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We’re in the midst of a rare and exciting time for video game fans: new console launch season. One of the biggest new games is Demon’s Souls on the PS5. I totally get the hype around this re-release of 2009’s seminal PS3 classic…but it’s not my favorite remaster of the year for two very specific reasons.
First, PlayStation 5 availability has been a bit of a nightmare, and as a result I won’t be getting one till next year. Sony announced a specific day for pre-order openings…which most retailers then blithely ignored, instead deciding to open orders immediately. Chaos ensued. Since then, restocks have vanished in the blink of an eye, with many shoppers seeing nothing but crashed web pages or error messages.
Second, Demon’s Souls is more of a full-blown remake than a remaster. Sure, the developers at Bluepoint may have started out by getting the existing game code up and running, and the final gameplay design may be quite similar to the original game, but everything else is wildly different. The renderer is far more modern, the assets are completely new, most of the animations are entirely new, and the audio design is completely re-done. I do like that the original voice actors were called back into the booth to voice their lines again. That’s a brilliant touch that most companies wouldn’t have bothered with.
Still, that love and care makes Demon’s Souls an archival-quality museum restoration, as opposed to the light-to-modest update usually associated with a “remaster.” Gamers are often lucky to get anything more than a simple resolution bump with most remasters, let alone the full years-long redevelopment effort that went into Demon’s Souls.
Fortunately, there’s another game that quietly came out earlier this year which perfectly exemplifies everything a remaster can be. That game is Saints Row The Third Remastered.
