This review is great, but one thing continues to stand out to me:

Video game "remakes" have rarely been actual remakes, and the critical response to #FF7R has really been highlighting that. (thread) https://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-vii-remake-the-kotaku-review-1842697312

Video game remakes have far more often just been remasters. The idea of a Final Fantasy VII remake has usually been of a beat-for-beat recreation of the original game, just with better graphics and real orchestral music and voice acting.

There have been actual remakes, but not many. And reboots of classic games exist, but they're not as common, and tend to adapt from the originals in such broad strokes that only the very basic concepts remain.

And that's just not how anything else does it. Remakes are just adaptations within the same medium.

In movies, for instance, a remake is almost always a completely different retelling. Similar characters and premise, but different shots, events, story progression.

Disney recently started remaking their animated movies while changing as little as possible, and there's a whole conversation about how weird and pointless that is.

But it's all we've expected from video games, and now that FF7R is doing it normally it's a "bold new direction."

There are reasons for this, I think? Mostly the technological advancement of the medium; the goal has been more about seeing old games in new, more detailed and complex ways, rather than trying to retell and reimagine like remakes in other mediums. I get that.

But I also think it's refreshing and not actually all that weird to finally see a remake that tries to actually retell and reimagine the game. To tell it's story, give us its world, and design its systems in new ways that give us a different experience of the game we love.

Because however much we've come to expect straight-up translations, that's not normal anywhere but in games. And I feel like it's a nice step to have our classic games recreated in full like this, rather than just served up with fancier graphics.

I look forward to playing it.