Back in 2013 Starbreeze Studios was in a weird position. They had lost several key team members in the years prior and in 2012 released Syndicate, a game that wasn’t well received. Releasing a small downloadable only cinematic platformer title was not something people expected of them at the time, but Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was a success that made people trust the studio once again. Pitched and directed by Josef Fares, who has since worked on purely cooperative titles A Way Out and It Takes Two, it was a very curious attempt to create a “single-player coop” kind of game. That used its simple yet inventive controls to tell a wonderful fairy tale (in the classic dark but hopeful way) story that evoked emotions through basic interactions.
The game has been re-released and ported numerous times since then and now, over 10 years since release, it got an almost shot for shot remake of the game, similarly to Like a Dragon: Ishin! from last year. This remake aims to be a new definitive version of the game and while it doesn’t quite succeed to be that at the moment, the game at the core remains amazing.
This game is a very simple, but very well told story of a journey two brothers undertake in order to find magic healing water to save their father. Being a cinematic platformer at core, you could expect the controls to be quite simple. And you’re right, but they do have a twist – you directly control both brothers, with each of them having a dedicated analogue stick and action button to perform the necessary contextual action. Which, of course, means that it plays best on a controller. The game is balanced around this idea and while you should expect moments where your characters start running into walls because your brain starts mixing up which stick controls which character on screen, it usually works really well. The obstacles brothers face and the solutions they must come up with remain fresh throughout the whole (relatively short) game. And from time to time you also get completely optional little interactions you may engage with.
Remake changes almost nothing about how the game works and how the levels are laid out. There are a couple of minor changes and you’ll probably notice them only in a side by side comparison, but as far as the gameplay goes, it’s basically the exact same game. Sadly, this means that the final big action sequence has a chance of being as finnicky as it used to be before, while having as poorly placed checkpointing as before. But since the game played really well originally, it makes sense to not change anything about it.
What has been updated is the visual side of things. Moving from a small downloadable 2013 Unreal Engine 3 game to a modern and seemingly slightly higher budgeted Unreal Engine 5 title, the visuals get a huge boost. Not that the original game looked bad – due to its art style most of it still looks wonderful today. But a lot of the scenes in the Remake looks absolutely incredible while retaining the original visual intent. In fact, the new version is visually far more varied, with every chapter having a more distinct look to it. Due to all this added fidelity, cutscenes have been reedited to feature more close ups and dramatic camera movement than there were in the original. It’s not a question of “higher fidelity means better”, of course, but it is nice to see that none of the intent and emotion has been changed, while taking full advantage of the updated look of the game. Though, it must be said that a few of the late game cutscenes, and even one character, have been redesigned, but in a way that I found welcome.
The move to the cutting edge and also still somewhat rough UE5, however, also means a lot of potential issues that the original version doesn’t have. People with older hardware, for example, will most likely have performance issues. But even on newest hardware you will notice problems. The picture often looks over-sharpened and noisy, depth of field occasionally misfires, the selected shutter speed for motion blur in cutscenes makes the scenes look laggy… There are also occasional bugs – for example, I once completed a chapter only to somehow die (I think) during the ending cutscene and after the cutscene finished, to be reloaded back to the last checkpoint.
Luckily, any and all issues I’ve seen with the Remake are fixable, as long as the publishers are ready to support and improve game. While the updated look and feel of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is, in my opinion, worthy of becoming a definitive version of the game. Especially since now it also has developer’s commentary and coop, just like some of the later re-releases of the original game. Granted, I don’t think playing this game in coop is a particularly good idea, but it’s nice that the option is there. If you have the original game and considered replaying it – you won’t miss much if you replay the original again, especially if you have an older system. But if you have not played Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons before, Remake is probably a better option to go with, if your system can handle it. Whatever your choice will be, the game itself is still wonderful.