In recent years, the world of video games has seen a surge in the revival of old classics in a renewed guise. Sometimes simply with technical updates, on other occasions with profound changes to the original playful and narrative concept: what exactly does reboot mean?
By ‘reboot’ we mean the total reconstruction of a saga, a series of games or even just a single work published previously. The substantial difference with the remake, which in recent times has taken on further facets with different types of interventions, is that the reboot aims at a complete reboot of the original productthat is, that is not limited only to re-proposing past glories, but rather exploits their success to start something new.
So if The Last of Us Part 1 is a remake of the original game, updated on a technical and gameplay level, Prey of 2017 represents in all respects a deconstruction and restart for the IP, which in this specific case even definitively distorts its features. Then there are some middle groundor ‘soft-reboot’, which concern those reboots in some way justified of the plot, which sometimes appear as a sequel or prequel: this is the case with God of War 2018 (here is the review of God of War), which despite having no numbering is, in fact, the continuation of the events narrated in the Greek saga of Kratos.
An effective and useful method to approach new fans frightened by the amount of content accumulated over years of releases and, at the same time, not to upset longtime fans.
