Seeing the game at release now, it's sad to see that everything that you called out came to be true. The new is devoid of the unique artistic direction, leaning more on the westernized generic fantasy world. You can even notice this in the changes made to armor sets and equipment in general, while the original was more utilitarian and realistic, the new looks like exaggerated and overdetailed fantasy stuff.

The remake tends to be more epic than strange, mysterious and unsettling which is a major downside from the original vision

Finally someone who gets it! People attack me for disliking the art style of the remake...

Blue point did the exact same thing in Shadow of the Colossus, make the graphics look good at the expense of the aesthetic and have digital content locked behind a deluxe edition.

Demons souls remake has convinced me that remakes should just be avoided. It’s too hard to recreate the artistic message of original games

'4k, realistic graphic, cinematic experience, photo mode, pre-order bonuses ' these are what BP think we want for a remake

BP completely ruined the OG atmosphere, artistic, charisma, characteristic

... people really thought you could not make a video game with vibrant colors on ps3 ?

Flamelurker by Bluepoint looks like something out of World of Warcraft. Pretty bad compared to the original From Software 2009 version

Nice to see a video that actually goes into detail with general problems of the remake compared to all the smug posturing over 'getting' the original game vs people who think it's just nostalgia.

that flamelurker redesign looked like a enemy from ratchet and clank

Aesthetics, color, and lighting don't get nearly the respect they deserve. Thank you for clearly and thoroughly summing up all the issues I've had with Bluepoint's approach to the Demon's Souls remake. Their Boletaria just feels like a hollow retreading of Ithryll with traces of Frozen Eleum Loyce, essentially being absolutely nothing like the original place. The thick fog in the sky that blocked the light and made everything grim and bleak is now gone, and Bluepoint even failed to realize that green is the foundational color of the soul's energy.

I just noticed after looking closely at the original Flamelurker that it has a monocle on its right eye like the king of the burrowers underground did, indicating that the king could've been turned into the Flamelurker.

Right on the money with the plant overgrowth mention. Bluepoint cared more about showing off their sweet graphics then respecting the original game.

Didn't the remake's creature designer said the original designs were not to his liking? It really shows how little respect they had...

I could not agree more, i have posted the exact screen shot of the cyber demon to many of my friends. Further i feel its necessary to point out, when discussing the redesign of the skeletons in the shrine of storms. They now appear to be a withered thin creature in bone armour, instead of an assemblage of various bones inhabited and given locomotion by the spirits of the shadowmen. The bones that make up the warriors have been changed aswell. Before they appeared to be composed primarily of human and cow bones aswell as large vertebrae (this is to be expected since this was a place of worship and sacrifice, cattle have an association sacrifice and the shadow men in particular had an entire cult and mythology around being judged to determine if they were a worthy sacrifice for the storm king) The redesign appears to show the jaw of a shark afixed to the collar bone area, in the original a very visually striking cow skull makes up this area giving the impression that there is a gaping set of jaws just below the skeletons mouth and it slowly rasps open and closed as their idle animation plays, and there appeared to be many other changes to the bones. I honestly felt guilty when the trailer released. Everyone was so excited and seemed so happy. But i sat in stunned silence as i saw things that concerned me. I had not seen the close ups on the fluted set, the gargoyles face, and flamelurkers face until this video a few min ago and i once again feel the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach about this project. : (

This is so good and detailed, as an artist I agree 100%

Also, one thing’s for definite. The original had a bleak and dreary vision in mind. It’s very Miuraesque and quite Berserk you could say.

Bluepoint doesn't understand demon's souls. For some godforsaken reason they looked at the ps3 game and concluded it's an epic fantasy, rather than a creepy, borderline horror dark fantasy it actually is. You can see this in the new soundtrack that tries to convince you so hard it's epic it feels like it's actually compensating very hard for the fact that it was made by people very bad at composing music. The "new and improved" artstyle is also a betrayal, as it turns the dead, dreary and mystical land of boletaria into a generic high fantasy world that borrows so much from the gothic infrastructure of yharnam and lothric it's borderline plagiarism. It blows my mind that a game so old can hold up so well artistically and that a company that makes remasters can be so bad at interpreting the source material.

I've been worried about DS remake aesthetically since I heard Bluepoint were doing it because of the SotC remake, and your analysis of DS's original aesthetic, as well as how it matters is fascinating. Great video, very informative.