Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’d definitely be more interested in either seeing a return of old favourites or something entirely new if there was already closure with a previous series. Remakes are only great if it’s reintroducing the game to a new audience.

I’m a sucker for sequels. I could play Curse of Monkey Island-style sequels forever and stay happy. Same goes for games like Uncharted - just give me a new one every year and I’d be satisfied action-wise with that one franchise.

New and fresh for me. I’m okay with all three, but I think some developers feel shackled by gamers’ interest to only see them revisit older IPs. It’s the equivalent of being typecast.

The great thing about Sierra was that while the people there did sequels they managed to keep them fresh, to innovate within them. Just look at Gabriel Knight: every entry in the series is radically different from the others just in presentation: the first features 8-bit pixel art, the second FMVs with actors, the third 3D.
So I don’t think sequels necessarily stifle innovation, they certainly didn’t for Sierra.
I personally love to be told multiple stories set in the same fictional world, to have a fictional place I can always return to, learn something new from and that continues to expand.

But as a career choice, it seems to be smarter for a designer to strife to create new universes. It seems to me that many people are skeptical that Jane Jensen could do anything as well as the Gabriel Knight games, probably because they barely know anything else from her (and dislike Gray Matter, maybe). But with Tim Schafer, he created new worlds with every game he made, and explored multiple story and game genres to boot, so I think fans are much less anxious that his next game might suck because it’s so different.

Although I hate the overabundance of sequels in Hollywood, I actually voted for them here. If you look at what all the old designers are doing now—Jane Jensen, the Two Guys from Andromeda, the Coles, Jim Walls—they’re basically just making imitations of their old games anyway (one exception being Schafer and Gilbert). I bet if the poll specified the designer, the results would be quite different. If it were asking whether Al Lowe should make Larry 8 or something original, or whether Ron Gilbert should make Monkey Island 3a or something original, then it would be hard not to go with the sequel.

As always it depends. I prefer new IPs in general, but there are also types of adventure that really lend themselves for sequels.

Take comedy adventures for instance. They usually leave room for more stories and having characters return makes it easier to make good jokes, as you are already familiar with them and know what their idiosyncrasies are. The same can be said for the detective/PI/treasure hunter/whatever kind of approach where you can introduce a new case every time, while also evolving the characters (Blackwell, Gabriel Knight, Tex). I don’t mind sequels to these games as it doesn’t feel forced. But even then there is the possibility of stretching it too far and the setting and/or characters becoming too stale. In that sense, I usually prefer that developers switch while the games are still excellent so that later games don’t sully the name. See for example the difference between typical American television shows and British ones. The former often run as long as there are enough viewers (not always, especially on HBO) stretching the story and the characters too thin, while British television series regularly end after only a couple of seasons of 6-8 episodes each. I really prefer the latter approach. 

However, there are also many adventures that have real closure, where a sequel wouldn’t add to the original or might even detract from it. An obvious example would be Grim Fandango here, but it’s also quite often the case for horror games and (psychological) thrillers. These often present complete stories with no open ends and a definitive fate for the characters and thrive on the unfamiliarity of the player with the setting and characters. Sequels just wouldn’t have the same impact here.

That being said, there were also quite a few recent games where I felt the setting and characters could have been explored more, such as Primordia, Yesterday and some Daedalic games. It’s quite often the case that the relationship between characters isn’t fleshed out enough or that the games end when you finally get attached to the characters. Or in the case of Yesterday, there is this potentially rich backstory to the main character that is hardly explored as the game is over in a flash (budget restraints probably). A case of wasted potential that might be/have been corrected with a sequel. But the were no famous developers behind these games, so this should be taken as an aside.  

So as I said at the beginning, it depends. There is no one-size-fits-all answer here.   

(and the developers often don’t have a choice as they don’t own the rights to the IPs, which is why quite a few of them are making spiritual successors)

Advie - 23 February 2013 07:41 PM

Lagomorph - 23 February 2013 10:54 AM

I bet if the poll specified the designer, the results would be quite different.

So would you rather see James Walls ...
1. Remaking PQ2: The Vengeance
2. Police Quest 5, or
3. A New IP that isn’t connected to Sonny or Jessie (maybe even something Sci-Fi like Bladerunner for instance... you do know that he was credited there for consulting) ..

I haven’t yet played any of Jim Walls’s games, so I don’t really know.