Drizzlehell
Banned
The question was born out of my musings about the original Metal Gear Solid and its remake, The Twin Snakes.
In this example, there's plenty that The Twin Snakes bungled in the process of translating to an updated vision of the game, including soundtrack, cutscenes, and voice acting, but if you ignore that and imagine a reality where Silicon Knights more or less nailed those aspects and made the remake just as amazing as the original, there's a lot that was done to the gameplay that built upon the original experience. But the question is, by adding an expanded move set for Snake and an improved AI and graphics to go along with it, was the game really that much enriched from a purely gameplay perspective?
I would argue that no, it wasn't. It became a different, more sophisticated game but in my opinion there never was a moment when I played the original MGS when I thought to myself "man, I wish I had the ability to drag corpses around or aim down sights, it would make the game so much better." If you ask me (and you didn't), the gameplay of the original was perfectly suited for the type of experience that the game intended to provide, and no matter how many times I play it, it never feels like the mechanics are somehow hindering me or have a negative impact on how I feel about the game. Sure, they may be a bit antiquated by today's standards and The Twin Snakes did improve on a lot of gameplay quirks, but I don't think that any of those new additions or improvements somehow allowed me to enjoy the story or atmosphere more.
There are more examples of this. For instance, the original 1993 Doom is, for all intents and purposes, a primitive-looking game with antiquated controls, graphics, and mechanics, but it doesn't matter because everything about it just fits together so perfectly that it still functions just as well today as it did back in '93. Another example could also be the original Resident Evil 4. Some would say that the shooting is antiquated because you can't strafe or move around while aiming, but the beauty of that mechanic is that it was done deliberately to increase the tension of the combat and allowing the player to move around instead of planting their feet while shooting would kinda ruin that original experience if nothing else was changed about the combat. Therefore, it was exactly what it should have been within the context of that game.
TL;DR - video game achieves perfection and timelessness when its gameplay mechanics are perfectly aligned with the intended experience, and seemingly antiquated mechanics serve to contribute to the game's intended atmosphere and tension rather than making it worse due to its age.
In this example, there's plenty that The Twin Snakes bungled in the process of translating to an updated vision of the game, including soundtrack, cutscenes, and voice acting, but if you ignore that and imagine a reality where Silicon Knights more or less nailed those aspects and made the remake just as amazing as the original, there's a lot that was done to the gameplay that built upon the original experience. But the question is, by adding an expanded move set for Snake and an improved AI and graphics to go along with it, was the game really that much enriched from a purely gameplay perspective?
I would argue that no, it wasn't. It became a different, more sophisticated game but in my opinion there never was a moment when I played the original MGS when I thought to myself "man, I wish I had the ability to drag corpses around or aim down sights, it would make the game so much better." If you ask me (and you didn't), the gameplay of the original was perfectly suited for the type of experience that the game intended to provide, and no matter how many times I play it, it never feels like the mechanics are somehow hindering me or have a negative impact on how I feel about the game. Sure, they may be a bit antiquated by today's standards and The Twin Snakes did improve on a lot of gameplay quirks, but I don't think that any of those new additions or improvements somehow allowed me to enjoy the story or atmosphere more.
There are more examples of this. For instance, the original 1993 Doom is, for all intents and purposes, a primitive-looking game with antiquated controls, graphics, and mechanics, but it doesn't matter because everything about it just fits together so perfectly that it still functions just as well today as it did back in '93. Another example could also be the original Resident Evil 4. Some would say that the shooting is antiquated because you can't strafe or move around while aiming, but the beauty of that mechanic is that it was done deliberately to increase the tension of the combat and allowing the player to move around instead of planting their feet while shooting would kinda ruin that original experience if nothing else was changed about the combat. Therefore, it was exactly what it should have been within the context of that game.
TL;DR - video game achieves perfection and timelessness when its gameplay mechanics are perfectly aligned with the intended experience, and seemingly antiquated mechanics serve to contribute to the game's intended atmosphere and tension rather than making it worse due to its age.
