Re-skinning is often considered to be a dirty word in the video game industry. In addition to conjuring gross images if you think about it for too long, re-skinning is synonymous with laziness in the industry because of how it involves reusing existing enemy assets rather than creating new ones. It's a fairly natural assumption to make. After all, tracing someone else's art homework and changing the colours didn't do any of us favours back in high school.
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| (Images property of Konami and Sony and Santa Monica Studio) |
However, I've played quite a few games recently that have shown that the second-hand enemy market is a lot more complex than this initial assumption. Thus, from this experience, I wanted to take some time to examine where the distinctions lie between the good and bad use of re-skinning and put forward my 3 Core Commandments for how to re-skin enemies in a way that doesn't make players think that the developers clocked off for lunch early.
Old Dog, New Tricks
My first commandment for re-skinning enemies is a simple one but it is so often one that developers get wrong. When developers re-use enemy assets, they need to communicate to the player that it is a different type of enemy. Despite what online voice-chat lobbies might suggest to you, most players aren't completely stupid. If you re-use an enemy design and have it behave the same way, they're going to see straight through it even if it is wearing a different coloured shirt.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
With this in mind, the best way to communicate to the player that a re-skinned enemy is new is to give it something new to do that forces the player to approach it differently. Dark Souls springs to mind as a good example of this principle in practice. As their names suggest, Black Knight and Silver Knight enemies have effectively the same designs, albeit with a colour change that appeals to even the most colourblind of Labradors.
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| (Image property of FromSoftware and Bandai Namco Entertainment) |
However, in gameplay they feel different because the player has to approach them differently. Black Knights carry heavier, more damaging weapons with huge attack windows while Silver Knights are more numerous and carry shorter, lighter weapons. Make no mistake, it is clear that they are built from the same character model but you don't recognise it as much in gameplay because of how you are forced to approach them differently.
The best examples of this principle on display are when developers take advantage of the fact that an enemy is a re-skin to mess with the player. The Castlevania series in general does this well but Aria of Sorrow in particular caught me off guard this way multiple times as I approached an enemy that looked familiar only to have my false sense of security blasted off me by a brand new attack. Getting used to the normal minotaurs' axe swings only to be surprised by the red variant cartwheeling through the air to cleave me in twain like a medieval Simone Biles is just one of many examples that the gave offered.
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| (Image property of Konami |
With all of this in mind, it's understandable why this of all points is my first priority when organising the worthies from the unworthies of re-skinning. However, to make the most of re-skinned enemies, there are other important principles to observe.
Don't Invite the Bosses
The creation of a great boss fight is more of an art than a science. It's difficult to predict in the design stages of a game what is going to click with players both thematically and from a gameplay perspective. As such, it makes sense with all of the effort that goes into them that they should be unique to set them aside as special hurdles for the player to overcome on their journey. With this in mind, you can understand why I say that it is NEVER a smart choice to re-skin your boss fights.
Budgets are a hard thing to work around, I get that, so calling for a full ban on all re-skinned bosses might sound a tad unreasonable. However, in practice, the painful reality of seeing what you thought was a unique boss re-purposed for a different location is disappointing enough that it would almost be worth not having a boss at all. It's almost like being given a really special, personal gift by a close friend that makes you feel touched by the thought behind it, only to find out later that it belonged to their ex and they just wanted to get rid of it. Sure, it might still be a good gift, but you're probably going to feel less bad about spelling their name wrong on your Christmas cards.
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| (Image property of Sony and Santa Monica Studio) |
While there are plenty of games that could be bear this cross, the most obvious example of recent years for me is God of War (2018) which re-used the same boss fight against a troll with a big slab of granite for nearly every single boss fight throughout the story. While they did go so far as to add some new moves to the boss, like Commandment 1 suggests, the game couldn't even muster the energy to give an in-universe explanation for why they kept showing up like extended family to an Irish wedding. Any time I asked why the next boss was just a red troll instead of a blue one, the game started whistling to itself and avoiding eye contact. By the end of the game, I was so familiar with the troll family that killing them felt more like data entry than a pitched battle to the death.
As such, my second commandment is to never re-use bosses for risk that the joy and immersion that a game has built up might crumble under the weight of the player recognising that the game has enough padding that it could be repurposed to protect crash test dummies.
Paste Not, Want Not
In the land of copy-pasted monsters, there is a common misconception that games only resort to re-skinning enemies when they run out of ideas. The argument goes that, if the developers had such a strong creative vision, why couldn't that extend to a few more unique enemy designs? However, while plenty of games are guilty of this, it needn't always be the case.
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| (Image property of Konami) |
On the surface, the aforementioned Castlevania games look saturated with reiterations of existing enemies. Looking through the bestiaries for most of the games, almost every enemy gets a remake no matter how good or bad the original was like they're an early 2000s Resident Evil game. Where the difference lies, however, between this and a negative example of recycling enemies is that, even if you purged the bestiary of all reused enemies, the Castlevania series would still boast exemplary monster variety. The reason why I hold up Castlevania like a priest about to dunk it in a tub of water is because its recycling of enemies isn't used to fill up its roster but instead to supplement an already full one.
Again, I'm obliged to refer to God of War's boss fights here because if you removed the recycled bosses you'd only be left with Baldur, Magni and Modi, one elf and a dragon throughout the whole length of the game's 15 hour story. This is without getting into the game's other enemies that are frequently re-used with a fresh coat of paint or elemental attack. In God of War's case, the enemy roster is only of a reasonable size because of repetition.
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| (Image property of Sony and Santa Monica Studio) |
As such, my third and final commandment is that re-skinning is an art like any other element of game design and it can't simply be used to fill the space. When it is used, it needs to be for an intended purpose rather than just to make sure the game reaches sufficient size to justify a $70 price tag.
Conclusion
My stated aim going into this article was to clear the air a little around re-skinning because, in many cases, it gets a bad wrap as a practice. However, it also isn't a simple task and, looking at some examples of it at work, I can sympathise with people that cringe whenever they see a tutorial area dog that's been painted turquoise to fill up a late-game space.
Hopefully, as consoles get more powerful, the industry ages and developers get more experienced, some of these bad habits might start to fade away and, with any luck, we won't have to live with Level 20 turquoise ice dogs and the God of War troll squad forever.
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