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Comment by notjustanymike | Hacker News Reader

For people on the fence about this, I have played it. It's better to think of it as a sequel than a remaster.

It's both. All the content from the original is there, polished up to modern standards. And then there's a bunch of new material added on as well.

It likely feels more like a sequel if you choose the "played it before" option at the beginning of the game-- that introduces the new content much earlier. If you tell it that you haven't played before, it takes much longer before it starts introducing the new content.

I think the "played it before" option is for me, if I choose to get it. Is it worth it if you'd played the original?

The original was interesting in its kind of a game, but more of a experience. The narration was excellent and there were some interesting nooks to find. I definitely didn't find everything. (I think there was an award to not play the game for a year).

It is definitely worth it, the new content is both extending the original and adding new unique stuff.

There's about the same amount of old and new content.

I was a big fan of the original but I find something repugnant about something that launched as a free mod, then was remade as a $15 game, and is now remade again as a $25 game with no option to upgrade your original purchase.

It's a remake that contains the entire original, as well as a lot of new content. As the creators put it:

> The script for this new content is longer than the script for the entire original game.

If you don't want more content you don't have to buy the remake. The original works fine.

More content is the only thing I want. Many developers offer their remastered games for free, like in the cases of Skyrim, Deus Ex, Bioshock, Darksiders, Red Faction, Trine, Ethan Carter, and The Witcher. Others offer a discounted upgrade like Dark Souls or Death Stranding. I'd be fine paying ten bucks for the added content, but asking me to pay for the original content again after I already paid full price for a copy on Steam and full price again for a copy on Switch is a step too far. I'm done being made a bitch by videogame developers.

It's difficult to discuss this without revealing things. Some might say the price is as much as a sequel...

I agree. From free mod to paid product sure. But for unknown quantity of new content entirely new game with even higher price feels exactly like the corporate publishers would do it...

> no option to upgrade your original purchase

It's not an upgrade, it's a remake. They recreated all of the original content from the ground up

Did they rewrite all the jokes? Re-record the voice lines? Not to be too blunt about it but graphics mean fuck-all to a game like The Stanley Parable. It could've been a Playstation 1 title and been every bit as fun.

After looking it up, they actually didn't bother re-recording the voice lines from the original so now half the narration is by someone a decade older.

The original lines are still there (some have been cleaned up). You can't tell the difference between the old lines and the new ones in terms of audio quality or sound of the voice.

The satire starts before purchase. Quite befitting.

It's a sequel contained within the original. So it's worth the purchase for new players and those that played through the original.

And for those unaware, the original was made in the Source (Half-Life 2) engine, while this remaster is running using Unity.

Wait it wasn't GoldSrc? (A la HL1) Because I recall trying the mod before it went commercial and it felt get much like an HL1 mod.

I agree completely. I think it works much better if you've played the original, then took some time to go back and play the new content. Otherwise some of its commentary about sequels (reviews, rose-tinted glasses, etc) kind of loses its "punch".

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