistently glitch through surfaces, NPCs just straight vanish mysteriously once gone from the player's line of sight, fists appear to hit surfaces meters away from the player, melee sometimes does not work despite having all the visual indicators to imply that it did, and sometimes sequences just straight fall-apart like this was game coded by one person on a five year old laptop. (I should know, I've been that one person before.)

It's hard to understate how mind blowingly broken the game is, I mean it's far beyond laughable and easily to the point of "I paid how much for this?" You hear all the time about AAA games that launch with bugs and crashes galore, 'Watch Dogs Legion' in fact being a recent Ubisoft example of just this, but none of those games are nearly as shattered as this experience. This feels like something that literally no QA ever touched at all, or something that was pushed out in under a year, heck it feels like an under 8-months game! There is no way anyone could justify putting this out on a store for money without feeling deep embarrassment, and I starting to think the developers were aware of this. They've already issued a statement apologising and asking for time to fix things, but it's just surprising; this isn't a case of "Oh, we underestimated what it would be like to make a game like this", this feels like a 'we're out of time and money so we'll just upload this alpha build to get a quick buck'. I'm honestly stunned a reputable studio consciously put this out, and everyone involved with this needs to get in some sort of documentary to explain this mess ASAP.

But when it's all said and done, what has this remake done better than even I could have imagined? Well it signal boosted the original. In the wake of this mess the original had so much support flood to it that it outsold the remake in it's launch week. (Which makes sense considering it's so cheap) And you know what, somehow despite it all I still think this loop back around to show us how homogenous great ideas have become under the guidance of big studios like Ubisoft. It seems there's no more room for great creative ideas that do things you wouldn't normally expect, and when those ideas do come along they're just flashes in the pan that don't last long enough to keep the Devs invested up until launch. It may seem unrelated, but I remember recently watching the amazing gameplay trailer from Cyberpunk 2077 and hearing the phrase "This is the next generation of open world game", then getting an immediate flash forward to the amount of games we're about to get that will attempt to mimic Cyberpunk's scale and ambition with a modicum of the size, talent or ability to do so. This is what the creative industry is, iteration upon iteration, and when you get a glimpse that's a little too unburnished, you can see it's a cycle on the verge of falling apart. (Jeez, these disaster games sure do get me philosophical, huh?)