My thoughts on the Kiwami 3 reveal

Does nobody else view the concept of remaking PS3 games to be absurd?

I'm not saying every PS3 game on the system was stunning, or even that they necessarily maintained a stable frame rate. I'm not saying games should be locked on older consoles, but that often times these PS360 games are visually gorgeous and just need a port or remaster to really shine. The reality is that the vast majority of PS3 games are not that different from modern games you can pick up and play today. They're just not.

Here's the thing: even if they didn't, even if games from 15 or so years ago were HIDEOUS and unbearable to look at, that wouldn't suddenly warrant them being discarded. We as the gaming community take a very lax and disrespectful position towards what we desperately want to be an art form. There's an almost unashamed willingness to proclaim "THANK GOD" at the prospect of something old being brought up to acceptable standards.

I don't think there's a threshold for when things become justifiably old enough to be discarded either. Honestly, my framing was off from the start. It's odd how dismissive and accepting we are towards new iterations of any video game. It's not that nobody can ever remake an older piece or have their own interpretation of it, it's that the industry rewards this kind of cynical nostalgia microwave reheat strategy where older product is polished to become newer product meeting modern standards. There is almost never a conscious kind of artistry in game remakes on the publisher or directorial side. It becomes a matter of the developers to scramble and rush them out, trying to put their heart into deeply cynical propositions.

People talk about how they can't wait to see Mine or Rikiya or the orphanage again and how they've been waiting for a while to be able to experience it. The reality is you always could have. Just replay the game. But the implicit statement here is always that they want to see these things with modern presentation: visuals that closer skate to photorealism. Gamers unconsciously think that fresh, modern graphics are actualizing older experiences into reality.

But going back to my original point, Yakuza 3 is not just not an ugly game, but a particularly nice-looking one. The mocapped facial expressions look extremely good and they've clearly worked out the kinks of their engine with the previous PS3 installment (Kenzan). Kiryu is notably bright-eyed and cheery and other characters like Rikiya wear their full range of emotions on their face. The PS360 iconic bloom coats the low-texture Okinawan beach and replicate an all-encompassing sunlight.

It's a really pretty game, and it's a bit of a time capsule into a slightly older period in game development. Yakuza 3, in its current state, gives audiences the opportunity to ground themselves in what Yakuza was after soaking up the more graphically complex Zero-Kiwami 1-Kiwami 2 pipeline. That's why it shocks me so many people react in disgust rather than fascination: something older and less homogenous to what they experienced before is met with derision. I don't know what to say to people that operate like this and who think this way.

PS3 games look especially beautiful at sunset. You can see how despite the older graphics, they paint a very human, vivid picture. In no world would I say this is "ugly", and I'd hesitate to call it "dated". It's datedin that it's not a path traced TAA DLSS upscaled Unreal Engine 5 scene, but honestly many of those games struggle to portray the kind of warmth and humanity Yakuza 3 does.

Moving past graphics, I really do think Yakuza 3 plays perfectly fine. The controls are snappy and responsive, you have a full 360 degree camera, and most of the gripes people have about defensive enemies fall apart when you exert the slightest bit of brainpower and creativity in how you engage with others. There's a million videos online, in fact, highlighting Yakuza 3 (and 4)'s depth in combat; lining enemies against the wall and leaving them in stunlock to "wallbound". You can get some interesting strings and combos against most of your opposition and there's actually an interesting skill ceiling here. It's nothing crazy as this is a fairly simple beat-em-up, but it's something here that is GOING to be lost in Kiwami 3.

Again, this just makes me sad. Many people prioritize a homogenized game-to-game experience where they flow exactly the same to one where they have to adjust to different unique styles and philosophies. It's not that Yakuza games are complex or particularly hard to succeed with: you can bolster your inventory with Staminan Royales or weapons from Kamiyama's shop if something's giving you enough trouble. It just comes across as a disproportionately silly complaint to center your gripes about "Blockuza" this much.

Rikiya looks ethnically Okinawan in the original and has the unique almost jheri curl hairstyle and now he just looks nothing like that. Kiryu's red shirt from the original is a callback to Takeshi Kitano's Sonatine, one of the franchise's inspirations. There's so many little tidbits like these that appear in older video games that are often stamped out in remakes. I don't fault a new team of developers for missing those details because it's not their fault. It's never their fault, it's the fault of publishers for insisting they can continue to churn out this slop and the fault of directors for not intimately understanding these minute details.

I can't help but feel frustrated. My gripe is that the Yakuza "franchise" is full of people that just want to bumrush through "content" and want it all streamlined. Rather than Yakuza 3 being a uniquely older charming game, it's a roadblock on their path to consume the franchise as soon as possible. We're stuck even longer in this infinite cycle of nostalgia and there doesn't seem to be an escape. Every publisher is doing this, and they know damn well we as a community will eat this shit up. We're hitting a point where it's just deeply obvious gamers cannot say "NO". You present some baseline vaguely interesting feature like the prospect of a padded out 10 year Mine side story and suddenly people are clamoring to drop sixty bucks on this game. It's just sad where we're at. I'm not judging any individual person for their consumption habits, in fact, I think we center these industry-wide problems way too much on individual consumers. The reality is we need some kind of marginal change across the board.

I personally feel the remake and nostalgia craze is endemic of severe issues with preservation in the industry. Older games are simply not accessible enough. I don't care if you're able to fire up an emulator and run all your favorite ROMs. Other people are either unable to or too tired to do stuff like that. The fact that I can't go on the PS Store or Xbox's store and find almost every video game ever made on there is a travesty. We have all this fancy powerful technology and we can't keep track of how our medium has progressed over time?

I think older games need to find their way on store shelves. I should be able to pick up ports of PS2 games right now if I drive to Wal-Mart. They should be listed alongside the latest PS5 hits, and that should be NORMALIZED.

Outside of accessibility, we need to start strongarming game companies out of anti-consumer practices. This is not done by "voting with our wallet", but by pushing for actual stringent legislation and regulation around how video games can be sold. "Deluxe editions" that come bundled with cosmetic DLC need to go. Sleazy microtransactions and overpriced subpar ports need to be under more scrutiny. The reality is because video games are far more malleable and software-like than other mediums, they require a special level of attention.

Lastly, we've got to address the enormous dev cycle and crunch problem that capital continues to worsen as it hits an even more burgeoning size. Games often take five to seven years to develop now in the AAA space. Developers are often held hostage for these enormous, bloated projects that ship dated on arrival. The remake trend is a reflection of these problems as when video games are such a big time investment it often becomes easier to bank on something safe and easy. We need some good old-fashioned socialism Workers' Reform to really straighten out the endless hell people work in.

I believe that once we start taking the games industry seriously as not just an endless content dump but a reflection of studios seeing how much slop they can get away with shoveling onto your plate things will start to marginally improve. And while I'm skeptical about "voting with your wallet", maybe at minimum you can save some money by escaping the endless nostalgia loop. You don't have to buy this game. You don't have to re-experience Yakuza 3 in a prettier engine. Sometimes it's okay to leave things be.