Developer Profile
When forming a game development studio, the common desire is to build something of your own; to unleash your creative desires on a world that, to this point, likely hasn’t been open to hearing the message you want to share with it. It’s a move that says ‘Here we are, this is what we’re doing, and this is a reflection of us through our art’. You don’t really get into game development – in the most part – so you can pick up games that have already been made by someone else, and tinker with their code and assets so they can function on newer (or just different) devices and look better (or, again, just different). Basically, you don’t get into games with porting and remasters in mind.
Bluepoint Games started out with an original release in 2006 – Blast Factor, a downloadable PS3 title released in November 2006, when digital-only console releases were in their relative infancy. It was the studio’s first year of existence, a game on the more basic side of things, and didn’t really show anyone much of anything, to be perfectly honest.
Had the team continued down this road, it would likely have ended up as just another studio you forgot released a twin-stick shooter on the PlayStation Network. Because seriously, there were so many twin-stick shooters on PSN.
But that wasn’t the path Bluepoint opted for, instead pivoting to the not-inthe-slightest new arena of remastering games. Sony wanted to bring back a bunch of its PS2 classics, wrapping them in a bit of high-definition sheen and using them as none-too-stealthy marketing for the bigger releases on PS3. The God of War Collection put the first and second entries to Kratos’ action-adventure (and violence) romps into one package, slapped a 720p coat of paint on them, and threw them out to the masses as a taster for the then-upcoming God of War III (in the US, at least: the Collection released post-GOW III in Europe). It was well-received critically and commercially, and was the moment Bluepoint realised what its calling truly was: to make the old new again.
Bluepoint’s second remaster followed a similar path: a bundle of two PS2 games, given a lick of HD paint, and re-released on the PS3 as a bundle. The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection, though, did one extra-special thing that made players sit up and take notice: it fixed technical hitches from the second game in the package. This wasn’t just a lazy hack.
job thrown out for easy money; it was something the team behind it clearly cared about – at least to some extent – resulting in players finally being able to play Shadow of the Colossus without crushing frame rate drops as experienced in the PS2 original. There was no stopping Bluepoint now.
AND NOT JUST SONY
Metal Gear Solid saw the remastered collection treatment (and Bluepoint’s first move away from a Sony format, with the bundle also coming to Xbox 360), while a few titles – PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Flower, and Titanfall – were straight-up ports from one system to another, rather than remasters. But all were of a type: games that had already been made, being redone for another format. Bluepoint became synonymous with ‘this will be good’, so when Gravity Rush and Uncharted were also fired out of the remaster cannon – the former from Vita to PS4, the latter PS3 to PS4 – it was of little surprise they were of a type. Said type being ‘good’.
But it was, fittingly, Bluepoint’s return to a game it had already remastered
“The future of Bluepoint seems healthy, with the studio already working on a PS5 project”
once before that showed how strong the heart of the studio really was. Shadow of the Colossus, brought back once more in 2018, this time for PS4, saw more than the bit of work bringing it up to a smooth, playable standard, as seen in the PS3 doover. The project came about because of Bluepoint’s good relationship with Sony, but also because employees loved the game and wanted to make a ‘definitive’ version of it. This meant not just another
coat of paint, but breaking everything down and doing it from scratch – all assets were remade and structured around the skeleton of the PS2 original’s codebase. Controls were updated, and graphical effects offered choices for players on the different tiers of PS4 systems – it was… well, definitive. The best version of one of the PlayStation’s best games, which has been released three times but was only made by its creator once. What a strange little situation.
The future of Bluepoint seems to be looking healthy, with the studio, now around 90-staff strong and still sitting pretty in Austin, Texas, already working away behind closed doors on a project for the PS5. Rumours are being thrown at the studio every day, with a remaster of Demon’s Souls seemingly the top of that particular pinch-of-salt list. Or maybe Syphon Filter. Resistance? Silent Hill could be a goer. Maybe the team will have a third pop at Shadow of the Colossus. Who knows? Whatever the case, it’s a fair assumption the next game from Bluepoint will be a remaster (or port) in some form – and there’s even less doubt it’ll be handled incredibly well, and turn out arguably better than the original did. Unless it’s Blast Factor 2, then all bets are off.
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