When the demo for the remake of Resident Evil 4 dropped in March, one presiding concern stood above all others: Would Leon say “Where’s everyone going? Bingo?”

The line comes early within the recreation, proper after our coiffured all-American hero has seen his police escort burned alive. Leon is about to be butchered by pitchfork and chainsaw-wielding Spanish farmers, however then a tolling bell out of the blue psychically summons them away. The line is amazingly silly, and if he doesn’t say it, I assumed after seeing information of the demo, I’m becoming a member of the mob exterior the Capcom workplaces. (Reader, relaxation assured, the villagers attended bingo.)

The tradition trade loves a remake; it additionally loves a reboot, a remaster, a sequel, a prequel, a multiverse, and a cinematic universe. In a current long read for Vulture, writers Josef Adalian and Lane Brown warned that TV is headed into an period of “safe ideas,” evaluating the occasions to return to the film trade of the 2010s. Brand recognition and cultural stagnation await; Harry Potter and Twilight sequence are within the works. Other media additionally run the chance of falling into this identical entice; that’s the hazard with certain issues.

Of course, there may be nothing inherently debased about remakes. No remakes, no Scarface or True Grit; in a broad sense, Shakespeare made a profession of it. It is a censorious and misguided impulse to assert {that a} remake undermines its topic. You would possibly discover it more durable to persuade somebody to observe the unique Wicker Man in the event that they’ve simply sat by Nick Cage hollering about bees (not me, that film rocks), however usually, this logic is bizarre math. Where there was one, now there are two. A remake is simply an interpretation—it shouldn’t substitute the unique.

But for video video games, the mathematics is usually a subtraction. So far this 12 months, studios have reimagined 4 traditional video games (to various levels of change) brilliantly: Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime, Dead Space, and, most lately, System Shock, probably heralding a remake golden age.

Contrary to different artforms, there’s a tendency within the video games trade to speak about remakes as replacements. This is to not say that the historical past of movie and literature isn’t additionally riddled with innumerable losses, nice works burned up in disasters or walled off on obscure streaming platforms. But with video video games, the place previous variations get swapped out for the brand new ones on platforms like Steam or the PlayStation Store, the substitute of the unique work is especially baked into the method. And a remake will not be a substitute, irrespective of how superior.