Once more, with feeling.

XIII is a cel-shaded first-person shooter that first came out in 2003. Since then, the game pulled in a fair number of fans and supporters. The game had (at least at the time) a unique visual style, a comic-book style presentation, and none other than David Duchovny voiced the main character. There was a lot to love there.

In 2019, Microids announced that XIII was getting a remake. Fans were happy up until the remake was released. Then they were sad and even mad. The remake was rather awful, like worse than the initial release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. It was so bad that Microids and then developer, PlayMagic, issued an apology to everyone.

The game was updated slightly in the months following release, but it was still left in pretty dire straits. Today, Microids announced that they will be giving it all a go all over again. This time, they're kicking aside PlayMagic and placing the fate of the XIII remake into the hands of Tower Five.

Microids also provided a short list of some of the general things that will be revamped with the remade remake.

• Refined art style
• Enhanced A.I.
• Reworkd HUD
• Revamped sound design
• 30fps framerate on Switch
• 60fps framerate on PS5/Xbox Series
• Online multiplayer (2 to 13 players)

The performance issues ironed out are great for everyone, but a lot of fans are undoubtedly giving most attention to the "refined art style" bullet point. Like I said before, the original game has this comic-book style thing going on. That was lost in the remake, replaced instead by something that many fans said looked more at home in Fortnite. You can see a comparison below of the original art design and the original remake art.


From the low-resolution screenshots of the Nintendo Switch version that was shown off just yesterday, it looks like the old art style is making a big return with the remade remake. You can see those images below along with a new Switch gameplay trailer.