Roughly ten years ago, Josef Fares made the switch from filmmaking to the world of game design. In the years that have passed, he has quickly become one of the new faces of the auteur movement in games ever since he skyrocketed to a household name with his now “famous” speech at the 2017 Game Awards. Fast forward to 2021, when It Takes Two swept the Game Awards and won Game of the Year. It made people want to go back and revisit his past work, though one of those works was hard to find on a modern platform; by that, I mean it was buried in the digital store catalogs, it made sense for the publisher of his first work to be remade so it can get fresh light in 2024, and after playing they only updated the visuals which began to question why this remake even exists when the original version still is up for sale. So, instead of making a comparison between the old and the remake, I decided to ask the question when I realized this is a visual upgrade: Does the game hold up after all these years? The short answer is yes, it does.
The game starts up with two brothers who are sent on a quest by the local village doctor to retrieve a water droplet of the Tree of Life to save their ill father. The younger one has an emotional loss mentally, mainly because he witnessed the death of his mother as he was unable to save her from drowning. Now that we have our quest, the game can begin. The first thing I remember that struck me as “interesting” is that this is a two-player game played with only one controller. Each brother gets a half of the controller, and you have to guide them through this fantasy world to save their father. It’s that type of control layout that could only exist at this experimental time in the early 2010s indie game market, along with the promotion from Xbox with being a part of the Summer of Arcade lineup for that year, helped get it more attention than it would have because it was coming out the year after the massive success on PlayStation with Journey.
The game is short in nature, by that I mean it’s as long as it needed to be to get across its story and themes of bonding. I remember I was able to first beat it in a single summer afternoon, and remember it struck a chord with me, which is funny because I’m a single child and have no siblings, but the idea of having the player controller both brothers at the same time was one, as I said, was weird at the time but as I grown accustomed to more types of games. I began to realize this is one of the rare types of story-based games that uses gameplay mechanics to get its story across, just like how a film would use visual images instead of dialogue to get its story across. Something that more games after this would push even further, like with what Undertale did with breaking the fourth wall down by giving the player a choice by doing things differently or playing the game like any other RPG.
But now that I have delved into what made the original release so noteworthy, what did they add to this remake? Well, the main spotlight here is the upgraded visuals, which do look nice, but this is coming from someone who likes ultrarealistic figures in games; I think that took away from the original charm of this being in a uniquely styled fantasy world here it just looks like a modern Final Fantasy game, and at first, it was off-putting, but I was able to get used to it. The second big change is the soundtrack was redone from starch and composed with an orchestra, and you tell the difference when listening to the two side by side. But that’s mostly everything they changed. This is a prettier warts-and-all style of remake, in a similar nature to the Crash and Spyro remakes from a few years ago; if you didn’t vibe with the games then and think a remake will fix all the issues, then this game isn’t for you.
But in the end, should you get this version or the 2013 release, which can be played on nearly anything, even an iPhone? If you are mainly interested in experiencing this game, then go for the cheaper and older version if you don’t mind the semi-stylized feel to it, or if you want that same experience but modernized by 10 years and don’t mind the skeleton is an “old” beast then go for the remake. But from my perspective, this is a remake that is primarily there to get people interested again, and hey, if more people discover this game because of it, then it has done its job and then some.
Score: 7 out of 10
Reviewed on PS5