sketchesofpayne said:
One thing we've seen in the last couple years is the return of space shooters, with things like Evocron Mercenary and Sol Exodus, and more recent developments like Elite Dangerous, No Man's Sky and Star Citizen. In the late 2000's all we had was the X series to represent the genre. With Interplay putting the Freespace license up for sale I'm sure we'll see something from that.
Well space exploration sims really hit the big time in the early-mid 1990s with games like the Wing Commander franchise, the Descent franchise, Frontier: Elite II, and it's sequel Frontier: First Encounters(Elite III), and games like X-Wing vurses Tie Fighter... So I think we're going to see space sims make a bigger comeback as time goes on.
By the way [user]Yahtzee Croshaw[/user], you were wrong in your Drown Out of Elite: Dangerous, it's not a remake of the original Elite and Elite Plus. Elite: Dangerous is a direct sequel to Frontier: First Encounters, which is the direct sequel Frontier: Elite II, which is the direct sequel to Elite/Elite Plus. That's both in terms of game canon, along with in universe time-line. If you're still playing Elite: Dangerous, sometime in the not too distant future you can expect the return of Thargoids, the hostile space-faring alien bugs.
Edit: A good piece of lore that shows the progress is actually in the Cobra MkIII's description. It was the only playable ship in the original Elite/Elite plus. In Elite: Dangerous it's stated as having been developed by Lave Cowell & MgRath shipyard around the year 3100. The design and the shipyard have since been bought by Faulcon DeLacy, which is the Elite: Dangerous maker of most multi-purpose ships. Ships like the Python and the huge Anaconda. Faulcon DeLacy also bought up Zargon Peterson at some point. While the brand name remains, ships like the Adder and the Fer-de-Lance are technically Faulcon DeLacy ships, despite wearing the Zargon Peterson brand name.
Back on topic: With the release of the new Master of Orion, along with the resurrection of X-COM, it looks like earl-mid 1990s strategy games are coming back. There's another game like the Master of Orion, that came out earlier too, which also took it's inspiration from Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares.
Also Mech simulator games seem to be making a come back, again these were a mid nineties staple. With MechWarrior Online a few years into it's life already and Heavy Gear Assault being out now. I'm waiting to see if Armored Core and Metaltech/Earthsiege/Starseige make a comeback too.
Finally, we can hope for either a new entry in the Starsiege: Tribes franchise, or at least a spiritual successor. No online multiplayer game ever felt as fun as Tribes, because that's a game that gives every player a jet pack by default. It also popularized the concept of automated turrets, but in Tribes the player actually has a method to control them. Still Tribes was a great franchise, full of hectic twitch gameplay, being unique for the fact that death could literally come from any direction, at any moment. Tribes is also the franchise that introduced the concept of being able to kill other players, by ramming them, or running them over with a vehicle.
