I have a weird question on a similar vein to what the video covered. Here is the context for it: I loved Dragon Age Origins, was really hyped for Dragon Age 2, and was let down in the playing of it. I went in with high expectations rather than reservations, and found that I did not enjoy the game as much as I had the first one. The weird thing is they "fixed" many of the underlying issues of the first game. I played them both on the 360, and admittedly the mechanical transition from a PC based tactical RPG to a console made much of the control clunky, and the originals brown=realism design aesthetics was, lets just say a bit bland. Ugly armor and all that aside, I was expecting them to refine all that for the sequel.
Instead I'd say they went the Dead Space 3 route and homogenized it rather than expand on what made it unique. But here is the thing, I was a good game. Not great, not unique but flawed like the first one, but well done and workmanlike, a solid effort. Jettison the baggage and expectation of the Dragon Age moniker and I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. Hell, offer it as a spin-off rather than a sequel and I probably would have embraced it. But I felt exhausted when I finished it, disappointed and let down. I never bought any of the DLC, and traded it in. Hell, I now own the Ultimate Edition of DA:O on both PC and 360 and replay them all the time, comparing and contrasting what I like about each, but I never have the inclination to revisit Hawke and company.
I love Fallout 3, played the originals and found that they captured what the game was about really well even with the transition to first person. But here is the thing, fallout was always sold on the humor, the world and your interactions with people. A game like Dragon Age Origins was sold on the mechanics, a return to the "old-school" days of isometric dungeon crawlers with expansive stories and epic battles. At least, that's how they marketed it to me. I went in not caring who I was fighting but how, and they sucked me in and towed me along with their great storytelling and characterization.
Here is the question then. Can a name be a detriment when a game departs from it's core focus? If the focus is the world, then can the mechanics change and it still be the same shared space, or conversely if the mechanics are the focus, like with a real time strategy game or claustrophobic survival horror, how far can a developer stray before it stops feeling like game belongs to the name?
Stuff like this makes me wonder how the publisher/Developer/Consumer expectations interact. To give an example, I was really interested in the idea of an Elder Scrolls MMO because my expectations of a game that bears the Elder Scrolls title is one of a classless, open exploration game. I could care less about the story, to me TES games are about freedom, and I was looking forward to seeing how they implement that. I still have Redguard and Battlemage, I've seen their experiments in the past how they've diverged from the core series. I was very disappointed when I read that they are doing a bog-standard class based WoW style MMORPG, and all the big hype was how it interacted with "the Lore" and the different factions and whatnot. To me that wasn't representative of what I think of when I hear the Elder Scrolls name.
But if I were to hear that they are doing a Mass Effect fist-person multiplayer shooter? That wouldn't bother me, because I think of storyline and the shared world. Hell I don't even play multiplayer shooters and I might pick that up, just to see how they fit it into the world and setting they have built. I might be a bit peeved if it was called Mass Effect 4, but as a side project, I think the core engagement could still be there because when I hear Mass Effect I hear story not mechanics in my head. I also block out the last 15 minutes of the last one, but that's beside the point.
Sorry for the wall of text, great episode.
