Remastered

Recently in the gaming industry, there's been a trend towards remastering video games. Remastering a video game is the process of updating an old video game's graphics to get it closer to modern standards. Some examples of this are the trio of Playstation 2 games that were released on the Playstation 3: Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper. The most recent example of this happening, though, is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

For those that don't know, Skyrim was a popular game released on the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in 2011. The game was beautiful when it was released, blowing its predecessor out of the waters in terms of visual quality. Now, though, five years later, we have a new version of the game with updated graphics, all of the downloadable content, and a new feature: mods. I picked up the game over the weekend, and it got me thinking on whether this is a good thing or not.

Personally, I love these remastered versions of games. The aforementioned game Sly Cooper was one of my favorite games growing up. I don't play the Playstation 2 any more, though, and on top of that, I sold my copy of the game a long time ago. Luckily, they remastered the game for Playstation 3 some years ago, allowing me to keep playing one of my favorite games. This, I believe, is a huge benefit of remastering.

But there's still a problem with remastering. Some argue that remastering old games is a lazy gimmick performed by game creators to make a cheap buck. Yes, they polish up the graphics, but most of the game is already complete, allowing developers to get away with selling again a game they already sold once. One of my friends told me that he wouldn't buy the new version of Skyrim since the old one worked just fine, and honestly, I would've agreed with him if it weren't for the added bonus of all the downloadable content being in the new version.

All in all, I think that remastering is a fine line to walk. Some companies will, of course, abuse the process for the sake of making a cheap buck. But I think it can be a good process for those of us who love older video games. In fact, a new version of Final Fantasy VII is coming out next year. The original game is for the original Playstation, and the graphics are not just outdated, but distractingly bad. Many are hoping that this new game will fix that problem. We'll see.