This is a question I've been asking a lot. Anyone who knows my writing knows I kinda hate most remasters, and am pretty hard on remakes. I don't expect everyone to have my values here. Nor should you. We all have different reasons to play games. We all enjoy different parts of them. I like history almost as much as the games themselves.
In discussion though, I'll see some reoccurring reasonings pop up, and I feel compelled to walking through some of them, especially after seeing some people confuse my On Toyification as me attacking remakes in a weird, round about way(People on the Resetera forum were like 'wow why are they using such a weird metaphor and making up a word to say they hate remakes' not realizing that the word WAS the point and I took my opinions on remakes as a given). Instead, let me write something a bit more direct on the subject, while trying to fairly walk through some reasons(both good and bad) that people seem to approach remakes with.
"I've always meant to play this game, and the remake seems like a good time to catch up"
(Similarly, you'll see "This makes the game accessible to more people!", but this should still apply to both.)
Now, this isn't about Silent Hill 2 but the timing isn't coincidental either. If I'm to be honest, the only Silent Hill game I ever played was SH1(In all its glorious, chunky, messy glory). I have no relationship with Silent Hill 2, outside the fact it's been on my ever present mental list of games to get to for years.
Half of the Silent Hill 2 fans out there will tell you the remake is great, and the other half will tell you it sucks, but I frankly have no interest in it because neither change a fundamental fact.
The Silent Hill 2 Remake is not Silent Hill 2
SH2 Remake is a pretty substantive remake. If you play it, you haven't caught up on Silent Hill 2, you played a different game. A game deeply inspired by the original, and a game that could be good. A game that, in theory, it could be on it's own merits even better. The same situation has played out with Resident Evil 2. Both the original and the remake stand on their own as unique games, each with their own cultural value. Regardless of which you have preference for, these experiences are not fungible.
Transformative remakes and adaptations like this span all art. Few people know about 1960's Frank Sinatra movie, Ocean's 11, but most are at least familiar with the 2001 remake. So while this isn't new, with games it... getc complicated. The Gaming Brit makes the point that while Disney's The Little Mermaid is an adaptation of a 1837 fairy tail, we don't treat the two as the same in the same way we do with games. Gaming doesn't have very many examples like Scarface or True Grit. Our remakes tend to be closer to to the 1998 remake of Psycho, a slavish remake, seen by many to be devoid of any artistic value.
Videogame remakes tend to be somewhere between that and The Star Wars: Special Editions(George Lucas should have made games. If he made games, no one would complain. He'd remake half of the content and force the update on steam and if you complained about it, you'd get yelled at on twitter or something for being ungrateful for a developer supporting their game post launch). A different experience that's just similar enough to pass as the the same piece of media. Could I fairly claim someone who played the Demon's Souls remake hasn't actually played Demon's Souls? Despite my hatred for it, no. That would be unfair. It's tough, though. Outside of mechanical things, it'd be hard to talk about a lot of other aspects of the game, down to even the mood and music. On the upside, they have a chance at having a more authentic multiplayer experience, something the technically impressive fans servers don't recreate. The Archstones keep PS3 DeS alive, but on life support. Even I have to admit the remake's active multiplayer scene has value.
Would I say someone who played Devil May Cry 3 through the HD collection didn't play the games? While I might not prefer that choice, realistically we basically played the same game. What about Bionic Commando, vs Bionic Command: Rearmed? Something that can both in some ways be a seeming better version of the original(It isn't, by the way. Rearmed is cool, but it really turns a fun, brisk game into a slog) while at the same time being a fundamentally different experience. No, playing Rearmed doesn't count as playing the NES version of Bionic Commando... but neither does playing the NES version count as knowing anything about the arcade version(Not even REMOTELY the same game).
Examples like this, closer to the adaptions of other mediums, tend to come from an older age of gaming. More modern media, even modern reboots strike a weird middle ground that is so respectful of the original content that it sorta rolls around to being disrespectful, like we're trying to save them from themselves.
So while the Silent Hill 2 remake has to be respectful to the original, it often limits these creations to being their own art. The NES is full of transformative titles(... Mostly because Nintendo forced their hand, but that's another story), that did deep reinterpretations of the arcade originals, like Rygar, or Ninja Gaiden. The PC was full of examples like this too. Wolfenstein: The New Order exists culturally distinct from Wolfenstein 3D, but interestingly also the 2d Castle Wolfenstein(A game I had not played until writing the first draft of this article, but figured if I was going to mention it, I should install an Apple II emulator). Wolf3d was, in a sense, an extremely substantive remake that supplanted the original in cultural importance, though that doesn't strip Castle Wolfenstein of all the things that make it interesting in it's own right(You press a button to STOP MOVING it feels ABSURD but the absurd controls make it. If the controls weren't absurd, there would be no threat and no tension. You are a spy, moving around should be challenging).
Interesting too is Metal Gear Solid, a sequel, but also a mechanical retelling of Metal Gear 2. This is a statement that feels insane until you play MG2. The radar, how stealth works, the type of puzzles, poly-alloy temperature sensitive keys... Like someone reviving an old franchise, Kojima took his best, old ideas and turned them into a new package. Also appropriately, Twin Snakes(While arguably the cutscene changes are more in line with what Metal Gear would become, the gameplay changes (both the porting of MGS2 features, and their own new enemy AI and other decisions) show a complete lack of understanding for how the game was designed, and how play within that space is supposed to work. Also somehow the graphics look worse, like a bad 3d kids cartoon) sucks.
These games(Besides Twin Snakes. lol you suck, Dydak ) are supported by their reference material, but are also allowed to stand on their own. This is something we don't afford many remakes and remasters and what's on the table to change is seemly arbitrary and narrow(I knew the DeS Remake was cooked when they said the core was the untouchable gameplay but it was the graphics that were the problem). But why? If we're afraid to change that much, why are we remaking something at all?
"I'm interested in the original, but it's hard to get and looks like it plays really weird"
The brutal question to ask here is "are you actually interested in the game?"
Do you want to play the game, or are you oppressed by the concept of a videogame canon, where you're expected to play these old games? Do you want to play Metal Gear Delta just do you can get the guilt of not playing MGS3 for 2 decades off your shoulders? Often old weird game aren't great despite looking and playing weird, but partially because of it.
If you are interested in a remake because you feel like it'd make doing homework easier, ask yourself instead why you're assigning yourself videogame homework? The only reason you should be assigning yourself homework is because you're some weird VG History sicko, in which case a remake ain't gonna cut it(In fact, you might have to torture yourself and play every version of the game you can find). Otherwise though, free yourself from this imaginary canon. No one is checking your gamer card to make sure you beat all the important games. There is too little time on this earth to play the cliffnotes version of a game out of some imaginary obligation.
"I regardless of whether I've play the original, I think the remake looks cool!"
Maybe you're interested in Silent Hill 2, but not THAT interested. You know you're never actually going to play it. You like AAA games. You like horror games. The remake comes out and you're like "whatever, it just looks like a good game." You're not looking to apologize to an ancient backlog item, it just seems cool.
That's... perfectly reasonable. Even if the brand(Ew) is giving you a little nudge, as long as the interest is from the game just looking good, or getting good reviews, or being recommended by fans, great!
If you're in the "The original looks weird" camp, this is where you should try and move yourself. This is the most honest place to be. You don't owe the original anything, just because it existed first. Older isn't better, it's just it's own thing.
Now, someone like me might be obsessive about trying to pick the most ideal, truest version of a game or might rally against buying into hype cycles and getting excited about something just because a brand name nudged you a little but like... you don't need my personal brainworms. Go with God!
"I've played the original 50 Thousand Times and want to try Something New"
This applies to remakes, to mods, to dumb HD texture packs or source ports or whatever. Maybe it's not 50 thousand times. Maybe it's not even 10 times. Maybe it's just once.
Either way, at a certain point, it doesn't matter anymore. You just want a new way to experience a thing you love. You recontextualize it in a way that makes it feel fresh, or forces you to engage with it from an entirely different angle. Even a robust remake like Silent Hill 2 allows you to see a different take on something you're extremely familiar with. Doing this, even if the experience is bad, can still give you deeper insight into the thing you love.
So of course this is, like the above reason, perfectly reasonable!
Now, it can have drawbacks. Some people go far out into the weeds that they forget what it was like to experience something in it's original form. This can lead to weird things like people genuinely recommending deranged things to new people, like watching the first two Star Wars trilogies in Machete Order(THE ANSWER, FOR EVERYTHING, EVERY SINGLE TIME, IS RELEASE ORDER. You can do whatever you want, but if you care enough to ask, the answer is ALWAYS RELEASE ORDER). Often this is an effort to solve non-existent problems that only exist because you've watched or played something too many times. "You TOTALLY need these mods(I'll admit this is me when I get a bethesda game for like 2 bucks, but that's just because I only play TES games as weird hentai games. This is not the ideal experience for most people) to ACTUALLY enjoy the game" kinda stuff.
... This though this is not really an inherent problem, just a cautionary tale. It's not like folks more on my side of the retro-gaming fence can't be insufferable in the exact same way.
You need the right region, with the right settings, on the right emulator and shaders, no wait on a MiSTer(The advantages of which certainly exist but are also largely overstated, especially at the price. It is, at the end of the day, still emulation and most accurate FPGA emulators are already cycle accurate in pure software. The reduced latency and native CRT support is nice, though 😌), no wait real hardware only and a CRT -- oh no CRT? Then you need a $300 scaler, with the -- wait you played the 1.1 rom revision?? They only released a thousand of those at the end of the console's life, it's not really the same thing and...
Most people aren't like this though and once you feel satisfied with your experience with a game... why shouldn't you play around with it? Why not mod it to all hell or playing some weird versions? Those are a part of history too. The problem is never are desire to play around with the culture and media that influences us. The problem is only that the culture around gaming encourages us to do this both frivolously and compulsively, almost like we're inherently hostile to the idea of games as artistic works. People will dive into modding new games before they've even played them enough to figure out what they even should mod.
... But art isn't precious and untouchable either. Some of the best weird art comes from pulling apart the works of other(Don't look at me). Like many things, it's about balance.
Yelling at Clouds
So I gave two kinda misguided reasons and two pretty good reasons, but ultimately there are few bad reasons to play a game. As long as you enjoyed yourself, who cares? I'm not a cop. Sure, I wanna give some perspective, and maybe change how you think about these things, but at worst I'm going to pout when you tell me you liked Mercury Steam's Samus Returns(I will never forgive them for putting a morphball maze in The Big Room). Maybe a little playful huffing. What I won't do is think any less of you(I mean I will if you act all rude and stubbornly incurious but that doesn't have anything to do with the games themselves). Part of the fun of art is having different opinions and talking them out. Disagreement with games is fun because the stakes are so low. I very rarely care to convince someone they're wrong for liking something. If we disagree, I want to know why they love what I hate. I want them to share their joy.
But still I want to ask... why? Why do we feel the need to do this? This weird ritual where we take an old game, grind it to dust, and then try to blow it's soul into some new, shinier vessel. I was talking about Half-Life on bluesky and of course Black Mesa came up a lot. I don't terribly have a lot of interest in it, but it seems pretty inspired, especially compared to most remakes. Usually the problem is that companies take an A-Team game, and give it to the C-Team, acting like the march of time will make up for the difference in skill. Black Mesa, by comparison... that modding team really does seem like an indie A-Team.
It's still not Half-Life 1. It can give you the stories and moments of Half-Life 1, but it's not that game. A friend(No shade, Saturn, I'm not putting you on blast 😭) on Bluesky said that it's worth it just to see the new Xen(Xen in HL1 isn't even that bad. Like it's the low point, sure, but it's not THAT bad) stuff... This kinda stewed in my head for hours like... Why? I have thousands of videogames to play. I like Half-Life 1 but do I like it enough to wanna basically play Xen Fanfiction? Do I care about Half-Life as a property enough to want a fix-it fic? This isn't to be disparaging either. Fanfiction rules! There are some games I've loved enough where I did want exactly that! I'm not the biggest fan of AM2R, but I care about Metroid enough that yeah, I did kinda wanna see some fanfic(Like a lot of fanfic, playing AM2R left me feeling like 'This is well written, I just... don't feel like we watched the same show').
The weird part is how we talk about these games like they can just slot in as a replacement, despite coming from very different places than the originals. There is this gamer urge that bugs me that we need to fix and modernize everything when, to me, a lot of the value of Half-Life 1 is that it is a game from 1998. if I want to super optimize and polish over my HL1 experience, I probably shouldn't be playing HL1, I should probably be playing a modern AAA game. What do I get from putting HL1 in modern cosplay?
When I watched the early 2000s prestige TV show The Wire(I hate to report that it's good as everyone annoyingly insists that it is), I had easy access to the modern, HD, 16:9 version. Instead of streaming it, I went and found some old, properly mastered DVD rips in 4:3, because that's the show. That's what it was shot for. Scenes and transitions were built around that aspect ratio. So even though the crew forced themselves onto the HD Remaster project to make sure things matched their vision as much as possible, and despite them approving of it... I want the 2002 version because what is the value of pretending it's something modern? What do I gain? That it uses all of my screen? The fact that it is this old TV show is part of what makes it what it is.
Back in the day people would rally against Pan-and-Scan home movie releases. When wide screen TVs came out, many of us celebrated the fact we were finally over this problem, only for us to immediately re-invent the problem again. Many will gladly shed context and artistic intent if it'll be a little smoother, more technically "perfect" experience. We try and optimize our experience, but what are we really optimizing for? Are we really optimizing for the best experience, or are we just optimizing for expectations? Aren't our screens, and our GPU, and other things tools? Why do we prioritize using as much of them as we can rather than the artistic intentions of the things we claim to enjoy?
So I guess my question is, despite the low stakes, despite the perfectly valid reasons... Why do you want to play a remake?