How to Title Your Stupid Sequel

[Milanezi]

I'm all in favor of unique titles, like Dirty Harry movies.

 

[Nomanslander]

Yeah, I have to go with AVGN when it comes to this matter. I like numbers. If you want to be creative, make the body of work itself interesting, not the title. If you want to be fancy, have it in Roman numerals.

I really can't stand it when titles go with subtitles, or reboot names to sound original. There has to be some form of connection that lets the audience know which title they're about to watch/read and in which chronological order it came in.

There has only been a few exceptions that I've let slide. Bond is one of them, one reason being that I can never imagine them all being in chronological order or having continuity considering there's been like 6 bonds within 50 years. And the idea that all those movies are in continuity of each other makes my head hurt.

Now take Harry Potter for an example. I'm no fucking Y-gen millennial, I'm an X-gen, so I have no fucking clue where to begin with this series because when the first book came out I was too old to get into it (well, you're never too old, but I was told this was originally a children's series, so I never bothered till I was told different) and by that time the movies came out and I started noticing them, I had no fucking clue where to begin since none of them were numbered. And what is there like 10 of them? I don't know, because they're not numbered! One of the is about some Asgard, Ashhard, something prisoner right? I don't know because the series is expecting me to know about weird names in the movies, and I'm a complete outsider on this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, google schoogle. I've already lost interest again just thinking about how chronologically confused I am about them all.

Another has been giving subtitles for trilogies, and as long as they don't have stupid names. Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rinds, and Star Wars movies come to mind. When there's only three titles it's easier to remember which came before which. And as for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dooms sake (given the fact that it's a prequel) it was probably a good choice that it wasn't called Indy 2 because that would have been confusing. Now I mentioned stupid subtitles, and I think I don't need to explain myself on that part. If the subtitles stars with re- and ends with -tion, it sucks and the guy that came up with it needs to die.

 

[beastro]

I've always found the Legacy of Kain series naming to be frenetic, especially given how the first games subtitle is the name for the series as a whole.

 

[g3rg]

Bravo, Yahtzee. But how then do we classify the Final Fantasy series, which has numbered sequels that have buttfuck all to do with each other?

I'd think to relate them to the plot or lack thereof. Each game has something that stands out about it from the rest. FF12 could be Final Fantasy: Hugh Hefner's Odyssey.

FF8
Final Fantasy: Breakfast Club with Gunblades

FF13
Final Fantasy: ULTRA AMAZING SUPER RPG TURBO SUPREME FIGHTER!!!!?!!!!!!

 

[chadachada123]

Well Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, while not being true sequels, are spiritual predecessors/successors of each other with a unique naming scheme. I like their naming system, and would certainly like to see others do the same.

The Elder Scrolls does it alright. No one refers to them using number, and very rarely are they even referred to using "The Elder Scrolls." The vast majority of references just use the location name (barring Arena and Oblivion). So while the full name is, for example, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it is commonly referred to using just Skyrim, taking the number issue out of it.

Edit: For larger series, like Halo and Star Wars, it is justified in having the universe name in the title, but it still should have something besides just a number for main releases. Everyone knows what you mean when you say Knights of the Old Republic, for example, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic works well.

Halo: Reach works well. Halo 3: ODST, however, sounds like an expansion of Halo 3 and not a full-blown game.

 

[chadachada123]

Star wars is a movie where the sequels were named in numbers, although they did make some effort to add in new names, and give the numbers not starting from 1.

Fun fact: A New Hope (the first one, episode 4) was originally released as Star Wars, without any number or sub-name. The sequel, Empire Strikes Back, was the first that had a sub-name and a number.

Still, the sub-name is generally used way more amongst fans than the series number, just like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is generally called Oblivion pr TES: Oblivion and almost never called The Elder Scrolls IV.

 

[grumbel]

I like numbers in titles. Numbers are great. They are straight forward and easy to understand. It annoys me to no end when I see stuff like this:

Blackwell Convergence
Blackwell Deception
The Blackwell Legacy
Blackwell Unbound

or

Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
Oddworld: Munch Oddysee
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath

in my Steam library and then have no idea in what order those games are supposed to be played, which means I have to make a trip to Wikipedia to find it out. With some plain old good numbers, I wouldn't have that problem. Given how every game gets turned into a franchise with at least half a dozen titles and spin-offs on multiple platform, handhelds, phones and tablets some good old numbers can help a lot in keeping track of what is available and how it fits together.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

This article is amusing considering Microsoft made Bungie tag the "Combat Evolved" subtitle onto the end of the original Halo because they didn't think it would sell by just being called "Halo." How times have changed.