Tangential Thinking: Wherein I talk about prequels, remakes and why FF8 probably shouldn't have one

People who have had to put up with my complaining over the years are probably aware of my dislike of prequels, which I see as self indulgent and unnecessary.

We already know how it's already going to turn out so there's no tension and how the pieces got into that position is generally not interesting enough to warrant a direct telling. One of the things I like about A Song of Ice and Fire is that the rebellion before the first novel is slowly filled in through dialogue as characters bring up various events. We get the key notes for a story without actually having to go through the entire thing (and given that this is George RR Martin it would be a doorstopper).

Furthermore prequels can't meaningfully add to the world, as any new characters and places have to be gone in some way or another by the end otherwise we'll be left with plot holes when we get to the original work. So you really can't meaningfully expand the world, merely stretch what's already there.

Remakes are very similar. Instead of new content that is largely irrelevant, it's just the original content again, and so we know what's going to happen (probably). Seriously was there any good reason for the American remakes of Let the Right One In or Funny Games (did we even need the original Funny Games)?

But remakes are not without merit, if the intent isn't just to use the work as an easy source of already created material. They can be used as a reinterpretation, taking the source material in a different direction (eg the Rebuild of Evangelion series) or style/tone (The Thing). The intent could also be to improve accessibility of the source material, bringing the advances of time into past fiction. Of course this doesn't always work, just look at Night of the Living Dead and it's two remakes that most zombie movie fans probably don't know of.

This works better for video games as the march of progress is a lot more significant for them than films, as the player's direct involvement can be improved. Look at Ocarina of Time 3D, it's got everything the original had as well as better polish, handling improvements and additional content.

And now we sorta get to my initial idea when I started this an hour or so ago: Final Fantasy 8 (also I'm over hyperlinking things). Now Sony has been making HD remakes of popular game series', but so far they've been sticking with PS2 games cause it's comparatively little effort for a lot of profit. But if they every decided to rehaul some PS1 games I sincerely hope they don't do FF8.

As a PS1 it really couldn't do both free camera 3d space and good detail, so to have a pretty pre-rendered background we had to make do with still camera angles which could be rather awkward (but atmospheric) in games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill.

As I've been replaying FF8 recently, I've had a chance to notice things that are foreshadowed earlier on. One such thing is the moon, which becomes a plot point of sorts later on. As with much nonrealistic Japanese stuff, the moon is freaking huge, so naturally a player will notice it from time to time, but maybe not just how frequently it pops up.

The reason for how the hell this is related to my above ramblings is that if hypothetically FF8 every became proper 3D, I fear the moon would lose some of it's mystique if you could just look up and the thing would be right there looming over you (don't get me wrong it'd look excellent), kind of like how monsters often lose some of their terror once you see them for what they are.

Now here's some pictures to distract from this unsatisfying ending.