>What is interesting to see is how a lot of fan remaster projects have this problem to a much lesser degree. Having the touchstone of a shared love for the original makes it much easier to organize and get people to stick around and agree to someone's vision.

Well that makes sense: in a remaster, the "vision" is really just "let's modernize this old game". So everyone knows what it's supposed to look like, basically, because they can just look at the old game itself.