Riley Reviews
By Riley Fink
By Riley Fink
In my extremely lucky position with nailing a PS5 at launch, I’ve been playing a ton of Bluepoint’s Demon’s Souls remake and it’s gotten me to think a lot more about remakes in general. Namely, when I played the original Demon’s Souls last year, which to those who are unaware is the lesser known older brother to the famous game Dark Souls, I found myself not playing far into it out of indifference.
Now the general rule when it comes to art direction and graphics is that gameplay comes first, so why is it that the remake was able captivate me far better than the original when the two are nearly identical from a gameplay perspective? And if visuals really are that important, why did Bluepoint’s other recent remake for Shadow of the Colossus not captivate me in the same way? Both games strive to tell a story through subtext and subtlety, both try to use a heavy atmosphere to connect you to the world, and both have awful performance problems on their original hardware. Well I think it comes down to the strange way that visual polish affects the feel of gameplay.
Shadow of the Colossus, or SOTC, had an insane amount of visual polish already on the PS2. The way that the main character flings around trying to hold on to the back of a colossus is still impressively fluid to this day, so when the remake bumps the resolution, frame rate, and visual detail up, it doesn’t affect the way the game itself feels for the most part. Those things are appreciated, especially since a large portion of SOTC is spent riding around the world on your horse, but definitely not essential for the mood and combat feel the game is trying to set. It does have more visual polish which does make the game better, but playing SOTC feels fundamentally the same no matter which version you pick. If you weren’t a fan of the original, the remake probably won’t convince you either.
With the original Demon’s Souls on the other hand, the lack of polish alongside the outdated janky game feel can really take you out of the world, especially with its frequent drops in performance. It still does look good and does portray the world they were aiming for with some success, but with all the redone animations and textures the remake provides, alongside its few small gameplay tweaks, the game really does feel different, and much better, than the original which I don’t think I can say for SOTC.
Such a visual overhaul always risks undermining or missing the point of previous artistic decisions, which fanboys will be more than likely to tear you apart for. Yet Bluepoint has proved they’re fantastic at narrowing down the initial vision of the creator and fleshing it out with immaculate visual fidelity, and they’ve proved to me that some good eye candy can go a long way in enhancing an experience, even if the gameplay itself is mostly untouched.
Now the general rule when it comes to art direction and graphics is that gameplay comes first, so why is it that the remake was able captivate me far better than the original when the two are nearly identical from a gameplay perspective? And if visuals really are that important, why did Bluepoint’s other recent remake for Shadow of the Colossus not captivate me in the same way? Both games strive to tell a story through subtext and subtlety, both try to use a heavy atmosphere to connect you to the world, and both have awful performance problems on their original hardware. Well I think it comes down to the strange way that visual polish affects the feel of gameplay.
Shadow of the Colossus, or SOTC, had an insane amount of visual polish already on the PS2. The way that the main character flings around trying to hold on to the back of a colossus is still impressively fluid to this day, so when the remake bumps the resolution, frame rate, and visual detail up, it doesn’t affect the way the game itself feels for the most part. Those things are appreciated, especially since a large portion of SOTC is spent riding around the world on your horse, but definitely not essential for the mood and combat feel the game is trying to set. It does have more visual polish which does make the game better, but playing SOTC feels fundamentally the same no matter which version you pick. If you weren’t a fan of the original, the remake probably won’t convince you either.
With the original Demon’s Souls on the other hand, the lack of polish alongside the outdated janky game feel can really take you out of the world, especially with its frequent drops in performance. It still does look good and does portray the world they were aiming for with some success, but with all the redone animations and textures the remake provides, alongside its few small gameplay tweaks, the game really does feel different, and much better, than the original which I don’t think I can say for SOTC.
Such a visual overhaul always risks undermining or missing the point of previous artistic decisions, which fanboys will be more than likely to tear you apart for. Yet Bluepoint has proved they’re fantastic at narrowing down the initial vision of the creator and fleshing it out with immaculate visual fidelity, and they’ve proved to me that some good eye candy can go a long way in enhancing an experience, even if the gameplay itself is mostly untouched.