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Is Xenosaga HD Really Necessary?

By Heath | September 4, 2012 at 9:11 pm

I just saw some news talking about Sony being like “Hey man, you want Xenosaga HD, ask Namco Bandai about it,” and I got to wondering…how many of these are even necessary? I’m not going to type a big long thing about it, but this one in particular stuck out to me because graphics were always one of Xenosaga‘s biggest strengths. Who the heck would say that the visuals were lacking in any way? They were among the best looking RPGs on the PS2. I’m not saying that as qualification that they are still top-of-the-line today, but do they really have to be? How much would that improve the Xenosaga experience? It will have the same gameplay, same soundtrack, same story told in exactly the same way. HD doesn’t wave a magic wand and make all of the other factors better too.

Now, Xenogears on the other hand, you’re already well aware that I totally understand, if you’ve ever read this site before (which you…probably haven’t, let’s be straight here). But for you I say, hello, I’m Heath, and I like Xenogears. Remake that game in HD and I’ll be there on day one. I say this and of course realize that such a game will probably never happen, thanks to the rights being scattered all across the countryside in the hands of too many different people and companies, but that doesn’t mean I want it any less. I also realize it would take a mammoth amount of work on par with designing and making a brand new game or maybe even more, given the length of XG‘s story.

I put this out there because with Xenogears, I see a game whose experience can be changed significantly with an HD update. I mean, look at the original version. Yeah, you HD that and it feels quite different. Xenosaga, I don’t see giving me a different experience just with an HD makeover — definitely not enough to make me want to play it again, at least.

Seems like nostalgia is causing people to ask for HD re-releases of every single game they ever thought was great. I’ll admit it’s hard to even keep myself in check here. The power of found memories is not a force to be underestimated.

Topics: Editorials, Xenogears, Xenosaga