Alright, alright – its no secret that the Final Fantasy X HD re-release announced at last year’s Tokyo Game Show was going to be a popular item among gamers. First time hearing of this? We have a list posted if you missed the games that were seeing new life breathed into them.
I was one of those who never owned a PlayStation 1, much less a PlayStation 2. Sure, I’d go over to a friends house to play games like Twisted Metal and Metal Gear Solid, but I never was able to jump on the fanboy wagon that keeps people all over the world enthralled with the tales that are spun out of Square-Enix’s 1st Production Department (the people responsible for all of the Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy games).
Final Fantasy X was my first leap into that arena.
I watched a roommate in my dorm play. I followed the story every night. I started to love the story, the characters, the world that was shaped. Having worked around video games for so long, I know that most people tend to rave about how FFVII or VIII are the pillars to which Final Fantasy is so vaunted. While it is a personal goal to make my way back through that jungle of emotion and sleepless nights, this is a game I’m throwing my money at the moment it hits shelves.
While the Tokyo Game Show saw the announcement, there hasn’t been any details given since. Interviews with the developers since September have made brief mention of the title, usually amounting more to water cooler talk than actual concrete screenshots or videos. Over the weekend at the Taipei Game Show, with some clarification from Andriasang, we now know that this HD release is more a remaster, “like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus rather than full remakes”. Like it or not, we are going to see these HD remasters stick around and continue to sell. Never fear! If Andriasang is correct we should be seeing solid talent at the helm in producer Shinji Hashimoto (Front Mission, Kingdom Hearts among his other credits).
Look forward to spending hours planning your Sphere Grids, and playing Blitzball till your eyes bleed…all over again. Final Fantasy X HD will be released for both the PS3 and PS Vita systems.
I feel like these HD updates are really targeting the people who may not have caught the game the first time around, or maybe those players who have played it but don’t own it anymore, but I still have a PS2 and my copy of FFX, and I see no reason if there’s no new content to play it again.
Then again, maybe my lack of interest comes from not having a PS3 or Vita, or an HDTV. It’s a mystery.
That is exactly it.
I run into people everyday that won’t even touch a game if they feel the graphics aren’t good enough – they are talking about games that may not touch the ‘realism’ offered from today’s shooters, like Tales of Vesperia, or even the Fable series. It is always a matter of opinion. You obviously don’t need HD to enjoy these older games. Its hard not to be caught up in the world of “GRAPHICS! GRAPHICS!”, and there are a lot of titles that are so pretty I’ve been tempted to ask it on a date. I’ve been sorely tempted to buy a PS2 to be able to play all of the older titles I missed out on, especially since the local shop has it for dirt cheap. If you have a PS3 and got ahold of an HDTV, would you buy a remake, instead of a remaster?
I take remakes on a case-by-case basis. Most of the time a remake is done it’s of a popular and well-loved game/movie from the past, often times there is no need to do it, and indeed they end up losing what made them special at the time. But some games, for various reasons, don’t hold up to time. I think Final Fantasy VII is one of these games. Pick it up and play it sometime. The controls are annoying because you have to hold a button to sprint, so you end up holding the button all the time. There’s a lot of needless wandering and grinding, and the graphics and sound do not hold up to later titles. A few changes here and there would make it amazing again. But FFX was as perfect an RPG experience, both in gameplay and graphical aspects, that to reboot it would be a travesty.
My argument against remakes has always been “why don’t you take a swing as a shitty movie/game?” No one should want to remake Citizen Kane, but take a crack at Showgirls. Leave Super Metroid alone, but see if you can fix Infinite Undiscovery.