Persona 3 Reload is Great but Remakes are Bad | Persona 3 Reload Review

[@JonathanJuan]

I think there’s some nice prose here but I distinctly disagree with your thesis. One thing with games being art is that they are also very distinctly tied to technology that quickly progresses, and so we often have art that is compromised by the limitations of its time. Traditionally, art was most often limited by the artist’s technique - a painter has nearly all colors available to them, and the difficulty is figuring out how to best make use of them to reflect their creative vision. Technology would not drastically change this in a short amount of time. Games are not exactly the same, though. Persona always had the vision of being essentially a playable anime, and tried to approximate that through the low poly models and minimal voice acting. I think that the fact that we can mirror that original creative vision in a way that was impossible for them to do before has some merit to its creation. That being said, I also think that a remake doesn’t necessarily replace the original either. It still exists, and while preservation is a potential concern for other games, we don’t have any real lost media when it comes to the original P3. Physical art was singular - there was only one Mona Lisa, and you have to go to Paris to see it - but digital art is much easier to replicate in a format so close to the original that it is easier to retain over time. I agree with you that I’m excited more about Persona 6 and the improvement that brings, but this thesis that the merit to art is lost by remaking it is an older traditional field of thought that is just not broad enough to cover something as modern and innovative as games. Games already require involvement of the player as part of its artistic expression (it’s why Ebert didn’t consider them art, a notion I completely disagree with as a disqualifier, but also acknowledge makes it a different form of art than all that came before it). If Persona 6 was not well into development, your point might stand a bit stronger about the dangers of lacking innovation, but as it stands we are about a few months away from it’s reveal and about a year or so away from it’s release. I think that’s the biggest sign that both can exist - that historical art can be preserved, new art can be developed, and art that seeks to reimagine something closer to what the artists originally wanted can all completely co-exist, with their own merits, without taking away from the validity of the other.

[@FirstPlace97]

Yeah, that's a good response. I agree with pretty much everything you said there but that's why this topic has bothered me for a bit and is a bit of a paradox for me. It's not easy for me to just accept that our "old" media is getting replaced by new editions. To me, if the remake is principally a 1-1 restoration, as has been done many times before with classic films that might have been damaged through time in physical form, I'm not really up in arms about it. The example you use about classical art, such as paintings, is a great point that I have considered a bit myself. The analogy I use is, the encore performances of Shakespeare's plays are never really called into question for perhaps one reason: we never got to see the original rendition of his plays with him performing them, so we can only try to approximate his vision. In that sense, because there is no "definitive" Shakespeare, we will continue to re-imagine his plays on our own terms and adaptations. We can argue forever about who played Othello best, etc. But like you said with the Mona Lisa, there is a definitive version and that is the original. I believe that we should absolutely take influence from older works and try to find the "true" artistic vision using whatever innovative means available at present. But I think we can only really do this going forward by adding rather than supplementing. I don't appreciate the trend of remakes because I don't view it to be so much an artistic endeavor rather than a short-sighted commercial ploy. When I reviewed RE4R, I enjoyed the game for what it was. I couldn't help think that the new developers misunderstood many aspects of the story and the conventional design philosophy; the tank controls and precision shooting were not flaws of their time, rather intuitive choices. As a sufferer of OCD, I also think about how a process can be repeated ad infinitum to the point of becoming redundant. Like Persona 3 teaches us, life is imperfect and we have to deal with it as it comes. The corollary to this would be Persona 5's message about "if you hold on, life won't change." There's an anecdote from Scorsese, when he talks about how Sir David Lean was still editing (the restoration of) Lawrence of Arabia near his death. We can always go back and find new ways of cutting the pie. Sometimes we had it right the first time. So I completely understand your point of view and as someone who usually appreciates the innovation more than the creation, I agree with you. But the other part of me thinks a lot of these remakes, whatever you want to call them, are for the wrong reasons and might cause stagnation ultimately. I do like re-imaginings more, though -- like Scarface (1983) or Bad Lieutenant New Orleans, for example. We can do with more of those. Let the late, great veterans live, though.

[@user-ec8nz2ns4b]

Playable anime...? Where'd you hear that? I thought they said their vision was life simulation to teach lessons to the youth about spending your time carefully amidst other important things such as acceptance of loss and death, facing the ugly parts about oneself, and standing up to abusers and society at large. I mean all the games are rated 15+. They are basically made for high schoolers.

[@meta.versus]

Good video! Excited to see more! Just be sure to watch your audio levels. Going from quiet voiceovers, to ear-blasting music, back to quiet voiceovers right at the start was quite the jumpscare.

[@FirstPlace97]

Thank you. Yeah, I should put more warnings for when that happens, lol.

[@andrewmcmichael55]

Good video, nice insights

[@MarcosSSRN]

sorry but i disagree thanks to this remake people who want to get more into the persona lore and word are easy and good way to get more into that.

[@FirstPlace97]

yeah but that's also inevitable to happen with any new release of this caliber. It's kind of like with the Resident Evil remakes, they are remaking them for continuity while also doing retcons that change how the originals played out. It's good that new fans are finding Persona, but potentially bad if they end up going "meh" toward the originals.