Same as It Ever Was: Narrative Fidelity and the Art of the Remake

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #182. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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We are what we’re afraid of.

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As is the sacred duty of someone whose minimal online presence is devoted to horror games, I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently with the remake of Silent Hill 2. Aesthetically, the game is an unmitigated triumph – the enemy design, the soundtrack and ambient noise, everything plays in the same deeply unsettling space as the original but dials it all the way up in a way PlayStation 2 technology simply couldn’t. Narratively, the game maintains the same plot beat as the original, only going so far as to up the ante on the subtext and change the puzzles so the game remains challenging for veteran players. It is an absolute joy to behold, and to share with my partner, who is playing through any version of the game for the first time.

But something was bothering me. I loved this game. I thought it was great. So, apparently, did a whole lot of other people. It gives new life to a thing we all know and love. It represents, as one of my oldest friends and another long-time SH stan puts it, an “egoless” production, where Bloober did not attempt to improve or alter the tone or narrative of the game in a substantive way, merely to faithfully reproduce the feelings of the original in high emotional fidelity.

. . . so doesn’t that mean it’s shitty art?

Follow me here. Typically, we think of a piece of “good” art as needing to have a particular unique vision, located within the execution of the creator. If someone attempts to be derivative or replicate a product originated by someone else, we necessarily think of them as “lesser” artists – cover bands are never nearly as good as the real artist, etc, etc. We see these complaints leveled at games all the time, as a particular genre or mechanic reaches a saturation point and people start complaining that there are too many hero shooters or Souls-likes on the market. The point of art, such as it is, seems to be to make something that only the creator could do, something that could only be the product of their ego. And if it’s not that, we call them hacks. Except, apparently, when they remake a videogame we like.

I’ve been rolling this around in my head for several weeks, and I haven’t come to a good answer yet about why this game, and a very small set of games like it, gets the pass on artistic integrity, while other remakes in various mediums get absolutely panned as either “too similar” or (if they do dare to take some creative liberties) “ruining the original.”

The closest comparison I can come to is that, in a way, Silent Hill 2 Remake feels more like a retelling of a classic tale, almost a myth, than a remake of a singular media property. While the plot beats are largely the same across versions of a story like Frankenstein or A Christmas Carol, the important differences come in how well the creator demonstrates their ability to capture the mood and the message. If some change is too far afield, you call foul, because that’s not how the story goes, or you defend it as a needed way to update the story (people who hate vs. love 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula are no strangers to this conversation).

With this lens, the way I love SH2 Remake starts to make more sense. I love it not because it’s something wholly original, but because it allows me a new avenue to explore a story I feel a lot of nostalgia for, clearly crafted by people that love the original game, too. In this way, the story also starts to feel . . . bigger, than just the original game. It’s taking on a life of its own, wending its way through online forums and fan art and decades of careful love and curation, to get here, to a new iteration that is really just one of many that sprung up out of a desire to keep the property alive in our long wait for Konami to get its head out of its ass. And while we don’t think about it in the same way we would think about a brand new IP, it doesn’t feel derivative – it feels curatorial, archival, preserving the story across generations in more accessible forms.

So, while I wouldn’t say I’m an uncritical fan of the sheer number of man-hours devoted to pumping out remakes and remasters these days, I think SH2 Remake points us in the correct direction for keeping key parts of videogame history alive. If we treat our key texts as part of a storytelling tradition and free game to riff on, we ensure that they stick around for future generations to enjoy without the constraints of obsolescence.

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Emma Kostopolus loves all things that go bump in the night. When not playing scary games, you can find her in the kitchen, scientifically perfecting the recipe for fudge brownies. She has an Instagram where she logs the food and art she makes, along with her many cats.