Summer 2049. A ghoulish-looking man is huddled against a shelf in a derelict building. He’s grasping a long, rusted pipe. An eerie voice asks him to accept a bargain: power in exchange for his soul.
“Take it,” the voice says, “and save your daughter … “
You see the man talk to said daughter later, as she coughs repeatedly, and you can see the pain of a parent watching their child suffer. When he promises her that the monsters around them won’t hurt her, you see a father trying his best to reassure his frightened daughter in the midst of genuine danger. When he growls at the enemies to stay away from her, there is an intensity in his voice–a perilous quality. As he begs for someone to help them while he holds her, you sense a specifically parental kind of fear and heartbreak.
Summer 2053. A small, baby-faced boy is huddled against a shelf in a derelict building. He’s grasping a long, rusted pipe. An eerie voice asks him to accept a bargain: power in exchange for … something unsaid, in order to protect … someone unsaid. When the boy stands up to fight the monsters that tower over him, you don’t feel the same dangerous edge as the father. You feel the vulnerability of a young person in over his head. When he tells the monsters to stay away from his sister, it’s in a low, almost pleading voice. As he screams for help, there is desperation, but also the fear of someone far too young to deal with this situation.
The first of these scenes is from the 2010 English-language release of Nier, while the second is from the 2021 English release. The writer-director of Nier, Yoko Taro, made two versions of the game back in 2010: one where the protagonist is a boy trying to save his sister, and one where the protagonist is a father trying to save his daughter. The latter (which was called Nier Gestalt in Japan) was reportedly only made because the American marketing team of Square Enix thought the Western audience wouldn’t respond as well to the young boy as the main character. When Nier was finally re-released in a new form in 2021 (the cheekily named Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139…), Taro decided to go with the boy protagonist for the English language region this time. Now, the modern English version only gives us the younger protagonist.
When players discuss the game today, there doesn’t tend to be a lot of consideration for this difference in versions. Yes, the main character is different, but the majority of the game is the same. It doesn’t really matter that much, they claim.
Doesn’t it?
How can these two gaming experiences be the same? The emotional quality and perspective is markedly different and evokes different reactions. The critic Dia Lacina is one of those who perceptively discussed this issue for Vice, and, struck by that piece, I decided to watch the openings of both versions of the game and compare them. They certainly feel distinctly different to me.
There are plenty of other classic games being remade or remastered in recent years. Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid 3, Suikoden I and II, and Final Fantasy Tactics, just to point to a handful. I sometimes wonder if there is enough appreciation amongst players for just how different the new experiences can be to the originals, though, especially considering that the fame and historical significance of the games usually comes from those originals.
Film fans will contemplate the differences between Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings theatrical and extended editions, or the intriguing variations in Wong Kar-wai’s cuts of The Grandmaster (the critic David Ehrlich went as far as to argue that if you’ve only seen the American version of that film, you haven’t really seen it). Readers will debate over the best translations of Dostoevsky or Hugo. Gamers, on the other hand, seem more likely to overlook changes in areas such as narrative and art direction, even in games that focus on storytelling.
Let’s look at Final Fantasy VII. It’s one of the most famous video games in history, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair amount of players have experienced it. But what did they experience, exactly?
Maybe you played FFVII when it came out in 1997, in the original Japanese, on the original PlayStation. Maybe you played it when it came to America and Europe for the same console, and thus experienced the localized version, which also included new gameplay features. Perhaps you played the 1998 Eidos PC version, which revealed mouths on characters. Did you use mods, or the new features like the Character Booster in modern versions of the game? Perhaps you even played FFVII via the abridged Ever Crisis on your phone.
The fascinating thing is just how different these versions of a classic can be. The initial version of FFVII in Japan, for example, reportedly lacks a special flashback scene that triggers when you go to the Nibelheim Mansion basement near the end of the game; this scene is one of the most memorable in the story and gives the player a very special and touching glimpse of Zack Fair, an important character in the narrative who will become even more important to the series later.
What about the English localization? As the translator and critic Tim Rogers detailed in his video series, there are some particularly interesting changes in English, such as dialogue that arguably alters the emotional status of Aerith and Zack’s relationship. Or should I say Aeris, the name that so many of us recall from playing the original Western release, but has now become close to obsolete? Meanwhile, the PC version of the game featured mouths on character models, which altered the feel of certain scenes; Aerith dying while Sephiroth stands over her has less impact to me when Sephiroth is bizarrely opening his mouth wide as if performing at an opera house. Maybe you just skipped FFVII and played the remake, because that’s Final Fantasy VII too, right?
If you’ve played the FFVII remake games, you’ve experienced a different story to the original. This is a topic of much debate in the fandom–whether the remake is the same story as the original or not–and there is no simple answer. While it does indeed cover the main events, it does so while adding new things, taking other things away, and changing the execution of the older scenes. Suddenly the antagonist Sephiroth is appearing in the part of the story where he was never present in the original. Though Yoshinori Kitase wanted him to be like Spielberg’s Jaws in the original–mysterious–that isn’t as emphasised in FFVII Remake.
You can even briefly play as Sephiroth in Rebirth, while in the original he was kept critically distant from you: an untouchable, terrifyingly powerful figure. To control him would be unthinkable. Zack, someone barely present in the original, is far more prominent now, and we see him even temporarily join forces with Cloud to fight Sephiroth in Rebirth. Even without the story changes, the difference in visuals, music, direction, gameplay, and the addition of voice acting would all make for a very different experience.
It’s remarkable how quickly players will sweep these kinds of changes under the rug, though. It’s still basically the same story, they often shrug. Others will go as far as to treat a remake as a replacement for the original, but as Carolyn Petit pointed out for Polygon, that just doesn’t make sense.
Differing translations also alter the feel of a work; it’s something often discussed in literature and cinema but not quite as much when it comes to video games, outside of a few specialist websites or social media accounts. In one of the most important (albeit optional) scenes in Final Fantasy VI, to cite one example, Celes throws herself off a cliff. In the original English version on the Super Nintendo (where it was released as Final Fantasy III), she does this after hearing stories about how other people had taken “a leap of faith” to restore their spirits. In the newer, more faithful English translations, however, it’s framed as pointedly dark. Both versions inevitably feel different, even if–as the translator Clyde Mandelin noted in his comparison–some players back in 1996 still saw the old version as grim.
The visual direction of scenes alone can change how a work comes across. The differences between the original Silent Hill 2 and the Silent Hill 2 remake are immediately striking, and something others have written about. As many have observed, the fog in the original is overpowering to the point where you can’t make character faces out as clearly, lending a distinct sense of unease to the scenes. Atmospheric differences also arise with the Shadow of the Colossus remake. The mansion setting in the original Resident Evil on PlayStation compared to the one in the GameCube remake looks dramatically different; the former has the kind of plainness you might encounter in an old, empty hotel, while the latter is much darker and Gothic, like somewhere Dracula might live. The original looks scarier to me, because it feels closer to home, like a place I might have been in before.
These are all official changes, but gaming becomes even more complicated when you recall how intertwined the medium is with modding. Modding is so prevalent, and so part of the core of PC gaming specifically, that many players will download and use them to “improve” a game in numerous ways without much care for how this critically alters their experience in regard to visuals, audio, and interactivity. People will employ mods as casually as they grab some ketchup to improve the taste of their food. The mods will make the game look “sharper,” “fix” the translation to make it more accurate, or add in cut content. They will, you are told, greatly enhance your experience with the game. But which game are you playing, then?
Perhaps there is no definitive version of a game. Perhaps there are just so many factors to consider for the medium, as even the tool you use to play something–be it keyboard and mouse or a console controller–can dramatically alter your experience. What about the way playing a text-based game, like Disco Elysium, can feel more like reading a book when you play it on a handheld system?
I don’t believe in prescribing a “right” way to play a game–but I do believe in approaching your gaming experiences with awareness and thought. It can be more taxing than the casual approach many of us take, but it’s also exciting, because it makes us think about one of the powerful qualities of this medium: fluidity. Choose prudently while you stand before waves of different versions of a game. Your favorite version may not be the one the general public recommends, or even the one the creator prefers. It’ll be the one that fits you best, for whatever reason.
Remakes, remasters, mods, and so on are all fine in concept, even wonderful, especially as it can be so hard to play older classics these days. It’s worth celebrating all the versions of classics that we have, but it’s also important to think about each version as an independent work. It’s not so much about focusing on which version is better or worse. It’s more about reflecting on the fascinating differences in the classic works of the video game medium.
