I'm not even going to try to come up with some kind of fitting opening sentence for this. I am going to write a disclaimer though.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this blog are OPINIONS! They are NOT demands on anyone, and whatever you want to spend your own money on is completely up to you, so don't try to come in here and tell me that I'm telling you how to spend your money because I don't care how you spend your money. I do, however, care about the direction of the gaming industry and how it can move forward.
To answer your question, yes this is another blog about the remake crap that's going on.
Today there was a rumour, that's most likely fact, that God of War: Ascension is going to have a PS4 version. That's right, another COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY "remaster" is almost assuredly coming to the PS4. Right away the comments in support of this sprung up.
"This is great for people who didn't get a chance to play it on the PS3"
What the hell was stopping them? What is stopping them now? Absolutely nothing.
"This is going to have graphical upgrades, and most likely all the DLC."
WHO CARES?! These games aren't even HD remasters, they are HD touch ups.
Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, Mass Effect Trilogy (still a rumour, but you know it's coming), and now GoW:A are all games that are already HD.
"But they aren't in 'true' 1080p HD."
See, this is why the gaming industry has a problem with content. Too many people care far too much about how many pixels are on the screen. This is just proof that the majority of gamers these days care more about graphics than anything else. Which makes me question why there aren't more PC gamers talking on this site then since if graphics were what you all really want, then PC is where you need to be.
"But the PC doesn't have the exclusives that consoles have"
You don't care about exclusives. You're supporting HD touchups because the graphics are better. A gamer that actually wants to play games will play them when they come out. If you really want to play these games, and not their HD touchups, then you'd have played them already. You clearly want to play graphics first, everything else second. Exclusives are just a convenient excuse.
I'm particularly disappointed in Sony for what are such lazy moves on their part. Yeah, I get that they need money, but this is frickin' sad. Where is the Sony of the PS2 days who actually tried to get new and exciting experiences for their console?
All I see is a Sony that's content with letting indies carry the ball while they greenlight touchups of games that aren't even a year old. And so many support this nonsense.
Where are your standards? Why support the complete halt of innovative progress in favour of being patronized with lazy offerings like hd touchups?
If this were something like an HD remaster of, say, Legend of Dragoon then that would be amazing. That game is pretty old and flew under the radar of a lot of JRPG fans. But these are games that aren't even close to being that old, and in the case of TLOU not even a year old.
I mean is this really what you want for your current gen consoles? HD touchups?
"Gee, I really liked this game, but I don't think it had enough pixels in it. I'd love to play the same game again, but with more pixels and DLC included for the price of a brand new game."
I have never seen a community more like a pancake than the gaming community. There is absolutely no consistency in the standards of what we should expect from the development scene and so many flip flop on what they have a problem with. It's like a massive case of bipolar disorder.
You want to support this creative laziness, all the power to you. You're definitely entitled to enjoy what you want. But you're killing progress. You're telling Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft that they can appease you with graphical touchups instead of new experiences. You're telling them all that it was ok that they launched new consoles COMPLETELY unprepared to have new experiences steadily available or announced within a timely manner.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if games that aren't even out yet have an HD touchup planned for 6 months after they release. Because why not, "it's good for people who didn't get a chance to buy a PS4/XB1/Wii U 6 months ago" right?
We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.
Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.
Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.
Par for Bethesda.
LOL people are actually expecting massive improvements or something? From Bethesda?? the same people who released Skyrim multiple times and the all look like shit? THAT Bethesda? are people for real?
The ps5 version doesn't change a ton but from my small playtime it's enough to make me want to replay it just to have it running at 60.
A side note to this my PS4 version no longer boots after it's "update" so I guess that's what it feels like to own a Bethesda game on PC
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.
Hopefully Microsoft will go back to the original story line and get away from that woke nonsense from the last Gears game Gears of Woke! But were talking about Microsoft so all the betting money is on more of the same woke nonsense.
I do definitely see an issue when it seems like HD remasters (essentially last generation games) are more prevalent on next generation hardware than any modern exclusives. They're there for people who did not play them before, but I think that it would not even be a thing if backwards compatibility was still included.
But it may not all be bad. It gets more money to the developers and publishers for little loss and generally such remasters are outsourced to smaller teams while the big ones focus on the new stuff. I myself don't usually buy remasters but I make an exception here or there. God of War I won't buy because I already own the entire collection on PS3.
"What the hell was stopping them? What is stopping them now? Absolutely nothing."
Maybe they didn't have a PS3?
"WHO CARES?! These games aren't even HD remasters, they are HD touch ups."
I agree on this. I consider the new "remastered editions".
"You don't care about exclusives..."
Again...maybe I didn't have a PS3??? Or maybe your right. It could that I just didn't want to get the game because it was not 1080p at 30fps. Now if I had a choice to buy TLOU PS3 or PS4 version, I would buy the PS4 version because it just seems better since they are the same price at gamestop.
"Gee, I really liked this game, but I don't think it had enough pixels in it. I'd love to play the same game again, but with more pixels and DLC included for the price of a brand new game."
I'm pretty sure this has been happening for a loooong while. GOTY version have been gaming out for a while, and I don't think anybody complained about those. I wonder if there would be less blowback if they just called this the GOTY version.
I don't understand the anger. The people that missed out on this now have a chance to get a better version. I do call bullshit on Tomb Raider that the PS4 and Xbox One versions are double the price of the original, but that is easily smelled. In the case of TLOU PS3 and PS4 versions are the same price.
"So.... what's stopping them from getting one? They're cheaper now than they have ever been and are only going to get cheaper."
So instead of buying TLOU for the PS3, you are insisting on people just buy a PS3 with the TLOU?
"GOTY versions are literally the same game with all the patches and expansions and USUALLY are cheaper than a full retail priced game. Remasters are touched up GOTYs that are full priced. GOTY's also typically don't release less than a year after the original game either."
They were never cheaper than the original retail game. Also GOTY editions released around 1 year(plus or minus maybe 2 months) from the original. I'm guessing you are talking about Tomb Raider. It released 10 months after the original. I think that is close enough to a year.
"it's been proven that remasters are mostly bought by people who already own, or played and beaten, the original"
Where did you get that info?
******damn, I didn't hit reply
Relax, HD touch ups aren't coming at the expense of new games. Believe it or not, I bought Super Mario All-Stars on SNES, yet the original SNES games still kept coming.
Resolution has only become an issue because the PS4 is the only console that was designed well enough to consistently achieve a resolution that we've been promised for years, and should have gone without saying this gen.
I might agree with you if there weren't also a slew of new games coming as well. Some of them original. Some of them possibly innovative.
All those points people make are completely valid.
The only one I might agree with is the $60 price tag issue. But as consumers, one has a choice to wait a month to buy it for half of that.
As a company, they want to maximize revenue from every game they make, so if there is an audience, they will make it available.
I don't really see the problem here. The day when E3 is mostly filled with remakes is the day I'll stand up and preach with you, but I think you're just upset about nothing.