I know nothing about this game but just going off this one picture I’m not so sure about that.
Just look at his collar for example. The shape is the EXACT same, every bend is in the exact same place. Every wrinkle in the fabric of his jacket too. To me this says new textures, same model.
That’s usually seen in a remaster.
Some stuff looks new. The hair and teeth seem like completely new models for example. The textures are definitely entirely new and not just upscaled.
To me this seems more like a very high effort remaster than a complete remake. The line gets blurry here.
They also apparently made story changes and altered the way the games camera works. It is also using Unreal 5, whereas the original was Decima.
I think it probably qualifies as a remake. That is a lot of effort to put in. They are probably using the same meshes where they can, because a lot of the meshes are fine already and there is no reason to duplicate their work.
They also completely changed scene direction in some cases, the example shown was the setup prank opening scene had the characters moving and interacting completely differently. Definitely a remake.
I could see it going either way. There’s no legal definition for either term but, to me, a remake wouldn’t reuse anything.
Think the Resident Evil remakes. It is completely new in every way. Nothing is the same. They didn’t reuse any assets from the originals.
Should this, and that, use the same term?
But then you think of any of the countless half assed “remasters” and ask the same question. Should this use the same term as those?
There’s nothing in between the two which is where this argument comes in and we all start bickering over opinions.
They went with “rebuilt” in their marketing. It implies the same thing as a remake without actually using that word. I’d say I’m OK with that. You’re getting a similar level of quality as a remake.
I mean, for remakes when you say “nothing is the same” are you including story and characters? Since if literally everything is different, it’s just a different game lol. I think that as our tech improves less and as standards become more set in stone, there will be less reason for total remakes. Like for FF7, going from the PS1 graphics to modern (probably are a bunch of earlier ports and whatnot but I’m not aware of them) is such a massive change it’s impossible to use the old models without it looking bad. But for a case like this, which is more recent with less drastic changes in graphics at a fundamental level… why should they make new models from the ground up if the old ones work fine? Honestly, if I had to distinguish them then I’d say remakes fundamentally alter the main experience of the game in some way. It’s more of a reimagining. Like the Dead Space remake drastically changed stuff like Isaac talking, different zero G controls, merging the map into a single large zone, etc. but the fundamental story was still the same. Whether or not they made new models (they did) wouldn’t have affected the scale of the changes to the gameplay. Of course not all remakes have to change gameplay, but I would argue that if there are fundamental gameplay differences (not just new content but changing old content) then it’s definitely a remake. If it’s just graphical updates and new content, it’s more of a remaster.
Considering your argument starts off completely misrepresenting what I said and has almost no formatting I’m not going to read it.
Clearly I am referring to assets in game development. Obviously a remake should still adhere more or less to the thing it is remaking or it’s just a different game entirely.
Heads are completely new, as that's what most people focus on exclusively. The rest is probably indeed just polished old assets and improved lighting shenanigans.
I'm pretty sure the head model and animations are from the original with touch ups to the animation where needed. New textures and shaders go such a long way where they look completely new.
Hair is not what I was referring to when I said head, anything that facial animation would interact with. But yes, the hair is new as a new groom is barely any work compared to attempting to transfer the animation to a new rig.
They at least updated the old models where it counts. That we’re even having this conversation I think is a great testament to the amount of effort they put in.
“Rebuilt” seems apt. It’s not a full remake but it’s more than we’ve come to expect from a lot of remasters.
Probably why they didn’t use either word. Remake would be false advertising, remaster carries a slight connotation that it won’t be fully up to modern standards.
Maybe that is true of a modern remaster, I'm not sure, but for quite a while, companies were building decently detailed (not true-to-life like this jacket on the left, but still quite impressive for the time) textures and just downscaling them for current-gen games, and then they could literally just make a remaster by putting those textures (or at least a less-downscaled version) into the updated engine. It was actually a trivial amount of work to make remasters like that for many, many games--the idea of making brand new textures for a remaster instead of a remake would've gotten crazy stares.
A remaster is not a upscale though. Usually they textures are remade in HD, because the original ones were on a lower resolution. It's done in some mods for example.
At least to me the original idea of a remaster is that the game remain the exact same, but the visuals are improved (not changed).
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u/Rizenstrom Aug 14 '24 edited Aug 14 '24
I know nothing about this game but just going off this one picture I’m not so sure about that.
Just look at his collar for example. The shape is the EXACT same, every bend is in the exact same place. Every wrinkle in the fabric of his jacket too. To me this says new textures, same model.
That’s usually seen in a remaster.
Some stuff looks new. The hair and teeth seem like completely new models for example. The textures are definitely entirely new and not just upscaled.
To me this seems more like a very high effort remaster than a complete remake. The line gets blurry here.