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How To Make a Good Gaming Sequel
Kantor48 writes "In today's world of unimproved gaming sequels and saturated franchises, Arthur Kabrick looks at the best and worst sequels in recent history, and compares the changes they've made to the formulae of their franchises. By doing this, he comes up with a list of lessons that any game developer creating a sequel should follow, if at all possible, to ensure that the new game is a step up, rather than a step sideways or, as in some cases, a step down. The criteria include ensuring the game does not spend too much time in development, updating technology, and trying not to change the development team, as well as being wary of changing the basic formula so much that fans of the franchise are alienated."
Sorry, but this article is crap. It just mentions a few things without proper reasoning. What makes a good sequel is not an exact science, trying to reason about it in a generic what is just unfounded.
Lesson 1: Starcraft 2 took a long time, and it's considered to be a good sequel. Same for Half Life 2. Development time is a dumb reason. Does it matter is a sequel needs 6 years of development, or simply 3 but still released 6 years after the original?
Lesson 2: The gamebryo engine was also used by Morrowind, and Oblivion before it was used for Fallout 3. A lot of games use the same engine, and it generally leads to better software, but it has nothing to do with game quality. Story and game content don't have much to do with the engine.
Lesson 3: BioShock 2 was made by a completely different studio, not just a different lead desginer. StarCraft 2 and Diablo 2 both had different lead desginers. There are also numerous examples of bad sequels that had the same lead designer.
Lesson 4: Yes... obviously. But what exactly was that, people can tell you that the change you made is a bad one, but they can't beforehand tell you what they liked and why? Also, not everybody is the same. Putting the exact game out doesn't result in a good sequel either.
Lesson 5: Don't evolve too much? What's too much? Also, doesn't have some overlap of lesson 4?
Lesson 6: Improve everything? But, doesn't that violate lessen 4 and 5?
But the worst part of the whole article, it doesn't even mention what defines a good sequel. He uses 4% difference in review score as listed by Metacritics. But reviews are not objective, review scores of games are also influenced by other games that were release before it. and of course, the reviews are generally written by different people, and different people tend to judge differently.
Good Sequels: Mass Effect 2, Starcraft 2, Thief 3
Bad Sequels: Deus Ex 2, Fallout 3 (though Fallout: New Vegas is on the good-ish side)
Fallout 3 is fantastic. much better than fallout 1 and 2
Starcraft 2 I won't purchase until I can do Lan play at home without online servers - so massive fail for the sequel.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Disagree. While sequels in movie world (with a few rare exceptions) almost never live up to the original, the gaming world is littered with sequels that have surpassed the original.
The original X-Wing back on the PC in the early 1990s was great, but TIE fighter smoothed off a lot of the rough edges and ended up the better game. Baldur's Gate 2 was a better game than the original because it took away some of the excessively sadistic design elements, gave a more content-rich game world and massively improved the balance of the magic system. Yes, Gran Turismo 5 may have been a disappointment, but if you go back to the series's roots, Gran Turismo 2 was a huge step up from the original. More recently, the Forza Motorsport series has improved beyond recognition with each sequel, going from an original which was a poor man's Gran Turismo 4, to a third installment that blows Gran Turismo 5 out of the water in most respects. The Fable series has evolved from a bad joke of an original into a pretty passable and unusual RPG. There are many more examples I could point at here.
If anything, I think the exact opposite of what you said is usually true. Original games, based on a fresh IP, often seem to get pushed out the door because "upper management" (whatever you mean by that) don't want to put too much time and resource into a project that's seen as a risk. Once a game has been successful, allowing more time to polish the sequel is often a more attractive commercial proposition. Sure you'll always find exceptions, but I think this generally holds true.
Thief 3 was a terrible sequel. In Thief 1 and 2 you were a thief, not a murderer. In order to succeed on the higher levels of play you had to not kill anyone. Thief 3 had no such limitation - you could happily murder anyone who got in your way (a la every other first-person game out there). It took the spirit of the originals and crushed it. Instead of 'Thief', it should have been called 'Brigand'.
Step 1: Make a Good Game.
If the game can't stand on it's own as a Good Game then it's not a Good Sequel.
Fallout 3 is fantastic. much better than fallout 1 and 2
Honestly, Fallout 1 & 2 are completely different games than Fallout 3, they are not even the same genre, which leads to the weird effect TFA says is undesirable. Most people I know (myself included) who played 1 & 2 when it was new like them better. The problem is when you attract people from previous games and then change what made it good (for them), which is this case was pretty much everything. All three of them are good games - but those who came from the first two have the transition from turn-based, overhead tactics to more of a first person action-rpgish thing with a turn-based homage thrown in. Since the time gap is so huge it is less of an issue since theres no recent memory of 1 & 2.
Personally I was really annoyed that Fallout 3 was basically 'oblivion with guns' but I think they did a better job with it in New Vegas (not pretending your not a shooter and making the aim button actually aim improved the game a LOT for me).
EA bought everyone with an original idea and on top of crushing the dreams of great game developers they are holding the fun hostage.
Trouble is, remakes sell, even for diminishing returns. To the creators, thats the safest route, kinda like betting on the favourite in a horse-race. There's a lot of talent out there, but they're often unwilling to take a punt on it, just in case its a dog.
Your military has nothing to do with unhappiness in Civ V (notwithstanding that social policy that gives you +1 happiness for every city with a garrison). I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. It is true that if you overextend your military you can drive your economy into the ground for a while, but that is only reasonable (and you can recover from it). You shouldn't be able to build a massive, world-crushing force without a stable and sizable economy to support it.
I've done plenty of warmongering in my games of Civ V without killing my empire, so I would venture to guess you're doing something wrong.
I also completely disagree with your assessment of Civ V in general. While there are changes I'm not fond of (such as lack of culture flipping cities, or removal of religion and corporations), on the whole it is indeed a marked improvement over the previous entries in the series.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
IMO, the US "Super Mario Bros. 2" (a Japanese came called "Doki Doki Panic" with Mario characters slapped in) sucked, but the game released in Japan as "Super Mario Bros. 2" (AKA "The Lost Levels" in the US) was great.
I think it's odd how this is taken as a cause rather than a symptom. If a game changes hands several times, it's going to be a mess when it comes out for -that- reason, and because it might have a dated feel, not simply because of the time. If the leaders of the project are idiots, it might take a lot longer than it should and won't be very good either, but that's because it had bad management, not because of the time. Longer development times makes the bean counters push to rush it out the door. I'd argue it's a bad decision to put a game out too soon, and that too has nothing to do with lengthy development.
If you're making a gigantic game at a reasonable pace, has one unifying, competent visionary guiding it throughout development, and manages to not feel dated when it finally comes out, I don't see why there would be a time limit for whether a game is going to be good or not. Half life 2 for example, took forever to get here, but was worth the wait.
The reverse is true too. Under the good examples section, the article mentions Uncharted, and the first 2 things it says the sequel did right are
"1) This took only two years to make; nowhere near six.
2) Two years, and they still improved the engine. It was also developed in-house, so Naughty Dog knew how to use it."
Seems stupid to me to suggest that a 2 year development made the sequel good. I've never heard anyone rave about how Uncharted 2 was so good because they didn't have to wait very long after playing the first one to play it.
In DNF's case, it really depends on what happens with the development. I liked Gearbox's "Borderlands," but that had very little to do with the plot or characters. If they throw out all the ancient junk and start fresh, maybe it won't be bad. If they try to use art that 3d realms made in the 90's, that doesn't seem like it could possibly work. If they try to use an old game engine, the game might be broken on arrival. In any case, I think it has very little to do with time directly.
Here is my advice on how to make a good sequel: figure out what people like about the original, and make sure not to strip out those parts.
You might think this is totally obvious. But I'm not much of a gamer, and I can still think of several cases where this simple rule was not followed. Here are a few:
Doom vs. Doom 3: In Doom (and Doom II), most of the time you were surrounded by large numbers of monsters, sometimes ridiculously large numbers of monsters. Also, if you played it right, you could often get that ridiculously large crowd of monsters to start fighting amongst themselves, and I took an evil joy in doing that. Doom 3? Advanced 3D engine with detailed monsters, i.e. not very many monsters. It was a totally different game.
Battlezone vs. Battlezone II: (These are the 1990's hybrid FPS/RTS games.) The most basic thing you had to do in Battlezone was send out "scrap collectors" to pick up "scrap", which you could use to build stuff. Also, when you blew up the enemy's stuff, it would turn into scrap you could collect. (But of course not at a 1:1 exchange rate; it would take about 3 enemy tanks to get enough scrap to build one tank.) In Battlezone II this mechanic was totally discarded; now your build units would drill into the ground and extract all the scrap they needed, making scrap just a function of time and not a resource you had to really manage.
Spy Hunter vs. Spy Hunter 2: (These are the hybrid racing/FPS games, not the arcade games) The original Spy Hunter game was a blast. You really were racing the clock; you were shooting lots of bad guys, but you had to do it quickly. Your car was tough, so you could afford to focus on the racing and the killing. Spy Hunter 2 changed the gameplay completely: now your car was very vulnerable, and you had to focus on carefully keeping yourself alive. You also, inexplicably, now had to run over power-ups, and there were lots of boss battles.
In both Battlezone and Spy Hunter, I really wish someone could take the original game engines and just make new maps. I would pay full price for sequels that were really just more maps for those game engines.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Reading this article made me cringe in much a similar fashion to how I respond to any particular artistic or entertainment based journalism; they are simply full of bullshit. The arts and enterinment industry in general have so little objectivity to comment on that anything but recitation of the facts is akin to heresy.
Fallout 3 is like if a hardcore Oblivion fan/modder were told about Fallout 1 & 2 over lunch with a friend, then decided to make a Fallout total conversion for Oblivion without actually playing the first game--maybe just reading Wikipedia and watching the intro video on Youtube. Like Morrowind and Oblivion it's sorely lacking in actual role-playing, aside from a handful of good sidequests it's full poor writing and dull fetch quests, and its overall narrative structure is Bethesda-ish rather than Fallout-ish.
I wouldn't say it sucks considered on its own and once heavily modded (it's mediocre pre-mods), but it jettisons so many of the core attributes of the Fallout games (while keeping much of the incidental shit) that it is a very poor entry in the series.
Fallout: New Vegas, on the other hand, is excellent. It's 3D Fallout done right. Great Fallout-style breadcrumb trail of a main quest that leads you through one quest hub after another, damn near every side quest is interesting, stuff you do matters for the ending (how the hell Bethesda screwed that up in F3 I have no idea--it's a voiceover and some stills, FFS!), even the most mundane quest can turn out to be far more than it seemed or take a weird twist, skill specialization is more-or-less restored, etc.
If you're a fan of Fallout 1 & 2, you'll probably like New Vegas. I'd say just skip F3--I doubt I'll ever play it again, as New Vegas is so much better, and far more to my liking as a Fallout fan. You say you don't like FPS games, and that might still turn you off as there is still a significant FPS element (obviously) but I would say it relies less on real-time combat and twitch shooting than even Mass Effect does unless you choose to play it as a pure FPS, so if you could stand ME then you can probably stomach New Vegas' combat.
If the original game is entertaining and popular, you can pretty much develop bug fixes and an expansion pack for it, add a number or surname and release a groundbreaking sequel. Article should be about rules for good games and not for successful sequels, the concept is quite ridiculous. Bigger, better, more features, better graphics; They all mean diddly-squat if the first game was puke and you're working around it. The only exception to this rule is adding multiplayer, since you can pretty much play a game of rochambeau with friends and make it enjoyable.
I think your problem is and the reason I hate the game is that when you take over a village you get that option to either absorb it into your empire OR have it as some weird vassal state thing for a little while and incorporate it later. If you take over it straight away, that city's unhappiness will cause unhappiness in your empire so you have to wait until the AI builds some happiness buildings for you and the local people stop complaining that they were conquered.
I've also had the problem where you start taking over large parts of the stupid AI's empire and all of a sudden your empire is crying itself to sleep over all the happiness you have.
Civ5 won't be touched by me again until about 4 patches OR a very good mod. Civ4 and Alpha Centauri still rule the roost in my eyes.
Cheers,
Maq
I agree. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote and yet ... why do I enjoy playing Fallout 3 so much more than New Vegas? I've played through Fallout 3 half a dozen times by now. New Vegas? I finished the main quest early, and I've not really been able to summon the enthusiasm to play through and chase down some of the alternate paths. I'd like to side with the NCR or the Legion, even just faithfully side with Mr. House ... but somehow my enthusiasm for the project evaporates bout the time I get to New Vegas. I don't really understand it.
I think you're right in so far as New Vegas is a better Fallout game. But I think Bethseda must have been doing something right, because I think Fallout 3 is the better game overall.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
While the article showed some good examples of things that worked, one thing that is missing is WHY things either work or do not, and an understanding about why any given game is popular is more important than pointing out examples of good and bad sequels.
In games that are clearly story driven, a key to making any sequel work is making sure the sequel has a good story. This may seem like common sense, but many games(and movies) have a great story for one game, but the sequel does not have a great story, so there is less interest in playing through to the end, or there is less satisfaction in playing due to the player not getting involved.
You have the basic "is the game fun to PLAY" issue, where if the game isn't fun to play, it can drag things down a lot. First person shooters for example tend to have very similar gameplay mechanics, with ONLY game engine improvements to keep people interested, because when it comes right down to it, the games are very similar. This links to how good the story in the game is to keep some players interested, but if the engine isn't better, then why not keep playing the older generation of the game? Some games use mini-games that are not very good that cause people to be annoyed, and if the same ones are used over and over again, that does not help.
You also have the issue where a game MUST have acceptable graphics and sound at the time it is released. It is typical that a full game, including engine will take four to six years to develop. Now, for a sequel, if the primary draw is the engine, it had better be more advanced and include improvements in ALL categories. Better here but worse there will end up with a lower score than the previous game in the series. Graphics and sound that is more typical of a game released in 2004 will result in lower popularity as well. For new games, DirectX 10 support as a minimum, taking full advantages of the technology is something of a requirement for graphics.
There are some games that have been released in the past year that failed these things. Civilization 5 is the perfect example of better graphics and better maps not being enough to compensate for poor AI, poor diplomacy options, and a reduction in complexity in many areas(including the tech tree and number/type of units). The main draw in the SERIES has always been DEPTH, combined with how easy it is to learn and understand the basics of gameplay, and when a sequel goes away from that main draw, you end up with a failure.
Now, game developers should not be afraid to try new gameplay elements, but DESIGN experiments can be done without spending all the time needed to perfect the graphics and animations and such, so it should not take four years of full development to discover that certain basic design elements will NOT be fun for players. Some things are fine in moderation, but don't force players to play a weak mini-game 200+ times in one playthrough since that detracts from the enjoyment of the game. Mass Effect 2 is a great sequel, but the mini-games get old VERY fast since the game does not increase or decrease difficulty based on advancement or character/party selection, so there is less of a point to them. The combat areas also are very linear in ME2, but at least the combat itself wasn't worse, and in some ways is better. The reason Mass Effect 2 didn't lose too many points due to the mini-games and poor combat areas is because the primary reasons for ME1 being popular are the characters and story, and the negatives do not cause the game to NOT be fun.
So, to sum all of this up, look at why any given game is popular, and make sure you make those areas the top priority. No one cares if a game has better graphics if the gameplay sucks.
And yet Miyamoto and Nintendo EAD spent more time and effort on Doki Doki Panic than they did on the quick-and-dirty expansion pack that was the Japanese "Super Mario Bros. 2". In fact, far more features from the former became mainstays to the series than anything from the latter.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I'd say its the other way around. SMB2J was a lame level pack, had no involvement of Miyamoto and was crazy hard. It just felt amateurish.
SMB2US on the other side was simply a great game, designed by Miyamoto, introduced a lot of fresh ideas and new enemies that actually got reused by later games. This is quite unlike SMB2J, everything that that game introduced has been basically completly forgotten and ignored.
I'd say Nintendo did absolutely the right thing in going the sprite-swap route.
Better yet, a multitude of decisions from the first game return to either help or haunt you if you import your original Shepard save file.
That feature is kind of overrated a lot. Yes, quite a bit of stuff caries over, but all that means is that you get an mail every now and then or an extra line of dialog. It basically doesn't change anything important in the game, as all the the big decisions you made in the first game are written out of the story in the second one (doesn't matter if council is alive or dead if it has no screen time in the second game).