Please stop obsessing over decades-old games and instead preserve the history of games.
I understand why companies want to remake their games. It is a lot of hard work, but it's a lot less hard work than making a whole new game and just one of those would surely make a lot of money. New games and especially new IPs, now come with huge risks where a single disastrous launch week can lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The teams that made Concord and Suicide Squad worked very hard, very tiresomely, and the result was a huge financial windfall. Had their time been invested in refining a proven success, a profit would have been almost guaranteed. Remastering games is a practical decision based on sensible economics. It just sucks.
The little-known fact about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is that it works just fine. Really, really well. Released in 2006, you can buy it now from Steam for $15 (and often less) and it works absolutely instantly. It runs at 2560x1440 without needing any hacks or mods, and after a few minutes of playing, the graphics still looked good to me. Hey, Bethesda games graphics are outdated at launch, and they're improved by modders in the months to come - no one was buying Oblivion for its looks in 2006, especially not for the ridiculously awful character models. And since Starfield is equally embarrassing, it's not like it's going to suddenly improve.
The thing is, Oblivion already exists in a very playable form that's just as enjoyable and flawed as it was 20 years ago. Plus, 20 years of mods have improved all the aspects that Bethesda is incapable of doing - like the user interface, facial animations, inventory, voice acting, textures - so that the game looks exactly the way you want it to. So then, what's an officially remastered Oblivion for?
Yes, as I said, it's intended to make money, especially from old fans of the game who want it to look pretty, returning to a Cyrodiil whose graphics resemble their two-decade-old invented memories of the original game. Plus, it's also likely to attract a new audience who may have only played Skyrim, so they may be disappointed to learn that the previous version wasn't as good. But even Skyrim's original audience is going to see a little more gray in their hair, even though this was almost 14 years ago.
Then it becomes even more frustrating considering the extraordinary efforts of Skyrim modders, who have spent more than a decade remaking Oblivion in Skyrim's engine, and are hoping to finally finish their Herculean project in 2025. They say they're not too bothered by the conflict with this official remaster. but come on how frustrating is this for them. Still, it is worth noting that Skyfall's aesthetic is very different from the wish-fulfillment drabness of Bethesda's version, as we've seen in the leaks.
For all of the reasons mentioned above, releasing remasters is now pretty commonplace, but there's also a sad irony in focusing on remastering the big-name titles of the last few decades. While GOG has recently launched some significant efforts to preserve PC gaming, that's barely scratching the surface of the vast history of video games that is being lost to time and technology because those who own the rights either don't care or are actively hostile to those who try to preserve their games for them. Games that can't be purchased on Steam and played with a single click will almost certainly not get expanded remakes, and will now only be played through illegal means.
Now I am not stupid and I'm not advocating for publishers to spend millions of dollars remastering forgotten, obscure games from their 1980s and '90s catalogs I know they're more likely to plunder them to pair the titles with very different new games (cough-Marathon-cough). Still I truly believe that putting a portion of the resources used in remastering into preserving the company's old catalog would be beneficial to humanity. Or, you know, releasing them into the public domain, as clearly should be done.
However, I think this should also be considered part of the existential anxiety in which video games now find themselves, where AA games are nearly non-existent and new ideas are kryptonite to publishers.
Yes, the rising cost of game development could be the subject of another article, and the industry's obsessive focus on live-service is another topic altogether, But all these tough parts of making games today are why remasters have become so common. As I said it is safe. And now, publishers are retreating like frightened kittens to that perceived safety. But doing so will only exacerbate the problems - it will reinforce the notion that the only sure way to make a profitable game is to buy one that's already been made.
We need bold new ideas built at reasonable prices. And it's sad to see the indie world crank out one original hit after another, and publishers unable to figure out how they can monetize and profit from this phenomenon at the AA level. The reason there are so many great games available to rip off and remaster is because decades ago, this is the way game development used to be! There was no need to release a game that would make half a billion dollars, as doing so would give developers the opportunity to create new sequels that could gain increasing popularity and lead to continued sequels and spin-offs.
Because Naughty Dog likes to joke about making the same three games over and over, and they have fun with it. the company also shows that it's a tough job. Endlessly updating games to reflect the latest tricks in graphics is foolish, that boulder always keeps rolling downhill as fast as it can be pushed up, and the sad irony is that that boulder is only as good when it's been dropped downhill.
Bethesda, for crying out loud, get on with making The Elder Scrolls VI and leave the perfectly good and perfectly fun Oblivion and Fallout 3 to the modders. And, for goodness sake, release the source code of Morrowind. And the same goes for everyone else.
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