Old games, sequels and remakes

Games
1

I have spent the last few weeks replaying old games which has put me in a reflective and nostalgic mood. Specifically I have been thinking about sequels to old games and such recently. As an older gamer (and probably the main demographic, age wise, of gamers who buy games) do I really want a sequel to fallout 1 and 2 (as an example)? I would much more readily pay for an update of fallout 1 and 2. Leave the majority of the mechanics the same, the same story but with new graphics. I’d definitely pay for Fallout 1 with 2008 graphics with a few modern conventions thrown in to reflect the increasing sophistication of game-play mechanics for whatever genre.

Similar to the way they did Dune 2000 as opposed to Emperor: Battle for Dune. Dune 2000 was purely just an update to the game engine and bringing dune 2 into the modern world directly without adding in modern RTS conventions was a bad idea. While Emperor, which did a similar thing to Dune 2000 but touched up the maps and gameplay for a modern audience was a wonderful game.

I don’t know if I really want to pay for an FPS, ultra-violent version of Fallout that I can’t play in front of my family. I just think it’s just not going to be “fallout”. Just like I would have preferred Ultima IV redone then Ultima IX or System Shock 2007 as opposed to Bioshock. Just picking up Fallout 3 as an example and don’t actually have anything for or against it until I play it.

Kind of hoping that’s pretty much what Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 will be effectively. An update to the engine more than truly a sequel.

Thoughts from other older gamers? (I’m 35).

2

Man, it’s sort of a double-edged sword, really. I totally still love the 2D iso view of the older Black Isle D&D games and could easily play games with that format forever probably. However, what the fuck, I just cannot expect time to essentially stop in whatever developmental cycle I twig the most and stay there like some fruity freeze-frame tech/interface/game design Matrix. I mean I can dig why the changes in Fallout 3 were made, and I can accept them, but I was thinking the other day that I would probably be pretty bummed out if someone made Planescape 2 or BG3 and did a similar overhaul that is taking place with Fallout. I wouldn’t run screeching through the internet like those NMA homos, with my pink frilly panties on my head and my mascara running down my face in dark rivulets like that blithering idiot Draikin, but it still might give me pause enough to have to reset my gestalt about the IP in question.

3

The switch from the Infinity Engine to the Aurora engine (for NWN) still makes me shake my head and wonder what they were thinking.

Though I’ll grant you that CD Projekt managed to do some pretty gorgeous things with the latter.

4

Odd that you mention Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune in that constellation, because I basically feel in exactly the opposite way.
Dune 2000 basically took the core game (Dune 2) and updated it to a modern engine. The main problem was that “modern” engine was basically already an aging engine at that point and thus, compared to really modern engines, it was underperforming. Not all alspects of the original Dune 2 were really ported over faithfully, but it did a competent enough job in my book. The game “felt” very similar.
Emperor: Battle for Dune, on the other hand, fiddled around a lot with the core mechanics of Dune 2, threw some overboard and included others instead etc. The game played out very differently and was much more action oriented. It was a tad more modern, but judging this from todays point of view is unfair, as more than three years of RTS evolution seperate the two games.
If they had chosen/created a state of the art engine for Dune 2000 in 1998, things would have looked different.
My preference for any remake of a classical game is to leave as much of the core gameplay intact as possible while still bringing the game to modern standards. For example, a Dune 2 remake released this year could have beautiful 3D graphics and of course stuff like the ability to select multiple units at once, but I’d like it best if it would (or at least could) include the original campaigns which would feel almost exactly like the originals in terms of challenge, gameplay and speed.

I’m not sure you know what you want either, because in the first paragraph you basically say you’d like a replica of an original game (Fallout) brought to modern technical standards, but leaving everything else mostly intact, and then you go praising Emperor: Battle for Dune, which was almost nothing like Dune 2.

rezaf

5

Man… Did your husband just leave you for a younger model or something?

6

I guess I’m old enough now to qualify as an “older” gamer (31 now, 32 in a week) and my feeling is that “leave the gameplay alone, just update the graphics” is a terrible apporach to remakes and sequels. It’s just my personal preference, but… all those old mechanics feel tired to me, now. Well, not all of them, but a lot of them. Often the mechanical weaknesses of certain games or genres took a long time to emerge and I had a lot of fun finding them, but, for example, for me Civ was never as much fun once I realised that “more cities = victory, every time”. You lose a lot of your sense of immersion in the world of the game and it just becomes a case of re-treading old steps as you implement, yet again, a solution to the general problem of “how to win at this type of game”. So, I think vigorous new thinking on ways to make interesting new mechanics, or to combine existing mechanics in new and interesting ways, is really important to the further development of gaming, or making games that are actually interesting rather than just… “comfortable” or reassuring.

Additionally, I don’t really feel the need for super-shiny new graphics; I still prefer 2D to 3D graphics for most things, because it conveys information more simply, clearly, and often looks better, too. Compare, say, EU3’s maps or MH:TCATS’s maps with Napoleon’s Ambition from Ageod. Which is not to say that I think we were all better off with CGA and so on, just that… a lot of so-called graphical “improvements” make for nicer looking screenshots but worse playing games, and of course they’re part of the skyrocketing of developments costs which has had such an insidious effect on developer’s willingness to do anything with the mechanics of games except go over and over the same old ground…

…however, I am not all that pessimistic because I see lots of indies about now making games in the “old-school” way, ie, one developer with a vision, and I think there will be lots of it in the future. And those games are not just nostalgia-fests; the graphics are often simple and serviceable but the space is wide open for those people to make games that appeal to, well, me and people like me, by doing something different. And while they may not be called “Title You Recognise, Part 4: The Search for More Money”, a lot of those indie developers are, I think, inspired by the same old games that all of us are, and actually free to build on that inspiration in a way that the big companies aren’t.

7

The remake of carrier command makes me whistle happily.

About frigging time, now a remake of MOO 2 and life can go on.

oh Fallout 1-2 not violent?? I vividly remember heads exploding there too.

8

I’m not exactly sure either. I guess lets simplify it a bit more. Do you think there is a market for old games updated to new technologies? Examples off the top of my head: MoO2, Fallout, Planescape, Freelancer, Ultima series, Baldur’s Gate, Elite etc.

I am not going to define “update” as I don’t necessarily think converting a 2d game into 3d or turn based into real-time is always the way to go. And of course even remakes where the core game is left intact can suck (though the only true remake I can think of is Dune 2000 which I didn’t hate).

The best example, which isnt actually a remake, I can recall is Starfleet Command. They did a fantastic job of converting the spirit of the table-top game into the space-sim without being slavish.

9

It certainly was violent but either due to the writing or limitation of the technology it wasn’t really graphic. Fallout 3 is very graphic. Its like a horror flick.

Not sure that’s truly in the spirit of Fallout. BUT I am not pro or against F3. It’s just a convenient example. I don’t want the discussion to bog down into hate/love F3.

10

Yah, I guess it really depends on the game in question.
For example, I think Civ is a bad example because there already have been various sequels which were (sometimes more, sometimes less) successful at expanding the basic premise of the game. Then again, even Civ1 (in it’s windows incarnation) is perfectly playable to this very day, with minimal hassle, and the graphics still do their job. Sure, it’ll look tons better in glorious 3D, but imo, these games do not really benefit from 3D graphics. And there’s always Civ4, which IS the better game. When I play Civ1 these days, it’s like a casual game, you can finish a game in a few short to medium sittings and it’s really a simple game compared to Civ4.

A game which many people appearently would love to see left pretty much intact, but brought to par technologically, is XCom. There have been numerous attempts at remaking it, but they all tried to mess around with the basic formula that made the original so great (and different people actually loved it for different reasons) and spoiled their “remake” in the process. This is one of the games where you could leave almost anything like it was in the original except for the “presentation layer”.
It worked with Settlers 10th Anniversary, which was pretty much Settlers II with a new campaign, improved military buildings and state of the art interface and graphics, so why shouldn’t it work with other games as well?

rezaf

11

It had a perk called “bloody mess”. I think if they could have made the gore look more realistic with the tech they had to work with, they would have.

12

The most memorable remakes I’ve tried were those of Maniac Mansion, Wings of Fury, Star Control 2 and Privateer.

13

I think that innovation is a wonderful thing. I don’t know that remakes or (to a lesser extent) sequels are necessarily the type of game that’s best suited to innovation, however. It’s a little riskier launching without that big name franchise attached, sure, but people have got to do it from time to time…

14

I can’t think of anything more boring than replaying games from ten years ago with new graphics. I played them already, bring on the new!

It’s like, if I want to watch Roman Holiday, I watch Roman Holiday. I don’t pine for a modern color edition with an edgier story and a different ending. I can watch Wall-E if I want a more modern love story, or whatever the next crazy movie is that Hollywood pumps out.

15

I agree in one sense, but there are some games with enough replayability to make it worth it. X-Com and MoM come to mind. MOO2 is another. I think these games would absolutely work with an updated UI and graphics.

Format, there were remakes of SC2 and Privateer? When?

16

Yeah, X-Com and MoM are the first examples I think of when it comes to games where the gameplay was already good enough. Didn’t get as immersed in MOO2 as others, though, because of different platform choices. Still, that is a timeless game.

If you remake a game like those now with scalable graphics adjusting to any screen aspect, that’s the last remake necessary.

Star Control 2 is also known as The Ur-Quan Masters. This is a version based on the 3DO’s SC2, which had more everything. Worth the download.

17

18

I just replayed BG2 / ToB. After NWN2, it was rough.

Sure, sure, BG2 is very fondly remembered, but, fuck. Don’t get me started on how bad D&D 2nd Ed. was. Or how if the lead character died it was reload time. Or if anyone got reduced to -10 hps and got “chunked” it was reload time. Or how fear lasted up to 2 minutes of real time and it was great fun watching the feared guy run across the entire fucking level aggroing everything. And Watcher’s Keep? Remember that endless fucking dungeon? UGH.

Of course, the flip side is that BG2 (and Torment, etc.) is as good as they are because they’re mostly un-spoken. With the spoken word, as every game today must have, each word costs 100X more (or more!) than it did when it was just plain… text. We’ll never have a game as good as BG2, ever again. And that’s sad.

Now if only someone could mod it to work in NWN2 with 3.5 ed. rules… man…

19

Actually, I’m playing ToB right now, and it seems great to me. NWN2 has never properly grabbed me. The camera just pisses me off. Yeah, the rules are better in many ways, but that’s not a gameplay problem, per se. Or is it?

20

You seriously wouldn’t want to see Ultima IV (or whatever game from the same error) updated to modern standards? I’ll be first to admit I am a graphics junky and I couldn’t make myself play those games again. System Shock 2 is about as old as I’ll go and that’s with all the modern texture updates. I couldn’t handle replaying SS1 for example.

And there are a plethora of old games on other systems which are worth updating as well - Phantasia, marble madness, mouse trap etc from Amiga days jump to mind.