AGD DID WHAT??

OK, I am seriously annoyed about this. Their remake of Trial by Fire was spectacularly awesome, though admittedly I say this as someone that already idolized the original — and, though it only came after a series of games that were mediocre at best and wincingly, embarrassingly, painfully bad at worst, I think they’ve been steadily improving, and their statement that this KQ3 remake is “AGD Interactive’s most polished remake ever” is probably true. But I’m not going to be downloading it.

Because why the hell did they even do it at all? Sure, IA’s remake wasn’t the best game I’ve ever played in my life — especially the character portraits and voice acting — but it was better than AGD’s KQ1 remake and even some parts of the KQ2 remake (that awful song and tower cutscene in particular). Plus it gave us “RUMF?” which has become an important part of my life.

Of course when we’re talking non-profit fanmade remakes of old computer games, anyone is allowed to do whatever they want (unless it gets too good, too professional-looking, in which case your project may get shut down XD) — but to me it seems a little tasteless to remake a game that someone else just remade a few years back, especially when you advertise it with phrases like “a new level of vocal professionalism” as if to say, “Yeah, there’s already a remake, but it’s shit; try ours instead.”

And all of this wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if not for the fact that nobody has touched The Perils of Rosella. AGD is now announcing that they don’t have the resources to continue doing free remakes of Sierra games (though adding with forlorn hope that they’d be “open to the idea of doing this commercially if given the opportunity,” which is hilarious), and this is perfectly understandable — but why, in this case, did they choose to do something that’s already been done rather than the last game in the series not playable in VGA point-and-click?

Sure, there are rumors every couple of years about somebody trying to remake KQ4, but so far these have all fallen through; I have no faith in such endeavors until the game is loading in front of me — or until a group such as AGD, with a good track record of producing actual finished games, announces the project.

And, sure, AGD wants to continue their “Father” storyline; no surprise there. But The Perils of Rosella takes place immediately after To Heir is Human, and involves a serious threat to Graham’s life — surely a perfect opening for more Father-related subplot, and less glaringly obvious than the maiden-eating dragon that we were essentially told straight-up in the KQ2 remake was his doing.

It’s kinda like how people keep making new movie versions of Pride and Prejudice over and over and over, but nobody’s yet made a well-acted, accurate version of either Northanger Abbey or Mansfield Park. Yeah, so, once again, there’s technically nothing wrong with remaking To Heir is Human again. I just think it was badly handled, and I’m irritated.