Retellings, Rereleases, and Old Stories Made New
Spoilers for Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020) ahead.
It’s been a hot minute since I played Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation, but I remembered the main beats: Shinra are bad guys, Avalanche are good guys, Don Corneo is the worst, Sephiroth isn’t a big-name character until near the end of the Midgar arc, and there are a distinct lack of shadowy creatures all over the place. To that end, I’ve been watching my little sister stream 2020’s Final Fantasy VII: Remake for a while, and in a big, in-person finale, we finally finished it. Some things stayed the same as I remember, but to my glee, a number of things changed, too.
The time for credits rolled around. “The Unknown Journey Will Continue” spread across the screen. And I felt like I was in the middle of something completely new, completely exciting, and truly unprecedented in video game storytelling so far.
For as long as I’ve been playing games, I’ve seen them released, rereleased, remastered, and remade from the ground up. I’ve repurchased or reacquired those new releases, even if I already own “the original,” per se. The same way that people reread old books, or go back to watch old movies, or even as those same movies are remade down the line, I love to revisit stories and experiences I’ve already had. I like to see what’s the same, what I’ve forgotten, what has simply faded with time, like experiencing pockets of a story for the first time again. And I like to see what’s different; new addition, new features, entirely new presentation-styles. They make what’s old new again in all sorts of ways. FFVII Remake got me thinking about how many games I’ve been able to play, experience, or reexperience because of this medium’s affinity for evolution, and the different ways it comes out.
Consider this a celebration of the ways that games endure, even as the tools we use to share them continue to change.
Accessibility
As technology evolves, our medium for games evolves with it. So, too, have the old forerunners of our medium. Without a lot of technical know-how, you just can’t run a Windows 95 CD-ROM on a gaming rig like you used to! With the rise of digital marketplaces, updated platforms, and new hardware for decades, developers have long since striven to keep games accessible to players.
Myst, once released in 1993 on the CD-ROM for Mac OS, was ported to all sorts of mid-90s-era hardware: Windows, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguar, PlayStation, and the 3DO. Following that, updated versions began to crop up with built-in hint systems or full three-dimensional movement options (Myst: Masterpiece Edition and realMyst, respectively), ultimately leading to the recent virtual reality release in 2020. All of this is to say nothing of Myst’s general accessibility through computer game platforms like Steam or GOG. Throughout thirty years, Myst has endured and been accessible to audiences throughout its lifespan.
My most personal example is the Final Fantasy saga, rereleased on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. After playing (and accidentally keeping) my friend’s copy of Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, I was enamored with Final Fantasy, but lacked an NES or SNES to play the original games, or a PlayStation to partake in the newer rereleases. And like clockwork, the Final Fantasy Advance series kept letting me experience those entries I had missed by time and the resources I had. Now, they’re just as readily available as ever through those digital marketplaces.
Same with the older Super Mario Bros. games; it would have been years before I could experience Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3 if not for their re-releases on the Game Boy Advance. Even the original Super Mario Bros. wouldn’t have been available to me for years to come if not for its Deluxe re-release on the Game Boy Color
Digital marketplaces tend to be at the epicenter for this kind of accessibility. Even if a household has access to a single console, the availability of previous titles in their libraries is more astounding than ever, and continues to provide accessible options for past releases.
Expansion
These rereleases tend to be largely the same as their predecessors, but with just enough extra or new content. It’s something familiar with a hint of new, that much more appealing to pick up and try again, or take the plunge to try for the first time.
Final Fantasy VI touted new dungeons not in earlier releases, last hurrahs to enjoy after conquering the main story. I was already sold on FFVI, but was all the same excited for those elements to stack onto my experience.
Chrono Trigger on the Nintendo DS was similar. Not only was it accessible based on what I had (which was not an SNES and hundreds of dollars on an authentic cartridge), but it touted new dungeons and a new ending on top of the existing slew. As the game that piqued my interest about multiple endings before I even had it, that was a huge selling point.
Even Myst including the Rime Age in the future releases; one more little section of the world to find and explore, even if it isn’t required to complete the game. Just something a little extra for old players to return to, or for new players to discover alongside them.
These were far more popular with RPG rereleases in the past; providing something a little extra, so players reinvesting in a game they’d already enjoyed felt worth it, that it was more than a direct port. Even for a wide-eyed, very new player to the game (and genre), those extra bits of flair were always appreciated.
Elaboration
Maybe technology wasn’t where the creators wanted it to be when they released their game, like George Lucas and the Star Wars prequels. Maybe, something called for consistency across all releases, like with the Yakuza series. Maybe it’s more than accessibility through platform, but accessibility and refinement through gameplay, elaborated upon for modern audiences.
Some of the old Nintendo classics, like Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy III, and Final Fantasy IV, have received updated releases on various platforms with 3D-style graphics, instead of the original pixel-style art, sometimes more aesthetically accessible to newer players. Nier: Replicant was released as its original was designed by its creators: all players received the same narrative and character design, instead of Western audiences getting an alternative form that tried to cater to Western concepts and images of masculinity.
The Last of Us: Part One has the graphical overhauls of two generations of hardware, plus the technological advancements of the PlayStation 5: haptic feedback in the controllers to further immerse into the experience, new accessibility features for players, and other fan-requested items, like difficulty settings and photo modes. Sometimes, a game is elaborated based on what its players want most. Similarly, Dead Space is expecting a rerelease in 2022, nearly fifteen years after its original release, with more refined graphics and sound design to catch up to (and terrify) a new generation of players.
The Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 2 Kiwami releases took the older Yakuza games and updated them to be more in-line with the later releases: additional substories, Heat Actions/finishing moves, dedicated Japanese voice acting, more fleshed-out combat system, and the like. Resident Evil 2 and 3 were also remade from the ground up, adopting the revolutionary camera perspective that Resident Evil 4 pioneered while marrying it with more modern horror elements: runaway sections, stalking-type enemies, darkness and flashlight physics, and designated checkpoints on lower difficulties.
The forthcoming System Shock is a remake of the 1994 cyber-adventure game, rebuilt with modern design sensibilities, control schemes, and graphics to more hauntingly portray Citadel Station. Where the original can look like a pixelated, clunky relic to modern players, developers are striving to make System Shock more accessible to a wider audience than ever while remaining faithful to the elements that defined the original release, hopefully creating an experience that is a truer reflection of the themes and atmosphere that original developers strived for nearly thirty years prior.
Diversion
The rug-pull. The bait & switch. The new story, masquerading as something old and familiar. The potential for an entirely unique experience, between covers and titles so recognizable. These, in my experience, are some of the rarest stories, so much so that I wonder if it’s actually been done prior to this, in any medium.
Now we come full-circle, back to Final Fantasy VII Remake. Past the graphical overhaul, past the voice acting, past the gameplay updates, FFVII Remake makes a point of spinning everything players expected about a remake on its head. This isn’t treading old ground in high-definition, or with modernized gameplay, this is new ground in a familiar setting. The story feels familiar to anyone who’s played the original FFVII, but starts to introduce shifts and changes: strange shadow creatures float about and force (or prevent) events in the world; the big bad Sephiroth makes named appearances far sooner than before; far more emphasis is had outside main character Cloud Strife’s perspective; Barret, another main character, is straight-up brought back to life after a brush with death; flashes of the original narrative are hinted at in foreshadowing, knowledge the original game’s characters never had.
I went into Remake expecting a funky and updated romp of the first chunk of FFVII’s story, and instead I kept getting whispers of “that’s not how this went,” and “I don’t remember that part.” FFVII Remake is making a name for this strange method, of creating a whole new story behind an all-too-familiar title, and it’s showing the storytelling potential of doing so from right out of the gate. The omissions, differences, and divergences between the original and Remake, often seen as low-points in other adaptations, are its greatest asset. Those differences are creating a brand-new story in a world people thought they knew everything about. This is the peak of remake-based storytelling: not just accessible in hardware, or gameplay, but in story itself. This is a story that new players can enjoy just as much as players who lived and breathed Final Fantasy VII as far back as 1997. It ends, not in a familiar sense of knowing what’s to come, but in the most unexpected way for a remake: a cliffhanger.
This is the next step for retelling familiar stories: true reexperiencing. The old fundamentally being made new again.
The Unknown Journey Will Continue
People are defined by stories: the ones they make, the ones they tell, and the ones they share. We have told the same stories throughout all time, and have adapted them for all time. How we reintroduce the stories to the next generation changes and adapts based on the stories, based on our way of storytelling, based on the need for those stories. I hope you’ve been able to appreciate those same stories in your life, too, and the potential they each have going forward.
