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Sequels We'd All Like To See
Voodoo Extreme has a feature up that's a wishlist for future sequels. They run down some great game franchises that have been off the board for a little while, and wonder out loud about the possibility of new installments. Besides the usual suspects for lists like this (StarCraft, TIE Fighter, Descent, Ultima), they touch on some cult favorites that are ... less likely to show up in modern gaming. From the article: "Planescape Torment 2: The Poop -- Loved by many a forumgoer is Planescape Torment, a Dungeons & Dragons-themed RPG set in the other planes of existence. It was a dark game with evil undertones, but also lighthearted and funny at times. Just think Baldur's Gate with an M rating. The Scoop -- Odds of a sequel are equal to or greater than Elvis coming home on the mothership." Any oldies you'd like to see back on modern systems? While I really like many of the ideas listed here, the LucasArts classics Grim Fandango and Maniac Mansion are the ones I'd most like to see rehashed.
Dungeon Keeper III: The Apology.
Dungeon Keeper was a great game with a simple premise. Dungeon Keeper II forgot that adding Mega-3D graphics and a storyline that nobody would care about doesn't make the game better.
Adding new monsters and more flexibility was needed.
I wanna explode more chickens!
Enough said? Really, I could think of a few games which would be lovely to have sequels to (DX, KOTOR to name a couple) but sometimes it's better to have an original story than churning out the same thing over and over which is what seems to happen nowadays. Perhaps I'm just too cynical.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
Hell, re-release those with modern graphics and upgraded online play (ala Half Life:Source) and they would sell all over again. I still play all three of those games and i cant remember a LAN party i've been to where we didnt get a game of starcraft going. Show me a gamer that doesnt have starcraft tucked away on their system somewhere.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I liked Duke Nukem, any chance of a follow-up?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Fallout was unquestionably the best PC game ever made.
Pleeeease don't make a Planescape Torment sequel. Sure, make another game set in the Planescape multiverse. But a sequel to Torment can only be a rape of a fine game's memory. The game had a fine ending, a great ending. Don't ruin it by tacking something on.
Anyone else remember that game? man Master of Orion got 3 sequels. It deserves at least one.
Why is it that everything good and full of art, thought and wit must make way for what is base and stupid and vulgar? I pine for charm and subtle humor, for fully developed characters, for well developed plots for the denouement... for story telling and all the other things forgotten.
Fuck it, I'm going to write a video game and show 'em how it's done.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Custer's Revenge II: The Revenge of Custer's Revenge
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Pong 2
I always wondered why, when LucasArts was seemingly determined to make Star Wars games in just about every other genre imaginable (combat flightsims, first-person, racing games, RTS, platform action, fighting games, etc.), with varying results, they never tried to do one in the one game genre at which the company historically excelled and was well-known for. If they'd done a graphic adventure in the Star Wars universe and had it turn out as well as just about all their other graphic adventures, it could have given a shot in the arm to the whole field of graphic adventures. I always thought it would be cool to have, say, an adventure where you played Han and Chewie shortly before the original trilogy, around the timeframe and in a storyline along the lines of the old Brian Daley novels, or perhaps a semi-comic Droids game where you played Artoo and Threepio; in either of these ideas you could switch from one of the two leads to the other, to use whichever character is more appropriate for a given situation. Seriously, it could've been really cool, but they totally, utterly ignored the SCUMM-style adventures when it came to Star Wars, even though they did all sorts of other things as graphic adventures (everything from licensed games with the other major Lucasfilm property, Indiana Jones, to crazy, inspired stuff like Grim Fandango) at the same time they were doing Star Wars in every other genre. Why?
What, are these guys new to gaming?
How about Syndicate, or Magic Carpet, or Dungeon Keeper, or Theme hospital?
How about xcom? (a real sequel, thanks.)
How about Alternate Reality the Wilderness, or the Arena, or the Palace?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Might as well finish the series given that they've spent more than $20 million to make the first two.
I pine for the LucasArts games of old. The Monkey Islands, the Day of the Tentacles, and Grim Fandango which was more art than a videogame.
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I pine for charm and subtle humor, for fully developed characters, for well developed plots for the denouement... for story telling and all the other things forgotten.
Get Psychonauts. Make all your friends get Psychonauts. Seriously. It's available from Steam if you can't find it in the bargain bins. DON'T just write it off as a platformer. It has all you want of that, and more. FFS, it even has the same creators as the games you mention.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
- A proper update to Elite and/or Frontier
- A better sequel to 1998's Battlezone. Heck, just update the graphics and let it run on a modern PC and I'd be happy
- Baldur's Gate III, Icewind Dale III
- Another Max Payne installment
- An updated Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire that will run stably on a modern PC
Oh, yeah, and I want a pony too....http://www.gamasutra.com/features/designers_noteb
But what's most interesting about Planescape: Torment, and what most deserves our attention as designers, is its setting, its characters and its plot. The phrase "fantasy role-playing game," of course, immediately conjures up images of a group of Tolkienesque characters marching through the forest in search of dragons. Planescape is blessedly free of these stereotypes - I've played for several hours now and there's not an elf or dwarf in sight, nor, for that matter, a forest. The designers of the Planescape universe have at long last abandoned Northern European mythology and devised something perhaps richer, definitely darker, and altogether fresher. If Baldur's Gate is a lager, Planescape is a homemade stout.
The story centers around a nameless, immortal character who is searching for his forgotten past. It uses the hackneyed "amnesia" device to explain why he doesn't seem to know anything about the world he lives in, but I have to say that it's handled at least as well in Planescape: Torment as in any book or game I've seen it in. Our hero is seeking the information that will explain, and then end, his immortality and allow him at last to die permanently. At least that's what I think he's looking for; motives and morals in Planescape are nothing if not ambiguous.
It might not be an official X-Com sequel, but Laser Squad Nemesis is a really good spiritual successor by the same designers, with more of a multiplayer focus.