Revision is a complicated undertaking.

There will always be 2 groups of people: Those that desire the purest, most faithful reinterpretation of the thing and those that desire a complete reimagining of whatever work is being revised. And as the creator of a remade work, which of these camps do you attempt to appeal to? Do you attempt to appeal to either at all?

For Capcom’s remake of Resident Evil 4, they did an excellent job of appealing to both sides and neither of them the same time. With every well implemented modernization or quality of life improvement, there is a compromise to the original game’s tone and direction. With every missed improvement that could’ve been made upon the original, there is something new and original and exciting. This towing of the line makes for an experience that feels uneven and inconsistent. Had this been a wholly original work, these inconsistencies wouldn’t exist but as a remake of a work that came to define the entire trajectory of its series, they loom like a colossal shadow over what is a very well made, likable experience. Oh, and the island segment is still way too long.

Where’s everyone going? Bingo?

God of War: Ragnarok represents everything wrong with big budget, single player game releases. That being said, giving it anything less than the rating I’ve given feels disingenuous to me. This is by design. Ragnarok is a very competent title by every measurable metric- It’s graphics and overall visual presentation are top notch, the gameplay is fun and engaging, and there’s a story here that I imagine many will want to see through to its conclusion. But with a budget of around $200,000,000, how could it not have all of those things? Ragnarok is a game that feels more like a product than an artistic endeavor- a game that feels like it was created and endlessly focus-tested in a lab somewhere to be as digestible to the largest demographic of consumers as possible with it’s unrelenting safeness and sterility. Ragnarok could never fail because it is completely adverse to any sort of risk. And to that end, it has been abundantly successful, winning multiple awards and the praise of fans and critics worldwide. But it was in this pursuit of appealing to everyone that something important was lost. Ragnarok comes off as an all too lateral move from a series that had just boldly reinvented itself only a few years prior.