(D)evolution of Game Series/Franchises

[Thebazilly]

[I believe I'm up to this task. See if you can chart the arc of what -I- consider this franchise's de-evolution from my tone.]

Assassin's Creed -- [snip]

I love Assassin's Creed, but yeah, Ubisoft is running it into the ground. I thought Brotherhood and Revelations were excessive (I still enjoyed them, but they were excessive). I told myself I wouldn't look at AC3, get excited about it, or buy it. Then I ended up buying it and loved it, although the main story was crap. I especially like how Haytham and his cronies go from reasonable, if a bit cold and utilitarian (finally, Assassins that admit and understand that they're KILLING PEOPLE) to pure, baby-eating evil after the plot twist at the beginning. Because Templars are bad guys and Assassins are good guys, even if they both murder, bribe, and lie in the name of their causes.

I told myself I won't buy AC4, either. I'll probably end up buying it anyway and enjoying it. The naval combat in 3 was one of my favorite parts.

Assassin's Creed is kind of becoming my guilty pleasure.

 

[AuronFtw]

I don't know, I thought Mass Effect 2 & 3 were quite good, with 2 having one of my favorite endings. Mass Effect 1 had great exploration, and I really miss that, but lets be honest: the writing was not as good. The characters were pretty bland and uninteresting compared to the other two, and I would argue the action got better as well. If they had kept the exploration, the RPG elements, and improved the vehicle sections instead of getting rid of them, then the games would have been perfect.

Pretty much this. The series kept a very steady pace and maintained fairly high quality of design and polish... right up until the last 10 minutes of 3. But the rest of it? Fantastic. Great characters, great story arcs, combat that got better with every game. I cried for Mordin, I cried for Thane. Very well developed, with backstories and motivations that are both well-rounded and completely believable.

A rare gem in a sea of mediocre RPGs, and a surprising one considering that it's packaged in the form of a shooter.

 

[BitterLemon]

And this is no "deevolution" from say Dragin Age 1 to Dragen or 2, or Mass effect 2 to 3. this is basically taking The Last of us, and making The Lats of us 2 be a flight simulator about how Joel has gotten a smack-addiction and Ellie mmust use her newly found superpowers to destroy him and his legion of henchmen, while being written by a thirteen year old. You may think I'm using Hyperbole, but I'm not, it really is that fucking bad! The only reason it doesn't get more notice is because the story is so absolutely shit everyone stopped paying attention to it, it literally is so horrible it turned a series who one of it's strognest points was it's story and turned it into a non-factor. i mean, holy shit, is it bad.

I know how you feel, bro.

I've never liked or learned to play RTS, but I loved Warcraft 3 when I first played it, don't know why. It's the only RTS that I've ever played till the end. It's was sometime after Frozen Throne was released and when I just finished the last mission, I thought "Wow, amazing, I wonder if there's plan for a new expansion or a Warcraft 4!". So I google it up just to find the WoW release trailer.

"The Last of Us Flight Simulator" feeling is exactly what I felt that day.

 

[Guy from the 80's]

Hitman : Moved away from the formula that made the game great. Catered it for a wider audience.

Splinter Cell : The same thing. If Splinter Cell were invented today then the first game would NEVER be as difficult as the first one. In fact the developers took pride in the difficulty. Now its just another 3rd person shooter and deserves a giant MEH!

Agree with Splinter Cell, disagree with Hitman.

I think that Absolution still managed to be difficult enough (playing on higher difficulties anyway), and it was frankly more polished that it's predecessors. I liked the fact that you could get silent assassin ratings in multiple ways without having to work out by trial and error the handful of paths the devs programmed in.

Yes, the whole slo-mo thing was a bit daft, but it allowed decent noisy runthroughs that previously felt clunky. And if you were doing a silent one, you simply didn't need to use it (and the game still rewards you for being quiet).


The newer splinter cells are just crap though - it's basically a straight shooter now without any encouragement to be quiet or avoid a bodycount.
Chaos Theory was probably the best one because it was the most open - it was more straightforward to go in with grenades, a sniper, and shotgun, but don't expect Lambert to be happy about it, and don't expect the guards to sit there doing nothing.

I'm going to give Hitman a go because of your post. Thanks.

 

[stroopwafel]

The best(or worst depending on how you put it) of a series devolution is without a doubt Resident Evil. After Shinji Mikami left Capcom RE has just become an embarrassment, lacking any kind of imagination or direction. Its like whoever is making these games nowadays don't even care. What they do is just take the RE4 template and mechanically work off some corporate checklist without any effort. Never would have thought a series that brought us some of the best classics in gaming would sink like a brick.

The best example of a series evolution is definitely Tomb Raider. I never really like the previous games in the series but was completely blown away by the reboot. One of the best games this gen for me. It's amazingly fun to play(a superb mix of Uncharted and RE4), has a beautiful setting that is interesting to explore and a good plot that keeps a steady pace. I played the game and literally couldn't put it down until I completed it. Not in a million years would I have ever thought to love a Tomb Raider game this much.

As for other examples mentioned: I played through every Hitman game(except the original) and actually enjoyed Absolution the most. It was still a hide&seek game(if you wanted to play it that way) but controls were updated and felt much more intuitive, so much so that it could be played like a slick stealth shooter as well.

Dead Space I think reached its peak with DS2(it had much better action than DS1 which made it more fun to play, while retaining much of its predecessor's atmosphere) and fell apart with DS3(to no fault of the developer).

 

[4RM3D]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

What is this perma death / count down timer thing in BoFQ? How can you get so stuck, you can no longer complete the game?

 

[-Dragmire-]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

What is this perma death / count down timer thing in BoFQ? How can you get so stuck, you can no longer complete the game?

Part of the story is that you gain a power that makes you super strong when you use it. The downside is that the power is slowly taking you over. In-game, this manifests as a timer that counts toward how corrupted you are( probably not the exact phrasing but close enough). Once you are fully corrupted, it's game over.

Every nth amount of steps you take raises the corruption by about 0.01% (I may be off on the amount but it is a step counter that raises it by a small amount. The real boost to the counter is if you use the power in battle, you become very very strong but every move raises the corruption by about 3-5%(memory is fuzzy on the quantity here too). As far as I know, there is no way to get rid of corruption meaning if you use it too much too early you can fall into the problem of not being able to walk through the game without reaching 100% corruption. The only way to beat it then is to restart or load an old save where you didn't use the power as much.

It's been a long time since I've played it and I never beat it so take this info with a grain of salt.

 

[mitchc95]

metal gear solid (havent gotten around to playing metal gear classic yet)
mgs1: nifty little spy game with some clever plot twists, clever bossfights (mostly) and an inspirational final message to live life to the fullest despite risk. not to mention being extremely detailed for a ps1 game. main flaw other being too heavy reliance on backtracking.
mgs2: purposefully unlikeable new characters with a muddled plot, lacked the interesting bossfights of the first game. much more interesting as a meta narrative than a game itself, given that its a satire on the nature of sequels themselves. still has incredibly deep secrets to find if one has the time for it.
mgs3: in my opinon the series peak, despite its many flaws. innovated very heavily with the format provided by the first two solids, the best self contained narrative in the series. suffered from poor flow due to clunky camouflage, healing and weapon interface, but had some of the series most interesting boss fights. not to mention having one of gamings best female characters in the boss.
portable ops: largely felt like a cash grab to me, the story was poorly written and the villains lacked personality. ;ess said the better
mgs4: CUUUUUUUUUUUUUTSCEEEEEEEEEEENES. while it has arguably the best gameplay and helped remove the flow issues from mgs3 in the series, the story oversteps itself, having cutscenes over an hour long in several instances, half of which are parroting information at you, that you could easily figure out on your own, even for a metal gear game. the non B&B corps boss fights were solid but oh lord did the B&B bosses feel out of place, with exploitation movie backstories and unintersting fights, other than crying wolf. did have solid characterisation though other than the bandbs and (shudders) akiba
peacewalker: started with a genuinely interesting plot, but started to fall apart quickly when you are given the ability to view a (supposedly) underage girls underwear and then starts introducing ai driven mechas into the 1970s, big boss' character was kinda flat in this one though. solid stealth gameplay and tonnes of content, the vehicle and mecha bossfights can eat wieners though

 

[scorptatious]

metal gear solid (havent gotten around to playing metal gear classic yet)
mgs1: nifty little spy game with some clever plot twists, clever bossfights (mostly) and an inspirational final message to live life to the fullest despite risk. not to mention being extremely detailed for a ps1 game. main flaw other being too heavy reliance on backtracking.

I love MGS1, but I can't help but wish there were more areas in the game where you needed to sneak past patrolling guards. That's pretty much one of my favorite aspects of the game.

I guess I can't really blame the guys who made it too much, as they were probably limited with the PS1 and all that. Plus, if they added too much, it would probably pad the game for too long as well.

It's a mixed feeling I have.

Also, I kinda think the combat is a bit clunky. Particularly when you're forced to fight a group of guys who soak up damage in a tiny room or elevator. The fights just felt weird and unnatural compared to the game's boss fights. Which I felt were designed with the game's controls and mechanics in mind.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter

What is this perma death / count down timer thing in BoFQ? How can you get so stuck, you can no longer complete the game?

Part of the story is that you gain a power that makes you super strong when you use it. The downside is that the power is slowly taking you over. In-game, this manifests as a timer that counts toward how corrupted you are( probably not the exact phrasing but close enough). Once you are fully corrupted, it's game over.

Every nth amount of steps you take raises the corruption by about 0.01% (I may be off on the amount but it is a step counter that raises it by a small amount. The real boost to the counter is if you use the power in battle, you become very very strong but every move raises the corruption by about 3-5%(memory is fuzzy on the quantity here too). As far as I know, there is no way to get rid of corruption meaning if you use it too much too early you can fall into the problem of not being able to walk through the game without reaching 100% corruption. The only way to beat it then is to restart or load an old save where you didn't use the power as much.

It's been a long time since I've played it and I never beat it so take this info with a grain of salt.

Almost right. in dragon form each round costs an increased amount of corruption so using it for one round as a finisher is less costly then pecking at someone for three to four. In addition most of the actual powers cost a bit more. The dragon breath can technically kill you instantly as you can hold it for as long as you want in a single round but the longer it goes the more corruption (and damage) it causes.

The other point is that restarting isn't returning to zero. Your progression is rated and your character can rank up in the class system (the class system is basically how much dragon blood you have at first your character is like 1/243242 or some gibberish but you can increase it all the way up to 1/4 (this is increased through a bunch of rankings the game keeps track of through the game including in battle deaths d level time of completion ect) the higher your ranking the more areas you have access to which leads to more powerful items and a more complete story. In addition you gain special experience with every battle outside normal progression experience. This experience exists in a separate pool and can be given to anyone at any time. This experience also carries over, so you can make your characters a little more powerful as you progress or save it all for a massive level boost. At the start of your next game you also retain half your money and all your items and skills, so getting back to you were on a second run without using dragon powers once is fairly easy. The lowest I've heard you can go through is D level about 6 or 7% so there is a fairly huge margin for error but it's an easy trap the first time you play.

Ah, that makes more sense. It's not broken as I had first thought, I just lacked patience. I only tried one playthrough so I never experienced those aspects of the game.

 

[Something Amyss]

Saints Row: SRTT took any black humour and replaced it with a constant string of "dick and fart" jokes.

...ZANY!

Gone are the clever puzzles, replaced with more third person shooting because clearly there aren't enough third person shooters already. Gone is the platforming, replaced with waves of quick-time events.

I won't defend the QTE's, but there remains puzzles and platforming. To pretend otherwise is nonsense.

 

[4RM3D]

*snip*

Ah, that explains it. Still sounds like a cheap way to extend the playtime of the game.

 

[bug_of_war]

Give us a journal that is effective enough that it is reasonable to turn off the pointer. Bring back the massive dialogue options with every person that actually had impact with your social standing. Make the race you pick have real impact.

I do kinda miss the older games journal entries, but at the same time, I never really read most of them other than the main story line ones because I wanted to play more than read. As for the dialogue options, most of the people in Oblivion and Morrowind said the exact same thing to most questions, so I don't really mind that Skyrim's populace have little (or none) to say because really, not everyone is gonna stop to tell you everything, people have their own things to do. I also didn't mind that the race you picked did not hinder your play style, it felt more realistic in the sense that if you worked hard enough your character could master magic, or stealth, or front line bloody combat.

OT: Assassin's Creed is no longer an assassin game, it's more or less a game that explores time periods and says, "These people are secret underground Templars, those people are mildly kinda assassins". However I'm still very much hooked on the franchise, I liked all 3 ancestors and their stories, I'm looking forward to what Black Flag brings, and it'll be great to see where the series goes.

Mass Effect got better as the series progressed I feel, the first game was quite clunky and while had a good story, really was tough for me to get the motivation to finish. The second game felt much more polished, I preferred the streamlining of the RPG elements and thought the characters were WAY better than the ones from the first game (Garrus and Wrex were cool in ME1 tho). The controls were better, the story seemed fitting, and I really didn't mind the planet scanning, better than falling on a desolate planet, driving aimlessly in all directions to find some crap, only to realise I didn't bring enough skilled technicians to open the fucking thing. I loved the 3rd game, the graphics were great, the soundtrack was really fitting, the story felt like an epic climactic one, and I understood why they didn't do team mate missions and why everything was focused towards the main story. I thought the ending was fitting, and preferred the ambiguity to not knowing how my choices will effect the future of that universe.

Dragon Age is an awkward one though, there were things I liked in both games and things I wasn't to happy with. Dragon Age 2 improved on the combat and dialogue, I prefer having my character fully voiced rather than choosing long lines of text that instantly get transmitted from my character's brain to the other character's, it just seems more natural to have to people talking than one being a silent fuck who only speaks while in combat/gets selected to be played as. Dragon Age Origins however had a much more focused and well paced story, and whilst I didn't like levels such as the Deep Roads or the Fade, the Bracillian Forest and the end battle were so interesting and enjoyable.

 

[The Madman]

Gone are the clever puzzles, replaced with more third person shooting because clearly there aren't enough third person shooters already. Gone is the platforming, replaced with waves of quick-time events.

I won't defend the QTE's, but there remains puzzles and platforming. To pretend otherwise is nonsense.

You're right, I should have added the stipulation of being 'good' puzzles or platforming. From what I played of the new Tomb Raider I struggle to think of a single example of platforming that wasn't Uncharted style hand-holding, and if there are any decent puzzles in the game I didn't encounter them.

The new Tomb Raider is a shooter now, that's all there is to it. The other elements are just optional side-stuff at best akin to how you spend a lot of time driving and racing cars in GTA, yet no one calls that a racing sim.

 

[The_Scrivener]

Final Fantasy is the biggest offender because of its tenure. Zelda, Mario and the N bunch aren't so much devolving as rotting from the premise outward.

And yeah ME3. Terribad. Painful Escapists voted it for GOTY based on denial of how subpar it was. If that same poll took place in 2 years when ME fanboys have moved on, it'd have never won.

 

[Something Amyss]

The new Tomb Raider is a shooter now, that's all there is to it. The other elements are just optional side-stuff at best akin to how you spend a lot of time driving and racing cars in GTA, yet no one calls that a racing sim.

Nobody calls it a shooter, either. But I'm going to have to go with the aforementioned statement that The Last of Us must also be a third person shooter by these metrics.