May 3, 2020

I’m starting up a blog again. Like an actual weblog about what I have going on in my career instead of just mass link dumps every six months or whatever. Mostly because I often have thoughts about the pieces I get published that I think are interesting but that won't fit under the word count or are tangential to the main thesis of the article.

One throughline in a bunch of the pieces I’ve written has been adaptation, specifically adapting an old game for a modern audience. I started April by writing a review for Final Fantasy VII: Remake than a week after that I reviewed Operencia: the Stolen Sun And I just finished a review of Streets of Rage 4. FFVII: Remake is obviously a huge reimagining of a classic game and Streets of Rage 4 is a modern sequel to a classic series. Operencia might be lesser known because it isn’t a sequel or remake of a specific classic game but a new version of a classic style of game, the first-person dungeon crawler RPG. 

One of these adaptations is not like the others. Both Operencia and Streets of Rage 4 are faithful to their source material to a fault. They’re both well made, good updates of their respective genres, and definitely worth playing if you’re a fan of brawlers or dungeon crawlers. All the updates in those games are more quality of life than quality of content, though. FFVII: Remake, on the other hand, makes changes that mess with player’s expectations in a really bold way. It also manages to capture a lot of the tone of the original. Successfully threading this needle is one of the reasons that I really love playing FFVII: Remake. In a concrete way, that game doesn’t care about your expectations of it and I really enjoy that.

This all speaks to the way we think about what makes a good adaptation of another work. I just don’t have the impulse to have a do-over of the same content that I see in criticism of a lot of work. When people complain about changes made to Marvel storylines in the MCU, for example. There seems to be this feeling in the air that the newer work somehow replaces the previous work which I don’t accept as true. The comic book version of the Infinity War will always be there, go read that if you didn't like Avengers: Endgame. The 1997 version of FFVII is out on practically every platform, go play that if that’s what you want. The only real difference when it comes to games is that graphics and mechanics change over time. The reason I don’t accept that though is that I think the idea that one graphical style can be ‘better’ than another lacks imagination. For example, I don’t think FVII: Remake looks ‘better’ than the original. They both look great just in different ways. 

Anyway, that’s it for this week. I’m trying to keep these under 500 words. Take care. Stay safe.