Reboots seem to be a major point of contention both within the gaming community and pretty much everywhere else to the point that the outrage about reboots covers up issues with them that I feel need to be talked about. Reboots, at their worst, are both unoriginal and disrespectful of the original material but, at their best, they can be brand new interpretations of existing ideas and in some cases improvements on the original material without trying to say the original is inferior.
With this in mind, I wanted to talk about this because there are several reboots that are, if not outright bad, then at least questionable in execution and ignorant of the original's charm and highlights. Issues with DmC: Devil May Cry and Ratchet & Clank (2016) are abundant and obvious but some of the lesser known successful reboots are Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls. Just to be clear, when I say these are lesser known, I'm not saying less popular, just that the fact they're reboots is not clear to everyone who enjoys them.
So, what makes a reboot? Why are so many of them bad? And what does it take to make a good one? Well, the first question is surprisingly difficult to answer depending on who you're talking to but the second and third questions are a bit easier.
A reboot is a reimagining or reinterpretation of an existing work. If you compare Alice in Wonderland to Alice in Wonderland by Disney and the Alice Madness series, you can see how different a reboot can be from its source material and even from other interpretations.
As for why many reboots are bad, well that comes down to two real issues: the first is a lack of respect for the original material and the second is a lack of understanding of why people like the original. The latter issue is far more relevant but, to many, the former is far more egregious.
Obviously, if you don't respect the original material, even if you're rebooting it, you won't want to add anything to it that former fans liked because you're basically just making something entirely different while wearing the logo or title of the original work.
The latter issue incoporates this but on a much larger scale. A lack of respect for the original is part of why a reboot may not be faithful but another is generally not knowing what made the original so popular, especially since fan data on the topic may not be consistent enough to form a solid conclusion.
So for this, I'm actually going to take a different approach. Instead of talking about DmC:DMC and talking at length about what it does wrong, or talking about Ratchet 2016 when TheGamingBritShow did a far better job than I ever could, I'm going to tackle this from the perspective of someone who knows the original material better than anyone else who is trying to remake it but doesn't quite get what made the original so great: the Rurouni Kenshin Reboot.
One major issue I see with Rurouni Kenshin Reboot as far as I've seen so far is that it is trying to introduce far too many elements at a time. In chapter 1 alone, we already have Kenshin, Kaoru, Yahiko, Kanryu Takeda, Jin-E, and a mook that seems to be using Raijuta's design to fill Gohei's role. While this may sound like small potatoes so far, the bigger issue is how these characters are changed. And, of the characters I listed, the biggest and most impactful changes come from Kanryu and Jin-E.
In the original manga, Kanryu Takeda was a big gang leader who was using a doctor named Megumi to create fast acting and cheaply manufactured opium to turn a profit, he uses a small time group of Shinobi called the Oniwan Group (or Oniwabanshu in the original Japanese) to get Megumi back. Back then, Kanryu himself wasn't that big of a deal, he was just some billionaire snob who got in way over his head but the arc worked on a foundational level for one simple reason: it was the second arc right after Jin-E's that introduced the idea that killers may not necessarily be evil, which in turn gave a level of depth to the characters that kill that rarely ever gets to those characters in manga and anime with similar "Killing is bad" messages. I'll talk more about that when I get to Jin-E, however.
In the reboot, Kanryu is still a big gang leader but now he's a real estate tycoon who is trying to get Kaoru's dojo and, more specifically, the land it's on, mixing him with Kihei Hiruma. This coupled with that mook who is a fake battosai not unlike Gohei and we can see that he's created a mirror chapter to the original but its execution is a bit different.
In the original, Kihei and Gohei's presence in Kaoru's life were simply a draw to get Kenshin to stay at the Kamiya dojo and in Tokyo for the duration of the manga. In the reboot, it seems to be doing that while also trying to establish Kanryu as the big bad of the manga.
Having an overarching villain is not necessarily a bad thing, since it can create a goal post for the characters to work toward and he can also serve as a manufacturer of enemies for the main characters to fight. However, if you're going to have a big bad, you want to make sure they're worth their salt. And while Kanryu started the gang collections that is leading to the fights in this reboot, he seems to be inconsequential outside of that.
Jin-E, however, is a far bigger problem. In the original manga, Jin-E was a crazy killer, yes, but psychotic is not his only character trait. Jin-E, as a murderer is assumed both by the audience and the other characters to be just a serial killer who attacks former Isshin Shishi. However, on his deathbed only two chapters later, we find out that he was actually a hit man hired by an at-the-time unknown political figure to kill to give him political power. Jin-E took the job because, without the ability to kill, he didn't know what to do with his life, even killing himself at the end with the notion that, even if he could keep that politician's identity a secret forever, his broken right arm would lead to a life he doesn't want to lead. In essence, while it is true he enjoyed fighting, he primarily took up killing as a hitman because he didn't have any other traits or skills he could use to live in the Meiji Era.
Is any of this groundbreaking? Not really. Even at the time, Jin-E's character trait was a combination of two stereotypes rather than one which made him somewhat less generic but still not incredibly complex. That said, it was a good amount of characterization given in a very small amount of time.
In the reboot, however, he's a laughing maniac with no real personality and a somewhat foreshadowed vendetta against Kenshin for stabbing through his hands, though fighting Kenshin could just as easily be for fun. While this change may not be all that big in the grand scheme of things, and may not even be that noticeable to anyone who doesn't have the original fresh in their mind, it takes a character who makes Saitou's original introduction work so well and makes him that much less interesting.
Another problem I see with the reboot is directly related to Kenshin's backstory with Tomoe, which is largely unchanged as far as we can tell. The problem isn't with the backstory itself but rather how the plot is framed around it. You see, in the original manga, whether intention or not, Kenshin's backstory was mostly a mystery until the introduction of Enishi to make him a more intriguing character. He's a former assassin who is also really good at and eager to do house work, and he's a child prodigy who fought in a war and survived despite his young age, which gives his youthful appearance and relatively young age a bit more wisdom and experience than they would have otherwise.
For the most part, we weren't given detail on Kenshin's backstory because, for a long time, it wasn't necessary that we knew it. While Kenshin's legendary status as Hitokiri Battosai made him intimidating to anyone who heard it, there wasn't really much reason to detail Kenshin's history until Enishi was introduced whose very existence and presence in that final arc was entirely related to that backstory that we didn't know. And, boom, we got the opportunity to develop and flesh out two characters for the price of one. Now, we know more about why Kenshin doesn't kill anymore but we also have very tangible, albeit misplaced motivations for Enishi to get revenge on Kenshin.
With the reboot, though, because Kanryu is the main antagonist and there doesn't seem to be a real seamless way to introduce Enishi, Kenshin's unchanged backstory is more unnecessary information than it is an impact on the plot. Now, I'm not saying a character's backstory should be changed at all but, since Kenshin's history with Tomoe doesn't seem like it's going to be relevant for a while, there was no reason to even bring it up.
The issue with the Rurouni Kenshin reboot is not that it's bad, I would definitely like it a lot if I were not already a fan of the original material. However, its focus on introducing characters that were very popular in the previous manga indicates that it's more about catering to old fans rather than trying to tell a good story. It's bringing all these popular characters in but without the backstory and events that made them popular in the first place.
That somewhat ties into the second question, why are so many reboots bad? It's because, for you to make a good reboot, you need to make your own version of the original material while still being true to the heart of that material. You don't want to be disrespectful of the original but you don't want to be reverent to it either. You want to make something that fans of the original will like while still making it clearly it's own entity.
Many who make reboots either don't understand this concept or don't care about it. In the case of DmC: DMC they were trying to make something completely different because they didn't think the original was any good. In the case of Ratchet & Clank, they were trying to make something that would appease everyone instead of making something that could be enjoyed on a deeper level for the people who wanted to, though the movie tie-in may have had something to do with that as well.
One of my friends stated to me that the makers of the original material making the reboot is the only way to make a good reboot, this was back when Ratchet 2016 was still in development. And, it would seem that he grossly oversimplified the issue, since this reboot also wasn't all that good either.
Now, everybody talks about bad reboots but I want to take some time to give credit to the reboots that actually manage to do it right, reboots that manage to carry the spirit of the original while still being identifiable on their own.
Ninja Gaiden (XBox) was a good reboot, not just because it was mechanically deep and difficult but because it had everything that fans of the original would like. Iconic Protagonist updated in a cool way? Check. Difficulty level in-tact and potentially even heightened? Check. Only introducing characters that are in some way relevant to the journey? Check. Tangible motivation to go through the story? Check. Script writing that's true to the original? Absolutely. Pretty much the only thing it didn't get right was making it clear that it is a reboot, since many in the Ninja Gaiden fandom still believe it's a prequel series to the NES and SNES games.
Then, there's Dark Souls. Now, the reason I say Dark Souls is a reboot is because, well, it's basically a bigger better Demon's Souls. Many people incorrectly assume that Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne are all in the same series, which they're not, the only thing they have in common is the development team, FromSoftware. Demon's Souls was the first and when they made their next game, they wanted it to be bigger and better and incorporate ideas that they didn't have the chance to do or execute right in Demon's Souls. So, in that way, Dark Souls is more of a reboot.
That said, as a reboot, Dark Souls isn't quite as unique of an experience as Demon's Souls, especially not anymore after Soulslike is now apparently a topic of discussion, but it's still true to the heart of Demon's Souls by being all about the adventure, the atmosphere, the wonder and mystery, the dark tones, the unraveling of the history, and even the idea that you're not the center of the universe. These are all things that its sequels still don't get consistently right.
That said, Dark Souls still went out to solve some of the major issues with Demon's Souls. Estus was introduced to bring tension to exploration, limit healing abuse, and force you to make decisions related to your adventure, something that Dark Souls 2 didn't understand with life gems. Dark Souls 3 somewhat fixed this issue and, to be fair, added the improvement of Ashen Estus but the point is that Estus was created to improve upon the tension and hard decisions that Demon's Souls somewhat had trouble with due to consumable healing items like healing grass. It made bosses that were all relatively unique from each other and were not always eager to make you feel like a big man, something that was a big part of Demon's Souls, that Dark Souls 2 fundamentally misunderstood, and Dark Souls 3 has abandoned entirely.
Mini Rant: Many people have argued in defense of Dark Souls 2 and its lack of enemy variety, saying it's a false criticism when saying that is fundamentally misunderstanding the point. When people say Dark Souls 2 doesn't have enough enemy variety, what they mean is that most of the original enemies are all relatively the same and the ones that aren't were present in Dark Souls. It's not just about the shape of the enemies, however, it's also about how they function and how you fight them. Roll when necessary, deal some damage, and memorize attack patterns is fine in games that have deep combat but for games that are trying to be interesting, having too many enemies like this can be a detriment, something that most people still don't seem to get.
Rant Over, back to the topic.
Consistent world design was made a big part of Dark Souls, to the point that the interconnectedness and consistency of the world made it enjoyable to explore but also immersive because you had to take in your surroundings and watch out for enemies.
Finally, Dark Souls made crunchier, more satisfying attack animations while still not relying too much on the combat to carry the experience. Now, for someone like me, who loves action, platforming, and combat more than anything else, average combat can really bring down the experience but, in reality, Dark Souls and Demon's Souls are not made for me. Those games were made to appeal to people who love the adventure and, while yes, I do enjoy adventure, combat and platforming are paramount for me. This is inevitably why I still recommend Dark Souls and Demon's Souls despite knowing that I'm not a fan of them. Because, even though they're not made for me, they may very well be made for someone else, so who am I to say that you can't like it?
I think, if there's anything to be learned from this, it's that when making a reboot you should respect the source material enough to not bastardize it but be strong enough to make it a unique interpretation instead of retreading old ground completely.
That's all for now, have a wonderful day.
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