It's baffling how we came to this point.

Remakes are the most confusing thing, for me at least. Video games especially. You have fans built into your franchise. They already love the thing you own. They want more of it... Or, more specifically, they want the thing you've already made, but they want it updated with the latest graphics and voice acting and maybe some control tweaks and such. Essentially, you already have 50% of the work done - Same story, same dialog, same plot points and general game play, same items, same locations... All you need now is some voice actors, the programmers to redo these existing things with modern graphics and, if you're feeling adventurous, maybe flesh out some characters a little, add some side quests, you know, just a splash of spice...

... Then they hand out something that spits in the face of the original product, even sometimes going so far as to insult the players and the product itself, changing everything to the point where it's almost unrecognizable. Actual total plot and story changes. Maybe the one key thing that people who wanted the original again, only better, wouldn't want...

Obviously it's not about making money. They had people lined up to give them money. Even stuff like ESG investment only partially explains it, because while you obviously need to keep access to that investment money, you have to know that it's a death knell for your company to isolate, insult and upset the consumer of the product? We've seen it happen more than once, it isn't an unknown phenomenon. There has to be some element of "True Belief" at work.

It's really pretty maddening. Even a monkey throwing poop at a dart board would hit the bull's eye a couple of times a year.