Opinion: The Amount of Remakes We Had Proves that Old AAA Games Are Still More Creative

Deleted member 11370 · Apr 11, 2020

Remakes tend to be a safe bet. What games usually get remakes? Games that had critical and/or commercial acclaim. And that makes your perception absolutely biased. For every good, "creative" game that gets remade there are hundreds, or even thousands, of games that will never get a remake.

Honestly, this topic is like saying that the 1960s had the best music because they had the Beatles, the Stones and The Who, while completely ignoring absolutely everything else that was made during that decade and has not passed the test of time.

astro · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
If you compare Death Stranding to all other games it's creative, but compared to other Kojima games it's more exotic than actually creative (imo

the gameplay loop and online interaction is very creative but that's more of a game design creativity than the world building creativity I'm talking about here

You are going out of your way to dismiss examples that prove you wrong, lol.

Windu · Apr 11, 2020

Idk probably just proves that studios are more willing to fund a known quantity than something that is brand new. Less risk.

Blade Wolf · Apr 11, 2020

Richter1887 said:
You don't have to like it but that doesn't make it any less creative. There is nothing like it out there in the market. Both gameplay wise AND art wise.

MGS is creative but not on the level of DS.

Fair enough, I guess this is getting way too subjective.

DS is no doubt more creative than most modern games that I totally agree. I guess I liked MGS more but yeah it's too subjective.

Not to mention Death Stranding is super unique anyway so it's not a good indicator of the AAA in general.

Loanshark · Apr 11, 2020

You seem to have a strange take on the concept of "proof", friend.

Crossing Eden · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Fair enough, I guess this is getting way too subjective.

DS is no doubt more creative than most modern games that I totally agree.

It's premise is way more over the top than MGS. That premise is just delivered in a more believable way than crotch vampire.

Daniel Westlake · Apr 11, 2020

Pretending FF7 of all things was some wildly creative endeavor the likes of which we no longer see is high tier dumb

Edgar · Apr 11, 2020

Idk, we got two knacks this generation, which means it kinda blows everything else out of the water creativity wise

Dogui · Apr 11, 2020

I can assure you every single dev in the industry is creative. But that's the thing, AAA games nowadays are a lot more expensive to make so they must follow safer formulas compared with back then.

Creativity is risky, and you're forced to make more of the same if there's more money in the table.

The average joe doesn't have an open mind for more creative, different games. It's a playerbase problem.

Crossing Eden · Apr 11, 2020

Dogui said:
The average joe doesn't have an open mind for creative games. It's a playerbase problem.

Fortnite has been one of the most popular games of the generation and the devs shutting it down for a single weekend in an incredibly meta sequel transition made the news before that transition even happened.

Blade Wolf · Apr 11, 2020

Edgar said:
Idk, we got two knacks this generation, which means it kinda blows everything else out of the water creativity wise

Did you just obliterate me and my whole freaking thread?

WadeIt0ut · Apr 11, 2020

Daniel Westlake said:
Pretending FF7 of all things was some wildly creative endeavor the likes of which we no longer see is high tier dumb

I am going to assume the younger gamers never played RPGs older than that. Because FF7 wasn't even overly creative for the genre at that point.

FF7 blew up because it was an RPG in 3D.

Deleted member 16876 · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Fair enough, I guess this is getting way too subjective.

DS is no doubt more creative than most modern games that I totally agree. I guess I liked MGS more but yeah it's too subjective.

Not to mention Death Stranding is super unique anyway so it's not a good indicator of the AAA in general.

I am not sure why AAA is somehow a reason to discount it.

Plenty of creative games are AAA. Not to mention a lot of games in the old days were creative. The ones that are rememberd the most are either the most succesful games or the most unique.

Back in the day you had your fair share of "uncreative" games. Tons of RE clones, tons of Mascot platformer games, tons of rpgs that tried to outdo the spikey hair of FF, tons of racing games that look similiar.

It is still the same thing today. We have a lot of games that are "trendy", that probably won't be remembered or remade but the biggest ones or most unique will be remembered for years to come.

Video Games Are Dumb · Apr 11, 2020

yuoke said:
I can just post this alone with minimal effort to show how not samey games are.

Yeah but let's really break this down. Death Stranding, sure! Weird as hell and totally something out of left field.
Resident Evil 2 is a remake, so let's just ignore that one.
Control is a third person shooter by Remedy who have made third person shooters for 20 years.
The Outer Worlds is Obsidian making a follow up to new vegas, a 10 year old game.
Sekiro is the latest rendition of FROM Software's Soul style game design they've been making for 11 years.
And do I even need to do this with Smash Bros?

Since the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is popular these days, lets look at what else Square was doing at the time.
Bushido Blade, a fighting game.
Einhänder, a shoot em up.
Power Stakes, a weird horse gambling game.
Chocobo's Dungeon, a dungeon crawler.
And guess what, all of those games launch in 1997 alone...oh and they had Final Fantasy 7

If the idea of iteration is more appealing to you, I get it! Right on, that's a valid position.
But let's not kid ourselves, game studios were far far far more creative 25 years ago.
They took risks! Tried new ideas. Not in some sort of new system on an already successful game, they took real risks

Arta · Apr 11, 2020

In this thread, confirmation bias is a thing.

alr1ght · Apr 11, 2020

Dogui said:
I can assure you every single dev in the industry is creative. But that's the thing, AAA games nowadays are a lot more expensive to make so they must follow safer formulas compared with back then.

Creativity is risky, and you're forced to make more of the same if there's more money in the table.

The average joe doesn't have an open mind for more creative, different games. It's a playerbase problem.

This is it.

I just started playing Spider-man, supposedly one of the best games of the gen and all I can think while playing it was "I've played this 10 times already."

Homogeneous designs with a different coat of paint is what I think of when it comes to AAA titles this gen.

mutantmagnet · Apr 11, 2020

yuoke said:

This image has nothing to do with the OP.

astro · Apr 11, 2020

mutantmagnet said:
This image has nothing to do with the OP.

OP has the soul of an old man yelling at clouds.

Crossing Eden · Apr 11, 2020

Video Games Are Dumb said:
Control is a third person shooter by Remedy who have made third person shooters for 20 years.
The Outer Worlds is Obsidian making a follow up to new vegas, a 10 year old game.
Sekiro is the latest rendition of FROM Software's Soul style game design they've been making for 11 years.

All three of these games are wildly different from the studio's last output in spite of those last few games influencing their design.

Video Games Are Dumb said:
If the idea of iteration is more appealing to you, I get it! Right on, that's a valid position.
But let's not kid ourselves, game studios were far far far more creative 25 years ago.

Imagine talking about FF7 as an example of massive creativity and not as a glowing example of iteration taken to it's natural extreme. Imagine living that life. When even the remake of today is an example of iteration.

ClickyCal' · Apr 11, 2020

Arta said:
In this thread, confirmation bias is a thing.

Yep pretty much.

Dogui · Apr 11, 2020

Crossing Eden said:
Fortnite has been one of the most popular games of the generation and the devs shutting it down for a single weekend in an incredibly meta sequel transition made the news before that transition even happened.

It was a creative event, but like, Fortnite wouldn't be a popular game if the gameplay was like a turn based version of Katamari Damacy.

I mean, the idea of battle royale as a genre is really innovative, but it had to be about shooting things anyway.

The event has zero negative impact for a series already that popular. Nobody started to play Fortnite because of the event.

Blade Wolf · Apr 11, 2020

Arta said:
In this thread, confirmation bias is a thing.

Well I am not gonna pretend that I'm not biased with my examples

So please just ignore those examples and hear me out, as it is my ultimate point here:

Regardless of generation trends or certain exceptions, I really do feel like modern AAA game worlds (that includes world building and general style & tone) aren't as creative as it used to be.

astro · Apr 11, 2020

Crossing Eden said:
All three of these games are wildly different from the studio's last output in spite of those last few games influencing their design.

Imagine talking about FF7 as an example of massive creativity and not as a glowing example of iteration taken to it's natural extreme. Imagine living that life.

You are correct, Eden. It must be that many of these people were very young at the time the games they're harking back to were released, and they didn't know how iterative or quite standard in terms of creativity many of them were as they weren't as able to see the bigger picture.

I know for a fact when I was very young, even though I still devoured gaming magazines etc... a new game that was new to ME felt like the biggest and most creative thing ever.

WellbornWarrior · Apr 11, 2020

Crossing Eden said:
Fortnite has been one of the most popular games of the generation and the devs shutting it down for a single weekend in an incredibly meta sequel transition made the news before that transition even happened.

Fortnite isn't exactly the Paragon of creative gameplay just because there are events happening once in a while where all players can do is watching and the devs found an eclective way to decorate their server maintenance.

Edgar · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Did you just obliterate me and my whole freaking thread?

I think I did. Feels good man

Niosai · Apr 11, 2020

I wholeheartedly disagree with OP. Imagine playing something like BotW, Splatoon, and hell, even Fortnite, and saying devs aren't creative anymore.

KernelC · Apr 11, 2020

Boomer thread alert.

I think the game industry is currently going through a bit of a renaissance, so I gotta disagree. Sure there were more JRPGs back then, but the ones we have now are just as good. If you only play a certain genre, you might think "they used to be a lot more creative", but when you go out of those same titles, you will understand how much variety there is in gaming today.

Crossing Eden · Apr 11, 2020

Dogui said:
It was a creative event, but like, Fortnite wouldn't be a popular game if the gameplay was like a turn based version of Katamari Damacy.

But that's not the metric for creativity. The metric for creativity is not "IT HAS TO BE AS OVER THE TOP AS ONE OF HTE MOST NICHE GAMES EVER"

Dogui said:
I mean, the idea of battle royale as a genre is really innovative, but it had to be about shooting things anyway.

Fortnite is less about shooting then it is building. The vast majority of high level play is basically a chess match where you build in a proper enough way to exploit a window where you can deal damage. So yes, it can be downplayed as "it has guns" in the same way that DMC can be downplayed as "it's a hack and slash"

WellbornWarrior said:
Fortnite isn't exactly the Paragon of creative gameplay just because there are events happening once in a while where all players can do is watching and the devs found an eclective way to decorate their server maintenance.

Read above.

astro · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Regardless of generation trends or certain exceptions, I really do feel like modern AAA game worlds (that includes world building and general style & tone) aren't as creative as it used to be.

I think you've been given plenty of examples that disprove this "objectively", and that if you wrote out a top 50-100 list of the most creative AAA games you could find and someone did the same for the last decade, it wouldn't look much different in terms of overall creative visions, etc..

Blade Wolf · Apr 11, 2020

astro said:
I think you've been given plenty of examples that disprove this "objectively", and that if you wrote out a top 50-100 list of the most creative AAA games you could find and someone did the same for the last decade, it wouldn't look much different in terms of overall creative visions, etc..

''I really do feel like''

Crossing Eden · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Well I am not gonna pretend that I'm not biased with my examples

So please just ignore those examples and hear me out, as it is my ultimate point here:

Regardless of generation trends or certain exceptions, I really do feel like modern AAA game worlds (that includes world building and general style & tone) aren't as creative as it used to be.

The only reason you think this is because you weren't old enough at the time to discern which games were the result of iterating on existing ideas and which games were truly innovative in a creative sense. FFVII was the devs iterating on the most successful JRPG ideas at the time while making the game and overall genre more accessible, (yes that dirty word), for mainstream audiences on top of having the best visuals people had seen in a game. So were games like Resident Evil. And even new IPs were the result of iteration first and foremost instead of creating entirely new genres. And even though the perspective had shifted from 2D from 3D, devs didn't just throw out what made their older games worked, they iterated on those ideas to make the transition.

LTTP---->OoT
FFVI---->FFVII

etc.

You're an adult now, so all of these things are more obvious to you.

astro · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
''I really do feel like''

Dude, I understood that, and it doesn't change what I wrote. ;)

Cosmic Voyager · Apr 11, 2020

Video Games Are Dumb said:
Yeah but let's really break this down. Death Stranding, sure! Weird as hell and totally something out of left field.
Resident Evil 2 is a remake, so let's just ignore that one.
Control is a third person shooter by Remedy who have made third person shooters for 20 years.
The Outer Worlds is Obsidian making a follow up to new vegas, a 10 year old game.
Sekiro is the latest rendition of FROM Software's Soul style game design they've been making for 11 years.
And do I even need to do this with Smash Bros?

Since the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is popular these days, lets look at what else Square was doing at the time.
Bushido Blade, a fighting game.
Einhänder, a shoot em up.
Power Stakes, a weird horse gambling game.
Chocobo's Dungeon, a dungeon crawler.
And guess what, all of those games launch in 1997 alone...oh and they had Final Fantasy 7

If the idea of iteration is more appealing to you, I get it! Right on, that's a valid position.
But let's not kid ourselves, game studios were far far far more creative 25 years ago.
They took risks! Tried new ideas. Not in some sort of new system on an already successful game, they took real risks

Are you seriously trying to say that a dev must make a game in a different genre every single time in order to meet some arbitrary standard of creativity? LMAO

who gives a shit whether Remedy has made TPS games for years, that has no bearing on the content and creativity of their game. Square just made turn-based RPGs forever, but I don't see them getting flak for that (because again, it has nothing to do with the content of each individual game). Also by your metric, you better toss out Resi, MGS, and all the other franchises that are being touted as creative in here, since all they do is iterate upon themselves.

Mass_Pincup · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Regardless of generation trends or certain exceptions, I really do feel like modern AAA game worlds (that includes world building and general style & tone) aren't as creative as it used to be.

In what way something like DQ 11 or FF XV not as creative as their predecessor?

Video Games Are Dumb said:
Yeah but let's really break this down. Death Stranding, sure! Weird as hell and totally something out of left field.
Resident Evil 2 is a remake, so let's just ignore that one.
Control is a third person shooter by Remedy who have made third person shooters for 20 years.
The Outer Worlds is Obsidian making a follow up to new vegas, a 10 year old game.
Sekiro is the latest rendition of FROM Software's Soul style game design they've been making for 11 years.
And do I even need to do this with Smash Bros?

Since the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is popular these days, lets look at what else Square was doing at the time.
Bushido Blade, a fighting game.
Einhänder, a shoot em up.
Power Stakes, a weird horse gambling game.
Chocobo's Dungeon, a dungeon crawler.
And guess what, all of those games launch in 1997 alone...oh and they had Final Fantasy 7

If the idea of iteration is more appealing to you, I get it! Right on, that's a valid position.
But let's not kid ourselves, game studios were far far far more creative 25 years ago.
They took risks! Tried new ideas. Not in some sort of new system on an already successful game, they took real risks

I mean Left Alive, Life is Strange 2, The Quiet Man and Kingdom Heats are all pretty different...

Blade Wolf · Apr 11, 2020

Crossing Eden said:
The only reason you think this is because you weren't old enough at the time to discern which games were the result of iterating on existing ideas and which games were truly innovative in a creative sense.

you may be right but I honestly do feel this way, it's like a believe I guess, like how some people think Japanese cars are more reliable than American ones

Mass_Pincup said:
In what way something like DQ 11 or FF XV not as creative as their predecessor?

I could answer but it's subjective as shit

KernelC · Apr 11, 2020

Niosai said:
I wholeheartedly disagree with OP. Imagine playing something like BotW, Splatoon, and hell, even Fortnite, and saying devs aren't creative anymore.

Indeed. How can you look at:
Tearaway, Journey, God of War (that one continuous shot is simply amazing), Gravity Rush, Bloodborne (literally the only good Lovecraftian interpretation in gaming to date), Titanfall, Persona, etc. And say "meh, they used to be better"?

Ruisu · Apr 11, 2020

Video Games Are Dumb said:
Yeah but let's really break this down. Death Stranding, sure! Weird as hell and totally something out of left field.
Resident Evil 2 is a remake, so let's just ignore that one.
Control is a third person shooter by Remedy who have made third person shooters for 20 years.
The Outer Worlds is Obsidian making a follow up to new vegas, a 10 year old game.
Sekiro is the latest rendition of FROM Software's Soul style game design they've been making for 11 years.
And do I even need to do this with Smash Bros?

Since the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is popular these days, lets look at what else Square was doing at the time.
Bushido Blade, a fighting game.
Einhänder, a shoot em up.
Power Stakes, a weird horse gambling game.
Chocobo's Dungeon, a dungeon crawler.
And guess what, all of those games launch in 1997 alone...oh and they had Final Fantasy 7

If the idea of iteration is more appealing to you, I get it! Right on, that's a valid position.
But let's not kid ourselves, game studios were far far far more creative 25 years ago.
They took risks! Tried new ideas. Not in some sort of new system on an already successful game, they took real risks

Oh I get it, so it's only valid creativity if when reducing the game to a one line description it's different than the one line description of the other games. Doesn't sound arbitrary at all.

Video Games Are Dumb · Apr 11, 2020

Crossing Eden said:
Imagine talking about FF7 as an example of massive creativity and not as a glowing example of iteration taken to it's natural extreme. Imagine living that life. When even the remake of today is an example of iteration.

Don't condensed to me while skipping over the main fucking point of the post.

Since the Final Fantasy 7 Remake is popular these days, lets look at what else Square was doing at the time.
Bushido Blade, a fighting game.
Einhänder, a shoot em up.
Power Stakes, a weird horse gambling game.
Chocobo's Dungeon, a dungeon crawler.
And guess what, all of those games launch in 1997 alone...oh and they had Final Fantasy 7

There you go, genius

Nanashrew · Apr 11, 2020

Niosai said:
I wholeheartedly disagree with OP. Imagine playing something like BotW, Splatoon, and hell, even Fortnite, and saying devs aren't creative anymore.

I think Splatoon is actually mid-budget. Zelda, Mario and Animal Crossing are AAA budgeted games from Nintendo though.

Even games mentioned in this thread like Nier and Gravity Rush are mid-tier developed.

Unique hardly or never been done before AAA games are few and far between. You'll find a LOT more wildly creative stuff in the small to mid-tier budget titles.

astro · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
you may be right but I honestly do feel this way, it's like a believe I guess, like how some people think Japanese cars are more reliable than American ones

Well, it's good that you recognize it's not objective anymore and that strong bias plays into it.

Don't get me wrong mate, I have tonnes of bias when it comes to gaming that informs my opinions of stuff, it's hard to unpick it sometimes.

Dogui · Apr 11, 2020

Blade Wolf said:
Well I am not gonna pretend that I'm not biased with my examples

So please just ignore those examples and hear me out, as it is my ultimate point here:

Regardless of generation trends or certain exceptions, I really do feel like modern AAA game worlds (that includes world building and general style & tone) aren't as creative as it used to be.

I think it's easier to make creative worlds when they are based on pre rendered or static images and not realistic assets.

Most of the time, interesting settings comes either in Isometric crpgs, jrpgs with prerendered scenarios, or Point and Click adventures.

chrisPjelly · Apr 11, 2020

There's definitely a tendency for modern games to lean towards a certain cinematic feel, but aside from that, I think gameplay is as broad as ever.

Fisty · Apr 11, 2020

Honestly, I think it's just more down to the fact that japanese games are BACK

Like... the AAA JP devs finally stopped chasing western trends, nailed HD development, and have embraced what makes them unique. Gen 7 was awful, broad strokes

Crossing Eden · Apr 11, 2020

Video Games Are Dumb said:
Don't condensed to me while skipping over the main fucking point of the post.

So you you want to take the L and see what the publishers of those games you mentioned are also making and how they wildly differ in aesthetic and content?

Fisty said:
Honestly, I think it's just more down to the fact that japanese games are BACK

Like... the AAA JP devs finally stopped chasing western trends and have embraced what makes them unique. Gen 7 was awful, broad strokes

They haven't stopped chasing western trends. They've just stopped trying to make 1:1 clones. Like BOTW is the result of the devs playing games like Far Cry and Skyrim. DMCV was influenced by DmC. RE2 and RE7 were influenced by some modern horror design trends like stalkers. Death Stranding removed all of the anime elements of Kojima games entirely. etc. They're putting their own spin on existing ideas.

Video Games Are Dumb · Apr 11, 2020

Ruisu said:
Oh I get it, so it's only valid creativity if when reducing the game to a one line description it's different than the one line description of the other games. Doesn't sound arbitrary at all.

I'm not going to write a fucking novel to appease forum randos.

What is with the shitty fucking attitudes in this thread? If you have a point, argue it? Kill the sarcasm ya sophomores.

Blade Wolf · Apr 11, 2020

Edgar said:
I think I did. Feels good man

I'm about to counter your whack-ass Knack card with our queen & savior Space Channel 5

hydro94530 · Apr 11, 2020

You're thread title alone is enough for me to completely disagree with this lol, but I shall read anyways out of morbid curiosity.

Edit: Yeah super hard disagree on literally everything. There's one recent game that immediately destroys all your points, and that game is Astro Bot.

Encephalon · Apr 11, 2020

It's more like,
1. it's too expensive to take the risks these days and has been since the PS3 era.
2. The move to 3D forced developers to reimagine games, hence encouraging more experimentation

Ruisu · Apr 11, 2020

Video Games Are Dumb said:
I'm not going to write a fucking novel to appease forum randos.

What is with the shitty fucking attitudes in this thread? If you have a point, argue it? Kill the sarcasm ya sophomores.

It's not about how much you write, it's about the argument that games like control for example are not as creative because it's "another third person shooter".

V has come to · Apr 11, 2020

i mean, i do agree that the western AAA scene these days is fucking boring as shit (with a handful of exceptions of course) but with the resurgence of japanese games and the rise of indies theres more quality and creative games these days than ever before, so who gives a shit

Opinion: The Amount of Remakes We Had Proves that Old AAA Games Are Still More Creative

Do you think old AAA games have more creative & crazy ideas?

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