While remakes and reboots have been around ever since people started telling stories, they’ve stood a lot in the past 20 years. It gets hard to tell the difference between the two sometimes. Suppose the best definition is that a remake could use new characters, settings, etc., while using the same old story. A reboot will change everything: story, setting or otherwise, aside from a few small details to keep it familiar.
Usually, this means keeping the protagonist relatively familiar. DC Comics has multiple incarnations of Batman, but most of them are the usual brooding loner in a dark Batsuit. However, some franchises, like these popular video game series, got really daring and changed their protagonist’s personalities too.
6 Double Dragon Neon
Wayforward Technologies’ 2012 revival of the classic Technos beat ‘em up Double Dragon wasn’t exactly rewriting a novel. On paper, it’s identical to the 1987 game: a woman called Marian is kidnaped by a gang, and her boyfriend Billy Lee and his brother Jimmy have to go and save her. They take to the streets and clobber any gang member that comes after them with their keen martial arts skills.
However, the Technos games had a somewhat serious presentation to them — or at least as serious as 80s action films got. Neon’s Lee Brothers make self-referential gags and quips all over the place, whether they’re using weapons (“KNIFE to meet you!”), or teasing each other like jocks from a John Hughes movie. It was still fun, even though this Saturday Morning Cartoon approach didn’t please older fans.
5 Bionic Commando
Grin Software’s 2009 revival of the classic Capcom platformer technically wasn’t a reboot. However, there wasn't much of a connection between their game and the original 80s platformers. Those games were more like cheesy action movies as the shades-wearing Rad Spencer swung around with his Bionic Arm and fought Nazis. The new Bionic Commando was a more dour, serious affair that tried to match the tone of InFamous and Prototype.
Rad Spencer had dreads and a bitter attitude, and the original Commando Super Joe became a corrupt official. It was a world away from Grin’s prior game, Bionic Commando: Rearmed, which retained that action movie charm and a more confident, happy version of Rad. The newer game flopped, but Rad’s new look lived on in Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite.
4 Dead to Rights: Retribution
Dead to Rights wasn’t exactly a classic, but this Namco game earned itself a keen fan base. It was more like a 90s/2000s action film this time, as its lead Jack Slate was an antihero who’d sooner let his K-9 partner Shadow eat the Book than go by it. The game was Max Payne with a drop of Grand Theft Auto, with Slate’s snark and amoral attitude. It was grim, yet had its tongue in its cheek. But after two sequels, Bandai-Namco got serious.
They had Volatile Games make Dead to Rights: Retribution. It was still the same hard-boiled cop adventure, but Jack was now an everyman hero stuck in the middle of a conspiracy, with only Shadow to rely on. In other words, he became like every other video game hero at the time. Slate was as generic as his gameplay, a combo that has left Dead to Rights just plain dead since 2010.
3 Blades of Time
Despite their flaws, at least both incarnations of Dead to Rights were playable. The original X-Blades was a notoriously terrible hack n’ slasher by Gaijin Entertainment. It was about a treasure hunter called Ayumi using her X-Blades to fight a great evil. She was an overconfident cartoon trope who wanted to keep her finds for herself, and her fanservice design made her look more like something out of an R-rated anime OVA.
So, Gaijin Entertainment gave it another go under Konami with Blades of Time. It was better, in the sense that it was mediocre instead of outright bad. It changed Ayumi from a generic anime design to a Lara Croft clone, complete with a British accent. While the original Ayumi didn't have much character depth, the new Ayumi's dry, moody act wasn't much of an improvement.
2 Tomb Raider (2013)
Speaking of Lara Croft, this gaming icon has had a few refreshes since her original 1996 debut. After Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness put an end to her peak, she received a soft reboot with Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider: Legend. The new version was still recognizable as the sexy and confident heroine from the old games. She just had a dark past to uncover and a support crew on standby.
She was rebooted again for 2013’s Tomb Raider, where she gained a new origin story as an archeology grad who ends up adrift on the lost island of Yamatai. Through adversity, she learns to fight back and gradually becomes a self-assured treasure hunter. While she wasn’t a quippy action heroine like before, her more down-to-earth character arc was successful enough keep Lara in the limelight with two sequels.
1 DmC: Devil May Cry
This is perhaps the most notorious example of personality shifts in gaming. Ninja Theory’s reboot of Capcom’s Devil May Cry series really left a sour taste in fans’ mouths. Gameplay-wise, it wasn’t too bad, and it was even better when the Definitive Edition fixed its flaws like the lack of a lock-on feature. Still, their game couldn’t hold a candle next to the main series, especially when they couldn’t fix their biggest flaw: their new Dante.
He was cocky and had one-liners for days like the original. Yet, his attitude was different. He was supposed to be more punk rock, with a foul mouth and an attitude to match. But he came off more like a try-hard at best, and the world’s second-biggest jerk at worst (after Vergil and his M’lady Fedora). He did get better, and might have worked if he got a sequel to flesh him out. However, even the fairest fan would find it hard to accept a DmC2 over Devil May Cry 5.