Rundown (4/27/2025) The Pokémon Evolutionary Line Kerfuffle

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Natalie Rambles About Pokémon Generations and Evolution Lines
• ACTION BUTTON PICTURES PRESENTS “LOS ANGELES NOIRE” (Tim Rogers is Back, Bitches!)
• Oblivion Remastered Shadow Dropped! (And It’s An Aesthetic Downgrade)
• Natalie Muses About Re-Whatevers Some More! (She Just Can’t Stop It!)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Natalie Rambles About Pokémon Generations and Evolution Lines

As I semi-regularly bring up in these Rundowns, I have a bad case of Pokémon Obsession. I treat the series as my happy space, and indulge in a lot of videos from a curated list of PokéTubers, who talk about the series and myriad minutiae. However, the more I indulge in this, the more I begin growing frustrated with the accepted status quos of the series. Which is not anything new for me. Even back in 2013, hot off the heels of Pokémon X and Y, I was making spreadsheets that reimagined the level ranges and evolution methods for every Pokémon. …I also made pretend multiplayer playthroughs using strategy guides and notebook paper as a child, so this is really nothing new for me.

But my current fixation and frustration— beyond people pretending that the physical/special split wasn’t the 15th and 16th Amendment of Pokémon— has to do with the often arbitrary way people view generations. And specifically when a Pokémon does or does not belong to a generation. With most Pokémon, this is fairly straightforward. Pokémon are part of whatever generation they are introduced in, but that gets more complicated when talking about cross-generation evolutions. This was a bit of a dead concept in Pokémon from 2010 to 2021, but Generation II and Generation IV were lousy with these things.

Gen II introduced 100 new Pokémon, of which only 75 were new standard Pokémon and 6 were mythical/legendary. While 7 were pre-evolutions of established Pokémon, 7 were lateral split evolutions, not necessarily better than the predecessor, just different, and a scant 5 were direct upgrades. Sure, the clear majority were new Pokémon, but many of these new standard Pokémon were not readily available in Gold, Silver, Crystal, HeartGold, or SoulSilver. Making them feel like they are not Generation II Pokémon. Namely Houndour, Slugma, Skarmory, Larvitar, Murkrow, Marill, and more you could throw in. Combined with how many Gen II Pokémon… suck, and most Gen II teams have historically mostly consisted of Gen I Pokémon, it’s easy to argue that Gen II lacks much of an identity. There has been enough essays on how ‘this is good actually’ or ‘this is bad game design, but we love it’ to fill a high schooler’s locker. I’m on team ‘Game Freak was being dumb’ personally.

However, Gen II is somehow less egregious than Gen IV, which I consider to be Gen II-II in spirit. There were 107 new Pokémon, of which only 64 were new standard Pokémon and 14 were mythical/legendary. Another 7 were pre-evolutions of established Pokémon, 4 were lateral evolutions, while a whopping 18 were direct upgrades. Well, there is some debate about whether Rhyperior and Dusknoir and the like were upgrades, but they were at least intended to be superior. Game Freak should have just made Rhyperior a 560 BST Pokémon with decent special defense, but they didn’t. They should have given Dusknoir 120 attack and levitate, but they didn’t.

This does a lot to affect Gen IV’s ability to feel like a generation in and of itself, and this lack of identity was reinforced by the terrible Pokedex from Diamond and Pearl, where players were given little choice but to gravitate to a handful of good Pokémon. There’s a reason why so many teams run a Luxray, Staraptor, Rapidash/Floatzerl/Roserade, Lucario, and Garchomp. Because a lot of the other new Pokémon just aren’t good. Bibarel is an HM slave. Kricketune, Wormadam, Vespiquen, and Mothim are early bug types that fall off in power scaling over time. Rampardos and Bastiodon have big power and big girth, but they are not the sweepers that most players typically go for. All ice types are obtained 75% through the game, making them irrelevant in the Social Construct Consensus. Drifblim can’t deal damage unless it dies. Toxicroak is a Safari Zone Pokémon outside of one part of a route in Platinum. I can go on, because the distribution really does blow chunks.

Okay, okay, so… what point am I actually trying to make? Well, in a Classic Natalie The Fuck move I wound up getting sidetracked and indulged in discourse about how the early half of Pokémon games were a bit toss in terms of general game design. The actual point I was aspiring to make was that I think it’s wrong to view cross-generation evolutions as inherently belonging to their debut generation, when they are part of an evolutionary line from a prior generation.

To me, defines a generation most are the new evolutionary lines it introduces. Meaning I think Roserade is a Gen III Pokémon, even though no sane person used a Roselia in Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald (partially because it could not be caught in Emerald). And I consider Ursaluna to be a Gen II Pokémon, as it evolves from Teddiursa, who is a Gen II Pokémon. They were not added until later, but I think they should be a retroactive addition and part of these generations. Anything with an Ursaring and without Ursaluna is just wrong to me, because it is a denial of progress made, and an insistence on keeping things the way they were back in the before times.

It’s something that bugs me whenever somebody tries to do some project with Kanto, Johto, or Hoenn, and insisting that the Dex be kept at its original 151, 251, or 386 available Pokémon. They will implement modern moves, modern mechanics, add new types or abilities to existing Pokémon. But they pretty much never add new ones that added to an evolutionary line. Even when that would make the games better, introduce more variety, and make far more teams viable. What I did here with this header image was take the initial Gen I Pokémon, the original 151, the Kanto marketable plushies, and intersperse all additions to the evolutionary lines. Which includes Megas, Gigantamax, and regional forms for good measure. Personally, I think this makes for a drastically more interesting and varied roster. There are more than three ghost types, two steel types, and zero dark types, and gives many Pokémon far more versatility.

I could have done the same dang thing for Gen II or Johto Pokémon, but this took me hours to make. I don’t know how normal people make projects like this, but I had to drag and arrange all 200+ of these sprites from my Pokémon Home sprite directory to Draw.io, and manually move the image on a canvas. I tried using the Arrange feature, but that’s very limited, as Draw.io is not made for image arrangement. It’s just something it can do.

…What is my point? My point is that I look at this roster of Pokémon and view them as the entire Kanto and Gen I roster, and think that anybody doing a Kanto thing should view this as the definitive list. You could argue against the Alolan forms and such, but Let’s Go gave players the opportunity to bring these over, and also included Mega Evolution. The Mystery Dungeon 1 remake included branching evolutions and Megas. So… this seems plenty appropriate to me.

Akumako: “Nat, just because something seems appropriate to you does not mean others will see it that. …And you do realize that most people who bother with retro Pokémon stuff are nostalgic specifically for the old games, right? They are just not interested in the newer games or newer Pokémon. Pokémon to them is something set in a fixed point in time, and they don’t really care about the new shit beyond a few designs. There are people who liked it when things were jankier. They liked it when the games were less balanced, the learn sets were a gay dog’s ass, and the game design was full of arbitrary holes. Because that is what they remember, and they enjoy the friction of it, because it is friction with importance, with a historical girth to it.”

…But don’t they want to see things get better? I get appreciating things that were flawed and finding beauty in them, but why create things that pretend as if improvements have not been made? Why do people keep going back to FireRed, Emerald, or so forth when there are countless hacks and improvement mods that made things overall better, by addressing the jank and stank of these games, and added in more modern mechanics? To me, the model for a better FireRed and/or Emerald is beyond obvious, but people seem committed to these flawed systems.

Akumako: “…You do realize there are people who play competitive Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow multiplayer for fun, and compose tier lists and metas based on what was possible in those mechanics.”

…Are those people just stupid? I get that it is more simple, but what is the point in competing in a game well known to be broken and unbalanced?

Akumako: “What’s the point of edging, née gooning, when you can just cum in three minutes like a Navy Seal?”

Yeah, exactly! Just get it done in the most efficient way and move on with your life.

Akumako: “Case in point. You’re too much of a rational masturbator to understand. You view an inefficient system as something to solve, not something elegant in its flaws. You want to fix things wherever possible, and believe that there is an optimal state that everything should strive for. From governance to system design to architecture to agriculture to the fucking dimensions of physical objects. You believe in standardization like a Catholic believes in the Pope, and want everything to be balanced, in the right bucket, and presented in a system that is basic, intuitive, comprehensive, and foolproof. Your mental canvas is a spreadsheet, and you want everything to balance out correctly. That is what makes you a good accountant, but just because something is optimal does not mean it is the best. People are diverse. They like things for different reasons. And most of them do not, or cannot, think of things in the way you do. They are content in under-analysis, in not getting it, and operate on what feels right in their heart, not what is logically sound. This primo defo fo’ sho’ applies to politics, and it sure as sandpaper applies to game design.”

…I still think it’s bogus that seemingly nobody has attempted to make a FireRed hack with modern QoL. Stuff like the universal EXP Share, the physical/special split, Black and White TM rules, move relearning, regional forms, and access to new evolutions added in later generations, letting you take an Annihilape through the game. The evolution lines and bedrock mechanics have been updated, and not using them feels like someone insisting on using Word 2003 for writing letters, even though it does not read DOCX documents.

Akumako: “…Just make your own damn Pokémon hack, ya persnickety piss-fuck.”

That would require me to learn how to code, and I’d rather not do that. …But I will keep futzing around in my silly nightmarish spreadsheets.

Akumako: “We absolutely lost the plot in going on these tangents. I guess it can’t be helped. …On with the Rundown.”

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ACTION BUTTON PICTURES PRESENTS “LOS ANGELES NOIRE”
(Tim Rogers is Back, Bitches!)

Well, this is an occasion that warrants a section. I have spoken before about my love of Tim Rogers, a rather notorious writer and analyzer of video games with a lineage going way back to his old early 2000s work on Insert Credit and his review blog, Action Button. After and during which, he was working on a scattering of games himself, trying to make it in the industry, before eventually getting a job as a writer and video maker for Kotaku, where he found a new audience who were receptive of his personality and insights.

He is exceedingly verbose, often stringing things along in peculiar analogies and phrasing while still striking at a truth that is evident to at least a native English speaker. As a critic, he has a keen eye for detail, a desire to break down and understand things, and to instill a greater meaning into the works he analyzes, while also knowing when to call something out for being either trite or shite. And as a person dude is just fascinating. He is incredibly candid, honest, and open about his lived experiences, and I would pay $400 for a copy of his (currently nonexistent) biography. Because I know it would be one of the most bizarre things I have ever read, and make me view the whole god darn world in a different hue.

I have nothing but respect, if not adoration, of Tim Rogers, and have been patiently awaiting his next video, as it was over 2.5 years since his excellent and introspective 6-hour-look look at Boku no Yatsunatsumi (2000). And he chose to follow this up with a nearly 10 hour video on Team Bondi’s L.A. Noire (2011). I’ve known this game was coming for over 3 years at this point, and was very curious as to how Tim would tackle it. Mostly because I neither liked nor understood L.A. Noire when I played it as a 17-year-old who had never seen a detective movie, let alone read a detective novel, in 2012.

The political messaging was lost on me as a child who still believed high school American propaganda. The detective angle was lost on me as a dry-pussied adventure game virgin who had yet to play Zero Escape: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors (2009) or Professor Layton and the Curious Village (2007) or Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001). As someone who struggled to read faces (I legitimately got better at it after going on estrogen, I don’t know how), the whole interrogation element confused me. I also could not tell the characters apart, as most of them were just the same man in different colored suits with different voice actors. And all the action elements of the game were… subpar. With flat procedural shooting, driving that felt too light and slippery for its own good, and the open world was more museum piece than a place to explore.

I actually wrote a review of the game 13 years ago. I actually read it, even though I do not like reading things I wrote that long ago, and… it’s expectedly lame and blasé.

With that in mind, I was wicked curious to see how Tim would analyze, interpret, and make sense of L.A. Noire as a game, and… he kind of doesn’t.

You see, this video is not really a game review. It’s more of a narrated, highly scripted, abridged, roleplaying Let’s Play. But not in the sense of being a Mind Series. It’s just Tim, pretending to be a detective, talking about what the protagonist of L.A. Noire did in a playthrough, where he decided to make the protagonist a damn psycho. One who would shoot bodies for twisted satisfaction, cause traffic accidents out of blistering incompetence, and shove people aside on the street in rage. This is a type of ‘sicko goblin’ means of playing a game, something that Tim has brought up in the past when describing his review process, approaching games from the perspective of multiple different players to really assess them. So I can understand how and why he played this way.

However, Tim spends so much time delving into the story, going on his own, admittedly delightful, tangents, that he kind of fails to describe what he thinks of the game. Well, beyond thinking so highly of it that he was willing to write, direct, film, and edit a nearly 10-hour-long video on it.

He never breaks character enough to reveal his true thoughts as a game developer and critic. You need to read between the lines for that. Because this is Tim, playing a character, the lines are all squiggly and it can be hard to grasp when he is joking and when he is being genuine. It is not bad. I love Tim’s way with words, and the character he plays throughout this video is endearing. It succeeds in what it is trying to be. But it is such a departure from his prior reviews that I don’t quite understand what his intention was. This is different, and that’s fine, but why is it so different? Why do the thing this way?

I’m miffed by this decision because I know that Tim has a marvelous way with words and L.A. Noire is a game with a lot to talk about. A lot to critique and cover. And, as a game developer, novelist, and documented cop-hater, I am curious what his direct views on the game are. How it balances logical deduction and interrogation. Its use of then-revolutionary facial capture technology. And how it fares as a title born from a positively hellish development cycle. However, despite making the longest video of his in this new Action Button YouTube Channel life, it also winds up feeling the least comprehensive.

…And that’s The Straight Dope!

Gosh, I love stealing Tim Rogers-isms.

Still looking forward to the 6 hour Rondo of Blood and 12 hour Final Fantasy IV videos in 2026 and 2027 respectively.

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Oblivion Remastered Shadow Dropped!
(And It’s An Aesthetic Downgrade)

This is a project that I would have forgotten about… if it stopped leaking. Word that port and support studio extraordinaire Virtuos was remastering The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion first hit back in August 2023 via some leakers. IP owner Microsoft kept their head down and did not acknowledge the leak. But over the past few weeks, if not months, speculation, rumors, and further leaks on the title have been billowing over, especially after learning that the plan was to shadow drop the title. This all culminated with its reveal on April 22, 2025, when Microsoft announced and released the title on the same day, giving people the opportunity to tear into it and assess it as a re-whatever of a much beloved title.

Being such a big game, it will take time for a consensus to form, but I think it’s worth noting how this re-whatever is aspiring to be more than what was initially reported. Just Oblivion with an Unreal 5 coat of paint, with the same guts underneath the game. That appears to be an accurate description, but per the footage I have seen, this re-whatever is far more thorough in its approach.

• The UI is completely redone, aiming to capture a mix between Skyrim’s questionably sparse UI and Oblivion’s parchment-based menus.
• The quaint and eccentric voice acting of the original is preserved, but it comes with the addition of many new character voices to give the many NPCs and races a more distinct identity. Because cat and lizard people shouldn’t sound like just some guy. They should sound like some guy doing a cat or lizard person voice.
• A new leveling system that is probably necessary, as the leveling system in Oblivion and its scaling was messy, and I remember it being advised to not level up. Which, in an RPG, is leagues of craziness.
• The animation, visual effects, lighting, and myriad other visual systems have been completely redone to make the game look modern.
• The sound effect systems and sound balancing have been overhauled so the game sounds modern.

However, it seems that the core balancing and design remain the same. Which is probably the best way to go, considering this game’s legacy. The west, the game was among the first bangers for the Xbox 360, coming out before even Gears of War, and offering a distinctly next gen experience. Thus leading the game to be a pivotal Xbox 360 game in the eyes of many, and even being presented as one in the reveal trailer for Oblivion Remastered. Because there truly had never been a console RPG with a world the scale and fidelity of Oblivion, and this could not be done on the PS2. …No, the canceled PSP version does not count, as that was basically a level-based affair. Not open world.

Also, Oblivion was surprisingly popular in Japan, leading to a wide number of inspired Japanese Western fantasy RPGs, and also Demon’s Souls (2009), which was greenlit by Sony due to Oblivion’s surprised success.

While it was overshadowed by Morrowind in the eyes of diehards, and later became overwritten by Skyrim’s enormous success, Oblivion was a big deal for millions of people, who invested hundreds, of hours into its world. Though, it’s a game that I can only really admire from afar. I played about 40 hours of the game way back in 2009, when I was a dumbass 14-year-old. And looking back, I simply did not understand the game, or how it was meant to be played.

Oblivion was my first proper open world RPG, so its lack of direction, kleptomaniac fantasy of loot, and imposingly vast world all left me baffled. Most of my time with it was spent lollygagging around the main city, doing whatever quests I could, becoming a level 1 champion of the arena, and breaking into so many homes to amass valuables with no end in mind. When really I should have just followed the main quest and stick with that. It wasn’t even that I wasn’t used to modern 3D RPGs, as I beat Fable II (2008) a few months before trying out Oblivion. I just could not grasp these systems while starting the game in its largest city.

Really, I do think the intro of this game just overwhelmed me, and this is something Bethesda handily remedied when it came time to make Skyrim. That game starts with a basic, linear path to follow along. It does not ask you to travel a quarter-way across the country for the first leg of the quest. You just head in one direction— north— and the game eases you into its systems. A tutorial dungeon, action set piece, walk and talk section, starter dungeons, a beginner city with a SNES JRPG scope, before a semi-scripted dragon battle, and the introduction of both a house and AI companion. It is so much more approachable to a newcomer. Is it a good intro for a game people are meant to play again and again? No. Bethesda is BAD at making introductory sections for multiple playthroughs. But they are good at making introductions that help ease new players into their worlds. …Except for Starfield, which isn’t good at anything.

…Sorry, I got distracted while waiting for more direct comparisons to crop up on the interwebs, because the biggest point of contention with a remaster like this is, and will always be, the aesthetic changes.

Oblivion was a game released in an odd era. Before multi-core CPUs really took off, at the murky dawn of the HD era, when bloom was en vogue and the answer to making things look more ‘realistic.’ When compared to a PS2 game, it looks like a generational leap forward. With real-time lighting, HD texture quality, shimmering armor, fields of grass with individual blades, and doodads in the environment that you could manipulate to your heart’s content. However, it also looks a generation behind something like Skyrim, in part due to its… generic post-LotR movies high fantasy-ness. Also, the faces all look like some manner of gourd.

Looking back, I could see how people would find the game’s aesthetics to be underwhelming or undesirable in their construction. But there is still a clear artistic vision that you can glean just from watching a bit of gameplay or looking at the ancient Steam page screenshots. It is in need of some polishing, new textures, and a general facelift if one wants to push this as a modern-ish game. However, one thing that really helped Oblivion stand out was its colors. In a generation where a desaturated look became the cool thing, it had vivid greens, blues, and reds that helped it age far better than its murky grey-brown contemporaries. It looked damn nice on a 900p 19 inch Philips HD LCD TV!

So seeing this remaster discard this colorful approach, to siphon the life out of the trees and grass, rendering everything a decrepit beige, it hurts the soul.

Our world is vibrant, our world is colorful, our world has a level of beauty and visual variety that should be celebrated and cherished. Worlds of fantasy and should either capture or exaggerate this. However, Vurtuos and Bethesda, in their nebulous wisdom and questionable artistic sensibilities, have chosen the path of a sprawl-bound cynic’s idea of what a world looks like. I can understand the choice to cater toward realism in regards to the fauna and level of detail, as the original was littered with dated technical shortcuts to paint its world, but this is not realistic. This is what the world looks like if you live in a place where nature is dead. I know that the original’s palette was not perfect. Everything in it was a bit too blue. But this is an overcorrection in the wrong direction, and I just know people won’t see this for what it is.

…But aside from the color— aside from the most important element that even the legally blind can see— I can plainly see the excessive amount of work and effort invested into this game. The new textures, level of detail applied to everything from the grimy corners of caves to the skyboxes, and the character models that don’t look like an alien’s illustration of a human or human’s illustration of an alien. They all look great. Same with the changes to light sources and effects in general, taking what are, by modern standards, rudimentary details and replacing them with something far more deliberate. Something that looks more real and looks better. There is some serious work put into this project, and I do not want to demean any of the skilled artists who spent so much time creating these new assets. …But COT DAYUM does this ish need a color correction mod, and the art directors need to go outside and stare at grass for three days straight. Don’t y’all got grass up in France?

Grief. I wanted to move on, but then I saw a comparison of the walls surrounding the Imperial City, and the artists here got it so, so deeply wrong. Strone is a wonderful material for building something to last decades, if not centuries, and I love me a good stone building. Because you can see the wear and tear just by looking at it, and can feel the age by rubbing your hands on the exterior. The steady decay caused by years of rain, or snow, or heat, and of wear and tear. I find beauty even in the way a chunk of sidewalk breaks apart over time, how shoes, animals, plant life, and everything chips away at it. This causing its color to gradually fade as smudges become permanent fixtures and specks of vegetation take hold. And that is something that is so obviously present in the walls and road of the Imperial City. You can tell it has lasted decades, if not centuries, it is discolored, and while not pristine, it’s a damn wall. The beauty is in its construction, in the fact that it has lasted this long.

While the remaster’s take on this wall is… almost insulting. The dirt, the grime, the texture of weathered stone, it’s still there in traces, but it has been washed away along with its blueish hues. Turning it from something that looks like it was erected in the mid-Northern hemisphere into a structure that looks like it belongs 2,000 miles to the south. It looks too clean, too untouched by the elements, and in the effort to make the structure look more detailed and imposing, they make it look less efficient. Less like a wall devised for security and more like something to flex architectural aestheticism. When… it’s a wall. Why give it more detailed divots and fine curvature? Hell, why adjust the proportions in a way that would make it harder to build? Why is the top of the wall changed in a way where it would be harder for archers to find cover in the event of an enemy attack? Why is the Imperial cross gone?

I know this seems trite and fickle, but this approach carries over to the centerpiece of the game, the capital city, and it looks completely different, all because somebody thought that stone should be a whitish, slightly yellowed, gray, rather than a more elegant blue-gray with greater variety in its color depth. Colors popped, there was an obvious gradient when looking up and down any building as the developers simulated exaggerated shadows and achieved something with stylistic flair. Meanwhile, the remaster just looks like a worse version of reality. And nobody, especially now, needs a worse version of reality.

Sadly, this aesthetic will be seen as the default going forward, and will establish the expected look for The Elder Scrolls. Which… I cannot believe how much Bethesda mishandled The Elder Scrolls after Skyrim. Same with Fallout after they revived it for a mass audience, but especially Skyrim, which was a worldwide sensation and still amasses thousands of daily players, over 13 years after launch. Anybody sane would have fast-tracked a sequel, but Bethesda has instead pursued the path of inefficiency and chosen to spread their IP in the wrong direction.

In the minds of Bethesda management, The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 are keeping their respective IPs alive and relevant. Which is somewhat true, but those are not games meant to be played and moved on, or platforms for creators to build upon. They are meant to absorb your whole damn live, constantly giving Bethesda money, and I view them as being inherently lesser and less palpable to the Video Game Canon as any of the single-player offerings. Hell, I consider that Elder Scrolls adventure game to be more Canonical than TESO. And my only mental frame of reference for that game is the canceled Warcraft adventure game. I don’t even know what it looks like, and it’s more important than that MMO ZeniMax Online invested like half a billion into.

Yes, these MMOs have their following, but they have not, and will not, appeal to the majority of people who played and enjoyed a Bethesda single-player game. These masses just want a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout, and that really should not be too hard to deliver upon. The core mechanics and gameplay loop are known and well documented, and so long as the story is good and progression systems keep pace with modern standards,

This is not that extensive or hard to deliver upon. What Bethesda ought to do is find a way to make the types of games they are known for work in a robust engine that they do not have to develop. Meaning Epic-Tencent’s Industry Defining Unreal Engine Version 5.X. Have a technical team who is consistently working on a foundational tech for all their main Bethesda games. And have three supplemental teams who are cycling between entries in their key IPs. So the Elder Scrolls team, Fallout team, and Scarfsome team, if they really think that’s worth being an IP. Moddability should of course be the ultimate goal, and should be baked into the general game design, with every base game functioning more as a foundation for other creators to use, while boasting its own story, characters, locales, and so forth.

In this modern era of high-cost high-time video game development, I think that it is necessary to keep IPs alive by releasing one new title at least every decade. Which, itself, is a crazy long amount of time. Back in the halcyon 20th Century— where nothing bad ever happened— a series going 5 years without a new entry was bizarre. But if you want AAAA quality, AAAA length, and AAAA pricing, then you need 4 years of A-grade development. And development is rarely, if ever, A-grade when dealing with 400 person teams. (Side note, a kid who was 8 when Skyrim came out is already 22-years-old.)

Bethesda could have achieved this if they planned things differently a decade ago, but they didn’t. They allowed the open world genre they helped popularize become ubiquitous without updating their design, or remembering the importance of quality storytelling. Meaning the most exciting thing they have done in the past 9 years is have another studio do most of the leg work in repackaging a game a bunch of people, who probably aren’t around anymore, made 19 years ago. It’s just… unfortunate when would be titans lose their way and placement due to seemingly irrational restrictions and desire to pursue non-canonical offshoots.

…Also, Microsoft created tools that were vital in the US Israeli joint genocide of Palestinians. There’s a call to boycott them, and this is a Microsoft project, so keep that in mind. Because I sorta forgot about that. I read about that news a week ago, but I still bought Oblivion and Morrowind for $10 this past week, because I felt like it, so… oops!

With that all being said, maybe don’t buy The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025) available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC for $50. …Or $60 if you want DLC for a remaster of a game that routinely costs, like, $3. Gosh, DLC like this just needs to stop. I’d rather every game just bake the DLC price into its base price instead, even if that causes many games to cost over $100. If that’s too much, just wait a few years for it to get down to $20.

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Natalie Muses About Re-Whatevers Some More!
(She Just Can’t Stop It!)

I was planning on just leaving this subject there and moving on, but the topic of re-whatevers is one that I cannot help but indulge in, even though my script has gotten pretty rote by this point. The impetus for this was that Stephanie Sterling actually did a video tangentially about this just a day before Oblivion Remastered dropped, going over how some recent remasters of older games look worse than the originals. A sentiment I have been echoing for years at this point. And hearing someone I respect utter the same things as the demons in my head makes me feel SANE! Ever so SANE!

I generally agree with Stephanie’s assessment of the subject, but I do not like the phrasing and language she uses to express her stance. Such as the double meaning assigned to something looking “worse” or “better”. Describing remastered visuals as “cleaner” and “simpler” than the original, when I would argue that pixelated textures are far cleaner and simpler than a tile set with a smoothing filter over it. Now, she can use whatever terms she wants, but I worry when terminology gets muddled, as it makes it harder to convey ideas, and nobody these days even knows the difference between a remaster and remake.

She brings up three core examples in the video. The remasters for Croc: Legend of the Gobbos (1997), Gods (1991), and Suikoden (1995). All of which have changes that I think are worth interrogating. With the Croc remaster, I would describe the original visuals as being quaint, while the remastered visuals look cheap. The original tile sets were designed around the limitations of the original, and made to look good when repeated ad nauseum. The pixelation of the walls and ground gave the impression of wear and texture, and this is helped by the lower visual fidelity, as it urges the player to view these environments more abstractly and less literally. It makes the simplicity of the designs, the repeated textures, and barren environmental details stand out far more than they would if the game lacked the smooth visuals.

The next main game Steph brings up Gods Remastered, is one I had never heard of, and the optimal word for describing it would be uncanny. They took a heavy 2D action platformer and attempted to make it look ‘HD’ but in a way that was deprived of aesthetic taste. The protagonist is a realistic pre-rendered muscle man who has idle breathing animations, but his key frames are all lifted from a 16-bit character sprite, meaning he looks wrong when he moves. The fidelity implies that the developers could do far more detailed animations, but they just aren’t, and the lack of abstraction makes the omitted details look like oversights.

The backgrounds, designed around the limitations of tile sets of the era, are recreated block by block, with only minor additions such as pre-rendered torches that emit lighting effects. The texture quality is so high that the blocky nature and repeated elements just looks wrong, the color changes are questionable, the protagonist’s redesign is ripe shite, and the pre-rendered sprites, in general, look like they are from a different universe next to the backgrounds. There is a stark lack of cohesiveness, and the end result just looks cheaper. Generic. Like something executed by a creative without a creative vision, or one too fixated on replication.

Lastly is the recent Suikoden remaster, and this one I have to disagree with Steph on as, looking at a comparison between the two, I am rather conflicted as to which one I think looks better. The original Suikoden, and to a lesser extent its sequel, were average when it came to their sprite work. The games don’t look bad, but they are also murky and plain in a lot of their environments, triumphing most when they are given the opportunity to flesh out small details. Like strewing a kitchen with food, or determining the furnishings of a bedroom.

Otherwise… a lot of this ‘sprite art’ appears to be based on photo libraries that the dev team bought. As someone who tried to turn photos into sprite art in the past, I have some advice for you. Don’t do that. At most, use it to get the right shape. A sprite tile made by hand will almost always look better than something you get by crushing a picture. If it is an abstract little detail, like a poster in the background, sure, that works. But for anything else? No. Just don’t.

So, with the remaster, Konami opted to redo all the backgrounds. But not in an HD-2D style a la Octopath Traveler: The Eight Travelers (2018) or Star Ocean The 2econd Story Remake HD (2023) Instead, they opted to recreate the maps while preserving their dimensions, redrawing the game, seemingly without the limitation of tile sets, while still reusing assets as if they were using tile sets. I appreciate the shadow and lighting effects this added, and think that certain elements look far better than the other. However, not everybody on the dev team got the same artistic memo, and for every one thing that looks better, there’s something else that looks uncanny.

Like a bridge of textured and well-worn wood being replaced with freshly polished sheets of browned metal. The smooth bricks of a century-old castle’s exterior. The insistence on casting rooms in a black void, when the original would often avoid this. The forest trees and dirt patterns look far less natural, homogenizing the design and removing clearly intentional twigs, underbrush, and debris in favor of grass and specks of dry dirt. …But then a battle background goes from a grey mountainous environment at night to this vibrant scene illuminated by bold blue moonlight, with patches of greenery shining across the mountain face, and fog rolling in from the sides.

This all leads up to what I think should be a general rule when remastering a game. Re-master it.

The term remaster is one that was taken from the music and film industries where the master recordings of music or film are the originals from which all derivatives are based on. To remaster it is to take the masters, make a new high quality transfer of them, and edit them in some way. Altering the audio balance, levels of instrumentation, colors, sound effects, deciding what scenes or segments should be cut or included, et cetera. This remastered master is then the basis for further derivatives, and sold back to the market. Just about any old thing from yesteryear that is re-released today will be a remaster. When someone converts or transfers something from film of vinyl to a digital medium, what they are doing is a form of remastering, by establishing a new master.

Typically, a remaster does not involve introducing new elements or touching up visual effects beyond what was present in the original. There are examples of new instrumentation being added to a remastered track or CG being added to a remastered film, but those are generally not received well, and people would rather just have better audio and color balancing, while emphasizing clarity. They want their music in higher quality than what, say, a cassette was capable or, and want 1080p, or maybe even 4K, film transfers, with only smart touch ups that exist to enhance what was clearly the original vision.

With video games though, the idea of a remaster is a touch bit different, as there is an expectation that the visuals will be overhauled, replaced, and new technology will be affixed to the game to make it look higher fidelity. They are taking the master and then introducing a number of new elements not present in the original master. Admittedly, some of these additions can be highly appreciated. Such as changing the game’s rendering capabilities, aspect ratio, and technical display stuff to make the game work in 4K at a 21:9 aspect ratio. Or introducing quality of life elements like new checkpoints, new modes, a hint system, controller mapping, minor stuff that is affixed to the game without changing much.

But when you start changing the look of the game, the camera, the perspective, the colors, the overall visual identity, or the underlying gameplay systems, then I think it stops being a remaster, at least in spirit, and starts being something else. Something else… and often something worse. I have previously called remasters that heavily futz with the visuals and not much else ‘facelift remasters’ and they are inherently neutral. They are neither good nor bad, but I would say that most are on the bad side of things, and for one reason. A lot of facelift remasters transform too much of the original work they are remastering.

They overwrite the original vision, replace it with their own, and it often looks far, far worse. A good facelift remaster is one that has narrow ambitious, a fierce commitment to the original art direction, and only changes what is necessary. The lighting and shadows can be updated, but the color palette should be mostly the same. The models can be updated with higher polygon versions, but the general skeleton, proportions, and look should be retained. And the textures should look like the thing they are supposed to look like. Wood should look like wood, and only plastic should look like plastic.

To name a good example of a facelift remaster, I was always very happy with how Twilight Princess HD cleaned up the original title, looking like a lateral improvement in a side-by-site, featuring textures that remain true to the aesthetics of the original. It looks like how I remember Twilight Princess looking on a CRT back in 2007. I similarly am happy with how the Mass Effect Legendary Edition (2021) cleaned up the original titles, offering a bevy of smart and small changes, without compromising the color balance. …Except for areas where things were too dark or dreary. And I’m rarely going to complain about something using neutral studio lighting.

So what am I trying to say here? Honestly… I’ve gotten way off track, but what I am saying can be surmised as this. When doing a re-whatever for a game, only change things that should be changed. Do not muck up with the art direction unless going through it with a fine-tooth comb. Respect the original artistic vision, even if one thinks that it was lacking or blasé. An old and crusty game in 1080p looks better than a remaster that does not respect the original.

…And now I should try to circle back to my original point. Oblivion, Croc, Gods, Suikoden— why do these games look like this? Why do they look measurably worse in terms of the subjective fields of aesthetics and artistic cohesiveness?

Well, firstly, good taste is not universal. Some people with control over IP just have a bad eye and think that old is ugly while new is beautiful. These are people who should not have power, but do, and we should do something to stop them. Secondly, a lot of these projects are farmed out to international support studios, who are often put in shitty positions. They need to get products out on time, within budget, and manage communication between a wide swath of people, playing telephone, and possibly hopping between three different languages in the process. Intention gets lost, artists are forced to produce sloppy work, and measures to ensure artistic integrity are skipped over. And thirdly… no, I think that about covers it. Bad taste, short schedules, and a lack of understanding or caring beyond getting the job done.

…Also, re-releasing early 3D games that run at 240p or some similar resolution, without any aliasing, resolution bumps, or so forth, is like re-releasing a movie by ripping a VHS tape. Yeah, it is the game, and it is in the quality it was originally presented back in the before times. But the only people who would prefer that over a transfer of the original filmstock are people with bad taste.

Now, how do I prove that I have good taste and am worth listening to? …I don’t know, maybe read Psycho Shatter 1988 or something.

…Also-Also, on a semi-related note to these old-ass games being re-whatever’d, GOG, apropos of nothing, just launched Breath of Fire IV on their storefront, for just $10. It’s a bit of an odd choice, given how the series has been thrown by the wayside for so long and the third game was not re-released since the old PSN. But this is the only Breath of Fire game that came out on PC, so re-releasing it is relatively cheap and easy, and they already brought out the first two games on NSO, so the series is around. …But Capcom really should re-release the series in one big collection. They have the technology!

…Also, gotta love it when four major RPGs come out in the same week! Oblivion Remastered, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, and Breath of Fire IV!

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Progress Report 2025-04-27

I didn’t want to work on TSF Showcase 2025-06 this past weekend, so I played Pokémon Emerald Rogue again, and finished my first 2.0 run. I won’t offer a review, but I overall find the game to be a major achievement, impressively designed, and a genuinely fun roguelike experience with enough variability to be a deserted island game in and of itself. The fact it does so much while being a GBA ROM is genuinely baffling to me, and after burning myself on PokeRogue, this offers a similar but different experience. Because Emerald Rogue is really just a Pokémon game rearranged to be a roguelike. With randomization up the wazoo, Slay the Spire-esque branching paths, a downright excessive progression system, a stifling number of customization options, and a plethora of challenges. It is genuinely one of the more comprehensive roguelikes I have ever seen.

That being said, I also do not quite get how it wants me to play it. Am I just supposed to catch every Pokémon, clear every run, and make the game easier as I amass more and more stuff? What should I prioritize upgrading? Are runs supposed to take four to five hours due to exploration, trainer battles, and save state RNG manipulation? Or should I just keep pushing through, seeing what I can accomplish, and start each run with a new randomized assortment of friends? …Even though I got super luck and snagged a technician Scyther in my first run, and that’s legit one of the best starters possible. The balancing is overall weird by virtue of its complexity, and its ‘generation exclusive challenges’ are what set off the preamble for this week’s Rundown.

…Also, if I was not clear, this is a very good Pokémon ROM hack, and I would strongly recommend it.

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2025-04-20: Finished reading the subject for TSF Showcase 2025-06. Then Tim Rogers dropped another video and I spent a good chunk of my night watching that, while playing Pokémon Emerald Rogue, because I have to keep these hands busy with something. Also, darn Rain got me riled up with politics late at night, so I just kinda stopped it then and there.

2025-04-21: Wrote like 2,000 words on re-whatevers for this Rundown. Wrote 300 words for the LA Noire bit.

2025-04-22: Wrote 2,600 words for the Oblivion Re-Whatever bit. Added 600 words to the LA Noire bit. Wrote 800 words for the preamble.

2025-04-23: Wrote 1,800 word Preamble Ramble and created the overdesigned yet underdelivered header image. Decided to edit the Rundown now because #fuckit!

2025-04-24: Decided to get started on The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, playing it for about five hours. REALLY liking the game, but I will have some harsher words to say about the SIM elements in this ADV-RPG-SIM.

2025-04-25: More The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, going for about 6 hours. The game is ultimately not quite what I expected, but I still like it quite a bit. Would have played more, but Cassie wanted to watch Vivy and Temple of Doom. Good times. Temple of Doom is incredible, besides the vast amount of racist shit, and I can see why people would say it’s better than Raiders. Vivy is also good, but it’s weird how anybody took such literal cues from Detroit: Become Human (2018) though. Not because the artists or writers did a bad job, but because David Cage is a fundamentally untalented and incurious creator who thinks his ass births chocolate. I would be happy if that man went to prison.

2025-04-26: Watched Indiana Jones 3 with Cassie and Shiba. Good, but has a bit too much shared DNA with the first movie. Played like 9 hours of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, developing some harsher criticisms. Game is still an 8/10 at worse though. Will probably impress me more once I get to the post-game. Currently about 50% of the way done, I think.

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