Sure, but I think that the type of game is a pretty big input. Existing generative AI isn’t great at portraying a consistent figure in multiple poses and from multiple angles, which is something that many games are going to want to do.
On the other hand, I’ve also played text-oriented interactive fiction where there’s a single illustration for each character. For that, it’d be a good match.
AI-based speech synth isn’t as good as human voice acting, but it’s gotten pretty decent if you don’t need to be able to put lots of emotion into things. It’s not capable of, say, doing Transistor, which relied a lot on the voice acting. But it could be a very good choice to add new material for a character in an old game where the actor may not be around or who may have had their voice change.
I’ve been very impressed with AI upscaling. I think that upscaling textures and other assets probably has a lot of potential to take advantage of higher resolution screens. Maybe one might need a bit of human intervention, but a factor of 2 increase is something that I’ve found that the software can do pretty well without much involvement.
Nightdive have said something along the lines of “just because we made a remaster doesn’t mean we won’t also make a remake”. I’m still holding out hope they will.
I’m not optimistic though. SS1, even in the EE, was ROUGH. SS2 is not that far off from Deus Ex and immersive sims… really haven’t evolved much past that. That combined with the endless funding faucet shutting off makes me pretty sure they’ll be sticking to more popular franchises and the like (allegedly the next big Nightdive announcement is at Quakecon).
I would 100% love a Nightdive (or similar) remaster of Deus Ex. But my point is more that it really doesn’t need it, mechanically. If you were to go boot up DX after having played nu-Prey or Shadows of Doubt or whatever, it would be familiar. Some rough edges but no more than going back to DOOM after… DOOM 2016. And SS2 (and Thief) is maybe one notch further than that.
Contrast that with SS1 where it honestly had more in common with what would become the mechwarrior games than DOOM (see also: CyClones).
As for funding: Plenty of indie devs have talked about it. Xalavier Nelson Jr is always a good listen (he did a few episodes of Remap Radio). Late 2010s/early 2020s, getting funding for a video game was, if not easy, very doable. That is more or less what let Nightdive establish themselves as the weirdos who go REALLY REALLY hard on loving remasters of older games.
But between economic uncertainty and the realization that COVID was probably a localized peak for the gaming market, it has gotten a lot harder for basically every studio to get funding. Which is likely why Nightdive seem to be doing every single iD/MS game they can or games that are part of multimedia franchises (e.g. Dark Forces).
So Quake 4 is a no brainer (would love 3 but that is multiplayer first which gets risky). And while Nightdive CLEARLY love System Shock (it is more or less what the company was founded on), getting the funding for a full “game” a la 2023’s SS1 is a much bigger challenge than a ridonkulous source port/patch. There isn’t a company that is really going to be eager to fund that because it isn’t part of a major monetizable franchise (although Dommy Bug Mommy SHODAN as a Disney Princess would be peak dystopic hellscape) and there would be a hard sell in terms of it significantly increasing market share over the remaster.
I feel like I’m way more critical of Deus Ex than some, but I’m not sure I agree that it doesn’t need mechanical refinements. From gunplay to AI to stealth there is a ton of jank there and I’d hesitate to call any of it modern feeling. Even Warren Spector was aware of this at the time, with that quote about how it’s basically a 7.5/10 FPS, a 7.5/10 stealth game and a 7.5/10 RPG, but its unique selling point is that it’s all those things at once. Personally I think the story, world, atmosphere and concept still hold up incredibly well. The rest could do with modernizing. Not least the voice acting. But I guess with the Mankind Divided sequel being canned I should have limited hopes about a Deus Ex remake getting funding.
The funding bit makes sense, I thought you were referring to something Nightdive-specific, but the post-COVID slump is something we’ve been reading about for some time now. I had hoped SS1 Remake sold enough to merit funding for a full SS2 remake as well, but maybe I need to temper my expectations.
What are you talking about bad voice acting? DX:MD was all serious and professional but it lacked the comic charm of lines like “A bomb’s a bad choice for close range combat”.
Hoping to see more third-party devs update their games. It's ironic that the worst ports are the ones that benefit the most. Games that were just thrown onto the Switch 1 with no effort to reach acceptable performance suddenly perform well now. As long as the framerate wasn't capped, it might just hit 60 on Switch 2.
But games that were downgraded to properly fit onto the system can't revert those downgrades. Capped framerates remain so, those games need patches to uncap them.
Some of the games I most want to play on Switch 2 are ones that remain stuck at 30fps still...
Capped framerates are so frustrating. Wish they would just use vsync, which would lock to 30 but will jump to 60fps any time the hardware can handle the scene. Maybe it’s not that easy to do in some cases, idk.
Are we really calling tweaking a config file a “remaster” now? This is the bare minimum for a new console, IMO, and it is absurdly disgusting they thought some of these “upgrade packs” should cost money.
They're not charging for performance upgrades. The only paid DLC packs are the ones that are, well, actual DLC. What makes that more "disgusting" than any other DLC?
Yes, they are. If you want 60 FPS and a higher resolution in the two open-world Zelda games, you either need to pay more or have NSO + Expansion Pack. There is no justifiable reason for these to be bundled in with the “Zelda Notes” shit (that’s a smartphone app and not even part of the game).
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