What game series would be completely ruined with a gritty reboot?

[nohorsetown]

Gritty Rock Band: Early in the game, you drive a van for hours on end, endure poverty, and struggle for recognition. Later on, if you do well, you can do drugs, bang groupies, and trash hotel rooms. Either way, you're in a shitty cover band without an ounce of original material, and you hate yourself.

Gritty Custer's Revenge: 'nuff said.

Gritty Harvest Moon: Geld the bulls, slaughter the chickens, clean up shit, get screwed by Monsanto corp.

Gritty Imagine Babyz: Oh, I don't know. Something with shit and puke and crib death, right?

 

[crazyrabbits]

The NES classic Ice Climbers.

Popo and Nana are now inner-city youths living in Chicago (or any other urban city). They somehow became expert parkour/climbers because they often had to steal (and subsequently run from the police). The duo have some tragedy befall them (parents die, Nana gets assaulted by a corrupt cop, etc.), they head up north to escape from the pressures of the city.

They end up making their way to Alaska, and get embroiled in a complex plot involving a multinational corporation letting genetically-modified creatures run amok on the mountains and terrorize the tourists. Popo and Nana get conscripted (under threat of imprisonment) to take out the creatures no matter the cost. They also collect vegetables, for some reason.

 

[WorriedSandwich]

Burnout.

Everytime you get a takedown, you see in slow motion how the opposing driver's body gets mangled and crushed upon impact, followed by a flash-forward to his funeral. Then the camera zooms in on the crying wife and son while 'Mad World' by Gary Jules plays in the background.

 

[Salad Is Murder]

Resident Evil.

 

[sextus the crazy]

I was thinking the worst example is Donkey Kong or Kirby. Would completely bomb.

... Although, a gritty reboot of Pokemon would pretty much turn into Persona. Hmmmm....

I'd support this.

OT: I'd say zelda, but thats what I always though Twilight princess and skyward sword were (especially with them being after windwaker).

id say metroid. because if it was made in this era, samus would be as big as her armour suit or completely overly sexualized and need a strong male support character to make her his *****.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6f/Metroid_Other_M_Cover.jpg/250px-Metroid_Other_M_Cover.jpg

I'm pretty sure a gritty metroid reboot would be metroid prime but without a good color scheme. Metriod is already pretty dark.

 

[Miles Maldonado]

Command & Conquer Red Alert.

Because Gritty Red Alert is just World in Conflict with giant tanks.

Aside from that, I'd have to say I'd be pretty irked if Activision handed Crash Bandicoot to Infinity Ward. The sad thing is is that Call of the Bandicoot might actually outsell the entire franchise up to that point.

 

[Souplex]

I was thinking the worst example is Donkey Kong or Kirby. Would completely bomb.

How the hell would you make a gritty reboot of Kirby?
There is nothing darker than Kirby.
You play as a cannibalistic, regicidal terrorist on his campaign to destroy dreamland.

 

[Issurru]

Rollercoaster Tycoon! It can be a nothing held back of the exploration of the secret drug abuse, corporate cheating and manipulatoíon that goes into running a destroying people'S lives through overconsumerism.

I already made Rollercoaster Tycoon dark. That's why I had the roller coaster loop track not long enough and set the speed to max. Bye bye customers!
OT: pretty sure most things would fail with a dark and gritty reboot. Except maybe monopoly that could be badass

 

[GameMaNiAC]

Thief. Kinda like with Prince of Persia going emo, is Thief ever went emo or goth, if Garrett develops a big swish of black fringe and a feminine looking mouth I might just go into conniptions.

This. A million times this. I am praying to all the forces of the universe for them to not fuck up Thief 4.

Also, 'gritty' is a retarded word.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

Ratchet and Clank.

No more cutsie art design and quirky, funny humor. Clank will be a murderous robot and Ratchet will be a grizzled lab experiment gone horribly wrong, and then turned into a super soldier by the government that created it.

They'd be more likely to make Ratchet human and clank into a grizzled black man. In fact they'd just make Lethal weapon: the game... actually that wouldn't be half bad.

Seeing what EA made Insomniac do to Overstrike sorta just explains my disappointment. Looked cool and interesting, now it just looks like a Resistance sequel.

 

[Nexxis]

Spyro, which they've tried. I have mixed feelings about the Legend of Spyro reboot, but I don't think it helped the series at all. It certainly wasn't better than the previous games (maybe except for Enter the Dragonfly). I also thought that defining Spyro's hero status by his color was pretty weak.

 

[DrOswald]

d

God damnit, she was going through PTSD! It was natural for her to behave like that!

I can't tell if you are saying it was a good scene, but if you are you should feel bad. That is one of the worst scenes in video game history and every developer in the world should see as the perfect example of what not to do.

 

[Squidbulb]

Cooking Mama.

 

[Darren716]

Team Fortress 2, if all of the classes went from being cheery about killing their fellow man to disheartened and angry about it the entire game and the economy would crumble. First the community would no longer be interesting if everyclass became 1 dimensional killers since there wouldn't be anything interesting to make content about. Then the economy will fail since character customization would seem out of place with the classes' new personalities.

 

[Zenn3k]

Metroid

Gonna have to disagree with you on that one. Metroid prime wasn't quite a gritty reboot, but it was a certainly darker than the 2d games. And yet it still has the best atmosphere in any Metroid game.

While Metroid Prime is a great game (one of the best in the series), I wouldn't call it "Gritty".

Gritty would be making it much more serious in tone, removing unrealistic elements (like the morph ball)...darker colors and characters. Samus would go from a shapely blonde to a "butch" and buff bounty hunter.

Prime isn't gritty by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Theminimanx]

Metroid

Gonna have to disagree with you on that one. Metroid prime wasn't quite a gritty reboot, but it was a certainly darker than the 2d games. And yet it still has the best atmosphere in any Metroid game.

While Metroid Prime is a great game (one of the best in the series), I wouldn't call it "Gritty".

Gritty would be making it much more serious in tone, removing unrealistic elements (like the morph ball)...darker colors and characters. Samus would go from a shapely blonde to a "butch" and buff bounty hunter.

Prime isn't gritty by any stretch of the imagination.

I should probably elaborate a bit. My point about wasn't that Prime was gritty, my point was that making the colors less vibrant doesn't remove the typical Metroid feel the way removing color from many other Nintendo franchises (Mario, Kirby) would. Also, having sci-fi or fantastical elements in your work doesn't mean it can't be gritty. See Game of Thrones. (At least I think it has fantastical elements, never actually watched it.)
I also still think that a story about Sames dealing with her PTSD from the Ridley attack (some pretty dark stuff) would have worked were it set earlier in the timeline, and more importantly, made by a proper storyteller.

 

[chiggerwood]

Shadow warrior. If that game were to get a gritty reboot I would spend the rest of my life searching for a magic lamp so I could wish for a time machine so I could kill all the developers before they were born, as for the other two wishes... for the sky to be pink and a pack of lucky strikes that would never run out, or give me cancer.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

actually, Mario might be interesting as dark and gritty - a bit like there will be brawl with Mario as a cop and Bowser as a crime boss

Any idea could possibly work, but this is one of those that would take a lot of effort and luck to do so.

me thinks.

:/

I think a Mario game where mario is a neighbourhood level drug dealer in a big city, and his GF(sister, or wife could work here too) peach ends up getting stuck as a prostitute for "King Bowser" the local crime kingpin, and he and his brother luigi hafta step up their game, spread their influence, and kick some ass to settle the score with him and get her back, if only for the sake of family pride.

But yeah, that might ruin it or just make it awesome... not sure which, I had an entire storyboard mocked up for that at one point, was kinda funny, was sittin around with buddies of mine and we were trying to make a gritty reboot for a buncha stuff and ended up focusing on mario, because it already has a ton of drug reference material in it, and a relatively normal dude as a protagonist....

 

[NerfedFalcon]

When I saw the thread title, my immediate thought was Touhou, but there's already probably enough grit in there with all the undertones (and occasionally overtones) of racism, xenophobia, murder and dangerous insanity (and attempted apocalypses) that it could actually work with the right writer.

And if it wasn't a bullet hell shooter where all the story details take second place to not touching any of the million billion bullets on the screen all at once.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Pokemon. I mean, it's already pretty close what with all of the animal abuse going on. Bring in The Great War and have Pokemon die instead of fainting...you know, since getting set on fire or frozen would normally kill an animal.