THINK BEFORE YOU REMAKE

Ever since that glorious day at E3 2015 when Square-Enix showed off to the what seemingly impossible and ended up announcing a remake to one of their most beloved RPG’s of all time in Final Fantasy VII for the upcoming PlayStation 4, everybody lately around here has been caught up in something that I like to call “Remake Fever”. And the only prescription to that said fever, it seems, is take one of their old games that they ended finishing up quite some time ago and remake the shit out of it until it shines a golden, crispy brown.

Just think about the possibilities: brand new characters…new enemies to fight…shiny new, upgraded graphics…!

Ohh…this is gonna be sweet…!!!



- Now hold on to your peanuts there, people! Before you happen to undertake in the wonderful world of remakes and fuzzy things…maybe you might wanna sit back and really think about this for a second or two… I mean…are you really sure you want to do all of this...again…right now…?



Look…there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with trying to remake one of your old games…I get that. But what I do find wrong in the whole thought process is the sudden timing and certain circumstances that forward such a hasty decision…especially in regards to recently completed games that have become a success here. I mean, it’s natural to do a remake after some time has passed and when you have acquired a certain amount of experience, maybe even joining up with a team and trying to remake the game using a whole new engine, but within a short matter of time using pretty much the same engine and graphical style from before? W…Why…? It doesn’t make any sense…! (Unless you like torturing yourself again, lol.)

I’m using myself as a primary example of behind the whole remaking process, since, as you guys probably already know this by now, I’ve been currently trying to remake and “perfect” one of my games that I completed back before in 2009 that I started doing again back in November 2013… You probably already know what it is…but let’s not mention that game here. *seals lips*

Now on the surface of things, okay…it’s been quite a long time since the original game was finished, and there were some things that I wanted to add in that I didn’t get quite the chance to do originally, and the graphics could use a minor facelift among some other things…plus the game isn’t quite as good as I initially thought back in 2009…so, okay, a remake, or as General Manager, Jim Benning of the Vancouver Canucks likes to put it, “a retooling” was in the works.

I felt overjoyed that I was going to revisit a piece of myself that I had some pretty good fond memories of working on in the past and the possibility of fixing all those problems that plagued the original game for me for years will be a thing of the past… And since the original game only took me around 10 months or so to finish – this shouldn’t take me as long to do, right..,?



*sigh*

…As you can probably tell from the lack of any recent game submissions from me, yeaaah…I’m still not quite done it… But I’m also almost done, if that’s something worth a small consolation.

(Yeah…it’s not gonna cut it, right...?)

…Anyway, through the initial remaking process, things were originally going pretty good at first! Everything was running along rather smoothly; I was working on the project for a long time, almost up to around three to four hours a night, and quite a lot of stuff got finished in that short matter of time before then. And I love the new enchantments and features that this game has over the original. It’s almost like this was gonna be an absolute cake walk…

But then…rather uncertainty started to rear its ugly head…

Things were starting to take way too long than it should have; the list of changes started to grow and grow and suddenly start to overwhelm me over time; and what seemed like it was once fun and awesome to see all the new improvements in action started to feel kinda like…you know, deju-vu again... It’s like I’ve done this whole thing before with just a bucket full of new paint added on to it and it’s just not as exciting when I first made it back in 2009… It kinda made me slowly regret over time if a remake was even necessary at all…

I mean, yeah, since I’m almost about done, I guess I could say now that it was necessary to do… But after undergoing this experience of remaking a finished game again - I don’t think I ever wanna do that again. The remake just took even longer than the original one to do, and not really that much was changed other than fixing a handful of problems to the best of my ability… I can only imagine if I had added even more content to the game already just how long it would have taken to probably do… It probably wouldn’t have been completed until sometime in 2016! *phew* (Thank god for my amazing planning skills.)

So you see…my remaking experience wasn’t quite the most pleasant one in the entire world… In fact, I don’t think I would wish something like this on my worst enemy… It was a painful process going through everything again…

I mean, I’m happy to see the game have most of its problems fixed and have even more content just like I originally intended it to have before…but it still feels…rather incomplete still... You know that feeling for those who’ve completed a full game before where you finish something to the best of your ability and then you go to play it again for the sixteenth time – and it’s still good…but it’s still feels like it’s…missing something…kinda like the same feeling I had when I initially decided to remake it in the first place… Huh…

In the end, I guess remaking the game was a good idea on paper at first, but then it turned into quite a struggle almost pretty much after the fifth month mark until its inevitable, sort of end. I mean, yeah, this is completely different than doing something like an RPG in RPG Maker and it’s supposed to be kind of frustrating to do…and I know that I’m much older than before and don’t have the same amount of time to work on anything as much as I did back then, but still…

My lesson to take out of that whole entire experience was this: don’t ever do that again… I mean, it’s hard enough to finish a game the first time; it’s even harder to do it the second time.

Look, I know that remakes are suddenly all the rage with the kiddies nowadays, but you have to seriously ask yourself if it’s, indeed, worth it to invest even more time, energy and sacrifice to rework on a game that you pretty much put all of your heart and soul before in making it again. Because once you get back on that horse, it’s not going to be the same, pleasant ride like it was before – no sir! Sure, it might be a bit fun at first to ride him again, but the fun doesn’t last forever…

I just don’t want all of you guys to go through the same crummy experience like I did remaking my own game that you guys are thinking about possibly doing… Even though there are probably a lot more successful stories of people attempting remakes on their past work and enjoying revisiting it again, I thought I would write this article to share my overall experience with you guys these past almost two years now (wow…) and sort of remind all of you guys to really consider some of your decisions before attempting anything. Make sure that you double check, triple check with yourself and your teammates to decide if a remake is truly worth it or not in the long run.

Yeah, it’s natural for those to look back at some of their old stuff after a while and have that whole feeling of doubt and having that whole mindset that they could do probably do even better now than before - but sometimes you just look at it and say, “Yeah…I think it’s fine the way it is.” Besides, if your original work had some positive reviews, solid download numbers and mostly positive feedback to it initially, then I say job well done… No point taking a second bow.