Syberia - Remastered

I’ll start with the positive: this is just a remaster and isn't trying to change the story or characters. The new, rebuilt environments look pretty good and pretty faithfully recreate the environments of the original. All of the documents have an optional “read” mode which gives you the text in a larger, easier to read font. Now on to everything else. The game’s difficulty has been toned down a lot, in ways I both like and dislike. Many of the puzzles are simplified, with necessary objects in closer or more obvious places. Hotspots are highlighted now, and there’s no confusion if two of them are close together. Most of the useless hotspots have been removed, so no more wondering about a bunch of locked doors you’ll never need to open. There are a couple of new or reworked puzzles, all of which were pretty straightforward. These changes help with some of the more unfair or annoying puzzles from the first game, but even in Adventure mode, the game holds your hand a lot. Some people may like this overall, but I prefer a more challenging experience from this kind of game. The voice acting is all the same. There are a couple of places where extra lines were added, but these were sourced from cut material from the original. While I loved hearing characters like Kate and Oscar with their original voices, I have to acknowledge that some of the voice acting is just bad. The new puzzles are also noticeably silent; the characters can’t comment on any of the new things they have to do unless there’s a suitably generic line from the original to repurpose. Despite the nostalgia, I think the game would have benefitted from some modern voice acting and even a few line rewrites. It’s also very strange to me that none of the cutscenes were redone, even though they have no talking and are arguably the most dated part of the original. The 3D environments look nice but don’t feel great. The camera is locked to specific angles and some of those are very awkward. The game often tries to mimic shots from the first game that just don’t make sense in the 3D environment and make navigation confusing. Navigating around the screen with the mouse is very awkward. In some of the more crowded rooms, it’s hard to navigate around the scenery, some of the narrower walkways are a pain, and the exit hotspots are sometimes in weird places. Many of the areas, especially outside areas, are massive in 3D, which means they take forever to walk through but occasionally still have hard-to-find doors or staircases. Kate often clips into objects or the floor when she moves, and stares at nothing during conversations. I often had conversations happen out of order. For some characters, the conversation topics are listed in the wrong order, and following them results in a weird conversation where you introduce Kate and her mission in the middle of a conversation where both things were already referenced. One of the phone calls can’t be triggered by you calling the character and now involves you reaching a specific spot, which in my playthrough meant that the first three or four phone calls Kate got all referenced a conversation that hadn’t actually happened yet. I really wanted this to be good. I generally like to see classic adventure games get updated to be playable on modern systems and more accessible to modern audiences. Syberia is one of my favorites and it would have been great to see it get a new coat of paint, but this remaster feels cheap. It wasn't all bad, but there were so many mistakes and so many things they could have updated and just... didn't. You might have a marginally better experience than I did if you play with a controller and want more hand-holding with the puzzles, but even then I don’t think it’s the best way to enjoy this story. Maybe one day we’ll get a remaster that feels like more of an upgrade, but until then, when I revisit this game, I’ll go to the original. 3/10

People say "just play the original" but you have to take the 25 years into account which has passed since then, just because how much technology has progressed. This is a faithful recreation in my opinion and I can see the passion and craft which went into making it. If somebody new to the world of Syberia I can fully recommend this, and I hope the same team will remaster Syberia 2 as well the same way. I also welcome the redesign of the characters to make them more relatable, especially Kate. What I also see are the shortcuts taken to finish this game under some set period of time I'm not aware of, but I'm sure they couldn't work on the premise of "done when it's done". These are ## Using the original cutscene videos I find this actually pretty baffling decision, they have re-made the entire world and the characters for the better imo, and then they show cutscenes rendered in 2000 or before, which looked good at that time, but has aged like fine milk, especially compared to the gameplay which luckier of you may enjoy in 4K. Even if they were cut because "animation is hard", sometimes they're just camera panning estabilishing shots. Can be confusing since the 2000's cutscene shows their rendition of the area, and then at gameplay you're dropped into a much more detailed place. Same goes for characters, especially when Kate is shown in the cutscenes, that's a completely different woman, falling into "depiction of women in 90's videogames" thing, which I see efforts were made to tone that down a lot in the remaster, maybe even the 2017 Syberia 3 game too, idk, I haven't seen that, judging from the trailer that game is terrible. I wonder how these cutscenes were handled in Syberia VR from the same studio? Do they just show you the same videos but on a plane in VR? ## Exploring 3D world Now that we're in 3D!!! I'm a bit baffled there's no free movement mode. Like in the Myst games and remakes made after 2004 the user can toggle between "classic mode" and "free movement". It would have been nice to see the world from the actual perspective of Kate (as in I presume that's already done in Syberia VR), and to control player movement with WASD+Mouse look. That is the norm these days with "walking-sim + puzzles" games which has become the modern day equivalent of point-and-click adventure games. The lack of that especially annoys me when Kate is walking/running towards the camera and I cannot see where she's going. Or when I want to see where ladders or roads are going exactly but camera says "nah". There's the right click interaction for moving the camera ever so slightly but it's completely useless. ## Sound design It is a real shame that sometimes they just re-used sounds and dialogs from the original game and said "yup that's enough". I guess they still had to work a lot for adding new sounds since the world is more explorable but still the foley art in this game is mediocre at best. It's serviceable but shows that sound was not a priority in this game ever, especially when they're just reusing 25 years old samples. They also reused dialogue sounds. Which was just deadline~ + budget-induced ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ probably. It had inconsistent audio levels and quality. But more importantly the acting and writing of those dialogues were just plain terrible. I've played the original like when I was 13 or 14 around that, and boy I didn't realize it was that bad. All of this just moved 1:1 into this remaster which is a shame. Idk it would have been nice to at least try improving that hiring actual voice-actors for a more relatable performance. However I know that would have been a significant bump in the budget. Despite me whining about these things, I'm having fun re-living this world with this remaster, I'd recommend to play if you're into steam-punk shenanigans.

I'm ok with remastering Syberia, but the remastered doesn't bring up a well enough upgrade compared to the original. I don't mind the fact of leaving old cutscenes in, but Kate's model is totally different from what we see in those cutscenes. Plus remaking the whole game and still offering static screen with no camera control, a very slow walking/running animations, no way to double click to leave the screen...well, is not good enough. Instead of looking like a 25 years old game, now it looks like a 15 years old game. Also puzzles are way too easy right now, Syberia wasn't a difficult game, now it's impossible to get stuck. Plus in and here are little glitches, sometimes is very hard to leave a screen, otherwise you see a line on the ground marking the transition toward another screen, like in the university for the rocky part in which you rewind the train, which are very ugly to see.

пока я тут ходила, решала головоломки, мой муж изменил мне с лучшей подругой

I'm sorry, I have to recommend you not purchase this. The original game, which I think you can still buy, is wonderful, full of mystery and the graphics, if of its day. This remastered version has multiple nearly impossible puzzles -- not because they are intrinsically hard, but because they are highly illogical, or just polain broken. You can spend a lot of hours with areas or fun throughs, llm help, etc., and only after entirely unreasonable work, _might_ collect enough true facts and moves to succeed. I purcjased this almost entirely to support the efforts, to encourage future such games. But this one won't convince that way, and it's a shame there wasn't appropriate respect put into generating it.

good story and puzzles, glad it got remastered.

Вся игра получилась +- 1) локации + - больше объёма, проработки, смотрится современно - - в оригинале были живописными и продуманными, в ремастере - увы при этом упущены важные детали окружения, как например со статуями мамонтов в Барокштадте. Необычное решение с почти постоянно перемещающейся камерой, мне в целом оно зашло, потому что больше рассказывает про место, где ты находишься. Знаю, что других игроков это отвлекало, но на вкус и цвет. 2) геймплей + - тот же, что в оригинале - - оказуаленность (да, представьте себе, в point'n'click), не надо мне 3 раза показывать план ключа, я б его и так нашла добавлены пару новых головоломок, 1 в жилище монаха (непонятно зачем), 2 в комнате для Елены в Комсомольске (вот тут вроде как более логично было). 3) управление в ремастере однозначно лучше, сквозное перемещение в длинных локациях порадовало, а кружочки были и в оригинале, но в виде подсвеченной метки, единственной проблемой было на фабрике добраться до мельничного механизма, она туда просто не хотела идти, а так в целом норм. В оригинале Кейт часто делала не то, что её просят и это раздражало 4) графика - Ужасные лицевые анимации. Но проблема в том, что разрабы решили сделать на них акцент в диалоге, что логично, конечно, но эти безжизненные модельки просто не вяжутся со своей эмоциональной озвучкой, поэтому либо, как в оригинале, камеру за спину, либо оживлять модельки. Местами то ли баги, то ли недоработка, например в полёте алконавта, который в ключевой момент на платформе просто не появился (в оригинале был) а в процессе игры вообще пару раз проваливался в ад (под пол) и общалась я с ним без него. - Моделька Кейт. Была капризная сильная независимая юристка, стала треска мороженая, ну фу. Смысл в ремастере был менять внешность гг....не ясно, непонятно. Отдельно хочется спросить, зачем было вырывать некоторые сцены, как например сцена с веслом и Моммо...в оригинале это было трогательно + показывало, какая белоручка Кейт. Могли бы тогда уж добавить момент грязной работы потом для Кейт, если уж нарушили целостность произведения, но нет, просто вырезали. Вопрос с телефоном, на тот момент сенсорных телефонов не было, могли оставить оригинальный. Если у вас кровь из глаз из-за графики 2002 годов, то, конечно, играйте в ремастер, если же вас этим не напугать, то сначала оригинал. Ну...в виду вышесказанного, 6/10.

Оригинальная Катя была харизматичной, ты верил ей, сопереживал. Здесь же, персонаж, во-первых дубовая, во-вторых не интересная. Сиськи, жопу увеличили ,в ширину тоже поправилась, видимо в Нью Йорке пончиками только питалась. Мимики вообще никакой, разговаривает как робот. Да даже у Оскара по сравнению с ней больше мимики будет чем у нее. В сюжете нет ничего нового. Ремастер очень ленивый, старые синематики прогнали через нейронку и нате, жрите. В синематиках Катя оооочень сильно отличается от той, которой мы играем, ну хоть модельку что-ли похожую сделали бы, я не знаю, вообще не проникаешься в атмосферу. Вообще из нового и это единственный плюс этого ремастера, это окружение, остальное все взято из оригинала. Буквально взяли музыку, озвучку, синематики и впихнули в ремастер. Оригинал будет атмосферней, этот же калл полный. Не советую, оригинал советую