Remember that PlayStation 4 game you really liked just a few, short years ago? Well, maybe you can buy it again soon!
Only a month after releasing a full remake of the less-than-10-years-old The Last of Us, PlayStation is reportedly back at it again. The gaming blog MP1st reported over the weekend that a remake or remaster of 2017’s Horizon Zero Dawn is in the works for PlayStation 5. If true, this would come less than six years after the original game graced the PS4 and less than a year after its sequel Horizon Forbidden West released.
Now, to be clear, the report doesn’t say definitively whether or not this would be a full remake that Sony would sell for $70, like The Last of Us Part I. It reportedly includes improved lighting and new character models to match the quality of those found in Forbidden West, but we don’t know much beyond that.
But the internet will never stop being the internet. As such, people had thoughts about this news when it dropped.
Hey, remember Bloodborne?
Chiefly, people want to know why PlayStation would do this when plenty of older games from PlayStation’s past sit untouched. Exclusives from the PlayStation 3 generation like Resistance: Fall of Man and the first two Infamous games are a couple of prominent examples of games Sony has seemingly forgotten.
Heck, you can even go back to the PS1 and PS2 days to find things like Sly Cooper and Jak & Daxter that possibly deserve some remake love.
But one game stood above all in the online fracas following the Horizon rumors. It may be the best PS4 game. Some might even call it the very best game in a series that includes the incredible Elden Ring, which was many people’s 2022 game of the year.
People love this game so much and it’s still never gotten any kind of update for PS5.
You guessed it: It’s Bloodborne.
Let’s ignore the irony of blasting a remake of a game from 2017 by asking for a remake of a game from…2015. They’re both fairly recent — we’re not here to measure contradictions.
It’s a very valid point that Horizon has already gotten a patch to look and run better on PS5, while Bloodborne and many other classics from PlayStation history have been ignored.
It’s just one example, but it underscores the point nicely: PlayStation is in a bit of a weird spot right now and remaking recent games may not win over hearts and minds.
Having bad flashbacks
Gamers of a certain age may remember the halcyon days of 2006, when Sony launched the PlayStation 3 to a great deal of mockery and derision online. It looked like a George Foreman grill and famously, at launch, cost « 599 U.S. dollars. » Just one console generation after the PS2 became the highest-selling console of all time, Sony thought it could get away with selling an overly expensive console that didn’t have a great deal of enticing exclusive games on it at the start.
Sound familiar? The PS5 isn’t $600, but $500 is nothing to sneeze at in this economy. There have been some standout exclusives like Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, but other titles like Forbidden West and the upcoming God of War: Ragnarok are also available on PS4. There’s just a general feeling in my gaming circles that the PS5 hasn’t done quite enough to justify the high cost of admission yet. And remaking games that already look and play great on a PS5 isn’t getting people excited.
To be clear, the PS5 is doing just fine. As of June, it had sold more than 21 million units worldwide despite being very difficult to find ever since its November 2020 launch. Heck, even the PS3 wound up narrowly outselling the Xbox 360 by the end of its life. I definitely don’t think this trend of remaking recent games spells doom for the PlayStation brand or anything, but it is a bummer. It just feels like a way to get something out the door as COVID continues to cause game delays around the industry.
Unless it’s Bloodborne. All is forgiven as soon as Sony remakes that one.
