Sequels forever

And ever, and ever.

What's better than a video game that you love? How about a sequel to that videogame which builds upon everything that the first game did and improves it whilst carrying on the story to it's next logical step? Why that's just- an intensely traditional viewpoint for how Sequels work which I suppose is largely outdated in the world today, now isn't it? Movies have taught us that sequels are so often ancillary and limp when they finally hit the stage, achieving little more than tugging on nostalgic heart strings so much that they deaden the human spirit's ability to feel whimsy. But video games tend to have an easier go of things. Narrative isn't as important as improving gameplay and scope, and if you're a company like Ubisoft that literally means just trying your hardest to cram other modern development trends into your aging game engine. But when making sequels is that easy; what's there to moderate and temper your ambitions so you don't end up spitting out endless sequels forever? Nothing? It's nothing, isn't it.

I think Ubisoft comes so readily to mind when I discuss this because Ubisoft are just the poster boys for the 'endless sequels' problem. Their entire business model is built on finding something that works, wringing the blood out of the product entry after entry, attempting to zap life back into it with a new engine and repeating that process forever. They don't try anything new, they recycle ideas, and if their modellers weren't some of the best in the Industry the entire Ubisoft pantheon of gaming would have literally nothing to it's name. It's as though not a single person in that company knows the definition of temperance and moderation or, here's a big one, pacing! Yes, this is a very fresh complaint from a man who has just gotten around to playing Watch_Dogs Legion; I've never known a product so desperately calling out for a cutting room floor as Ubisoft's recent games.

And it's not just Watch_Dogs. The latest Assassin's Creed also squeezed out it's narrative to last across a belated and repetitive campaign across England that introduced no new ideas, enemy times, gameplay methods, or basic ingenuity concepts which make up basic game design. They just threw in an RPG system, watched the numbers go up and call it a day. So how can these games still persist as they do, doing nothing clever and creative, and still getting inexplicably great scores from industry games reviewers who quite obviously didn't bother finish the product they're reviewing? Sequelitis. It's a sequel to a long running franchise with beloved and enfranchised fans who conflate anything carrying the brand name with the great memories they once had playing the thing rather than the reality of the bloated monstrosity it has now become. And that, is the allure of sequels.

Creating a new property or concept is hard, unbelievably so. Creating worlds that people care about, concepts that aren't done to death, characters you can come back to; all requires a level of dedicated and creative freedom not accessible to a great many people out there. And it comes with so much risk. What if all this time and effort and money invested into bringing this idea to life ends up coming to nothing? What if people don't like it? What if they hate it? How can I be certain that my vision will reach the audience that doesn't even know it exists? What if it doesn't have to? What if I make my dream fit into a guise of a product that they already love so they flock to it by default? I may be making this sound nefarious and manipulative in how I'm framing it, but these are actually very logical creative routines that I don't actually have any problem with. It's the consequences of this thought pattern which concern me.

One of the inevitable casualties of un-ending sequel syndrome is the death of all meaningful narrative that always comes from a narrative stretched too thin. The exact thing that happened to the Legend of Korra, only usually not handled by creatives clever or inspired enough to forge something watchable out of a frustrating situation like they were. Assassin's Creed is a prime example of this, once again. Having killed off their main protagonist and utterly failed to capture a core narrative story connecting their entries ever since. The overall narrative has since danced from Aliens to reincarnated human-alien hybrids to immortal god Assassin's, and none of it has any weight because it feels like the writing team are just making it up as they go along. There's very little set-up and pay-off between entries, and even the single game assassin narratives feel rushed and undercooked now. Do you remember when Altiar and Ezio's journey used to flirt parallels to Desmond's? Modern Assassin's Creed doesn't...

And beyond the story, the innovation of the games inevitably stagnates too. Who remembers when Call of Duty was the most derided franchise running for it's utter insistence of bringing the same core game out every year to their audience? When the creator's don't need to challenge themselves to succeed, they typically won't, and soon the well of creativity runs still and new games start to feel stale. You can't reinvent the wheel to the same car year after year to make it better, eventually you're just going to be repainting the same wheel and calling it a day. (Does the wheel analogy still work there?) New contexts, new stories, new settings; that's how you keep things fresh inside the development room and the playerbase. It's riskier, for certain; but risk always fits the reward for a job well done, doesn't it?

Another potential situation to consider is one where, like I've discussed recently, the existence of a sequel threatens to dilute what makes the first game special. Recently I bought this up whilst talking about Tyranny, a game which will never get a sequel. Tyranny's plot is perfectly laid around a great many plotpoints and mysteries, one of which being the very basic nature of the eponymous Tyrant. Any sequel would be forced to dispel that mystery slowly, or risk the plotpoint becoming stale, which would in turn demystify the original game forever. Going back to Assassin's Creed, as annoying as it is to repeatedly do so; the interesting conspiracy plotline which was introduced in the original games has been totally scrubbed to the point of toothlessness by magical space aliens that seem to eclipse any threat that Abstergo and the Templars presume to have. Anytime the aliens are reintroduced into the story, everything previously established in earlier games becomes worthless and unimportant; because now you're not fighting secretive cabals, you're saving the world from evil aliens. Increasing stakes sometimes step directly ontop of the predecessor in their unchecked zeal.

We all love our favourite franchises to go on, but eventually there has to be a stopping point. I adore Yakuza with every fibre in my being, but at some point you have to look at Kiryu, realise the man is approaching his sixties, and wonder what he's doing adopting an emo haircut and changing his name to Joryu. All great stories have their great conclusions, and if you don't conclude them, then the story is destined to run itself off a cliff. Look at Resident Evil 6; the product of a franchise out of ideas. That game bombed so badly the franchise literally started again from 2 and is still remaking itself. (They're going to be on to Remaking 6 by 2025; I'm fascinated to see if the team go for the challenge.) So my overall takeaway? End your damn series'!