Extra Punctuation: Building Sequels Badly

[Guitar Gamer]

I sincerely hope Yahtzee, that when you say us fans idea's are stupid; you refer to our plot idea's only. There is ocaisionly a gem in the dirt for mechanics or gameplay idea's.

 

[hitheremynameisbob]

System shock wasn't open ended enough for a sequel, but system shock 2 definitely was. He was only asking about the sequels, not the previous games.

I think you need to read his article a bit more carefully, then re-read the challenge, because you're not reading it as it was intended. You're seeing "Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels" as saying that the game in question (the sequel) is not itself open for a sequel, when what he clearly meant by it was that the game in question's predecessor wasn't left open for a sequel, and the sequel was made anyway. So pointing out that SS2 was left open for a sequel doesn't matter. His wording is somewhat ambiguous when set apart on its own like that, but in the context of the article it's clear that he's specifying that the first game not have been left open for a sequel, because (as he argues is the case of portal) when this is the case any sequels that do get made tend to mess things up. The first System Shock wasn't left open to sequels, so SS2 still meets his criteria.

Really, if that was too complicated, then just think about this for a second: why on earth would he specify that the SEQUEL not be left open for another sequel, when that's the game we're evaluating?

 

[Penguin_Factory]

This is an issue I tent to go back and forth on.

Outside of games conceived as series from the start (like Mass Effect), most sequels tend to just rehash the previous game in the hopes of recapturing what made it great. While that usually doesn't work, it can pay off sometimes. For example, I thought Bioshock 2 was much better than Bioshock 1 even though it was fundamentally a retread of familiar territory.

I think I'd prefer more developers to go the Team Ico route. Shadow of the Colossus is completely different from Ico and has only a fairly loose story connection that doesn't become apparent till the end of the game, but the two games are usually assumed to be part of the same "series" because there are enough thematic and stylistic elements to make them similar.

On an interesting side note, Portal 2 was apparently originally going to go in this direction, but play testers of an early build wanted Glados and Chell back. I'm glad Valve listened to them for this game, but if they want to do something totally new for the next one I'd be all for it. As far as I'm concerned that story is now over.

Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels, with the same main characters as before, whose story was regarded as better than the first. Let me help you out: there aren't any.

Silent Hill 3? I realise that might be stretching it a bit since it shares one character with the first game, who only appears very briefly in a non-speaking role, but it is undoubtedly a continuation of Silent Hill 1 and (in my opinion) has a much better story.

I hate this prevailing feeling that sequels have some obligation to the fans, retch retch. Let me tell you something about fans. Fans do not know what they want

I am in total agreement with this. Whether it's a direct sequel or a remake, the idea that new entries in a series belong to the fans and must cater to their every whim is poisonous and a major roadblock to procreativity.

 

[Concealed]

Right now everyone realizes that storytelling is an important aspect of doing games, irregardless of the genere.

Using the word "irregardless" is a good way to make people ignore everything else you have to say, being as it's a pretentious word that actually contradicts itself on closer inspection (ir-regardless? So, we're with regard?).

It's a cornerstone of the whole "games as art" arguement which was just sort of won by the goverment acknowleging them as such (I say 'sort of' because we still have a Supreme Court ruling in the pipe, and by it's nature The Surpreme court overrules everything else and can cause sweeping changes by overturning laws and precedents on a large scale with a single ruling.

There is a difference between games being a form of art and games being a form of art where storytelling is an important element. Architecture is a form of art too, that doesn't mean you have to stuff a fucking 3-act play into every building. Cooking is a form of art, but cooking is certainly not a means of telling a story.

Games are still a very insecure medium that are trying to show they're art by apeing the conventions of other mediums that already are; primarily books and film. A painting doesn't need a writer to furnish it with a really well-written plaque to tell you what's going on; indeed, art critics shit on such paintings, saying you should tell any story entirely through the medium of the work itself. Statues don't come with supplementary novels. Only games feel they need to do this kind of thing, and the sooner they realise they don't, the sooner they'll start being their own artform.

The thing is that Storytelling had to be given EQUAL time to the game development itself

You are insane. Again, it's like saying the carpenter who makes a picture frame is as important as the painter who makes the picture. The story can only ever act as a frame and setup for the play aspect of the game, which is what makes the medium what it is. Games will never be art while people like you are trying to force them to be something they're not.

The thing is that blending storytelling and gameplay together isn't EASY so nobody wants to take the time to do it right.

Or maybe it's that the modern non-play approach to game storytelling is totally wrong. Remember in Castlevania, how Simon Belmont slew the fearsome Medusa? How did we know he'd done that? Why, because we did it ourselves, without needing anything but our actions in the game to tell us that.

Is Sonic better for the asinine "universe" that's been built around it? Most people would rather it was just Sonic fighting Robotnik because he's evil. Mega Man has recently gone back to that. Is Homefront a better game than Black and Doom 2 because it's more willing to interrupt the actual gameplay with tedious storyline?

It's not a matter of "carpentry has nothing to do with painting" so much as the storyline being the paint, and the game design itself being the brush (the mechanical part) used to deliver it.

If you seriously think that's how important story is then you have no idea what videogames are. What about Tetris? Are you saying Tetris would be better with a plot? What about chess? Would chess be a better game if on white's turn ten white had to lose their kingside knight to the corrupt black Bishop because on move five it was established that knight had great faith and it would be both tragic and ironic for him to die at the Bishop's hands? Don't worry, on white's turn fourteen the E-file pawn is going to avenge his father.

Nevermind that none of this is playing chess, we're having a story now!

A game needs as much story as a game needs. Story provides a basis for visualising the game's mechanics in a less abstract way; more story suits games with more complex mechanics that need to be tied together. For example, Mastermind has no story; it's just a guessing / logic game on a board with coloured pieces. Battleships has more story; the pieces are ships, the board is a radar screen. Clue has even more storyline, with each piece a character, the board a house with secret passages, and even an overall outline of what the players are trying to do in the place. In each case it's as much as they need; Mastermind would seem absurd with the level of story Clue has, while Clue would seem like an abstract collection of arbitrary rules without the story to frame them.

Narrative is something games are terrible at; the best they tend to be able to do with it is have the game and narrative alternate, meaning the "story" (as you call it) is just the thing that happens between the game. They're much better when the narrative is built around the player's actions, which is the "no story" that the games-are-art crowd so despise.

Simply put if your going to create a story where permadeath is an option for one of the major characters, then by definition the game developers should not be creating a world where pople actually die in combat and get brought back to life casually by spells and items bought from stores. Rather they should be working around the idea of characters being knocked out, and ensure that the graphics, items, and spell names reflect that reality.

Wait, have you ever played any game that isn't an RPG?

I'll agree that we need more games based around limited story than we have currently. X-com: UFO Defense has no story really, but you build your own through how you play and it's awesome. Other games like Metroid Prime, Shadow of the Colossus, and Ico have such minimalistic storytelling it's hardly storytelling. Yet the gameplay in each tells a fascinating story.

I strongly disagree with the idea that we need to move beyond trying to tell narratives in games. You're arguing that it has to be one or the other. No middle ground. No variation between games. If that was true we would never have been able to play such incredibly well done stories/ games as Silent Hill 2, Portal (1&2), Deus Ex, Psychonauts, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Planescape: Torment, Okami, Grim Fandango, the Half-life series, Bioshock, The Longest Journey. etc. (Or even classic Mikami games that seem to mock gaming stories like God Hand and Resident Evil 4).

Do we need more games that try to convey stories without traditional narrative? Absolutely. X-com has told me some of my favorite stories in videogames, and they were conveyed to me solely via gameplay and with my input. But if that's all we had then we'd miss out on a hell of a lot of incredible games. Frankly I'm glad we have both.

 

[shimyia]

Hey Yahtzee... What are your thoughts on the announcement of Max Payne 3???

personally i am veeeeryyyy pesimistic about this and definetly think that Max Payne 2 Ended the story the way it should...

No, Max Payne 1 did that. 2 just killed everyone left over from 1.

that's just your opinion...
and srsly: i don't give a shit what you think...

i just wanna know if he's optimistic or pesimistic about it

 

[LavaLampBamboo]

Monkey Island 2? I personally thought the story was better than the first.

 

[Jradgex]

Dammit Soveru!
Why must you make so much brutal sense

 

[BlackIvory]

" Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels, with the same main characters as before, whose story was regarded as better than the first. Let me help you out: there aren't any."

Um... BG2>>BG1?

 

[Captain Bobbossa]

Oh Yahtzee you sound like a disgruntled dad.


Gotta disagree with you, Portal 2 > Portal

 

[GonzoGamer]

Case in point: Final Fantasy. Look at what happened when they stopped creating and started polling: Final Fantasy 12, 13, and 14... None of which deserve numerals. (XI doesn't either, but for different reasons. It's pretty good I guess, so I'll let it slide).

EDIT One thing though:

Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels, with the same main characters as before, whose story was regarded as better than the first. Let me help you out: there aren't any.

MegaMan 2 and 3.

And Fallout 2, and Donkey Kong 2. Man, it's pretty easy to contradict that statement.

If you look through the history of gaming there are a lot of examples.
I would actually include Portal 2.
I thought it was a better game than the first. Don't get me wrong, I loved the first but it wasn't really a complete game; it was the introduction of an ingenious game concept that I got as a bonus to a game.
But then again, I don't really consider story an important part of a game; and if I did, I don't think I would be much of a gamer.
At the same time, I greatly appreciated the new archetypes they slipped into Portal 2 from the fool to the god that created it all. It wasn't contrived or pretentious and while the hilarity wasn't as surprising, it was just as clever.
To me what was more important was adding new elements to the existing structure of the "test chamber" and to that end I was most satisfied.

If I want a good story experience, I'm not going to reach for a game and many of the games that people say have good story experiences only have good stories when compared to other games and tend to have some tedious and/or sparse gameplay.

 

[Mechanoise]

On the subject of sequels, I cast my mind back to the Metal Gear Solid series, (PSX Onwards).

Although heavily criticised for being a total mind-bend, I still enjoyed playing/watching the series, and although I can't say that I entirely get the story...I just became engrossed, and it became a guilty-ish pleasure.

Now I'm sure we can say that the first Metal Gear Solid was great fun, (If you want to count the NES version as well, since that technically was the first, be my guest ). I was psyched at a sequel, but all the points raised in Yahtzee's posts were evident, direct sequelage can just water the experience.

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't gotten around to playing MGS Sons of Liberty. When I found out that Liquid snake was still alive, I rolled my eyes back. It was unnecessary. Granted, I know a few that think that the whole game was unnecessary, but you can tell that was just a bid to toss him into the sequel. This is why I agree with Yahtzee, and that the fans are being looked at to in-adversely 'guide' them to construct their sequels. When a game is made, the fans are created, and the problem with the fans is that their 'likes' and 'dislikes' are expressed to help shape what the sequel should be...I just don't see that as a positive thing.

Before that's misconstrued, Positives and Negative of game mechanic sure help in designing a game that appeals and works, but I'm talking about events of the game, or characters...take 'Pyramid Head' for example; we Silent Hill lovers mostly think that Pyramid head was inventive and probably the best Silent Hill monster to date. The Westerner Silent Hill pick-up team realise this, and say with a 'Bill & Ted esq.' tone, "That's a brilliant idea! What this game needs is more Pyramid Head! I need more Pyramid Head!" (Anyone else get the image of Walken and the Cowbell scene from reading that?). What I'm saying is, games should not be done to appease the fan-base, and Pyramid Head should have stayed in Silent Hill 2, where he belongs, *trying to urge not to rant about how Pyramid Head doesn't make sense being in anything else*.

Quickly back to Metal Gear: Did anyone 'really' enjoy playing as Raiden for the later-half of the game? If you did, fine, but the developers themselves admitted that Raiden was there to make you appreciate Snake. I get the impression that a lot of MGS Sons of Liberty was laid out with the skeleton of the old game, and new skin of different colours was just stapled on here and there, making the whole experience just botched in places and quite disjointed. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it, but knew it could have been a far more engaging game.

Speaking of which, we all know that Riaden was the weaker of the two; why is it that weaker characters from previous titles need to be introduced into later ones as total bad-asses, (MGS 4 reference). We said: "Raiden's a Pussy", they said, "Then we'll stick him in Cyborg Armour and give him a Batman growl". I call it: Bad-Ass-Dertising a character, and when you say "BadAssDertising" it sounds like you're saying "Bastardising", which is about right.

Any games you can think of where pussy-characters are re-vamped as bad-asses in sequels?

Good post Yahtzee.

 

[L34dP1LL]

So basically they should do sequels Elder Scrolls style? Just taking the premise of the game but with a whole new story?

 

[L34dP1LL]

So basically they should do sequels Elder Scrolls style? Just taking the premise of the game but with a whole new story?

 

[zerobudgetgamer]

To everyone who's tried to debunk Yahtzee's statement, allow me to reiterate it for you with some slight emphasis

Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels, with the same main characters as before, whose story was regarded as better than the first.

Now, let's run through the list, shall we?

Mega Man 2 and 3

Already been mentioned, but since Wily keeps getting away/out of prison, the series keeps leaving itself open for sequels. Granted, it's not leaving itself open at the end of the game, rather re-opens itself at the start, but then that's an overused plot device, and thus bad story.

Fallout 2, and Donkey Kong 2

Neither use the same characters. In Fallout 2 it's the descendant of the first's hero, and in DKC2 it's Diddy and Dixie, NOT DK and Diddy. By these rulings it doesn't count if not all of the main, playable characters are both present in the game and playable.

Elder Scrolls

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't each sequel in that series set in different regions/lands? And is there any distinction that the character you're playing is the same as the prior games?

If you look through the history of gaming there are a lot of examples.

It seems a lot of people are listing off games whose gameplay was improved in the sequel, NOT the storyline. Super Mario Bros. 3? You're grasping at straws with that one, since story and plot were the farthest away from making the game as possible back then. Most (S)NES games had a central plot that pointed you in a direction (typically to the right) and told you to push forward until your eyes started to bleed. Sure you had Zelda and the early Final Fantasies that tried to push actual storytelling, but we've already established that neither of those two franchises use the same characters for multiple iterations.

Sequels can be good. Sequels can transcend their former. But what Yahtzee is asking is can a game wallow in it's already pre-established world, with it's own already pre-established plot, background, history, characters, etc. and still come out ahead of it's predecessor. I actually think Yahtzee was being a little too kind with this request, and should've also tacked on "is set in the exact same world, or one closely to near-perfectly matching the world of the original". If we had that, then SMB3 would get thrown out because the worlds are completely different throughout, and most of the "examples" in the history of gaming could also be thrown out for this same reason.

 

[Warachia]

System shock wasn't open ended enough for a sequel, but system shock 2 definitely was. He was only asking about the sequels, not the previous games.

I think you need to read his article a bit more carefully, then re-read the challenge, because you're not reading it as it was intended. You're seeing "Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels" as saying that the game in question (the sequel) is not itself open for a sequel, when what he clearly meant by it was that the game in question's predecessor wasn't left open for a sequel, and the sequel was made anyway. So pointing out that SS2 was left open for a sequel doesn't matter. His wording is somewhat ambiguous when set apart on its own like that, but in the context of the article it's clear that he's specifying that the first game not have been left open for a sequel, because (as he argues is the case of portal) when this is the case any sequels that do get made tend to mess things up. The first System Shock wasn't left open to sequels, so SS2 still meets his criteria.

Really, if that was too complicated, then just think about this for a second: why on earth would he specify that the SEQUEL not be left open for another sequel, when that's the game we're evaluating?

My mistake. It made partially due to lack of sleep, and partially due to ambiguous wording.
I thought he was referring to the sequel becasue there are plenty of games that they want made into a franchise, and the challenge becomes harder if you look a game series that stops at #2 and doesn't leave itself open for a #3.

 

[skylog]

The first Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban game was a tight story with a clear end that had every plot thread tied up (not counting the DS-only fifth case, since that was made after the sequels). The next game, Justice for All, managed to take that tight story and expand on it by focusing on the characters, making them more three-dimensional.

 

[finc]

Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels, with the same main characters as before, whose story was regarded as better than the first. Let me help you out: there aren't any.

I think Diablo II had a better story than the first game. Ok, so the main character from the first game is technically Diablo in the second game after he shoves the Soulstone into his head, but I thought that was more interesting in a way. The hero you played in the first game is the final boss in the second. Are there any other games that do that?

Also, you get to beat Griswold to death with his mate's leg. What more could you ask for?

 

[SilentHunter7]

Name me one sequel to a game that wasn't left open for sequels, with the same main characters as before, whose story was regarded as better than the first.

Too easy. Majora's Mask to Ocarina of Time.

 

[00slash00]

Baldur's Gate 2.

Same characters, continuation of the story, but it was a continuation that occurred naturally; you could beat BG1 and be left satisfied that the story ends right there.

In general though, that rule applies to just about everything made recently.
It's rather strange that fan-made games (until they get slapped with Cease-&-Desist) tend to be on par with the source material, while fan-demanded games turn into that fore-mentioned slop.

agreed, but the ending of baldurs gate 1 did leave room open for a sequel

 

[toapat]

I disagree with your point on sequels since for me personally 'more of the same' can be good as well.

I do agree strongly with the other point though: fans are stupid and wrong. Always.

More of the same though, doesnt happen for sequels made not following these points. I take Guildwars vs its sequel as the most significant example of this. Guildwars is a game that succeeded because it threw out the D20 origin of most other RPGs on the market. they stripped down an MMO to the point where the only thing left were the combat skills, and then allowed for hybrid classing and free redistribution of points. Armor was simplified down to simple, yet deep 2 option pieces for 5 slots each, as well as weapons with 3 levels of functional customization.

This is compared to the sequel, where armor and weapons now have inherent modifiers which do not cap, the skills are linked into weapons, and they reintroduced stats to the game in a way identical to that of Dungeons and Dragons. They removed the interesting, if incredibly challenging to balance hybrid classing. This is a direct sequel, which has no relation to the other game, and has yet to show actual use of any attributes of the original. It didnt use the original as a jumping off point, it threw out what made it withstand WoW, in exchange for it's greatest competition's strengths and some rather obvious flaws.

My Phrase "You cant beat Warcraft at Warcraft" comes to mind, reciting the fact that of the hundreds of MMOs made in the short aftermath of the release of WoW, only 2 others have succeeded. those others are the games Guildwars, and Final Fantasy 11, of which succeeded for Being original, and for not being American respectively. (Micro Transaction games such as DDO and Perfect World do not count, as their success is not based on actual number of players.).