Two of the biggest games of this year are remakes. Dead Space and Resident Evil 4. Now don’t get me wrong, they’re both very good games but so were the originals.
So the question is…
Do we really need remakes & remasters or should publishers and developers spend the money, time and resources on new games and should more effort be put into backwards compatibility to enable people to play the original games on modern hardware?
A good remake or remaster can be a great thing for games where the age of the original has become a barrier to play.
On PC, games that either don’t work on modern hardware, or require an excessive amount of fiddling and workarounds fall into this category. Similarly, elements from the game’s age like screen ratio, or resolution are noncontroversial things to update.
From there, you go into graphics and game design which does become more a matter of taste. This can become contentious. If for example the original Half-Life was unplayable on modern hardware, and Black Mesa was offered as the only possible “remaster”, I wouldn’t be thrilled.
On the other hand I love XCOM, the remake, even though it’s the only official remake of the original X-COM available, and the original arguably deserves a “proper” more closely faithful remake. (But Xenonauts exists, so I suppose everybody ended up happy). So maybe I just am biased to wanting closer remakes to games where I actually had a connection with the original.
For the question of game devs spending time doing remakes/remasters vs new projects, I don’t see a problem so long as the games being chosen are smartly selected, and if the remaster is done with care. [GTA San Andreas remaster screenshot goes here]. I’m not a fan of newer games getting remasters constantly, that feels like a cash grab, but generally a good game is a good game.