Speaking of Resident Evil 2, I often hear about how Capcom developers are lazy because they cut content from the original.
I believed and still believe that such an opinion cannot claim to be objective and is rather a primitivization of complex development processes to the level of a convenient and immature narrative.
First of all, a small team of developers worked on the original. It took a lot less people, a lot less resources, and even a lot less time to create the game than it did for the remake.
Back then, the geometry of the levels was very simple, so developers could re-use the enemies from the previous game without the risk that their intelligence would conflict with the environment. This is what happened with spiders and crows: they were literally borrowed from the first game. Their intelligence, animations, textures, and even sounds were not changed. This was done in order to artificially increase the content.
Second, the combat system and animations have become much more difficult to implement. Now you don't just have to choose the direction to hit the enemy: now you need to develop a quality impact that depends on the point where the damage was done, and other factors.
You should also think about how characters and enemies interact with the environment. In addition, developers need to develop an immersive environment, binaural sound, and other things that were never in the original due to the primitiveness of the technology. In the original, all locations are divided into strict segments, and instead of a deep sound design, there was music. To create sounds in modern games, you need a lot of people, and for music, you need at least one composer.
There is a popular opinion that games are easier to make in modern days. They say that earlier technologies were more primitive, so developers were constrained in their capabilities, but now it seems that nothing restricts them.
Well, this is partly true, but it is also a big misconception. To make a modern game, now you need a lot more specialists, time and money. If in the original cutscenes were simple, and complex emotions were expressed through screams and gesticulations, now there is a whole group of specialists who work with the actors and make motion capture. Then there is another team of specialists who edit the material. Perhaps someone did not know, but in modern cutscenes, as in movies, the lighting changes individually for each angle.
So when someone says that developers are cutting out content, think carefully, is it reasonable for the company to make an expensive game even more expensive because the original had crutches like scenarios and enemies that artificially increased the content? I think not. I would like the remake to be bigger, but now, when we especially talk about big games, there are always compromises.
This doesn't mean you have to like the remake. This also doesn't mean that you have to agree to different creative solutions. However, if you are trying to call someone lazy and greedy simply because you did not like the game and you do not try to understand the question, then personally I am unlikely to take this opinion into account. But those who have interesting criticism, and who do not try to expose the greed of unknown people, I will listen with pleasure.
