Games you'd like to see a remaster of?

Snowy

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For me, I'd love to see a remaster of Prey (2006)... It had amazing graphics at the time; they still look pretty decent... But I would love to see it again with modern graphics, raytracing, and AI not built on the Doom 3 engine (a real weak point imo).
 
The one I wanted the most was the Mass Effect remaster that hit earlier this year, and it stands out as a pretty good example.

Granted, it too could have used a full upgrade like you mention for Prey. I assume Bioware didn't go that far with Mass Effect because they were building off of Unreal Engine 3 and porting it to anything else would be comparable to just making a new game.

I'll also add that I definitely enjoyed Prey (2006). Hard to forget the first few minutes!
 
The x-wing, tie fighter series.
Starcraft and Broodwars. I know there's a total conversion mod, but I didn't really like it.
I'd also like a Rebel Assault I and II remaster.
The Soul Reaver series.
Hexen
Thief
I could go on and on...
 
The old Dark Sun CRPG series. Probably mostly nostalgia fueling my love for the first game (never played the sequel) but would really enjoy playing through a remake of it. I tried to play it a couple of years ago, but the game hasn't aged gracefully (graphics and gameplay).

Still, I enjoyed the setting and it was my first CRPG.
 
DeusEx, the original. Maybe even Invisible War, I always liked that game despite it's lukewarm reception.
 
I don't want to see any lame texture / ray tracing remasters. These are lazy. Remasters done the way Halo and Halo 2 were? Yes please. There would be many I'd like to see in that vein.
 
I don't want to see any lame texture / ray tracing remasters. These are lazy. Remasters done the way Halo and Halo 2 were? Yes please. There would be many I'd like to see in that vein.
I don't know, many of the games mentioned only really need higher quality textures and better lighting/shadows/global illumination. RT would be a cherry on top.
 
I don't know, many of the games mentioned only really need higher quality textures and better lighting/shadows/global illumination. RT would be a cherry on top.

I disagree. Nearly every game mentioned here is upwards of two and a half decades old. You can't bring those anywhere close to modern visual standards with textures and lighting improvements. The polycounts of the assets are extremely small. The geometry of objects is primitive to say the least. Games like Hexen and Heretic (mentioned earlier) aren't even 3D games at all.

In fact, retextures and lighting upgrades wouldn't help any of the games mentioned in this thread. Sure, they might look better than the originals, but they'd be far from good looking compared to modern games. Prey 2006 might be the exception, but everything else is far too old.

Dark Forces II Jedi Outcast & Jedi Academy are Quake III engine based games. These have primitive geometry. I have fond memories of these games looking really good now, but go back and look at them now. Retextures aren't going to fix them. We know this from the pathetic remasters of Quake and Quake II.

Pong, Zork and Pitfall were mentioned. These aren't 3D games at all. This almost had to be a joke. Textures and lighting upgrades aren't going to do anything for games like these. Starcraft is another 2D game. We might as well be talking about Pong.

X-Wing, TIE Fighter, etc. are 3D, but these are even primitive by Quake I standards. These games need entirely new assets. Which was done by a small team as a mod for one of the newer X-Wing games. X-Wing Alliance, I think. Rebel Assault I and II were made through a combination of primitive 2D/3D and digitized video. Again, you can't make a simple remaster of these and not be wasting your time. In fact, these are even harder to do than the 2D bitmap games as you can't just increase the resolution. We don't know the resolution of the digitized source video, but I doubt its good.

Soul Reaver was mentioned. I love that game but look at it objectively. Again, we are talking about a Gex engine game that's two decades old with primitive 3D modeling. Retexture it all you like but it's not going to look any better than the lazy Quake I remaster. That's all that's been mentioned. Mass Effect Legendary Edition mostly worked because the games aren't quite as old and due to various factors such as art style, etc. they've aged really well.

But we've seen retextures of games like Halo Reach which are far more modern than anything on this list and it just doesn't look that good. Sure, when you put images of it side by side against the original, you can see some nice improvements. The game is much improved, but more so for being setup to work on modern systems more than having upgraded visuals. Retextures are lazy. Hell, if its a UE3 engine game I can do that kind of work myself. The fact is that you can't overcome primitive asset geometry with ray tracing and some higher resolution textures. That's not how this works.
 
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I disagree. Nearly every game mentioned here is upwards of two and a half decades old. You can't bring those anywhere close to modern visual standards with textures and lighting improvements. The polycounts of the assets are extremely small. The geometry of objects is primitive to say the least. Games like Hexen and Heretic (mentioned earlier) aren't even 3D games at all.

In fact, retextures and lighting upgrades wouldn't help any of the games mentioned in this thread. Sure, they might look better than the originals, but they'd be far from good looking compared to modern games. Prey 2006 might be the exception, but everything else is far too old.

Dark Forces II Jedi Outcast & Jedi Academy are Quake II engine based games. These have primitive geometry. I have fond memories of these games looking really good now, but go back and look at them now. Retextures aren't going to fix them. We know this from the pathetic remasters of Quake and Quake II.

Pong, Zork and Pitfall were mentioned. These aren't 3D games at all. This almost had to be a joke. Textures and lighting upgrades aren't going to do anything for games like these. Starcraft is another 2D game. We might as well be talking about Pong.

X-Wing, TIE Fighter, etc. are 3D, but these are even primitive by Quake I standards. These games need entirely new assets. Which was done by a small team as a mod for one of the newer X-Wing games. X-Wing Alliance, I think. Rebel Assault I and II were made through a combination of primitive 2D/3D and digitized video. Again, you can't make a simple remaster of these and not be wasting your time. In fact, these are even harder to do than the 2D bitmap games as you can't just increase the resolution. We don't know the resolution of the digitized source video, but I doubt its good.

Soul Reaver was mentioned. I love that game but look at it objectively. Again, we are talking about a Gex engine game that's two decades old with primitive 3D modeling. Retexture it all you like but it's not going to look any better than the lazy Quake I remaster. That's all that's been mentioned. Mass Effect Legendary Edition mostly worked because the games aren't quite as old and due to various factors such as art style, etc. they've aged really well.

But we've seen retextures of games like Halo Reach which are far more modern than anything on this list and it just doesn't look that good. Sure, when you put images of it side by side against the original, you can see some nice improvements. The game is much improved, but more so for being setup to work on modern systems more than having upgraded visuals. Retextures are lazy. Hell, if its a UE3 engine game I can do that kind of work myself. The fact is that you can't overcome primitive asset geometry with ray tracing and some higher resolution textures. That's not how this works.
Talking about Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy (and pretty much all Q3 engine based games) more than anything they need better lights and shadows. It would probably be easier to just put RT and be done with it. I do see your point. Once you get better textures, and illumination, you'll also want higher detailed models.
 
There are some games, like Quake, where I think a texture upgrade and some other bells and whistles would get me to buy the game again -- the game play there was... good. It wasn't deep, but it took the FPS concept and just drilled down and polished it until it was razor sharp. If you wanted to do anything else to a game like Quake, you may as well just make a spin-off or another sequel. There are not a lot of games I can think of that fall in this category, and even Quake, as iconic as it was in the world of FPSes, would not make a great FPS by itself compared to today's modern shooters.

Then there are other games, like Final Fantasy 7 -- the game was so tied to the technology at the time, just a simple overhaul wouldn't be possible (doesn't mean they aren't trying it with other entries - Pixel Remasters). To do it justice, they are re-imaging the game from the ground up. And that is also exciting. A lot of work, but the Remake was really pretty good I thought. It still needs some entries to catch up to the overall game that the original VII was, but it just serves as an example where just a texture overhaul isn't going to do much.

Something like... Pacman would be similar. You could throw the best 3D graphics in the world at it, but a single screen 1980's platformer isn't something that would be a good remake with just better graphics. It would need a re-envisioning.

Then there would be a game like Everquest. It has been begging for a graphics overhaul since... forever. It did get a pretty major one in 2001, and it has been upgraded to various levels of DirectX along the way, but nothing as significant as the 2001 upgrade from the old picture-in-picture interface -- the game still looks more or less as it has since 2001. But today - you slap the best DX12 raytraced, DLSS'ed snazziest graphics you can on a game like EQ, and people and the genre have just evolved so far beyond the game that it wouldn't work (apart from the 20k or so diehards that are still over there playing the game).
 
I'd like to see a nice updated Unreal Tournament 99 game, and maybe even UT 2004. UT was what got me into PC gaming so I'll always have a fondness for those games. The newer UT games never could recapture how fun the originals were.
 
I would play No One Lives Forever (and the sequel) if they had modern graphics. I never finished the 2nd one. Or they could just make a 3rd one. Who owns Sierra / Monolith IPs nowadays anyway?

edit - found this old article from 2015, legal quagmire and is going nowhere. Boo. So the only way I can play these again is if I can find my old hacked copies on the old *** engine. BOOOO

 
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Would like to see a remaster of Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, Original Splinter Cell and Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory, Thief - Dark Project and Metal Age and Deadly Shadows and also add Kotor 2 to the list
 
I'd like to see a nice updated Unreal Tournament 99 game, and maybe even UT 2004. UT was what got me into PC gaming so I'll always have a fondness for those games. The newer UT games never could recapture how fun the originals were.

Unreal Tournament got me into PC gaming as well. My love for this game goes so far that I still, to this day, host one of the largest file repositories for the game; www.ut-files.com

With that being said, I'd love to see a remake of the original, however I think I'd ideally like it to visually look similar to the original but with better lightning and anti-aliasing. The graphics of those arena shooter games is what really made them what they were back then.
 
Most of the games mentioned in this thread are too ****ing old for a remaster. They need to be remade, assuming it could be done properly. A remaster usually consists of updated textures and potentially lighting effects. They are going to look like distorted Minecraft characters by modern standards.
 
Unreal Tournament got me into PC gaming as well. My love for this game goes so far that I still, to this day, host one of the largest file repositories for the game; www.ut-files.com

With that being said, I'd love to see a remake of the original, however I think I'd ideally like it to visually look similar to the original but with better lightning and anti-aliasing. The graphics of those arena shooter games is what really made them what they were back then.
That is awesome. Makes me want to fire UT99 back up and get some of those files to customize the game which I loved to do in the past.
 
That is awesome. Makes me want to fire UT99 back up and get some of those files to customize the game which I loved to do in the past.

I used to run 3 servers back in the prime day of UT.

DM - "Giant Maps" which consisted of giant sized bathrooms, bedrooms, livingrooms, diningrooms, etc.. where you were literally the size of a lego man in these levels. The server had low gravity enabled, with 155% game speed and 55% air control. (155/55) All of the maps had an ESR (Enhanced Shock Rifle aka Instagib) pickup somewhere on the map. So that's usually what everyone used or a sniper rifle. The trans-locator was needed to get to most locations within' these maps.

CTF - Similar to the server above, but the maps were made specifically for low gravity and 155% game speed and 55% air control. You spawned in with the ESR (instagib) and you also had a trans-locator.

MH - Monster Hunt - Had various mods/mutators to enhance the experience, but basically this custom game type was a single player type play through where you started at one point on the map, progressed your way to the end of the map where you fought a boss style creature at the end. Was multi-player, so people could join you during your mission.
 
Most of the games mentioned in this thread are too ****ing old for a remaster. They need to be remade, assuming it could be done properly. A remaster usually consists of updated textures and potentially lighting effects. They are going to look like distorted Minecraft characters by modern standards.
I fear a remake will most probably introduce pay content, and of course battle royal.

BTW GTA remaster has detailed textures, lighting effects and higher detailed models. That's what I like to see on a remaster.
 
BTW GTA remaster has detailed textures, lighting effects and higher detailed models. That's what I like to see on a remaster.

This. So much this. I love that UT (and games of that generation) have levels that are all mostly fancy square boxes. Leave them the basic geometry. Just throw in some higher resolution textures on them, better lightning (shadows, reflections, etc..) and make the models look less 90s and more details/realistic.

You can even even make the games powerups and weapons higher detail/textures as well.

Leaving the overall environment the same is important to keeping the game feeling like the old school UT99, for example.
 
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