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How Metal Gear Solid remasters should be done?

supernova8

Banned
I'd love MGS2 remade (UE5 or equivalent top of the pops graphics) with added physics/interactivity.

I remember with the MGS2 demo disc (before it even came out) how I was amazed that you could shoot out the glass window inside the ship's lounge, or shoot and smash all the bottles behind the bar. Also how you could shoot the tarp with the fight against Olga. Not entirely sure if that was the first game to do it (on console at least) but it certainly seemed next-level when I experienced it for the first time.

They could definitely add some more physics stuff in an impressive way without necessarily affecting the flow of the original game.
 
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I LOVED snake eater when it came out, but the last time I tried to play it a couple years ago I forgot what the controls were like. It’s absolute rubbish. Modern control scheme plz.

Nothing comes close to MGSV tho, as far as gameplay is concerned.
 

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
I'd really love to see a full scale Remake of the original MGS. Could be awesome. Make it like a full sized Ground Zero game.
 

OZ9000

Banned
Make a proper remake for MGS1/2/3.

I don't mind the original gameplay formula as long as the controls are updated.
 

Star-Lord

Member
As others have said, change literally nothing but the graphics. Keep the core gameplay elements exactly as they are (well, add the MGS2 gameplay elements to 1, as per Twin Snakes) and don't add any cheesy, over-the-top Hollywood cutscenes (here's looking at you, Snake, jumping on that missile), and they'll be on to a winner.
 

Soodanim

Member
2/3/4 would be fine with AI texture upscales, rendering resolution increases, and locked 60fps. Above 60fps isn't essential but would add extra smoothness to everything, especially CQC and action/vehicle sequences.

1 needs more love because of its age, but I've said for years that you either leave it as it is (excluding visuals) or completely reimagine it. MGS1 is a classic Metal Gear game with 3D elements thrown in, and Twin Snakes was proof of what happens if you just throw updated player options in: the balance is gone.

If you go the remake route, most of the games could be thrown into 5's engine and be more or less fine. 3 especially would fit right in. But 1 would need to be completely redesigned in terms of level layout and enemy counts, because otherwise it's just too sparse.
Remaster - The "HD" version of a game.

Remake - A brand new game that closely adheres to the design and narrative of a previous game.

Reboot - A brand new game, with new design concepts.

Reimagining - Similar to a remake, only with far more liberties taken with respect to the design and narrative.

This solid be required reading, too many people use the terms interchangeably.
 
This solid be required reading, too many people use the terms interchangeably.
Even publishers use whatever suits them.

Final Fantasy 7 remake is more of a reboot/reimagining than a remake.

And plenty of times they call a remake to a remaster that goes more indepth.
Probably like Demon's Souls and TLOU. Faithful remakes.
Those are actually remasters. At least Demon's Souls is as they still run the original code alongside the new graphical overhead.

The Last of Us is most likely an extensive overhaul updating the engine framework to be as close to TLOU2 in regards to graphical fidelity as well as some new features they've implemented for PS5 but keeping the inner workings of the original. Since it's Naughty Dog it'll probably be hard to tell on everything that is in the forefront for more than 2 seconds (new character models for everything in cutscenes as well as the interior of buildings they take place in), but you'll see lots of structural geometry untouched/similar/left alone, just with more vines, replaced assets and stuff, most likely gameplay animations as well. You'll still have plenty leftovers of it's previous life.

Some Naughty Dog guy hyping the game:
“To me, what makes this a remake instead of a remaster is the sum of its improvements”
There's no "to me" it's either a remake or a remaster, if it's a remake "to him" it's because it's technically a remaster, he just believes he overhauled everything so it was "almost" the same as doing a new game to him.

But he/they had a base to go from and base everything they improved. Fans spend years improving existing games extensively, and they're can never be classed as remakes, because they're remasters.
 
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Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Call it a Remake, release trailers that truly show how fucking amazing this remake is going to be - then when the game is released, make your fanbase realize it was all bait and switch and the game is instead a sequel to the original MGS but timetravel is involved.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Those are actually remasters. At least Demon's Souls is as they still run the original code alongside the new graphical overhead.

They are remakes. A remaster just upscales the original assets, improves the resolution and framerate, etc. Any release that has all assets completely remade is a remake, but then a remake can also change more things from the original. But they are not remasters.

And DeS doesn't actually run the old PS3 code underneath, it's just based on it and retains the same enemy AI etc. If it did, it would be IDENTICAL to the PS3 version in every way except the surface visuals, which it is not.
 
They are remakes. A remaster just upscales the original assets, improves the resolution and framerate, etc. Any release that has all assets completely remade is a remake, but then a remake can also change more things from the original. But they are not remasters.
Think of it as a house needing renovation.

If you change/fix the beams or any other part, can you say that this house was remade from scratch? Plenty of assets can be remade from the ground up, but the house you get in the end is still the one you had, only hopefully better. If you change the ceiling in this analogy you will have a new ceiling but technically just remastered your house. As long as the old house is standing it's still a remaster.

If you demolish it then built it again trying to keep the feeling the house had, that is a remake. There are grey areas and more complex scenarios, you can expand an old house only keeping some walls making it lose it's original soul and that's repurposing without respecting the original, or you can build from the ground up and then get things from the old house to populate the new (like a fireplace) because the new one didn't feel cozy without it or something. It's still a remake if you did that, but you felt you needed things to channel the old and ground it, it's like fixing the landing per see.
And DeS doesn't actually run the old PS3 code underneath, it's just based on it and retains the same enemy AI etc. If it did, it would be IDENTICAL to the PS3 version in every way except the surface visuals, which it is not.
It's very known and accepted that it does. The way bluepoint remasters games is running two engines in parallel, the original one and their own. Then they just overide the original one for graphics, physics and whatever else they feel is necessary, but never what isn't (necessary).

Last week DF even did a framepacing test with From Software games, including demon souls PS5, and they all exhibited the same latency problem when framesynced and running at 30 fps. If the game wasn't running the original code it wouldn't behave like that as you can't fake something so specific to From Software core technology, almost like a signature at this point. It could also be that it was fixed/replaced and didn't exhibit that behaviour but it did, hinting that it's not down to the rendering overhead but something deeper in the engine logic (they fixed the bad framepacing though).

Bluepoint: I think when you initially look at our engine and our technology, we spent a lot of time making sure that we can basically accomplish the task of running two engines side-by-side. One of the great things about some of the titles we've been able to work on is that they're great titles in their own right and so as we look at the game and we want to replace certain key pieces, we really tailored our technology to be able to extract certain pieces, put certain pieces of the game through our own technology but then also run the original game engine side-by-side. And so with that comes a lot of considerations from memory usage to performance to what kind of threading models and stuff we use to basically allow us to have the most amount of flexibility within each game.
(...) A lot of those things just required tweaks and we try to practice 'don't rewrite it unless it's necessary' and more of a mentality of 'bug fix rather than rewrite'. I think it pays tribute to the original engineers just how much of the original code is actually in that game.
Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-shadow-of-the-colossus-tech-interview

There you go, that's their work pipeline. They never remade any game from the ground up, and probably never will, it's not their modus operandi.

Demon Souls is a very, very, very good remaster, technically. (and that's a compliment, that they can make an old game shine like that - one could argue that remaking it on unreal engine and losing the spark in the process would actually be easier, remaster is not a derrogatory term, which is what a lot of people seem to think. IMO it's not inferior, it's often the superior way to do things and being able to keep them as they were if they want to, also change them if they want to - a bad game wouldn't get a remake anyway and lot's of remakes are crap because they can't surpass the original, there's a reason Bluepoint is the best, and that's because they technically do the best remasters - not remakes.)
 
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RoadHazard

Gold Member
Think of it as a house needing renovation.

If you change/fix the beams or any other part, can you say that this house was remade from scratch? Plenty of assets can be remade from the ground up, but the house you get in the end is still the one you had, only hopefully better. If you change the ceiling in this analogy you will have a new ceiling but technically just remastered your house. As long as the old house is standing it's still a remaster.

If you demolish it then built it again trying to keep the feeling the house had, that is a remake. There are grey areas and more complex scenarios, you can expand an old house only keeping some walls making it lose it's original soul and that's repurposing without respecting the original, or you can build from the ground up and then get things from the old house to populate the new (like a fireplace) because the new one didn't feel cozy without it or something. It's still a remake if you did that, but you felt you needed things to channel the old and ground it, it's like fixing the landing per see.

It's very known and accepted that it does. The way bluepoint remasters games is running two engines in parallel, the original one and their own. Then they just overide the original one for graphics, physics and whatever else they feel is necessary, but never what isn't (necessary).

Last week DF even did a framepacing test with From Software games, including demon souls PS5, and they all exhibited the same latency problem when framesynced and running at 30 fps. If the game wasn't running the original code it wouldn't behave like that as you can't fake something so specific to From Software core technology, almost like a signature at this point. It could also be that it was fixed/replaced and didn't exhibit that behaviour but it did, hinting that it's not down to the rendering overhead but something deeper in the engine logic (they fixed the bad framepacing though).



Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-shadow-of-the-colossus-tech-interview

There you go, that's their work pipeline. They never remade any game from the ground up, and probably never will, it's not their modus operandi.

Demon Souls is a very, very, very good remaster, technically. (and that's a compliment, that they can make an old game shine like that - one could argue that remaking it on unreal engine and losing the spark in the process would actually be easier, remaster is not a derrogatory term, which is what a lot of people seem to think. IMO it's not inferior, it's often the superior way to do things and being able to keep them as they were if they want to, also change them if they want to - a bad game wouldn't get a remake anyway and lot's of remakes are crap because they can't surpass the original, there's a reason Bluepoint is the best, and that's because they technically do the best remasters - not remakes.)

Yeah, I didn't say they have fully remade those games. But it's also not just the original PS3 code emulated with a layer of new graphics on top. They base it on the original code, but then there are small tweaks everywhere. This is especially apparent in DeS, where certain things are significantly changed, while in other places there are almost unnoticeable tweaks to make the game play better (and it does - it doesn't play 1:1 with the original game, but it's made to feel like it does, just a bit smoother and better).
 

AndrewRyan

Member
Would be thrilled to buy a Metal Gear Solid 4: Subsistence. It's been a long time and miss its melancholy atmosphere, sad music, and wonderful weapons! Just needs a control overhaul, fix the transitions, and upgrade all the graphics with HDR, RT, etc.

Metal Gear is great as is, maybe just speed up the transitions.

MGS2 could use another control scheme pass. With updated 4k visuals it would be amazing. The more I think about the more I like a remastered MGS2.

MGS3 is almost perfect now. I lean towards not touching it or trying something radical like the graphical update of Links Awakening.
 

Jinzo Prime

Member
  • Metal Gear Remake: A complete re-imagining of the first two Metal Gear games from the MSX.
  • Metal Gear Solid Remake Part I: A Remake of the first two Metal Gear Solid games from the PS1/PS2. Should be more faithful than MG Remake.
  • Metal Gear Solid Remake Part II: Remake of Snake Eater and Peace Walker.
  • Metal Gear Solid Remake Part III: Remake of Guns of the Patriots, expanded with extra content. Maybe some cut content from Phantom Pain?
 

SSfox

Member
I'm honeslty excited for this, now i won't have to pull off my PS3 when i want to play the games.
 
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