In Remake Hell

So Resident Evil 4 is getting a remake. I mean, of course it is. Naturally. With positive commercial and critical reception for the first three remade Resident Evil games comes the certainty of more. And we’ll see more remakes everywhere, as publishers across the industry read this positive reception as a demand for more.

You can knock over two birds with one stone: grab the nostalgia addicts with a “return” to their favorite games, and the critics with some kind of “subversion of expectations.” Everyone’s happy, everyone wins, time is a flat circle, tip any remaining bartenders in your area. We get to live in rapid-fire retellings of this industry’s history forever and ever amen.

Except — this is kind of boring, right?

Am I the only one who is already completely bored to tears with the prospect of seeing the same couple-dozen titles remade every few years or so? We’re coming off a month where two notable remakes were just released, and we even got a remastered Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. I don’t want to be a buzzkill; I know that the march of technology and lack of backward compatibility makes remakes almost necessary if folks want to be able to keep playing older games, especially on consoles.

The answer to this isn’t simply “keep remaking the games for newer technology,” though; it’s a plea for us to make technologies less restrictive and more universal.

What I fear we’re doing is becoming so conservative as an industry that good ideas stifle under the weight. Remakes and remasters may be necessary on occasion, but increasing the amount of energy spent on remakes might not be good for us.

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