I could have been a contender...
So I was thinking the other day of RPGs that fell short of being classics or even diamonds in the rough, that could have be successful with a modern remake and some tweaks. I'm not talking about the classics. Games like Ultima 7 or Pool of Radiance or Fallout 1 should not be remade because they are fine the way they are despite their age, and someone trying to remake them would lose the essence of what made those games great. I also wouldn't want someone to remake something that completely failed, because such an overhaul would result in a completely different game. I'll start with some examples and suggested tweaks:
- Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception
-- This game plays well and emulates the 3025 rules of the Battletech tabletop game pretty well. All it needs is a reduction in random encounters and padding from the late-game puzzles. It also needs an increase to the available mechs, and some more and better set encounters to offset the proposed reduction of random encounters. With some other minor tweaks, I could see a remake of this game doing well on the indie market.
- Ultima 8
-- Ok, this one might be a little controversial since many would call this game a complete failure and not worthy of a remake. The biggest problem with Ultima 8 was that it was a mediocre CRPG, but horrible Ultima game. If Origin had just made this a separate story of in the Ultima universe, and got rid of the stupid platform jumping mini-games, then I think this would have been a fine diamond in the rough. This game may have been much better received if it was called something like Ultima Legends: The Blackthorne Banishment, and ended up being a story of what Lord Blackthorne got up to after he was banished from Brittania. It could have built up the lore around the Guardian while not having to involve that Avatar at all. At this point it's too late to remake the game or to redo the lore.
- Stonekeep
-- I tried to like this game, but let's face it... Stonekeep was a failure, but an interesting failure. I could see it remade today as a party-based indie blobber like Legend of Grimrock, or as an action game with RPG elements with a larger budget from a bigger studio. It's a game that keeps coming up in discussions, so there is something charming there, but ultimately it just fails to be engaging.
- Sword of Aragon
-- I have a deep love of this game, but even at the time the game was published the UI was outdated. Also, there seems to be some quests that were never completed or entirely fleshed out. The game is nearly perfect as is, but really could use the benefit of a modern UI upgrade with mouse support, graphical upgrade that depends less on the earth colors on a 16-color palette, and beefing up some of those incomplete quests. Strategy RPG fans are always hungry for more, and a modern indie update of this game would be very successful.
So I was thinking the other day of RPGs that fell short of being classics or even diamonds in the rough, that could have be successful with a modern remake and some tweaks. I'm not talking about the classics. Games like Ultima 7 or Pool of Radiance or Fallout 1 should not be remade because they are fine the way they are despite their age, and someone trying to remake them would lose the essence of what made those games great. I also wouldn't want someone to remake something that completely failed, because such an overhaul would result in a completely different game. I'll start with some examples and suggested tweaks:
- Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception
-- This game plays well and emulates the 3025 rules of the Battletech tabletop game pretty well. All it needs is a reduction in random encounters and padding from the late-game puzzles. It also needs an increase to the available mechs, and some more and better set encounters to offset the proposed reduction of random encounters. With some other minor tweaks, I could see a remake of this game doing well on the indie market.
- Ultima 8
-- Ok, this one might be a little controversial since many would call this game a complete failure and not worthy of a remake. The biggest problem with Ultima 8 was that it was a mediocre CRPG, but horrible Ultima game. If Origin had just made this a separate story of in the Ultima universe, and got rid of the stupid platform jumping mini-games, then I think this would have been a fine diamond in the rough. This game may have been much better received if it was called something like Ultima Legends: The Blackthorne Banishment, and ended up being a story of what Lord Blackthorne got up to after he was banished from Brittania. It could have built up the lore around the Guardian while not having to involve that Avatar at all. At this point it's too late to remake the game or to redo the lore.
- Stonekeep
-- I tried to like this game, but let's face it... Stonekeep was a failure, but an interesting failure. I could see it remade today as a party-based indie blobber like Legend of Grimrock, or as an action game with RPG elements with a larger budget from a bigger studio. It's a game that keeps coming up in discussions, so there is something charming there, but ultimately it just fails to be engaging.
- Sword of Aragon
-- I have a deep love of this game, but even at the time the game was published the UI was outdated. Also, there seems to be some quests that were never completed or entirely fleshed out. The game is nearly perfect as is, but really could use the benefit of a modern UI upgrade with mouse support, graphical upgrade that depends less on the earth colors on a 16-color palette, and beefing up some of those incomplete quests. Strategy RPG fans are always hungry for more, and a modern indie update of this game would be very successful.
