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sounds like excuses to lazy out for Nintablet money.
Hopefully they change their minds down the road after they cash in...
First about the comparison to other ports and remasters. They are usually done by the same companies that developed the original version, so I'd guess they have the original assets in high resolution in which they can work with. (or in case of FFVIII, in which they didn't have the assets or code and had to redo some stuff, they knew the game would sell enough to justify the work and cost). In case of Grandia II, it seems like the current developers have access only to what was published, including the compressed images in-game. This alone makes it harder to release a remaster with improved graphics.
They need to evaluate how much time (and money) the images upscale and treatment will take, and how many copies of the game they expect to sell. And how to fix the bugs that appear by using such bigger textures than the original ones for an old code that wasn't ready for them. Although I love the game (so much it's the first and only time I'm making a mod for a game), I don't think it will ever sell that many copies to justify a perfect remaster.
In the beginning I was remaking every image from zero. Although it provides a more detailed image, it does take a freaking long time. And they're obviously not 100% faithful to the originals. After I finished remaking the images that I could understand and had skills to make them, I started using Waifu2x for the rest, but still trying to clear each one and seing them in action to fix anything I wasn't happy with. And this is just for making them acceptable for 1080p. For 4K they need to be even more detailed and even more work and time would be spent.
The developers of the HD edition took an easier choice. They did seem to have remade some of the stuff like numbers and other details, but for the most of them they just seem to have applied an AI enhancer (like Waifux2) and called it a day. It is quicker but the results are not as good, especially if displayed in a 4K resolution. If the original images were clean things would be different, but...
There's a big problem with the original game's assets: not only they are very low resolution, but they also have heavy compression artifacts. Some of the icons I found even impossible to understand what they should mean.
Character portraits when upscaled reveal distorted shapes and wrong blotches all around. For a single image, I need to clean the original low resolution image to try to lessen the compression artifacts, apply Waifu2X (to upscale it), and then clean it again and even redraw some parts. I take around 40min-1hour for a single image and the result is far from perfect.
Grandia will never sell as much as a Final Fantasy. So as a business standpoint, I do understand why they would not expect enough return for the work of remaking all the images, especially to make them look good in 4K. I do it as a hobby and love for the game, so my time is not as financially valuable :P
EDIT: About the part about the developer having access to original assets in high resolution, it makes me remember of the newest ports of Resident Evil Remake and RE Zero.
For the first Remake, Capcom actually didn't have the assets in higher resolution anymore. So they took longer to re-release it, and you can see that most backgrounds are not really that detailed, and some (like the underground cave ones) are just plain ugly.
For RE Zero they actually had the assets in high resolution. So they took much less time to make the re-release, and the backgrounds are much better.
Grandia II, having so many small icons and images in such poor state, must prove to be and even bigger challenge...
Grandia could easily outsell FF8 or some of the newer trash since Grandia is an actual JRPG even with just an point and click world map which is better then no world map at all.
(pretty much the only thing FF8 has over Grandia 2 is the world map that you get lockd out of 80% of on disk 4)
Wouldn't be surprised if squenix purposely sabotaged Grandia to make sure it wouldn't outsell their new trash (Dragon Quest sold well apparently, like when they held off on the FF7 remake for decades since Grandia 2 was originally missing an entire button.. how does no one notice something like that and then tell us not to woory they will fix the game while that button is STILL missing at the time of the post...)
Squenix and Capcon losing the high res assets just shows how incompetent they are (especially since we are talking about FF and RE not just some random games)
Also they could run the assets through the AI upscalers that we have now which i wanted to ask you if you were aware/interested/capable in trying at least for maybe the skyboxes if the other filters don't work out.
I tried installing some other AI enhancers, but I was getting errors when compiling them and installing dependencies and whatnot. If you do know of some sites that I can use like the waifu2x one or other easy ways to install AI image enhancers, please let me know.
(ya i usually do the same for mass conversions)
was thinking people might run into problems with the AI upscaler programs or that it wouldn't be as efficient/take longer to test each time..
Thanks for elaborating.
No sorry i am not aware of any or i would have suggested on your mod thread.. my only experience with the A.I. upscalers is the 2 FF7 and 9 mods for the prerendered backgrounds.
(i'm sure the companies "remaking" these games could use those upscalers tho if nothing else since they don't seem to want to put in the work/are given the time and funds to do so and test it)