Which Game Series Would You Reboot?

Franchise reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, and the trend is starting to creep into the games industry as well. The Guardian's games blog is running a story discussing a few examples and pondering likely candidates for future reboots. Quoting: "If anything, the concept of the reboot makes more sense in the videogame sector than it does in movies. For a start, games are complex entities, with each new iteration in a familiar series adding many, many hours of fresh narrative content. Entering, say, the Zelda, Resident Evil, Half-Life, Dragon Quest or Metal Gear worlds at this stage must be massively intimidating — even if the developers go to great lengths to make each entry work as a singular, self-contained entity within the canon. Also, videogames are going through a paradigm shift in terms of popular appeal at the moment. The faithful audience of young males has been joined by new demographics brought in by the Wii, PC casual games, and now the iPhone. Many of these people may be vaguely aware of long-running game brands, but won't have a clue about the key characters, sign post events and basic gameplay mechanisms." So, which series (or individual title) would you like to see rebooted?

Comments

Re:Final Fantasy

[Yosho]

I would reboot Final Fantasy and make many of the characters less cheesy.

If you think the characters are cheesy, that's one thing, but why do you think this needs a "reboot"? What does "reboot" even mean here, given that almost every game has nothing to do with any of the other games in the series?

I would also make the subject matter a bit darker

Which FF game are you talking about? A number of the FF games have had fairly dark plots underneath their superficially colorful graphics; FF6, Tactics, 10, and 12 all come to mind immediately.

the interactions more free form

So... you want the series to basically stop being like a Japanese RPG and be more like a Western RPG?

I think it would also be nice to have a non-turn-based combat option.

FF 4 through 9, 11, and 12 all fit that bill. If you didn't mean "turn-based" but actually meant, "I want a battle system where characters don't line up in rows and swing at each other", there's still 11 and 12.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you're basing your opinion of the entire series off of just one or two of the games.