This has never been the place to come for gaming news [or anything else – FFG reader] but amongst the avalanche of announcements and new releases, I noticed a couple of things relevant to our interests here:
Firstly, the cel-shaded shooter XIII is back on GOG, having previously been de-listed for some reason or other, presumably tedious rights issues. It’s been some time since I played it, but I have reasonably fond memories: I enjoyed the setup, the visual style, and the fact that being ‘stealth’ meant creeping up behind people and hitting them over the head with a chair.
Presumably related to the original’s sudden reappearance, a remake has also been announced. It was initially supposed to have been released around about now, but has now been pushed into next year. Details are relatively thin on the ground, although a handful of screens have been released and it (obviously) looks a lot smarter, and I’m glad to see that the chair-to-head smashing feature apparently remains intact.
(Image from GOG.com)
It looks like this is just going to be a new game also called XIII rather than the original game touched up a little bit for modern gamers. I’m not sure the latter would really work: I increasingly feel that whatever the technical shortcomings of a particular title (in this case, checkpoint saves and quite small levels), they should be considered part of what makes the game what it is and places it at a certain point in time. (Patches that make them work on modern systems, or add a widescreen mode, are of course welcome!)
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Under the heading of massively belated sequels, a follow-up to Beneath a Steel Sky has been announced. The original is beloved by many adventurers, and I often wonder whether I was a bit too harsh on it back in the day. As with Revolution’s main franchise, Broken Sword, I did remember it being tonally all over the place at times, mixing dark, dystopian sci-fi themes with broad sitcom humour, with characters cracking wise at inopportune moments (much like our tactless friend George Stobbart). It’s one that I’m tempted to revisit at some point.
Anyway, the sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, looks to be far removed from its predecessor’s point-and-click origins, which is a bit of a surprise given Revolution’s mixed experiences with 3D in Broken Sword games 3 and 4, and ultimate decision to return to 2D for the fifth game. They also seem at this stage to be distancing it from the first game by claiming it isn’t a sequel and emphasising that you don’t need to have played the first game to enjoy this one. That’s perhaps less surprising, given that the characters in Broken Sword seem to begin each new game with few memories of what transpired previously.
It certainly looks nice enough, based on early footage, though, utilising a visual style not dissimilar to XIII. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.
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Sequels, prequels, spin-offs, remakes. This is the Hollywood way of retelling the same stories again, again and again. There’s no need to “update” classic games, for a classic is something you can’t remove nor add anything of interest to it. And no, updating graphics is not necessarily a great idea (yes, I still have 4:3 CRTs). For example, Thief Dark Project with “better” effects would probably lose its unique ambiance. A good artistic director makes the best with what he has at a given time : trying to “update” ordinarily just ruins the previous wanted good looks (revised Quake does not feel the same way the original one does, wether sofware or hardware). It’s like all these stupid modern directors who ruin Wagner and Mozart with “revised” “modern” staging, just because they’re unable to create anything of their own. It’s always easier to deface something existing, especially if it’s great, much greater than the works one is able to create — this sounds like a revenge against better minds. Who would dare and rewrite classical texts in modern lack of style and vocabulary so they please modern bozos ? (and that’s not even guaranteed to work !)
Let Hollywood explore old libraries in order to find new stories (Leiber, Merritt, Smith instead of Tolkien and Martin) ; let game studios try and create, for a change, instead of pretending to “remake” and “improve” games they were unable to create first. Or label these “new” versions as mere “mods for moddies”.
Oh, and yes, you were a little bit too harsh with Beneath a Steel Sky, as with No One Lives Forever. And too generous with XIII whose only interest lied in the cell shading look (the game itself was boring, short and without a real end). 😉
November 16, 2019 @ 2:34 pm
P.S. : Quite amusing. Remakes seems to be the trendy topic, it seems, as here :
https://nofrag.com/2019/11/16/138299/
Comments are sometimes astonishing about what a few gamers want. Sorry, it’s in French, but I guess Google Translate will easily translate basic gamers’s sentences. New nofrag is far from FfG quality ! — far below, needless to say. 😉
November 18, 2019 @ 9:42 am
I generally don’t mind remakes, as long as the game is still available in its original form. Then gamers can decide for themselves which version they prefer. That said, I have found several remakes to be underwhelming, or at least make some questionable changes.
re: Thief, I’d be skeptical of any efforts to remake or remaster that one. As you say the game has a certain unique atmosphere that I’m not sure could be reproduced. The Dark Engine is clunky as hell today but if it were to be replaced, I fear some subtle but essential factor would be lost.
November 19, 2019 @ 11:35 am
Like you I’m more bothered that the games continue to be available in their original form: in this case it seems that the remake of XIII has either precipitated or coincided with the restoration of the 2003 version to GOG, but sometimes in an effort to push the ‘new’ version publishers attempt to hide the older one away.
November 19, 2019 @ 1:36 pm
Most older games would just require a patch to fix controls : hard-coded keys, absence of mouse support, and weird cameras were plagues. Ah, and a save anywhere feature, of course. And possibly a way to slow display or execution — I remember having to write a TSR in order to slow joystick down for Subwar 2050 because the game went too fast on my old Pentium II 233. “Improving” graphics seems very low a priority to me, except, I guess, for newer weird ratios wide screens (can’t they use centered old resolutions ?).
Remake is just a way to cash on nostalgia, the same as these singers who just sing older and better versions of classics without any reason but quick money.
November 19, 2019 @ 5:10 pm