Transcript
Speaker: So, hello everyone and welcome to this episode of our podcast. and My name is Andreas Eriksson and with me I have my co-host Magnus and Johan. ah So, let's start off with you Magnus, what have you been playing the last few weeks? yeah Well, I got ah a great tip on a game that i used to love from you when we talked about i mean the best and worst strategy games a couple of episodes ago.
Speaker: So I've been diving back into... Is it the last game from Steam?
Speaker: I've been diving back into Medieval Total War 2. And it is a good game. As much as I love it, maybe not the best game ever. ah But it's fun to see mechanics mechanics that The Total War series have dropped. Let's stay the same.
Speaker: And it is ah damn good game. I can't say no i can't say anything ah other than that.
Speaker: Yeah, it is a damn good game. i love it. I have actually actually been playing it a little bit too. And I started running into the things that makes me quit it. Because I was almost done painting the map. And I realized how incredibly annoying the AI is when you just have to mop the map.
Speaker: What about you? You, Johan. Damn, that was hard to say in English. Johan, what about you? What have you been playing? I've actually been dwelling into after our last episode with maps and and I got into space and such. I've been there i've been playing Warhammer Gothic Armada 2.
Speaker: ah That's a game I've been picked up and played lot. I mean, who doesn't love a cathedral in space with guns that blast other things to smithereens i mean that's so that's what i've been playing it's not the best game but i mean the match takes 30 minutes and you're done with it it's been that kind of that kind of week Oh, damn, you just reminded me. So we did an entire game about the overworld and maps, and we didn't talk about fleets and water combat, and we didn't talk about space and 3D combat with the like kid depth, height, everything.
Speaker: We entirely missed out on that, but we're going to have to get there. Yeah, on another episode, we can talk about that. But, I mean, it it is a good game, and i think maybe that's one of the games we should do a Let's Play podcast about yes i would love to do that actually and that sounds amazing and as i mentioned i have been playing a bunch more medieval total war because talking about it made me excited about it i've also been playing a bunch of beyond all reason which is um a game i'm trying to get my co-hosts to play
Speaker: It is free. It is a fan-made game, which is essentially what we're going to talk about today, because it's a modern remake of Total Annihilation.
Speaker: ye And I'm going to use it as an example a ton of times today. So we're goingnna you're going to hear everything about it. But it's a brilliant game. It's free. You can download it from, well, essentially the internet. It's not on any store or storefront yet, but it's brilliant.
Speaker: um So today we are going to talk about versus old or new games, old games. And essentially, we're not just going to run through like, oh, which are good new games, which are good old games, how do they compare? We already did it in a previous episode.
Speaker: we're going to talk a lot about remasters, and we're going to talk about what has been added to or taken away from the strategy game scene over time. And how does that make a good game good remaster? How does it they give us the ability to change at all the good games into a new good game or a new bad game?
Speaker: Or for that matter, salvage a bad old game by making it better if someone wants to do it. ah guess most remasters games that were good in their day. Few people remake a bad game, I guess.
Speaker: So that's the that's the subject for today. And I guess we're going to have to start off a little bit general. Like, how has so ah strategy games changed over time? What is new features that have been added? And like what is different about playing a 1998 game compared to a 2018 or 2025 game?
Speaker: What has happened? Well, a lot has happened on that front. And I mean, I'm not going to go into depth about it because as Andrea said, we we already had an episode in that case. But I mean, the biggest thing for me is better graphics, more complex, better AI.
Speaker: ah And in some instances, more resource management. You you can't just spam out armies in the same sense that you could do in and an older RTS and an older strategy game. And you have to take in yeah To do a callback to our previous episode, you have to take in maps into consideration, terrains into consideration.
Speaker: ah Games has tended to become more more complex. and Not to say better, there's a lot more to to take into account and better graphics, of course. And the thing that actually strikes me A lot of more time has gone into kind of cut scenes and trailers and hype for a game and that I don't think is necessary. If the game's good, I'm going to play it. I don't need to see the grand trailer for it, Paradox, looking at you or Games Workshop looking at you.
Speaker: but But I think that that that's kind of my thing. It's become more complex with more things with a sleeker, better graphic, it runs faster. And to some extent, turn-based games kind of started to dwindle out, but we had a whole episode talking about this. But in general, that's kind of my point.
Speaker: Yeah, I have to agree with you. And to make it even more simplistic, I get a lot less headaches from games these days. oh yeah And that's one of the i mean that's one of the hard things because I'm slightly younger than you guys. And when we were talking about old games and games that we loved and games that were fantastic, I was like, yeah, i really want to try this on.
Speaker: ah The graphics are so bad that I can't see what's going on on the screen. And it's not just... I mean, I tried replaying an old COD game.
Speaker: ah I think it's COD... It must be COD 3. Call Duty 3. And it was just, yeah I mean, without updated graphics, it's hard to see what's going on in that game.
Speaker: And I think it's how they rendered it and how they rendered the graph the graphics. But that is an actual issue that I remember getting headaches a lot faster gaming back in the days.
Speaker: There is actually more to it, i have realized. I've been looking into this a little bit because I love a bunch of old games, but I also get a headache from them. It's mostly a problem for me in the RPG genre. Strategy games are still okay.
Speaker: But it turns out one of the big problems is actually not that the game is rendered poorly. There's nothing wrong with the game. It's the modern monitors. So if you try to run a game with a limited amount of bits and a small resolution on a high resolution monitor, they have to sort of stretch out pixels.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. And that tends to fuck with, even if you run it in like the 4x3 format and stuff like that and not widescreen, it still tends to fuck with the graph it's quite the graphics quite a lot.
Speaker: So things that used to be clear cut but blocky becomes sort of muddy and the um inexact. Yeah, i can I can just agree with you here. I mean, after our ah first episode, I read yeah downloaded a game that watched That just didn't make my top three pick of good games. I think that's episode two, actually.
Speaker: And that's Wound Ships and Iron Men, where you essentially you fight all of the great naval battles from the Napoleonic War. ah It's a great game.
Speaker: and Don't check it out, because if you have to play it now, and you get a bunch of heavily... pixelated stuff on a blue back screen and you can't see anything of it. I i i gave it a run for 10 minutes and it did not work at all.
Speaker: Because, i mean, as you say, modern screens, modern operating systems, they tend to take these games and just, oh, let's put them in high rests. That doesn't work.
Speaker: Unless you remastered them. Yeah, and it but it it kind of makes me sad because it means like we're going to lose a lot of games that can still be valid, but it's just... ah just They're just too hard to play or they're too annoying to play.
Speaker: I actually learned something like and shame to say, I didn't think I was going to learn something new about something other than strategy games I've never played.
Speaker: so i mean, there there is something else that has changed and you and I in DS aren't really... we're not agreeing on this. I would say that the strategy games that want to have become more complex.
Speaker: And I think there's a difference with a lot of old strategy games. We talked about this in episode, in our first episode as well, but that they are, I mean, they they kind of, they wanted so much back in the day.
Speaker: And they always stretched beyond what they were really capable of doing. mean, trying to render too many units or something that was too complex and that didn't really work. But it was so cool that they tried.
Speaker: And I think that generally game developers have been better at kind of raising the complexity but also kind of realizing their limits and paradox aside which never seems to kind of hit that plateau they always want to do more than the game or the computers can handle yeah yeah or their graphics yeah but for that matter I think a few things. so I want to add a few things before we actually move on to talk about remasters.
Speaker: um First of all, I think there is one more thing that's gotten a lot better, and it's pathing. Mm-hmm. I mean, and there is actually a lot of cool cool ah coding ah behind this. There is a streamer, Day9, who talks a lot about this stuff. So I just learned it from him.
Speaker: But essentially, they've had to solve quite complex mathematical problems to do pathing. And for everyone who doesn't know, so in general, when you model ah when you build a strategy game or but when you build a game that is sort of top down on a map,
Speaker: you generally divide the map into some kind of tiles. So like every millimeter on the map isn't modeled. They have like distinct units, and you you model them, and then your army whatever you do is moving between each of these tiles.
Speaker: and They have actually they had to do a lot of really complex graphic calculation and complex geometry to make these things flow smoother and smoother and smoother to the point where it it feels like things move smoothly along them.
Speaker: And then they have had to do even more complex math to actually make the AI follow these lines and not just like... get stuck on one another. ah There is a lot of there there is a a ton of interesting things about this and if sometimes I'm going to do a proper research and just run down on all of it. But pathing is like one of the massive improvements.
Speaker: you can't You just can't ignore it. There is also, and I want to oppose Magnus here, because I do think there are a bunch of downsides to what has happened in modern gaming.
Speaker: There are two major ones. The first one is dumping down, and the second one is graphics. So i believe I feel that a lot of RTS games in particular, not so much the grand strategy ones, but the RTSs and where you can't pause, where you can't play at your own pace, they try to streamline things because they won't be able to have a competitive scene.
Speaker: They want there to be able to like put up player versus player without having too a steep learning curve or too imposing like learning curve.
Speaker: And that means ah streamlining the game down to its core functionalities. And I feel that this is a danger when you remake an old game. If you want to include those kinds of mechanisms, you can actually make the game less complex.
Speaker: And that's something I dislike yeah because I think complexity is the great leveler. It is what makes metagaming really hard when it's just too many things you need to metagame.
Speaker: The other thing is graphics. So we mentioned it very shortly on the maps episode. But so if you look at a total war game like Medieval 2 compared to a total war game like Thrones of Britannia, they both have an overworld that does essentially the same thing.
Speaker: But in the Medieval 2, it is stylized and clear-cut and easy to overlook. You can get like a or you overview. You get a clear idea of what's happening on the map. And in France and Britannia, they have tried to have the models of trees.
Speaker: You don't have a proper forest. you still have a sub few trees modeling or sort of giving the sense of a forest. But I tried to model them in such an amount of detail that it's actually like filling the screen with just distractions and have these hyper realistic mountains which you can zoom in on it's really beautiful but all you need to do know is that there there there's a mountain over there because you can't walk on it anyways and and this is also one thing that i feel that like they have had the ability to make really beautiful assets to the point that you sometimes make assets where you don't really have to have them
Speaker: Yeah, but I mean, aren't we all in agreement that Thrones of Britannia is a shit game? No, it's a poem it's ah is one of the best new Total War games. just visually annoying.
Speaker: You are visually annoying when you say that to me. But this this is this is another episode. Sorry, I won't take it away from Remastered. We just keep teasing the big showdown down of Total War games. It's going to happen. Yeah, it's going to happen.
Speaker: But I was like, the only meme of this podcast is that yeah we we will we will have a massive Total War episode. I just wanted to say, and if you're not if you're not familiar with what pathing is, think of and like an old tower defense game where the units come along and you can see that they all turn left or right at exactly the same point. They come in a big line and they turn.
Speaker: Basically, every game does that. It's just that if it's not an old tower defense game, there's not one path there or many many many many paths that cover the whole map but basically units move in kind of the same way and they have to choose a path if you're not a tower defense game uh And that can be more or less complex complex. It can be more or less well done. But that is a big difference between newer and older games, that pathing yeah has become more complex and more seamless.
Speaker: And in old games, you you you could see, basically, you could look at the game and say, okay, so this is how pathing works. This is how they've chosen it. I think if you look, if you play an old age empires game as well,
Speaker: and the path becomes really clear. And that's a lot harder to see these days. And it's not impossible. ah i found There are some really good examples. In the school division games, you can and kind of like see where the pathing is glitchy.
Speaker: Yeah. is ah Essentially, what you're trying to solve is the problem that if you have ah and a unit on point A and you click on point B, you might not be able to walk in a straight line.
Speaker: There might be things in the way, and then you need to map out how they walk around it. Do they just walk up to it and then walk to the side and then just sort of yeah essentially try to push on it like my robot vacuum does when it runs into wall?
Speaker: Or do they figure out the smarter path and just walk an entire different path? This is all very cool. It also runs into the massive problem of what if the or what if the problem is that you mark 100 units at point A and walk to point B, but point B is the same point for all of the 100 units.
Speaker: The thing that gets in the way is going to be all of the other units. and This is essentially why all the total annihilation and many of the old Red Alert games aren't really playable as like Battlefield games.
Speaker: It has all the units and mechanics and mechanics to be good Battlefield games, but units just keep getting stuck on each other. Yeah, I i can agree with that. and i mean Just to take a real-life example, it's like looking at my own cat.
Speaker: Because, I mean, there's a straight line to his food bowl. Does he take that straight line? No, he does not. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he glitches out and goes via the kitchen top counter and the kitchen table to get to his food because, I mean, why not?
Speaker: And that's that's kind of the thing we're talking about in Pathfinding. try to scale that up then and so you have 10,000 cats and you have some of them are going to go in a straight line, some of them are going to hop on the counter, and some of are going to sit still.
Speaker: and they that That is, some from my point of view, for modern games, a massive improvement how we've done Pathfinding and some of the things that I think remastered games have, in some instances, kind of sorted out.
Speaker: Compared to the old game. I must confess, I think Pathfinding is the main reason why I like remasters. But let's get into them. So we have a bunch of topics on remasters. um And first, I just want to get started with like your favorite ones.
Speaker: like Are there any old games which are remastered where think it's gone really well? And we're going to do the ones where it's gone really to shit as well after that. But really good ones.
Speaker: Do you want me to start? or do you can start. I can start. I have a top three that I actually think are really, really good. ah come Command & Conquer Remastered.
Speaker: i i think it's a brilliant remaster and because they haven't remastered the skin that much of it, but it's made the AI more intelligent.
Speaker: Pathfinding is better. Yes, you can still get units stuck, but I think it's It's a great homage to the old games. It's kind of what I wanted the old game to be b when I started playing it.
Speaker: ah i I have to say Homeworld 1 and 2 as a remaster. the The graphics works and the backgrounds and the artwork is stunning.
Speaker: But the HUD display is so much better than the first games. The pathfinding is also better. It is just stunning gems. And it's one of those games or game series where, not talking about Homeworld 3 and the crash that came afterwards, that's completely not another episode on how to ruin and ruin an IP.
Speaker: But Homeworld 1 and 2, when they came out, I loved those games. They were so stunning. And then they remastered them and they are even more stunning, but they are now really playable really enjoyable they are great great games and then again yes i have to say a total war game and for me it's i mean roe remastered is just an improvement on so many levels graphically pathfinding wise map resource wise it it just this thing of yes a city has this money many inhabitants you can't feel
Speaker: all your armies from this place. I i mean, it is... They also did like two other brilliant things. The first was that they let you play with the old rule set. So if you just wanted the graphic, you could just tick a box and then you just got the graphic remastered and nothing else.
Speaker: And the second one was that they actually remastered, the they actually redid the diplomacy system. which Which is great because the old diplomacy system is shit. As all Total War games, it's shit.
Speaker: This is not great, but it's a lot better. But I think that's my top three picks for remasters. I have a lot of other games that are narrowly on that list, but these three, they really stand out for me. that That's examples of really good remasters.
Speaker: I love those. What about you, Magnus? Well... I have to confess that I said this to you guys for this, but I don't think I will have the that much to contribute this episode because generally I don't like remasters.
Speaker: ah The only time I like them is basically for games that aren't strategy games. And it's to do with the graphics we talked about before that a lot of old games are basically unplayable.
Speaker: I had this with, sorry, trigger a warning. I will say something about games that aren't strategy games. ah But I replayed with my girlfriend, ah kind of like the whole Halo saga.
Speaker: ah And it bugged me so much that because these games were such as big part of her childhood, she kept like in game switching back to the old graphics. And i was like, no, I'm playing. I can't see anything.
Speaker: she did that all the time. She's like, oh, it's this map. My sister and I, we used to play pretend in this house that we lived in this house. And I was like, honey, please, please turn the good game back on.
Speaker: And basically that's, that's, almost always all that i feel that has good that a remaster has to contribute and i'm sorry to disagree straight out of the gate i did not like the rome remaster i've told you that rome was such a big part of my my own like gaming life i didn't feel that remaster brought me anything it it bugged up with some graphic choices that they made later on and i it just kind of ruined the feel for me and
Speaker: i I think I downloaded, I played one campaign, and it just felt like, yeah, no, the the magic isn't here. ah Which means that I'm probably the worst person to talk on this episode, and I will now be quiet for a while.
Speaker: yeah But, Magnus, I can agree with you with Rome. I mean, the original Rome is still a better game than Rome Remastered, but it's, what they did with it is a good remaster from my point of view.
Speaker: But I mean, I could easily have said Age of Empires 2 Remastered. i could have said the Medieval 2 Remastered. we We have some other games that could come up to that category.
Speaker: But yeah I kind of tend to to be on the same level as you are. Strategy games, in my part, have not been all the strategy games I care about.
Speaker: have not been remastered to the same extent first-person shooters, as RPG games or something like that. We have been, we have been, I'm saying we have been, as this club of strategy, we have been kind of spared this because there's rather being new ones. Instead of getting a remaster, you get a three or a four or a game that is similar because the studio has been acquired by EA and they do some other shit, but we say this is the legacy follow-up to this game.
Speaker: ah yeah So that's kind of my point of view, but I still agree with you. The magic for Rome is still Rome, the classical Rome. It's not the remastered.
Speaker: But then again, i can get the remastered to run on my PC, which is a good thing because i like to play it.
Speaker: um So I'm going butt in here because I also have a list of three. The first one is Rome 1. I love it. Because it just made a better game. like I loved the original Rome in many ways. It was great for its time.
Speaker: But it also had too many things that were too exploitable, um especially in AI pathing. So that's why we talked so much about pathing earlier on. yeah But also some battle mechanics, like the fact that if you have a line of pike and then the enemy has horses, they're just screwed.
Speaker: ah You can essentially move down like um a single unit or a single phallax can just move down an entire full stack of horses. ah but And it's just built wrong and they fixed it. And I think that's good.
Speaker: ah But I have two other games. The one I really want to hype is, of course, which I mentioned in the intro, Beyond All Reason. So it's a fan remake of um Total Annihilation.
Speaker: It is brilliant. It is just doing exactly what I want from a remake. It's adding it's just cleaning up the game and making it playable. And it's also adding ah few quality of life things we have started to accept expect from strategy games, like better queuing, infinite queuing, um better pathfinding, little bit bit better control scheme, easier to have more control groups, bindable keys, things like that.
Speaker: And the third one is ah going to be controversial because there is guess I'm going to say Heroes of Mighty Magic 3. And then I'm going to qualify it. because I'm not talking about the official version.
Speaker: Fuck that one. I'm talking about the Fan remake, but which is what essentially just a massive HD mod for Heroes of Might Magic 3, just to make it like playable and beautiful on the full on like like good screens, like massive wide screens. more than And this brings me into the worst ones, where because there I have well of course i have Warcraft But apart from that, I have Heroes 3, the official remake of Heroes of Mathematics 3, was essentially just borrowing a few things from the HD fan remake, and then it was just sort of a monograb.
Speaker: And they even removed a bunch of additional content from the, from the what is it called? It's not called the add-ons back in the day. it was called... the ah The Armageddon and so and Shadow of the Death. Expansion. Expansion was what they called it back in the day. all the people Old people terminology.
Speaker: Yeah, my terminology. Yeah, exactly. So that one was a massive disappointment, especially because I was already playing the fan remake and it was already better.
Speaker: And it was clearer. And it was actually running at a higher set of HD, a higher pixelation than the official remake, which is just embarrassing. Yeah, I agree with you because i had two games that sprung to my mind when we were talking bad remakes. and And one one of them was Heroes of Magic 3.
Speaker: But I'm also, yeah I'm not going to take the fight with you because I'm old and I can rise above these things. But Age of Empires 3, that's still a game I play.
Speaker: ah a lot the original version Heroes of Mighty Magic I think you've been you said Age of Empires I think we settled this in one of the first episodes no one played it yeah you've shot me since I brought this up as one of the worst games ever we don't play that I meant Heroes of Mighty Magic 3 that's still a game I played the original version of because for me it's it's so much magic it's sitting down in my friend's basement for a consecutive weekend and just playing this drinking Coke and eating bad pizza. I mean, the the that's that game. And we still try to play and try to get the multiplayer to work, but sadly it doesn't work on yeah unless you actually do a lawn with it. And the problem with that is I live in Sundsvall and he lives out in Nacka.
Speaker: So that's a problem. But the other one, I had was Warcraft 3 Reforged. And ah iim was actually, I was actually it so mad about this game, but I thought, let's give it the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker: But I went onto Reddit and and I have found yeah ah a thread there and created by Valsop1. And he kind of narrows this down perfectly what's wrong with this. So I'm just going to,
Speaker: read some of the yeah points from his post, if that's okay with you. Shoot. A 30 gigabyte patch, whether you own Classic Reforged, you're forced into the same client, just with graphics disabled for Classic.
Speaker: I can't stress how insane a 30 gigabyte patch is for a game this old. Half my remaining SSD space just went to a game that used to take up two gigabytes.
Speaker: but That's one of the things. and They went, he he goes through this, which is, did but but just that, you were actually forced into having this update to take a game from two two gigabytes up to 30.
Speaker: And also Blizzard put in so thank you to Wells or PIA, I hope it's okay and that I use this because i I got so stuck with it and kind of put my framework around it.
Speaker: But It's also insane how they put in this. If you do a map, Blizzard owns this and can do whatever they want with it until the ah end of time, the end of the universe. That's actually stipulated in it.
Speaker: You can't really find matchups on the servers. it it it's It's just a bad remake. And if you want to have a real kicker, ah real kicker with this, try to run it in any other the language than English because then they've switched the voice characters and it doesn't fit to the screen.
Speaker: So the voice acting doesn't fit to the text being displayed on the screen, which which is just, it's just lazy, it's just bad and it shows that Blizzard, they did five similar games, don't remaster these because No, and it's kind of the same thing when when you remastered Brood Wars. It's it's not good. Play Starcraft 2 instead.
Speaker: That's better. Blizzard should not, well, they're defunct now, but Blizzard should not be allowed to kind of remake their own games because they suck at it.
Speaker: Well, they do have some misfortunes, and I think it's the the dollar sign that confuses them quite a lot. Yeah, i and I think that Dolores Cyan confusing them is the same thing that con confused people to do a remake of Heroes of Mighty Magic 3.
Speaker: And with that said, you should not play 4 or 5 either. You shouldn't play 6 or 7 because they are crappy games. Stay at 3. That's what you should do. I do like 4. It has way better. but But it's not a better game. It just has way more humor. It's ah funnier.
Speaker: Yeah, I know it's funnier. But still, if you want to play a good game, stop with 3 and then play the fan-based remastered. and Just like that. and yeah um I've seen that Magnus has been quiet for some time. But it looks like he's itching to say something here.
Speaker: Well, isn't that part of the problem? I mean, if you have a do... If you have the need to do a remaster, something has gone wrong with a franchise. And I realized this when I would kind of like thinking and of yeah about games I've played that most of why don't play remasters because there has been a better game after. it's the it's I think it's like this with the Paradox games where generally I don't feel the need to play the old Paradox game because there has come something after that is, I mean, better.
Speaker: And we can... I mean, you you you can be disappointed that they dropped something or a feature that you liked with the old game, but it is a better game. I think Civilization is like that, even though I have played the old three and four, ah because I think the series dropped something after that or took a path that I didn't like. Generally, they moved on to newer and better games within the same franchise, within the same series.
Speaker: And I think that's what part of the problem with remasters. I know that nostalgia is a big thing. every I have a lot of nostalgia myself. i It's just like with books. I reread books, I replay games, but I don't feel a burning need for remasters.
Speaker: I think that this will be my and this might be my role this episode, just devil's advocate. you don't yesterday You're just going to be the old man yelling at clouds, saying, no, we don't need it. It was good as it was. you want This podcast has plenty of old men yelling at clouds.
Speaker: Yeah, that's me. I know, I take this. I'm going to butt in here because I like remasters a lot. So i I particularly play more um like RTSs in the like very RTS-y sense where you like control every individual unit. so you do everything on the same a map. It's not not just similar time, but it's actually actually like this sort of one massive map. You can do everything on it.
Speaker: And here remasters do have a role because it's not just pathing. It's things like how does your cannons or catapults fire? It's a how to what extent does surround mechanics exist?
Speaker: To what extent does taking a hill matter? To what extent does um resource mining work? To what extent does... um certain old style, because there's a really big problem with some old RTSs, which is that they were never really tested as multiplayer games.
Speaker: But they are generally played as multiplayer games. So yes, like old imbalances or exploits. All of these things can be fixed so that the game essentially plays and looks the way they intended it from the start.
Speaker: but just weren't able to do. And I do think that is something very important. And it's this why I do love beyond all reason, ah because Total Annihilation, the the original game, it has had a it has had another mod or another update as well, ah which made it better, a better for multiplayer. But essentially the old game was just not playable Unless you wanted to micromanage units and play against the AI and do sort of exploitive things to compensate for the fact that the game had the issues.
Speaker: because it had tried to do a little bit more than that the technology of today could manage. Like, it was a little bit hard for the game to not become OP the moment you got the big Berta cannon and could fire across the entire map.
Speaker: You just got ah OP, you snowballed too much. And all of these sort of rebalances has made it a competitive, really good game today, which is something I think is massively important. um Yep.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah That's massively important. i just remembered another game. It's not a remaster. It's kind of a clone and structure Rebirth, which is Dungeons.
Speaker: If you played Dungeon Keeper, brilliant games, all of them. Then they went on to do Dungeons 1, 2, and 3. I don't know why they bothered to do 2 and 3 because they they are kind of the clones for Dungeon Keeper. It did not work.
Speaker: But I feel that a lot of what you are describing, Andreas, and why you like Remastered, could actually be done by mods.
Speaker: And we've seen that example that the modding community kind of the picks up the ball and makes the game as it was intended to become. It's it's on a whole other episode, but but I can see...
Speaker: A lot of remasters where studios have done a good job. Yeah, that's great. But I mean, we also have the modern community that kind of revamps the game into what it was supposed to be long after the studio has stopped existing. I mean, Myth, but for example. Yes, I know it's a tactical game. I brought a tactical game to a strategy pod, but still love it.
Speaker: Fallout Tactics, another one, and also a tactical in game. But yeah for instance, Hearts of Iron 4. And I mean, loved Hearts of Iron 2. That's a great game.
Speaker: Hated Hearts of Iron 3. Loved Hearts of Iron 4. and But also what makes Hearts of Iron 4 great is that Paradox understand the modern community, which makes it that You kind of get a new game which ah with every good mod you get. it Do you understand what I'm trying to get here? Yeah, I do. And I have two things to say about it. First of all, sometimes I think remasters are necessary for the modding community that exists.
Speaker: A lot of games are just not moddable. No, absolutely. Because they poorly coded or they are coded in languages which are rarely used or well just in general, you can't mod them.
Speaker: um say And I do think that um whilst the mods are really good, and I do love modding strategy games, especially like all of us play Hearts of Iron 4 with the community, it is still only a really playable multiplayer game with mods.
Speaker: But... yeah It is also bit of an accessibility problem for new players where you have to find the right mod, get it, get it to work, avoid the wrong mod, avoid the viruses, avoid of the chaos that modding There are a bunch of things like that.
Speaker: which you sort of only get around with a remaster where the the like sort of the game makers have decided this is the core content. We're going to update it. we're going to put it in a new engine.
Speaker: ah We're going to ah sort of weed through the mods and keep all of the good ones and get rid of a bunch of the bad ones. ah So I do think there is a massive value there as well. As I said, ah i'm I'm a big fan of remasters, and ah know you guys want to butt in here, but I also want to move the conversation further on after that to games we actually want to see remastered, because they I think that's my main case for remasters.
Speaker: do so matt There's a shit ton of games, which I think would be amazing to have a remaster of. yeah there Yeah, I actually just wanted to butt in in the sense of which kind of games do we want to see? Because I think we all most of us have a list about it. So Andreas, why don't you pick up this and see what do you want remastered?
Speaker: Medieval Total War 2. two um yeah I wanted to have the same treatment as Rome Total War. I played it recently. It was brilliant game. It is a brilliant game. I love it.
Speaker: But I also ran into all the small like things which just doesn't work. um The fact that instead of making a smart AI, they had to settle for the dumb AI of the era and thus give it more armies and more resource boosts just to make it harder.
Speaker: ah or or a better bigger challenge. The fact that on the battle map, there are two tactics which always wins. You can always flank, you can always just huddle in a corner and just... um defend because the map has corners for some reason. Yes, they should make the map round or sort of convex. and and so They should do something. Hexagon or something. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: but But also the fact that the AI is so on the battle map is a little bit too stupid. So just by moving your armies back and forth around, you can just force them to constantly reposition until they just get angry and rush everything and then they are done.
Speaker: ah So this is just, I think the graphics holds up actually on Medieval 2, but the AI is an idiot. ye yeah So this is my first one. I do have a few more, but I want to give you guys the chances to bud in. What do you want remade?
Speaker: Well, i think I think we're going to let in Magnus because he's been quiet for some time, which is kind of uncharacteristic for Magnus. And I kind of want him into the conversation again.
Speaker: like I told you guys, this is your episode. But, I mean, theoretically, i would love to see remasters of so many games. ah But I do think, I mean, you you have kind of this pathway. Do do we just remaster it and just graphically or do we actually rework it?
Speaker: And I'm always wary of the reworks ah because I'm not sure that, I mean, studios and developers have necessarily gone in a good direction. And I think it's it's as possible that they will ruin a game you loved.
Speaker: ah as it is, they will actually improve it and something better. ah That being said, I would love, i mean, I would love to have the old civilization games reworked, especially the DLCs, which are really good back then, which really brought something the This was for, at least for me, the modding community was a big thing.
Speaker: And i would love to see them reworked, remastered, so that maybe you could get an active modding community for games that don't have it i i do love the modern community and i think we should have at least the whole episode on my good modding um so basically i um and i'm i'm nostalgic as well so the civilization series the the earlier games there i would love to see uh reworking but you or a remaster i don't want to see them reworked to be kind of something more similar to what civ is now um
Speaker: I would also i absolutely second a remaster for Medieval Total War 2, but maybe do something a bit different than with the remaster Rome.
Speaker: What do you say, Ewan? Well, I have a couple of games on my list, but I think the prime game I want to remaster is because...
Speaker: Game two sucked and game three we won't talk about. We threw that into the warp and we kind of forgot about it, ah hopefully. But that's Dawn of War.
Speaker: Warhammer 40,000, Dawn of War. It's an amazing, amazing RTS game, also with a strategic level. I would love to see that remastered, not only in graphics, but pathfinding-wise, unit-wise, and also...
Speaker: Something I think that a lot of times kind of holds back a good RTS game is ah unit cap wise. That, oh, you can only feel this many units.
Speaker: ah Yes, it makes sense if you're a space marine chapter. I mean, I played a lot of Dawn of War and kind of lost two whole chapters from one chapter. But fair enough, because it's a good game.
Speaker: I would love to see that remastered. Yes, obviously Medieval 2. Also, I can only agree with you there if it's done properly and right. And that's kind of the same thing with Dawn of War. If it's done properly, I would like to see that remastered. But that that's probably on top of my list.
Speaker: Yes, everything with a unit cap. Please. yeah I mean, rework it. Hate unit caps. It ruined, I mean, or it took away the potential of so many great games back in the days. i ah Talking about pet peeves.
Speaker: Hate unit caps. ah yeah I'd also like to see, and again, not to to get back into the Total War series, I'm sorry, but Attila, which is, in my view,
Speaker: ah Please don't get into me. Don't come at me. But Total War Adela, best game in the series. Such a stupid mechanic with the Huns. If they would just work out a better mechanic for the Huns, it would make them more of a viable threat, but not jump not just something that eternally respawns on you.
Speaker: I mean, that game could reach new heights. ah Throw in a bit of graph a light graphic remaster, and I think we could have such a good game. And I think that's, I mean, one of the problems with these games that aren't kind of like modded and developed and where you don't drop a DLC that just kind of fixes problems with the game.
Speaker: There are some game series that could really, they could really benefit from that. And if they don't want to do that, then absolutely do a remaster on the greatest hits. I'm just saying, think about what you remaster or rework when you do it.
Speaker: Yeah. umpa I want to second you on unit cap. That is, I'm not a massive fan of the definitive edition of age of empire two.
Speaker: I'm not a massive fan of age of empire in general. But the fact that it just raised the unit cap did so much. Larger maps, more units. All the RTSs where you have single individual units which you can control always benefits from more units.
Speaker: Because it takes you away from the sort of steering a single units. The more units you have, the more it makes sense to build formations and armies of them. And the more it looks like a real ah war game rather than just a massive hack and slash. So I love it.
Speaker: There's also something. so There has been a few remakes recently, ah for example, with Command & Conquer and the Command & Conquer Red Alert games, where they have just fixed up the graphics and fixed up the power thing.
Speaker: and there is a bunch of games which I just want to give that treatment to. ah The first one is, of course, my one of my favorite games ever, Wario Kings Battles, the second Wario Kings game. but this is say I've gushed over these games many times. It is completely broken, but it's broken in the most brilliant way. So this is where one games don't think the makers of the game looked at other strategy games and said, yeah, we want to do that, but we want to add more.
Speaker: I think they actually looked at real battlefields and like Kriegspiel and stuff like that and said, huh, computers are kind of good now 2002 or whenever, 2001 or whenever it was made.
Speaker: Maybe we can model everything. yeah and then they tried and it almost worked. But it's blocky, it's ugly. it is not something you can do. It's not getting more beautiful with an old monitor. It's just ugly.
Speaker: Because it was those, the early 2000s, when everyone wanted to have everything 3D, even if it was a bad idea. um And all of the mechanics almost fit together. It's like a house of cards that's always constantly wobbling a little bit.
Speaker: but it hasn't fallen yet. And a remaster of that game could be so incredibly good. Yep. But can I just go in here and and see that ah for all of you and for me included, can we have, except for the games we already mentioned, can we have a quickfire round for three games you want remastered? Andreas, you can start with that.
Speaker: Three games. I've already burned two of the Medieval 2 and the World Games Battles. if If you can choose freely, accept those games. We know those games. Do you have three more? ah Oh, it's a tricky one. There are some ones I want remastered just because it would be fun to be able to play them again. The first Total War Shogun game, like, won.
Speaker: yeah It's not even a proper Total War game. It was so incredibly different. And I sort of want to play that again. um and now I'm going to say something stupid because I want a remake of the Stronghold games, but they have remakes.
Speaker: I just haven't played the remakes. So maybe i just want to go and play the remake that already exists.
Speaker: Fair point. Fair point. Magnus, do you have... you have something? Well, mentioned Adela. And I will stick to my guns there. ah Give me a remake of Total War Adela. Fix the Hun mechanic there.
Speaker: I also want... I've been dreaming of finding and getting updated version of a really old strategy game that can't even remember what it was called. It's something like Highland Clans. It can't be Highland Clans, but something like that.
Speaker: Basically, it was... It wasn't an Age of Empires clone, but almost. and Kind of like that feel, but just set in the Scottish Highlands, kind of like during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
Speaker: And I just remember that it was... i had such I had so much fun with that game, but it was just... not Not that good. I'll try and Google it up. try and find it I think it's Highland Warriors from 2003. Yeah, it's Highland Warriors.
Speaker: ye Is it Highland Warriors? Well, in that case, I want to remake Highland Warriors. There is a game called that which looks like a...
Speaker: yeah ah But I think it's... I did a quick Google when when you were talking. But I think all of these are ah really good and since Since Andreas said Stronghold, I won't say Stronghold Crusaders because I would love to have a remake of that.
Speaker: that That would be insanely amazing. I think there is a remake or a new game or something like that, but I haven't played it. So I'm going to go with three other games. And my first one is I would love to have a remake of Lord the Rings Battle for Middle-Earth 1 and 2.
Speaker: Because those games were insane. They were so good. But with sleeker graphics, better pathfinding, unit cap just thrown out the window, i would love to see that.
Speaker: I would also love to see Star Wars Empire at War. Because that's one of the games that actually does space and ground battles in a good way. ah Love it. It's one of the games I think we should try and that test and talk about.
Speaker: And then again, also, it it was kind of similar to h of Empires, but Age of Mythology, I would love to get a remake on those games. It has a remake now, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, but it's not a good remake. I want a good remake. and So I'm kind of disqualifying everything that I think is bad, and I'm not going to mention it, so far as I'm concerned. You want re-remake.
Speaker: Yes, I'm an angry man yelling at clouds. I want a re-remake. I want something good. Do something good with this game. But, I mean, Stronghold Crusaders, I would i would love a good remake of that.
Speaker: I just want to back you up on Star Wars Empire of War because in 2015, I have never played it, but in 2015, I stumbled over that on Steam, downloaded it, and it was a bit too kind of and iffy for me to get into that that far after the release.
Speaker: I will second that remake or remaster. But I mean, it's it's also great because with the year with the game and the DLCs that come out, and you have a you can play all of the galaxy with three players with three different factions. So that's something I think we should do.
Speaker: ah I will not play the Empire. I can play the smugglers because then I can just fuck up shit ah along the way. But I mean, and we have some great games that we want remastered, but do you have a game that you would feel like, please don't touch this, just leave it as it is?
Speaker: Oh, that's a tricky one. i mean, there are some which I don't want remastered because I think no one should ever play them, and but but that's not the same thing.
Speaker: and it's all the Europa Universalis games. Yeah, don't touch those. No, but... Okay, this is a tricky one. This is really a tricky one. um
Speaker: Magnus, do you have any idea? Can I retro retroactively say Rome? Okay. like a yeah yeah you but yeah you call you just disappointed me so much it it was not what i was what i thought i was getting uh but most games i mean i'm a conservative i'm a conservative on this um but if there's something specific something that i really loved and that i think holds up and just don't touch it i'm not sure yeah I have one game ah in particular, and I talked about it in last episode when when I kind of got mad about impassable terrains and airplanes.
Speaker: yeah But do not touch Warhammer 40k Armageddon. Don't touch it. I mean, it has its bug, it has its s quirk, it has its ups and downs.
Speaker: But for me, every time I reload that game and play it, I just get sucked into the air quotes magic that is the 40k universe.
Speaker: Do not touch it. It's a brilliant game. and It is. Don't touch it. In that case, I do actually have one or two as well. um But it's provided, it's it's as long as it's okay to just do an HD version, like a sort of a graphic upgrade, which a fan can do as a mod.
Speaker: Sure. If that is okay, but I don't want that official remake, then yes, it is actually going to be the Heroes of Might and Magic games. Mm-hmm. I do not think... First of all, I do not think the studios making them have shown that they can make a modern Heroes of Might Magic game that is um that keeps the feel. No, no, no. They have a new one that's coming out this year that looks promising, but a lot of the old ones looked promising before they actually released gameplay as well.
Speaker: And the style of battle and the style of play in those games...
Speaker: doesn't really benefit from having any of like the new tech or new ideas from ah from games added. Maybe you can make the AI a little bit smarter, but actually the AI is kind of smart in those games.
Speaker: It is. They're well optimized for an AI. They're well built for their the AI of that day or that age. So please don't please don't ruin Heroes Mighty and Magic for free anymore. No.
Speaker: Agreed. Magnus? That's actually a really good one. um And it's also, i mean, to my point from, once again, an earlier episode that, I mean, you can build a great strategy game if you know your limitations.
Speaker: I think that Heroes 3 knew their limitations and they stuck to it. yeah And they they weren't trying to do something that were kind of like beyond the scope of what they could, maybe with, you know, the the simulation of battles. But I mean, it's a brilliant game because it is simple.
Speaker: And yeah I don't think they knew it at at the time, but they really, they they kept well within the bounds of what they could do at that time. And I think that that's a reason why anytime you'll try to kind of like improve it or improve the gameplay, or you're just going to end up ruining it.
Speaker: And I think that's a good rule of thumb for, i mean, for studios looking at, should we remaster or rework a game? If it works, it if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yep.
Speaker: And on that note, I think we can round off. So do any of you guys have any finishing or last words otherwise? No, I think Magnus said it correctly.
Speaker: if it If it ain't broke, don't fix it, man. ah Yeah, I agree. Even though the studios seem to think that um fixing it is a way to prevent them themselves from going broke.
Speaker: But anyways, thank you all for listening. And thank yeah you, Magnus and Johan, for participating. Have a nice ah day, night, evening, or whatever you're doing right now. And we are going to round off and I'm going off to bed.
Speaker: Goodbye. Goodbye. So long, guys.
Speaker: you
