I can't attest to the state the game is currently in. But speaking as someone who got fleeced out of 40 bucks when this came out, XIII may very well represent the worst that this industry's fetishization of remakes has to offer. The original XIII is a rare case where I honestly believe a sequel would have been a better opportunity to improve the original. The original XIII is far from a perfect game; if you want an excellent example of style over substance, it's ripe fruit for picking. Underneath its stylistic sheen and comic book influences are... another generic shooter. Once you step outside of the story sections that drag on, the actual meat and potatoes of XIII are paced pretty damn well for a game that came out in 2003. There's a solid understanding of level-based gimmicks that never feel bombastic enough to make for set pieces, but never feel thrown aside enough to be the left-over bullet points on a mid-2010s Call of Duty announcement video. Trying to do it all over again misses the point that, while the good parts of XIII certainly aren't going anywhere, they're stagnant without proper iteration.
XIII, as the remake I knew it as, showed little interest in upping the ante. If you ignore how this thing launched for a moment, you might find that it's a retread without a quarter of the original's soul. The art style, for one, still bears little resemblance to the original, favoring a more modernized, cartoony vibe. But even if you look past that, only the bare minimum has been done to add onto a game that's approaching its twentieth anniversary. Unlike the original, you don't have to install a fan patch to get it to be less clunky on modern operating systems... and that's it.
But let me talk about that technical state for a moment. The easiest way to describe how bad this thing was when it first released is this: in the original XIII, when you move around, the characters talking to you track your position with their heads. That a feature this basic in 2003 wasn't put into its 2020 remake should ring massive alarm bells. But that's hardly the tip of the iceberg. You want to know what that is? They remade all of the cutscenes in this... except for the first one. If I wanted to sound pretentious, I'd say watching a cutscene through osmosis is an innovative use of second-person gameplay. But it doesn't add anything. You're staring at a generic NPC as he stares at a wall, and you almost have to wonder: if they didn't have the talent to remake all of the cutscenes, why bother? The answer to that is that this remake had one of the most mismanaged, tumultuous developments of any to have come out so far this decade—worse than Cyberpunk. You think Bluepoint is bad? "Oh, Demon's Souls misses the artistic intent of the original"—when this came out, shooting didn't work. AI didn't work. The sound design was busted to shit, and you better believe that this thing was littered with more miscellaneous bugs than what we know of the pre-historic era. God, I wish Bluepoint made this instead of some yokel who thought he could harang success out of underpaid, overworked, and still-in-training interns. Fucking... imagine if CD Projekt Red did that. And Cyberpunk is the posterchild for rushed development now? Fuck me, man.
This might be better now, but honestly? I'm not going to bother with this again, and I don't think you should, either.
XIII, as the remake I knew it as, showed little interest in upping the ante. If you ignore how this thing launched for a moment, you might find that it's a retread without a quarter of the original's soul. The art style, for one, still bears little resemblance to the original, favoring a more modernized, cartoony vibe. But even if you look past that, only the bare minimum has been done to add onto a game that's approaching its twentieth anniversary. Unlike the original, you don't have to install a fan patch to get it to be less clunky on modern operating systems... and that's it.
But let me talk about that technical state for a moment. The easiest way to describe how bad this thing was when it first released is this: in the original XIII, when you move around, the characters talking to you track your position with their heads. That a feature this basic in 2003 wasn't put into its 2020 remake should ring massive alarm bells. But that's hardly the tip of the iceberg. You want to know what that is? They remade all of the cutscenes in this... except for the first one. If I wanted to sound pretentious, I'd say watching a cutscene through osmosis is an innovative use of second-person gameplay. But it doesn't add anything. You're staring at a generic NPC as he stares at a wall, and you almost have to wonder: if they didn't have the talent to remake all of the cutscenes, why bother? The answer to that is that this remake had one of the most mismanaged, tumultuous developments of any to have come out so far this decade—worse than Cyberpunk. You think Bluepoint is bad? "Oh, Demon's Souls misses the artistic intent of the original"—when this came out, shooting didn't work. AI didn't work. The sound design was busted to shit, and you better believe that this thing was littered with more miscellaneous bugs than what we know of the pre-historic era. God, I wish Bluepoint made this instead of some yokel who thought he could harang success out of underpaid, overworked, and still-in-training interns. Fucking... imagine if CD Projekt Red did that. And Cyberpunk is the posterchild for rushed development now? Fuck me, man.
This might be better now, but honestly? I'm not going to bother with this again, and I don't think you should, either.
Nancyfly
1 year ago