Forum - View topicThe Case For Remaking .hack//IMOQ
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 518 |
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Oooooh man, seeing that QUARANTINE magazine spread SENT ME. I remember seeing that exact ad back in the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly. It always broke my heart that I could never play through the entire saga.
You're doing good work with this. |
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Rob19ny
Posts: 1711 |
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This article needed to be made in 2018 after the 300k units announced in late October for Last Recode. That's when the begging should have started. Not after the 20th anniversary in 2023. As stated pre-release, GU was chosen for the 15th anniversary in 2017 over the original 4 games because it was easier to remaster while the OG 4 were outdated and needed to be remade (which would require more money Bamco were willing to give). Everything banked on Last Recode's sales in 2017-2018 and we were lucky to even get Vol 4. Why do you think there was teasing in Vol 4? CC2 was ready to release more .hack.
Because there are several factors involved such as not all publishers operate the same and having key staff members (Tetsuya Nomura, Hidetaka Miyazaki) who have games (original material; not manga/anime games like Naruto that can sell on its own because the manga and anime are popular worldwide) they directed that sold millions with the publisher pushing for the game to be made makes getting it green-lit easier (even if they know it will do poorly) while we have Konami cancelling the 3rd Zone of the Enders because of poor sales of the HD collection on PS3/360 making it clear that Kojima's grand weight in the company was not enough for Konami higher ups to give him what he wanted. Even after Cygames producer/president or whatever, who is a big ZoE fan, got Konami to let them remaster the 2nd game, it still bombed because that's just what the series is... niche. It's just meant to be that way. 300k in a year wasn't enough for to convince Bamco or else we would have gotten something of importance for the 20th anniversary and CC2 wouldn't have you all acting like puppets by repeating the same thing every year with "Ask Bamco". |
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johnnysasaki
Posts: 929 |
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while on the subject of CC2,I sure would love to see Capcom bringing Asura's Wrath to PC and modern consoles...
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Emerje
 Posts: 7352 Location: Maine |
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At this point I think IMOQ has the best chance getting adapted into a few anime OAVs or something, I just don't see the games doing well reissued with all the repetitive game play and time sink grinding. I think they'd have no choice but to do an all out remake and readjust the gameplay into something more fun. Sound is another issue that really needs work. When big fans like many of don't want to go back and play the game again because it's too much work, that's a hard hurdle for them to jump.
As for my own slice of the fandom, I have a pretty sizeable collection of .hack stuff taking about six feet of shelf in one of my rooms. For games I'm only missing Fragment (which used to be dirt cheap but now is $35+ on eBay) and "the Best" collection volumes 3&4, otherwise I have all of the American and Japanese releases of all the games, all of the manga and light novels released in both English and Japanese, some soundtracks and various Japanese booklets, and a few of the figures (of which I'd like to get more) and a few other random bits. A lot of the Japanese stuff came from Mandarake back when you could ship stuff from Japan for $6, now those same things would cost $30 to ship. Japanese games came from eBay where for the most part they're still pretty cheap. I only paid $15 for the .hack//Link collectors edition back in 2017. I think my luckiest buy was a sealed copy of Outbreak also around 2016 or '17 for $50 because it was bundled with two other games people didn't want (BoF:Dragon Quarter and something else I forget the name of) and the seller didn't mention it being sealed in the listing, you had to look at the pictures. Other collections and a drought of new stuff on Mandarake have kept me from adding tot he .hack collection, but I do still keep an eye out to see what's around. Emerje |
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taishou*
 Posts: 129 |
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I'd love to see a re-release of IMOQ. I'm a huge fan of the franchise, and I'd love to see more activity around it.
Anecdotally, I was able to attend the first day of the 20th anniversary exhibition in Tokyo, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many people turned out. Really emphasized to me that there are still a lot of fans out there who support the franchise. |
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MrPuzzles
Posts: 152 |
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Bandai refuses to do anything with Xenosaga, a trilogy by comparison that requires far less work to port/remaster, and has way more of a fan demand. And to say that demand has increased after Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is putting it very gingerly.
Yet Bandai isn't budging. I don't know how the G.U. remasters happened, but they barely scraped 300k sales across the PS4, Switch and PC. IMOQ doesn't stand a hell's chance of making a comeback. Not even close to remotely. |
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omiya
 Posts: 1833 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Agreed, even with what music has been officially released from Xenosaga II and III, there is still more music that didn't get released. A re-release project that includes separately purchasable and complete OST's would be welcome (saying this with .hack//Link OST sitting in front of me and Xenosaga III OST sitting behind me). |
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blooperboy
 Posts: 132 |
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*gently pets LN and manga spines* I sometimes wonder what it is about this series that has kept so many of us in love even when its hayday is long past.
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 388 Location: PA / USA |
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Unlike the earlier DotHack games, Xenosaga I in particular has the unfortunate situation of 1) not being very smooth in terms of QoL & pacing towards the start - mastering the combat is a bit complicated to learn off-the-cuff, and a lot of the opening consists of running down a hallway a few feet to watch a 6-minute movie before more combat happens. And then 2) there is a very uhhhhh situation involving a minor a ways into the story that I can only imagine would not be received so well today. The original English release of Xenosaga censored all of the games down a whole lot (undubs exist and are amazing however), but there are definite specific moments where I have to imagine Bandai would have an impossible choice of releasing as-is and getting backlash due to some of the more dated & extreme content, or blowing a ton of work and effort to tidy the game up when it's really only Xenosaga III that is polished enough to be 1:1 ported to modern systems with no alteration. I'm a really big fan of the trilogy in general and would love to see them get a full & proper remaster some day, but I feel like DotHack would be an easier remastering pitch to Bandai compared to the behemoth of considerations Xenosaga would need to make it playable. With Star Ocean 2nd R getting such big accolades right now and Mario RPG on the horizon, I feel like a pivot to Xenogears honestly wouldn't be the worst of ideas. Square is already using a lot of engines and assets that could probably take Xenogears-skinned environments fairly easily, and Xenogears was formatted (2D sprites on a 3D map) in a way that translates very well to the Octopath/Star Ocean R way of presenting a remake. If they tidied up disc two and turned things up to 11 to make sure that the back half of Xenogears was 100% playable, that news would probably be trumpeted from the rooftops - as famous as the cuts were in Xenogears' later half. Sadly I just don't know that DotHack has that sort of momentum behind it, and while Xenosaga III certainly would be a big win on modern systems, I don't know that I & II could hold up to scrutiny now. |
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