What is going on with videogames?
That's what that title sounds like, lol.
The kids were watching the Nintendo announcement video yesterday to see what kind of shenanigans were going on in Switchland. I sat and watched it with them to see if there was going to be anything worth $500. The short answer to that is no. The long answer is eventually.
The video starts out like so many other Nintendo Direct's with one of the big wigs from Nintendo stoically announcing upcoming titles and showing a little snippet from each one. The first several titles were almost all the exact same thing - a solo fantasy game set in an open world filled with bosses that require you to minmax a build in order to beat. Even if I recognized the series the game was from, the gameplay acted the same. Everything looked like Elden Ring and Expedition 33 had a surrogate baby with Final Fantasy XIII. Sometimes it would throw in farming and crafting for the lulz.
Then there were the outliers, like the Wii Sports and that awkward thumb wrestling game. The Wave Race bit looked fun in it tho. Pikuniku 2 looked interesting, the girls have been trying to play it lately on the Xbox. The Jujutsu Kaisen flavored Vampire Survivors game was weird. It looked like a fan made flash game from the 90's. The Ocarina of Time remake was the big thing most people were excited about. My oldest ran in from his room to tell me about it and all I can say is, well, I don't feel anything at all.
I played OOT on the 64 in high school. It was an interesting game to play but I wouldn't say it was my end all favorite thing ever. Golden Sun and FFX came out around the time I got around to playing it so it was substantially overshadowed in what I thought a good videogame was. The music is fun, the characters are fun, it's a good game. This of course, is coming from someone who DNF'd FF7. I can't hang with FF7. I know yall love it, you are all free to enjoy it. It's not for me.
So when they did the 3D movie thing and slow rolled remake of FF7 I thought, "Oh thats fun, the people that like that game will enjoy it." And I should feel the same way about this OOT remake. That it would be a nice project for the original fans. But these days with every other movie being a remake or a "20 years later" bit, I can't help but feel disappointed in it. The new generations deserve new games.
When we were kids a new console came out every 5 or so years. Entire game libraries were created for these consoles with brand new original titles every year. You would expect to see sequels to a game even quicker, with an average of 2 years. You could expect a sequel a game to appear on the same console.
Now games take so long to make and produce that hardware changes outpace production. Game companies that have to adhere to shareholder profit percentages end up burning and churning teams before a game gets off the ground, resulting in a title starting from scratch halfway through production. Now we have rushed games, buggy games, day 1 patches, and all that. So what can they do to get a game finished in time while making enough profit? Take some dusty IP off the shelf and remake it. The game was good when it was just polygons it will still be good rendered in all the graphics processing they can do now.
We are left with decade long production cycles, IP milking, and indie game copypasta. How many cosy farming games do we really need? (I won't go into mobile/f2p simulator games because that's a whole different swamp monster.) The new Star Fox game is a remake. The new Zelda game is a remake. The new Halo game is a remake. The new Tomb Raider game is a remake. The new KOTOR is a remake. The new Witcher is a remake. The new... How many times can we do this?
The fear is that a new chapter of a game won't have the same success financially as it's previous chapters. That's the same risk with books, movies, etc. Just last night I sat down to play Coffee Talk Tokyo and was left disappointed in the first two hours. It was the same mechanics, same gameplay but didn't have the same feel as the original. Multiple new characters were thrown at you way too early, and the barista isn't the same as the first two so when you talk to a regular from the old game they don't know you which is jarring. The devs took a risk to make a third chapter of Coffee Talk, but wouldn't have been as big of a risk as making a totally new game. I get it.
"But every Pokemon video game is essentially the same!" Yes and no. The mechanics of the game are the same across the board. You expect towns, battles, gyms, and such to all function similarly within the games. The difference is story and all the new Pokemon for that new region. Not every company is lucky enough to create something that modular and keep it going for this long. Same goes for Forza, the racing gameplay is similar but the big draw is shiny new cars in a shiny new environment. They don't need to remake old games when the old characters/cars can naturally appear in new games without issue.
I think what bothers me is that Nintendo is now doing this. I expect this behavior from a company that is owned by Microsoft, Sony, or EA. They have to make sure that shareholders get their +5% at the end of the year or else and will do whatever it takes to get that. Making good games people want to play is not at the top of the list. Shareholder revenue is. Nintendo gets a cut of the Pokemon money, they can experiment with things like the Switch and the Wii, they can make and keep original IP and make fresh games within their little walled garden.
Unless something is horribly wrong and they now DO need money. Hence, the Starfox and Zelda remakes. My kids have been begging for a switch 2 since the new Donkey Kong game came out with it. Now they want to play Pokopia, Mario Kart, and now Splatoon and Wii Sports. Nintendo has the game inventory, I just don't understand why they too would have to resort to remakes when their whole thing has always been unique titles for their existing IP.
Lol, is this one of those things where we all joke about it being a recession indicator like we're watching 2008 happen all over again?