Sequels, remakes and expansions

[Guest Bruin]

Okay, I touched briefly on this in another thread.

 

Now why exactly do companies continue to make sequels and remakes? Well, the answer is easy enough. To cash in on an all ready established franchise. Okay, I can understand that, sounds like a good idea even. But, when by making a sequel, (or remake as the case may be) more often than not, you're losing MUCH of what the original game was all about and in some cases, even ruining the entire marketablility of the rest of the series.

 

Lets not forget the immense plot holes that MANY of them feature. (IE: Halo to Halo 2, You destroyed the Halo, WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO!?) Of course, theres the sequels that progressively move from one base property of it, to something completely off the wall and ridiculous. A GREAT example of this is the Quake series. Quake was an amazing game, it had a ton of atmosphere and it revolutionized first person shooters and multiplayer. Quake II comes out, it was off of what the original Quake was by a good bit, but it stuck to a slim part of the original. (Space, remember, Slip-Gates were in Quake) THEN id comes out with Quake III: Arena. WHOA! I was first battling Zombies and Demonic creatures, then I'm fighting Cybernetic Aliens, now I'm fighting for some omnipotent being just to go and kill some Chinese guy at the end? Did I miss something here or what? So lets go through that again in terms of signifigance..

 

Quake - Revolutionary in the 3d Gaming and Multiplayer scenes

Quake II - Pushed the Online community to it's limits with modding

Quake III: Arena - Pushes the Graphics to a whole new level, making you wait 3 years for technology to catch up. While Unreal, which was made at the time of Quake II has graphics compareable, if not better in certain aspects than Q3A. Need I mention that Unreal runs much better than Q3A?

 

Now, lets examine Expansion packs. More often than not, these are hardly worth the buy. Mostly because whats in them SHOULD'VE been in the full retail game to begin with. Quake III: Team Arena, anyone? Or they add ridiculous things that you're never going to use anyway, and there was no point in even putting them into the game. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is a good example with it's Runes. Small little trinkets that are so insanely difficult (atleast any of the decent ones) to find that there was no point in even putting them into the game. I'm sorry, but if a rune has a 1 in 15 chance of dropping whenever an item has a chance to drop (which is roughly 1/3 of the time), and then you have another chance of 1 in 64,000 of getting a decent rune, why bother even putting them in there?

 

Then there are the remakes.. They're made primarily to capatalize on the nastalgia value that playing through the orignal offers. This normally comes at the price of sacrificing a decent chunk of the content from the original. A good deal of the time, it means that you lose much of the atmosphere that was in the original. For a good example, take a look at Wolfenstein 3D, then look at Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The original, by modern standards it's horrible, had a much more, pardon my wording, Nazish atmosphere than RtCW did even when you were in the heart of such complexes that had Nazi propganda on the walls. Even with the, what? 3 lines of German audio that was in the original, it was more beleiveable than RtCW having all the Germans talking in English with ze German accent, and all of it's WWII weapons.

 

Wolfenstein - Had Nazi's, and got to kill Hitler in the end

RtCW - Had Zombies, got to kill some mythical being at the end

 

Hm, looks like one of these games strayed from the main topic.

 

Thoughts and opinions are welcome.

[Guest razazteca]

what is your opinion on Mods for the FPS games?

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

Let's not forget these things called deadlines.

[Guest Flyboy]

I don't know...

 

I think the Resident Evil remake (I don't know if I can even call it that) is about to put all remakes to shame.  Just watch.

[Guest The Mighty Damaramu]

That remake will indeed rock.

[Guest Bruin]

Once more, I am reminded why I took such a long 'vacation' from this forum before.

[Guest Flyboy]

Once more, I am reminded why I took such a long 'vacation' from this forum before.

And why was that?

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

Because the truth hurts Flyboy.

 

Because the truth hurts.

[Guest Flyboy]

If the truth hurts then why do they keep putting those fucking Truth commercials on my television?!  >_<

[Guest areacode212]

Lets not forget the immense plot holes that MANY of them feature. (IE: Halo to Halo 2, You destroyed the Halo, WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO!?) Of course, theres the sequels that progressively move from one base property of it, to something completely off the wall and ridiculous. A GREAT example of this is the Quake series. Quake was an amazing game, it had a ton of atmosphere and it revolutionized first person shooters and multiplayer. Quake II comes out, it was off of what the original Quake was by a good bit, but it stuck to a slim part of the original. (Space, remember, Slip-Gates were in Quake)

 

But if they had made a straight sequel to Quake, the same complaint you had with Halo would have applied. You KILLED THE QUAKE MONSTER! What's left?? So, they made Quake II, which really had nothing to do with the 1st game, but from a marketing standpoint, it was a wise decision to continue the "Quake" name rather than come up with something new from scratch, as they did after Doom II. The first game was a hit, so why kill off a franchise so quickly? Most fans didn't really care that they went to a "space marine" theme while keeping the name. And that's really the key--the fans. As long as they keep buying, the game companies will keep making the sequels/expansion packs. This is why Maxis keeps making Sims expansion packs. Because they're guaranteed hot sellers.  

 

THEN id comes out with Quake III: Arena. WHOA! I was first battling Zombies and Demonic creatures, then I'm fighting Cybernetic Aliens, now I'm fighting for some omnipotent being just to go and kill some Chinese guy at the end? Did I miss something here or what?

It's not like either of the first two Quakes were exactly masterpieces of storytelling (get No One Lives Forever or Starcraft for that). If they want to create a new storyline for each Quake, I don't have a problem with it. And at least they attempted to tie together the disparate Quake & Doom storylines in the Q3A manual.

 

Anyway, there have been a ton of great sequels that have improved on the originals..Age of Empires II, Jedi Knight, Doom II, Unreal Tournament.

 

Now, lets examine Expansion packs. More often than not, these are hardly worth the buy. Mostly because whats in them SHOULD'VE been in the full retail game to begin with. Quake III: Team Arena, anyone? Or they add ridiculous things that you're never going to use anyway, and there was no point in even putting them into the game. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction is a good example with it's Runes. Small little trinkets that are so insanely difficult (atleast any of the decent ones) to find that there was no point in even putting them into the game. I'm sorry, but if a rune has a 1 in 15 chance of dropping whenever an item has a chance to drop (which is roughly 1/3 of the time), and then you have another chance of 1 in 64,000 of getting a decent rune, why bother even putting them in there?

Sure, a lot of these features should've been in the original game in the first place, but as pinnacleofallthingsmanly said, there are such things as deadlines. And nobody bought D2X for the *runes*. We bought it to use the Assassin and for other cool shit like the improved hirelings and magical javelins. If a company releases a product that extends the life of your game, and improves upon it, then what's wrong with it? It's not like anyone's forcing you to buy it. The Half-Life expansion pack was actually much more fun than the original (IMO).

 

This seems like it was more of a rant against specific sequels/x-packs/remakes than against the idea of sequels in general.

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

God damn

[Guest Flyboy]

Once more, I am reminded why I took such a long 'vacation' from this forum before.

 

And why was that?

 

If I had to guess, it would probably be the incessant whining about nothing. This thread is pretty damn stupid if you ask me, but I guess everyone is entitled to their 30 seconds of bitching. If you are bitching about companys making sequels to video games, you must have a lot of time on your hands. I understand the need to vent, but just think for a second. Why do you think the companies make sequels to games?

[Dumbass Mode]  

 

Then... wouldn't take make him... a hypocrite?  *gasps*

 

[/Dumbass Mode]

[Guest pinnacleofallthingsmanly]

Thank you Flyboy. Thank you for doing things for me.

 

*hangs head and laughs*