The State of Play announcement of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered highlights a major flaw of Sony’s remaster strategy and PSVR2 support.
Love it or hate it, a notable PlayStation trend this generation has been remastering PS4 games for PS5. Even though the console is fully backward compatible, we’ve gotten dedicated PS5 versions of the two The Last of Us games and will soon be getting new versions of Until Dawn and Horizon Zero Dawn for PS5. I find these remasters understandable, yet unnecessary, but I’m more frustrated that Sony isn’t giving this treatment to the games that really need it.
I might be beating a dead horse by complaining that PlayStation VR2 doesn’t have good first-party support. A year and a half into the headset’s lifespan, it’s abundantly clear that Sony is ready to move on to the hardware, especially now that there’s a PC adapter available. Still, I can’t help but wonder if the discourse around PSVR2 would be different had Sony decided to remaster games like Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Blood & Truth in the same way it is doing with Horizon Zero Dawn.
One of the big new reveals of Tuesday night’s State of Play was Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, which features upgraded visuals and rerecorded dialogue. Meanwhile, the only things shown off on the PSVR2 front were third-party games. One of those really struck a chord with me, though. Hitman — World of Assassination is getting a PSVR2 release later this year that’s basically an enhanced and expanded version of the PSVR1’s Hitman 3 VR. Seeing that gorgeous PS5 remaster for a game that’s already readily playable on the console next to a PSVR2 remaster of a game PSVR1 that players could try before highlighted what might’ve been Sony’s worst missed opportunity with its second VR headset.
