Best remake of 2020 so far...

[JWeinCom]

Hynad said:

JWeinCom said:

Cool.  That shows you understood the general point I was making.

The problem with that though is that if that I just don't think FFVII Switch and Xenoblade Chronicles DE belong in the same genus.  I understand your point that it has a certain feature in common with FFVII, that it's based on the same source code, but I think it has more features in common with games that you'd put in the remake genus, like Link's Awakening.

The point of classification systems is to put things into workable groupings.  I.e. things that are comparable.  I feel like it would make sense for instance to ask "What is a better remake Xenoblade Chronicles DE or Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes?"  I think we can have a good discussion about that. On the other hand if you asked me "which is a better remaster, Final Fantasy VII Switch or Xenoblade Chronicles DE?"  I wouldn't know what to say.  Those games are so different in terms of what their purpose is that I don't think you can meaningfully compare them.  And if they're not comparable, they should be grouped separately.

It is no different than comparing the work being done for AAA games. Some push certain aspects much more than others, yet they’re still AAA games, even if they don’t all look as good as God of War.

And I think the distinction can be made between mere ports and remasters.

FFVII on Switch is a port. It looks pretty much the same as the original, but enjoys the benefits of running on more modern hardware, so it’s polygon assets are rendered at a higher resolution. While a remaster has actual tweaks done to its assets, like FFX, XII and yeah, Xenoblade Chronicles.

Not all ports are remasters.

I thought you'd referred to FFVII as a remaster.  If not, you can swap it for VIII in the example.  And categories are obviously going to convey a range of things.  

Obviously a category is going to contain a range of things.  But if a category is too broad or too narrow it's useless.  

Let's try this.  The purpose of a label is to convey useful information about a particular thing in a quick way.  Yes? 

If the label of remake vs remaster literally tells you only one thing, that it does or doesn't use some undefined amount of source code, and tells you next to nothing about what the new product will be like vs the original, what is the point of this label?  What purpose does sorting games into a "reuses some source code" pile and a "does not use source code" pile serve? Why should we bother?