Remember the XIII remake? Boy, I sure do. It came out back in November of 2020 and quickly became one of the most panned games around. From copious bugs and other severe technical issues, to the fact that it was actually notably worse than the game it remade in nearly every way, things were quite cataclysmic for the title. Developer PlayMagic promised the game would be fixed. An update or two was released, but radio silence soon followed and it appeared that any interest in fixing the game was dead in the water. But publisher Microids revealed today that that’s not actually the case. The XIII remake is set to receive a major update with fresh improvements and multiplayer content soon.
Developer PlayMagic, however, hasn’t been involved with XIII for some time. Instead, Microids has put Tower Five, developers of the strategy game Lornsword Winter Chronicle, in charge of the upcoming update and ports of the XIII remake. Microids has revealed that Tower Five has actually been working on the patch, which is for the PC and console versions, for over a year now.
According to the publisher, “The development studio reworked the entire game from the Art Direction to the AI and added numerous technical improvements. Finally, Tower Five implemented the highly awaited online multiplayer mode for up to 13 players.”
Back from the dead
The XIII remake update with multiplayer content will be free for all owners of the game, plus it’ll be launching on Nintendo Switch, which I’d wager is a large part of the reason for all this effort. It’s rather surprising that an entirely separate studio has been painstakingly overhauling the game for over a year plus developing multiplayer. But let’s hope the title is now finally playable as opposed to what we got back in 2020. At the very least, it couldn’t get much worse, right? I just jinxed it didn’t I?
