Cognition Dissemination: Square Enix’s Remaster Teams Should Talk

The existence of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, which includes the first officially localized version of Radical Dreamers and a remastered version of Chrono Cross, is a net positive for increasing the availability of both games and preserving them for current and future console generations. But it’s not the best it could have been.

The ports of the games aren’t bad per se, but as middling as the reveal trailer and subsequent pre-release videos implied. The Chrono Cross post mystifyingly runs at a slightly worse framerate compared to the original PSOne version, despite being “remastered” for platforms several times more powerful. The artwork for Radical Dreamers contains a bilinear filter that can’t be disabled. There’s a desire among certain fans to preserve the original experiences, but that applies less when the original games can be so easily emulated. Extra features like the redone character portrait artwork, slightly updated character models, and the ability for auto battling and speed increases in Chrono Cross shouldn’t be sold short, but Square Enix was capable of more.

Case in point: Their other remasters. The quality of a Square Enix remaster depends on which team handles it. There are iffy ones like those mentioned above and other okay ones like Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (which our executive editor Angela is streaming) and the Final Fantasy IX rerelease. The most exemplary ones have been spearheaded by Akitoshi Kawazu’s team, the quality of which are so far beyond the others that the teams responsible for the other ports need to chat with Kawazu and his team. Immediately.

Consider the remasters they’ve handled. The original SaGa Frontier utilized a mixture of 2D sprites and prerendered polygonal backdrops like several other PSOne Japanese RPGs. The backdrops for SaGa Frontier Remastered were largely AI upscaled and sprites redone for HD resolutions, but the team put enough effort in to ensure that it could be played in a natural widescreen view not achieved by zooming in on the original 4:3 ratio. More remarkably, the remaster restored content that wasn’t completed in time for the original version’s release, including an entire character scenario. This was a lot of love and care to put into the remaster of a game that then-newfound JRPG fans in a post-Final Fantasy VII world either found odd-but-endearing or too offbeat to enjoy at the time it originally released, which makes it an immensely respectable effort.

The same could be said of the Legend of Mana remaster released mere months after SaGa Frontier Remastered. The team redrew most of the backgrounds for HD resolutions, as seen through closely observing the comparison shots. This also ensured that, again like the SaGa Frontier port, the widescreen view could be achieved naturally instead of adding horrendous zoom-in options for the 4:3 ratio. This was in addition to a rearranged soundtrack and ability to turn encounters on and off, two common features in Square Enix remasters. It’s the work the team put in for the backgrounds and sprites that shows how this effort was a labor of love. All this for a game either considered an enjoyable experiment in the Mana series or an insulting affront to everything Secret of Mana stood for when it originally released.

If these levels of effort could be put into remasters of two divisive (to say the least) titles, Square Enix sure as hell can do so for their other remasters. The only reason the Chrono Cross remaster has bad widescreen solutions achieved through either zooming in on the 4:3 ratio or stretching the view is because the company wasn’t willing to shell out the resources for proper ratio adjustments. The same can be said of the Final Fantasy VIII remaster, one in their biggest worldwide franchise. This is why Square Enix should listen to this criticism, from me and others (more the latter because I’m not delusional enough to think they’re reading this), and let the teams gather for a good chat. Having them all kneel in Kawazu’s presence as he educates them on the right way to remaster a game would work too.

I especially want them to get this right before the Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together remasters come along. Between the largely-accurate Nvidia GeForce list leak, a trademarked name for the latter, and the good feeling I have, I think both are inevitable. I’m not worried about LUCT considering the game was already in widescreen and well done when it released on PSP a decade ago. If they upscale it and call it a day, I wouldn’t complain too much. It’s Final Fantasy Tactics that will need more care, assuming they’re not remaking it. I’d like to see an improvement over the mobile versions (which contained… interesting choices for aspect ratios and new portraits) and especially the PSP version. It should be on par with LUCT on PSP, albeit in HD.

Whether Square Enix will truly care about these and other future efforts will depend on how the company feels they’ll potentially sell, regardless of how much work they put into them. Future solid efforts shouldn’t be exclusive to SaGa Frontier 2 (likely next on Kawazu’s list) and, if they feeling particularly brave (and I hope to heaven they will), Unlimited Saga.

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