SECOND LIFE LIFE

Remakes and remasters may seem like easy money, but just how difficult is it to get it right?

BY JON BAILES

William Pugh, director of The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, has a bone to pick with us. Chatting about the game, we mention that certain publications, Edge included, gave a slightly lower score to 2022’s revamp than the 2013 original, despite all of its additions. “If the original was nine out of ten, and we have completely faithfully preserved that, how can it be docked points for four years of work?” he laughs. At face value, it’s a reasonable question. But this also illustrates that the world of remakes and remasters often obeys a strange logic.

That it took four years to create Ultra Deluxe is further evidence. Initially, the plan was for Pugh and Davey Wreden (the creators of the original) simply to port The Stanley Parable to PS4, but since it was made using Valve’s Source Engine, that became a problem. “We tried getting support from Valve to get the Source Engine version running on PlayStation, and that was a non-starter,” Pugh explains. “So it needed an engine transplant.” Once that was under way, discussions began about new content, in the form of platform-specific endings for the PS4 and other console versions. A trickle of ideas became a flood, and a six-month project began to grow.

It’s a story that Stephen Kick, head of Nightdive Studios, should be able to relate to. Starting 12 years ago with the rerelease of System Shock, Kick’s aim was to rescue games from obscurity so that people – not least himself – could play them again. In time, plans for a more radical treatment of System Shock emerged, and a Kickstarter to fund the remake was successful, but “for better or worse,” Kick says, what had been mooted as a fairly faithful rebuild in Unity mutated as the money facilitated grander ambitions. Ultimately, “it abandoned a lot of what made System Shock special,” Kick says. “It started looking more like a standard sci-fi game.” That version was scrapped for the final version, built in Unreal Engine but with more modest alterations.

Not all remakes and remasters go through such tribulations. For EA’s Motive Studio, for example, the process of recreating Dead Space was a smoother ride. Some of the staff had even worked on the series before, and when discussion began to circulate around EA about reviving the IP, Motive’s leadership was keen to step in. Executive producer Philippe Ducharme was one of those who jumped at the chance. “The first discussions were: ‘Are we making a remaster? Are we making a remake?’” he says. “And what’s the difference between remakes and remasters?” That the original’s engine was 13 years old by that point pushed the team towards rebuilding from scratch.

1 Adirect port of The Stanley Parable might have been acceptable to players, but Pugh wanted those who’d completed it before to have new experiences.

2 William Pugh, founder of Crows Crows Crows.

3 “So much of my career and life success has been tied to people’s warm reception of The Stanley Parable ,” Pugh says. He and the rest of the team knew Ultra Deluxe had to hit a high bar of quality

4 Philippe Ducharme, executive producer at Motive Studio.

“WITH EVERY MECHANIC AND EVERY DESIGN ELEMENT, THERE WOULD BE BIG DEBATES WITHIN THE TEAM” 4