10 March 2024 , 10:00
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One of the most beloved small-scale titles from the last generation recently got a visual upgrade, but it does very little else to justify its own existence.
Usually I’m the type of person who’s all for video game remakes. Though the process can be a meticulous one for development studios wanting to stay true to the original, the art of remaking a beloved classic piece-by-piece is generally worthwhile; especially if it makes an experience previously trapped on an older system accessible to an all-new audience. It’s this mindset that I imagine publisher 505 Games had when first setting out to remake Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons entirely from scratch. Yet while the upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 sees the story of the titular siblings stuffed with serious detail, it feels like a missed opportunity to build upon the 2013 version’s magic.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake (yes, that’s its actual title) isn’t a bad game – far from it. In fact, for all intents and purposes, players on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC are getting the same two to three-hour adventure where you must simultaneously control the two brothers across a series of puzzle-platforming obstacles – only now you get to do so through the lens of 2024 visuals and the addition of co-op. It’s these two main factors, however, that I mainly take issue with.
For one, although on the surface the game’s title might suggest it’s one ripe for playing in co-op, unlike creative director Josef Fares’ two games that would come after – A Way Out and It Takes Two – Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is absolutely best treated as a single-player experience. Each one of the brothers is assigned to a particular analogue stick on your controller, with much of the challenge coming from forcing you to work out how to handle both at once in that ‘rub your head, pat your belly’ sort of way. Therefore, suddenly including co-op as an option removes one of the game’s most unique aspects. Although to be fair, the option to do so is still present in this remake.
Then there’s the visual upgrade, made possible due to new developer Avantgarden’s decision to build the game using Unreal Engine 5. Is it ugly? No. Is it technically an improvement? Maybe. But that’s all subjective and based on your own personal opinion. I found the remake’s graphical changes more of a hindrance than an upgrade, particularly because it made solving certain puzzles a nightmare. The Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake features a much darker colour palette in an effort to better achieve a sense of realism, yet in doing so it's made simple gameplay elements – like wall handholds, and skeleton bones you need to avoid (to stay quiet) – tougher to see.
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This prompted me to play the original 2013 version of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons alongside the remake as a sort of personal experiment. What I eventually came to realise is that although much lighter on graphical detail and realistic lighting, the original game’s puzzles and environmental objectives were a lot easier to pick out and read. It’s the old Halo Combat Evolved: Anniversary issue, where by making locations much darker, much of the charm present before is lost and the gameplay experience is far more muddled as a result.
That said, one area where the remake does improve greatly is in the interstitial cut scenes between chapters; whereas before this story of two brothers traversing great challenges to try to find a cure for their ailing dad was mainly portrayed using stilted character animations, the remake wisely adjusts some camera angles and makes the characters more emotive to better relay their plight. Even this upgrade ends up being relatively slight in the grander scheme of things, given that much of this brief story’s emotion is told so well through the gameplay – such as when the younger brother is hanging from a tree that you must guide through a ridge, or any time you’re forced to swim in water, and the older sibling must carry his younger brother on his back.
Familiar puzzles and scenes have been entirely remade to look like a modern release. (505 Games)Not helping Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake’s case for existing is also the fact that Josef Fares’ original version is still very much playable and available on digital console storefronts to this day. The remake is literally just a visual upgrade for people that want it, but I’d find it hard to recommend over the iteration we got to play some 10 years ago. True, it might not quite look as pretty or feature the ability to play co-op, but it’s a lot more readable as far as puzzles and platforming sections go, and it still looks fairly decent for a release that is over a decade old.
Whether we like it or not, we are firmly in the era of video game remakes right now – and have been for some time. And though the likes of Shadow of the Colossus on PS4 saved me the hassle of having to hook up my old PS2, the argument of convenience doesn’t relate to the recently released Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake. #
I can’t even say it’s a missed opportunity, because Avantgarden had a nigh-on impossible task between not wanting to change too much, while incrementally making things worse (in my opinion) by adding more realistic environmental detail and lighting. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake isn’t entirely lacking the original’s magic, but it does slightly sour on it.