By Matthew Moorcroft

So, what about that Ocarina of Time trailer?

It’s hard to not immediately have a little bit of nostalgic flutters when you hear Koji Kondo’s iconic music return in it’s fully orchestrated glory. And while you can make easy jokes about the look of it – it’s definitely got the sheen of those “Nintendo games in UE5” videos that suck much of the life out of these vibrant games – it’s certainly not as immediately bad looking as I would have anticipated. If Nintendo is good at anything consistently, it’s making sure their games are at least polished and look appealing.

But as appealing as it admittedly does look, and as lavishly faithful and 1-to-1 it reportedly is, it highlights a serious problem in the way that games are seen and talked in the modern day. We live in a world where classic games, lesser known games, and even games that are only a couple of years old get remade on the regular to appease a growing market that either can’t go back to play these classic games (for the record, Ocarina of Time is readily available on modern Switch hardware if you are willing to fork over a yearly fee and for those that aren’t it’s easily emulated) or for whatever reason don’t wanna play something older then they are. The latter, at least, is no different then many who simply won’t watch a movie older then 1990 – to them, it might as well be dated and non-existent.

With films though, and by extension most other forms of media and art, there is an expectation to leave well enough alone. Sure, most Gen Alpha or Gen Z haven’t seen Citizen Kane or The Godfather, but I suspect even they would mostly balk at the idea of remaking them. With gaming however, remakes are not only embraced but seemingly encouraged; once a game gets too old, it’s off to the remake machine so it becomes palatable for little Jimmy who thinks the game looks lame compared to his usual more modern, hyper ray-traced looking games that are the standard of the industry at the moment.

Talking about this is difficult as I don’t think the idea of remaking anything – movies, games, whatever – is inherently anti-art. It can be certainly lazy and cynical, but under somebody with a story to tell or a new angle to the material remakes can be a great way to revisit a work and look at it from a new perspective. But, at least in gaming, there is a real resistance from gamers and even the casual audience to the idea that sometimes it’s ok to let things be bygones; to them, if a game is not “fun” anymore or “janky” then it’s not worth playing and needs to be updated to their personal standards.

I talk about this now mostly because Ocarina of Time, a game that has already been remade once before (and excellently made I add, making this second one even more frustrating), feels like the pinnacle of remaking something simply because it’s audience is unwilling to engage with older media simply because it’s “difficult”. Sure, something like this new Ocarina of Time, or those new God of War remakes, or The Last of Us Part I, or Resident Evil 4, or Metal Gear Solid Delta, or the Persona remakes, or Silent Hill 2, or Dead Space, or the numerous other ones we get on a yearly basis now might “objectively” play better since it’s using updated, modern controls, but a lot of the games these are updating or trying to “fix” had those difficulties not as bugs but as features.

This also reached a head earlier this year with Yakuza Kiwami 3, a half-assed, ridiculously cynical remake that aimed to modernize a game that many have labeled as dated and jank, and while Yakuza 3 certainly is of it’s time Kiwami 3 makes very little case for it’s own existence (the changes to it’s story aside). It’s a case of games as profit and product; don’t think about them, don’t digest them, just consume and enjoy.

So where do we end up drawing the line here? I’m not going to say that forcing gamers to sit down and play games they aren’t interested is the answer – I think if anything that will honestly just breed a ton of hostility and worsen the situation -but an outpouring of remakes, many of which are lesser then their original outings, just fills me instinctual dread at both creative bankruptcy as well as the idea of the games industry not viewing itself as a creative endeavor. More so then any other medium, games view themselves less and less as art and more as entertainment, as playthings, and they deserve more then that.

Look, you are well inclined to be excited for these things. There are positives to many of the remakes I mentioned above despite all of them feeling needless in my mind, even if most of that is due to the fact that many games nowadays have a baseline technical polish above other generations. But as somebody who desperately has been pushing for games to be seen as an artform rather then a piece of tech can be upgraded, personally I think enough is enough.