A remake should preserve systems, not images

The Resident Evil 2 remake arrived in January 2019, the Resident Evil 3 remake on 3 April 2020. Same engine, adjacent production cycles, similar staging. The first is considered a model of its genre; the second a solid but unremarkable job, with lower scores.

The difference is usually explained by volume: RE3 is shorter, and the clock tower, the graveyard, the park and the city hall were cut, along with the multiple endings and the situational choices. All true. But the point, I think, is not how much was cut. It is what changed in kind.

RE2 has Mr X, a pursuer who walks the police station on his own. He hears gunfire, moves towards noise, turns up behind the door you were about to use. He is not a script but a system: his behaviour depends on your actions, and so every encounter with him is yours.

RE3 has Nemesis, who by design should have been the same thing, only worse. But in the remake he appears mostly where the plot requires and in fights staged in advance. He became a scene.

A system produces a story the player tells. A scene produces a story the player was told. The first is remembered; the second is rewatched on video.

Hence a working rule for any remake: first establish which system was generating the tension, and preserve it, even at the cost of throwing away half the recognisable views. Locations and shots are easy to redraw, and everyone expects them anyway. Restoring the mechanism that made something frightening twenty years ago is far harder — and that is precisely where remakes usually economise.