Sunday, April 19, 2026
Retreading Old Ground
The
world of video games has entered the era of retreading its past and
serving it up in a new coat of paint. Visual novels
are no exception to this tread with the last couple of years
providing a plethora of classic titles given this treatment. These
games can be broadly split into three categories based on the nature
of the alterations performed on them, the Remaster, the Remake and
the Reimagining. A Remaster is a simple touch up to the graphics,
music and other technical features to bring the title in line with
modern sensibilities without making any sweeping changes to its core
identity. If the developer wants to redo their work on the original
then they opt for a Remake which aims to shake up its elements and
make additions or changes to the narrative direction while still
keep the foundations of the original game. Then there are Reimaginings which rip up
everything and start from scratch with new systems and graphics
entirely distinct from the original and these aim to capture the original's spirit in a new form. Each brings something unique to the table
for visual novels so let’s reuse, reduce and recycle our way around
this industry trend.
Ship Of Theseus
Remasters
might seem the lowest effort of the three types since it is easy to
dismiss them as a quickly slapped together product due to the way
they lean towards minor changes. However, as anyone who has played a
bad Remaster will tell you a lot can go wrong even with the simplest
of things such a failing to capture the colour balance correctly or
poorly upscaling old assets. Then there is the choice about what
version of the original was selected if there were multiple
re-releases and what content is considered ‘core’ to the
experience. Balancing all these tweaks takes a skilled hand and one
wrong step can have an army of angry fans at your door demanding the
blood of the person who defiled their sacred original. Despite this
risk, the benefits of a Remaster in terms of accessibility on modern
hardware cannot be denied, many older visual novels are not playable
on newer systems, have outdated screen resolutions or did not
previously have console versions. These are a great avenue for
developers to make additional money out of an already completed title
while also laying the groundwork for a potential sequel or
continuation of the original as a series.
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| Simple, Clean and Effective is what a good Remaster should be |
Mashiroiro Symphony HD is
an example of the most basic kind of Remaster focused purely on
improving the user experience. The resolution was changed from 4:3 to
16:9 and all graphical elements were upscaled to match alongside the
addition of a few new bits of animation to create a little visual
variety. It is obvious when playing it that a lot of effort has been
taken to maintain the strong use of colour and seasonal aesthetics
which made the original stand out and to ensure they survived the
transition into this higher resolution. Naturally the UI also
underwent a redesign to better fit the new dimensions it has to work
within as well as a general improvement to its readability to bring
it into line with the rest of the industry. Beyond these parts little
else was changed and maintaining the rest of the game untack was clearly
the priority. While Fate/Stay Night Remastered is on the surface a
similar kind of Remaster to Mashiroiro Symphony, what differentiates
it is the choice of which version to use as its base. The headline
change which the Remaster boasts is the redrawn CGs for the higher
resolutions rather than simply upscaled and the player will
definitely notice the crispness of the visuals within this new
release. However, what players of original game are mostly likely to
notice immediately is this is not a remaster of the first version of
Fate/Stay Night, but instead of the Realta Nua release. As such there
are a lot of changes present which have been maintain in this
Remaster, even beyond the removal of the erotic content, particularly
in the increased amount of CGs and the dramatically larger
soundtrack. This choice was likely made to ensure the game could
appeal to the largest demographic and by this point Realta Nua had
become the de-facto version of Fate/Stay Night so few would question
its use here. Yet there is an undeniable difference in the overall
feel between the original and Realta Nua which will now be completely
lost on newer players.
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| Bad upscaling leaves blurry details behind |
Finally there is the strange case of the Ever
17 Remaster which makes the most sweeping changes of these three
Remasters yet not of the version the players initially expected.
Rather than using the well received original as the base for this
Remaster, the developers instead opted for the much more divisive
Xbox 360 Remake as its foundation. This is made even stranger by the
choice to remove the 3D models which defined this Remake and replace
them with a set of Remastered sprites taken from the original game.
This splicing of the two titles did at least resolve the odd
dissonance between the 3D visuals and the drawn CGs present in the
Remake, but at the cost of removing what made that game its own
beast. In terms of visual improvements, this is a Remaster on the
sketcher end with the upscaling being obvious in places such as the
small details on character sprites being blurred into
a mess of colour. All of the controversial narrative changes are
still present in this Remaster and no effort has been made to address
the issues people had with the Remake it making it a faithful recreation in this
fashion. The use of the original sprites almost feels like an attempt
to trick people into thinking this is the original and airbrushing it
out from history as the two releases blur together in people’s
minds. Given it is basically impossible to obtain the original Ever
17 or the Remake through any official avenue, this Remaster may well
take their place as fewer and fewer people play them over this much more
accessible version.
Emperor’s New Clothes
Sometimes
a Remaster cannot provide the changes a developer envisions for their
old title and so they turn to the Remake for a larger overhaul. The
reasons for this can be anything from the original being too outdated
in terms of its systems or the developer wanting to tweak core
elements and correct things they consider mistakes. As such the
changes made by a Remake are sweeping in nature and extend far beyond a visual touch up and into the game’s narrative
and mechanical fabric. Yet the developer does not want to wash away
what made the original title compelling and so there are less fundamental changes
than its long list of alterations might indicate. Mechanically a Remake will
keep the gameplay or systems and translate them into a modern form
matching any of the more recent releases from the developer.
Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen is a good example of this trend
with the shift from 2D to 3D SRPG combat. The aim of this Remake was
to bring the original Utawarerumono in line with the Mask games in
order to create a coherent trilogy to package together. Despite the
shift into 3D and the mechanical changes and different visual
identity it brings, the core progression of play is the same as
before with the battles and unit placement or actions being injected
directly into Prelude to the Fallen. It blurs the experience of the
Mask games with memory of the original Utawarerumono to create
gameplay which is enjoyable while keeping the identity of what came
before. Narratively little has been altered outside of the visual touch
ups expected of a modern release and it has taken great care to avoid
making any unnecessary changes outside of its main aim of creating a
trilogy.
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| Same style of combat now transfered into 3D |
A visual novel may release under time or budgetary
constraints which prevent its developer from properly capturing their
vision or be rushed and for this group a Remake is a chance to undo
any mistakes. Tsukihime was the first title of the fledgling
Type-Moon and suffered for both of these issues so a Remake of it was
naturally on the cards. Broken into two parts, the first half of the
game was released under the name Tsukihime A piece of blue glass moon
and showed a keen awareness of which parts of the original worked and
which need alterations. Visually and mechanical this Remake takes the
originals direction and translates it into the style of modern
Type-Moon while still bring recognisable as what it was before. The
story was a whole different case with new characters being added,
minor changes to some parts and dramatic ones to others. It inherits
much of the broad strokes of the overarching plot of the original
with a few people replacing each other, such as Vlov Arkhangel being
the early antagonist rather than Nero Chaos, and the major changes
only really start be felt towards the end of the common route. These
differences are not evenly distributed with Arcueid’s route being
more or less a carbon copy of the original’s version plus a few
more bells and whistles and minus the good ending. Here there is a
sense that her route was always what was envisioned so only a few
tweaks were needed for the sake of future set up. Ciel’s route was
always the weaker one in the original due to being too similar to
Arcueid’s and as such her new route has undergone such a large
revision it is almost unrecognisable. A shift into emphasising Ciel’s
backstory and her personal struggles in a more direct manner
characterise this new route and give it a much needed new identity
closer to the developer’s vision for her place in the story.
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| Everyone is rocking a new look |
Not
all changes in this Remake come in beneficial or benign forms, modern
Type-Moon works have a much higher power level than their older
material and never has this been more apparent than in A piece of
blue glass moon. The battle against Vlov Arkhangel and the final
battle of Ciel’s route stand out as the biggest offenders. While
Shiki’s Mystic Eyes of Death Perception given him a certain level
of power, he is still meant to be only slightly above the normal human
level and the original reflects this in his opponents being
de-powered in order for him to win. His victory over Vlov Arkhangel
in the Remake is so utterly unbelievable due to the power difference
between the two and by the fact a few scenes later Shiki is
struggling against common undead more in line with the original game.
Then the final battle of Ciel’s route takes this further by
introducing an antagonist of almost god levels of power and having to
power Shiki up to meet it. This antagonist is in the original game
but the fight is brief and acts more as a dramatic device than an
actual battle. Somewhere along the way the Remake has lost the
tension of mortality which defined the Tsukihime in favour of the
Fate/Grand Order style of spectacle fights which clash up against the
older components it still contains within it. When you Remake
something all the new features and changes can make it easy to loose
sight of what the original visual novel was all about.
Rethinking The Vision
In
rare cases a visual novel receive changes so fundamental that it only
vaguely resembles the original title it is based off. This
Reimagining of a game does not seek to preserve much of the material
identity of the original but instead aims to recapture its essence in
a new modern form. In many ways this kind of alteration is an
entirely new game and its choices of what to do with its systems are not bound in the same way as a Remaster or Remake. Not everything is
thrown out with this transformation as it still need to justify its
use of the name and IP it coats itself in. The elements which
generally survive this transfer are things like core aesthetic pieces
like a costume or uniform, which are easy to identity, and the
overarching narrative beats. Even these rarely end up unmolested
since they become part of the new structures where they bend to fit
the needs of these building blocks. Since this is such a monumental
undertaking, using the resources which could have been focused on an
entirely new game, and it has no guarantee to be well received by
fans of the original, it is no surprise that they are rare due to the
risks involved in producing them, but when they do come along they
are interesting specimens about how a creator views their creation.
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| Using 3D space creates new framing opportunities |
There are few visual novels of this kind so it is best to look
at one of the distinctive recent examples in the ToHeart Remake.
Almost everything about the original version of the game has been
thrown out, they completely revised the script resulting in many
fundamental narrative changes, moved to a 3D world space style of
game where the player can move around and added in various extra like
mini-games to create something which only loosely resembles what came
before. The change to use not only 3D models but also having them be
intractable and engage with a 3D world is the most noticeable change
when starting the title. The way its story is presented takes into
account the options offered through a broader physical space and
plays on position relative to the camera in ways simply to
available to the 2D original. On top of this being able to walk
around breaks the visual novel continuity and opens a sense of place
to the setting founded in the player’s direct experience of it.
However, despite these changes it still remains recognisable as a
visual novel when the narrative starts and the familiar text box
appears. Yet the story is a mixture of the old and the
Reimagined, here is where the overlap becomes apparent with its
rewritten script both adhering and deviating from the original
wherever it feels necessary. It clearly wants to recapture what made
the original popular so much of the core themes remain intact just
passed through an entirely reforged lens.
Conclusion
How
a developer attempts to recapture the essence of their previous work
defines much about how its audience will engage with it. For a
Remaster the choice of what version to update and the graphical
improvement to make will be closely compared to the original player’s
remember. Remakes take this further through their overhaul of a
title’s design pillars and often reflects the modern sensibilities
of the developer assigned to create it. The Reimagining is almost an
entirely new game of its own which only loosely borrows what it needs
to be recognisable as being descending from its original and it can risk not resonating with the original’s audience. Overall, the recycling
of past works is something to be approached with caution and an
understanding of what people liked about those games in order to get
the best results.
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