What Game Had the Most Wasted Potential

[Brownie80]

I'm not talking about the most disappointing game, though it can be hand-in-hand. What game had so much potential but squandered it? AHEM*MW3*AHEM.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

Too Human could have been a great launch of an awesome series. Who doesn't love an ultra techno future Viking robot murder game?

What we received was... man was that a let down. That game had no reason to suck that badly.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

1...2....3....

Final Fantasy 13.

Ambitious abstract storyline, poorly presented.
Ambitious take on the battle system (your mileage may vary)
Ambitious three game structure, later split apart in favor of direct sequels.
Ambitious environments, fully exploreable, scrapped

Art director Isamu Kamikokuryo revealed that many additional scenarios such as Lightning's home, which were functioning in an unreleased build during development, were left out of the final version due to concerns about the game's length and volume.

Toriyama said in an interview that the team was unable to make them as graphically appealing as the rest of the game and chose to eliminate them.

Admittedly, they managed to band-aid it back together in the sequels, but just imagine what it would have been if everything had gone according to plan.

 

[Bebus]

DA2, I'd say.

Personal tragic story, set in a single city, plenty of potential political intrigue... they could have made Kirkwall alive, given importance to so many characters and events, but it all just... fell flat into a mire of disconnected story, dull setting, repetitive combat and copy/pasted dungeons.

I don't hate DA2, but see it as the skeleton of a giant. They just needed more time and more ambition to flesh it out.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

1...2....3....

Final Fantasy 13.

Ambitious abstract storyline, poorly presented.
Ambitious take on the battle system (your mileage may vary)
Ambitious three game structure, later split apart in favor of direct sequels.
Ambitious environments, fully exploreable, scrapped

Art director Isamu Kamikokuryo revealed that many additional scenarios such as Lightning's home, which were functioning in an unreleased build during development, were left out of the final version due to concerns about the game's length and volume.

Toriyama said in an interview that the team was unable to make them as graphically appealing as the rest of the game and chose to eliminate them.

Admittedly, they managed to band-aid it back together in the sequels, but just imagine what it would have been if everything had gone according to plan.

Similarly, Final Fantasy XII could have been the best game in the main series. It had the most interesting and three-dimensional villains, an ambitious and sprawling world that comes so close to feeling really alive, some fantastic dialogue-writing, and a highly-political plot with a lot of potential. The problem was its utter lack of focus. It's torn between the more typically "Final Fantasy" elements and the more explicitly Matsuno elements. For instance, while I actually think using Vaan as an audience surrogate to explain the stranger parts of the world was a good idea, the problem was that he really, really did not gel with the rest of the cast.

 

[shrekfan246]

Final Fantasy 13.

I wonder if it had more or less wasted potential than the sequels, considering they had so many opportunities to fix the problems with XIII and instead managed to somehow flub it even harder.

But yeah, I'll probably have to go with that one too. As a person who loved every single-player Final Fantasy from VII to XII, XIII didn't even feel like Final Fantasy.

But I mean, my other choices would be like... Sonic Generations because Sega decided not to support it with extra levels after release and appear to have moved away from that amazing style of gameplay presently.

 

[MysticSlayer]

AHEM*MW3*AHEM.

I'm pretty sure that after the mass exodus of all the talent IW had, MW3 was completely doomed and had no potential to begin with.

I'll add ME3 to the list of recent Bioware games I felt had plenty of wasted potential,.One only has to look at the scrapped scripts to know that game could've been great if there were't two ego driven men on the writing team.

Are there any particular scripts you are thinking about?

OT: My pick is...

The Last Story:

This game had so much potential. It had a combat system that sounded interesting on paper. It was set mostly in a single town with a relatively small cast of characters, so they should have had no problem developing the world and characters. The graphics and physics were set to be great by Wii standards. It was also coming to us from a reasonably talented team.

What did we get? A bland, mostly dead world with cliche characters ripped straight from the worst of anime and JRPGs, and their interactions were as artificial as you can get. The world was incredibly washed-out and monochrome, even beyond their attempts of trying to make it feel like the world was dying, squandering the otherwise decent graphics. The pacing was horrible and killed any hope of fleshing out the characters or the world, and the combat system turned out to be boring and tedious with some horrible balancing and truly awful boss fights.

Honestly, if this game had taken its time to develop (i.e. be at least a 60 hour game rather than 30 hours), added more to the world rather than bare-bones and meaningless ideas, spent less time trying to capture 360/PS3-level graphics it had no hope of reaching, and balanced the singleplayer gameplay rather than try to shove in a multiplayer, it possibly could have been an incredible experience. But no, it completely failed at allocating its resources properly, choosing to focus too much on graphical fidelity and pointless ideas rather than creating a believable world with wonderful characters for the player to interact with.

There were some things to love, but for what it should have been, it was a huge disappointment.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Similarly, Final Fantasy XII could have been the best game in the main series. It had the most interesting and three-dimensional villains, an ambitious and sprawling world that comes so close to feeling really alive, some fantastic dialogue-writing, and a highly-political plot with a lot of potential. The problem was its utter lack of focus. It's torn between the more typically "Final Fantasy" elements and the more explicitly Matsuno elements. For instance, while I actually think using Vaan as an audience surrogate to explain the stranger parts of the world was a good idea, the problem was that he really, really did not gel with the rest of the cast.

I wouldn't though say XII had much wasted potential, or at least "the most" wasted potential. It was at war with itself, but it did manage to accomplish all the things you've listed above. XII is actually one of my favorites, I didn't think at first I'd like Balthier and Fran, but they grew on me as characters, Ashe is pleasantly reserved and more interesting than Lightning (IMO), even Penelo is less annoying than other FF characters who share the same trope. The villains are cool (judges are just awesome, need I say more?), The world is beautiful and open (The Giza plains have seasons), there's a great variety in scenery, (compare the Giza plains to the Sandsea).

I even like the silly mini game where Vaan has to run around yelling "I'm Basch fon Ronsenburg!". Now thinking about Vann's role in the game and how Basch was originally supposed to be the main character, it's funny.

I do have to agree it was lacking in focus, the summons in particular. You can get through half the game without realizing they even exist, and when you do, they don't really have much of a reason for being there.

I wonder if it had more or less wasted potential than the sequels, considering they had so many opportunities to fix the problems with XIII and instead managed to somehow flub it even harder.

Your mileage may vary.

But yeah, I'll probably have to go with that one too. As a person who loved every single-player Final Fantasy from VII to XII, XIII didn't even feel like Final Fantasy.

But I mean, my other choices would be like... Sonic Generations because Sega decided not to support it with extra levels after release and appear to have moved away from that amazing style of gameplay presently.

It still "felt" like a Final Fantasy game to me, at least as I understand modern Final Fantasy games. As in Final Fantasy X with more lasers and corridors. It just represents the accumulation of everything I wished the series would get away from (The gameplay vs graphics ratio is way imbalanced), but that's me, some people loved it.

As for Sonic, I've given up on it... I replay the old games and pretend they stopped making more. I guess it's to the credit of Final Fantasy, I haven't done that yet.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'd say the massively multiplayer role playing game genre has been under-delivering on potential for the better part of a decade now. The ever eloquent Mr. B Tongue explains why better than I can. Or at the very least will do the work for me.

 

[krazykidd]

The most squandered potential. That's a toughie.

Honestly, i say L.A Noire. The idea was good, the execution was less than stellar. I see what they were going for, and i'm glad they tried. I bought that game day one, but even if the game wasn't as good as i'd have hoped, i don't regret my purchase. I am always glad to contribute to new ideas, and new IPs. I welcome originality with open arms, and i hope there will me more.

 

[spartandude]

Mass Effect 3, it really should've been so much more. The writing for the most part was pretty bad to say the least. Sure there were some very good dialogues between characters here and there, but they were too few and far between and the majority of the main quest was terrible at best (who though Kai Leng was a remotely good idea?). and how did Cerberus go from 150 personnel to and entire fleet and army in 6 months?

Lets also forget that our decisions didnt matter at all. Character X didnt survive ME2, well heres an extremely similar character to do the exact same thing so we dont have to write something actually different to have consequences. Killed the Rachni? well it just happens there was another queen and the the quest happens the exact same way. Destroyed the collecter base? well TIM still gets pretty much all the technology anyway. Killed the council? well the new guys do the exact same things as the originals do. Some how didnt punch that stupid reporter.... ok actually everyone did so i dont blame her for expecting the punch anyway.

And then theres the really low production values. Textures are rather blurry. The art style has largely gone, and those animations? Ok the animations in ME2 werent great but they were better than ME3, how did they get worse?


Ok, a short and concise rant about Mass Effect 3 and not mentioning the ending (until now), my self control is getting better.

 

[Panthera]

Mass Effect 2. The first game ended on a high note and seemed to set the stage for a great series. Then comes...Mass Effect 2. The gameplay gets a tad better and the cast of characters is even better, but the overall main plot becomes a nonsensical train wreck and kills every bit of momentum the franchise had. It doesn't help that in addition to being bad, it felt like one giant side quest that had absolutely no bearing on the overall story of the series.

 

[The Madman]

I have to agree with those saying Dragon Age 2.

The idea was solid. I love the concept of a more personalized rpg story with a tighter focus on a singular location and smaller cast of characters, then having the game take place over time so that you can see how your decisions made throughout the game play out. Seeing the characters change over time and the locations be altered, it's brilliant story mechanic and something Bioware should have considered doing age ago considering while their writing isn't always the best their skill at making sympathetic and enjoyable characters is undeniable, so making a character driven adventure seems obvious. Then add in the unreliable narrator trick with various events as you play them being one characters perspective on certain events and it seems like DA2 should have been the most well thought out and most clever Bioware game to date.

Yet somehow they just completely messed it up. The characters, normally Bioware's strong suit, are a wretched inconsistent lot. The story is a jumbled incoherent mess. The visuals are bland and boring, made even moreso by the lack of variety in locations which never really change as you'd think they should. The gameplay was just a tedious mess. And the way the entire story just sort of crumbles is pathetic, especially seeing as the vast majority of your choices as it turns out are absolutely meaningless.

Worse yet is that because of DA2's failure it's unlikely Bioware are going to try any of those clever ideas mentioned in the first paragraph again, already with DA3 we see they're going back to the old 'save the world' trope.

Such wasted potential.

 

[Evonisia]

Halo: Reach. Let's attempt to make a more personal story out of the Halo universe as the previous games had established epic scale stories. Unbelievably wasted by making the characters all have one trait about them and have them all compete in a "who can have the noblest death" competition. Oh, and you know that epic scale story the previous media had? Well let's retcon the book it all started from and make our new version of the book just to allow us to get away with most of the threads dangling loose. Let's put in some fan fiction as well, there's a enemy which were so few in number that the Covenant decided to send them all to Reach, explaining their lack of presence in future games. Halo: Reach could have easily been saved by the gameplay, but they decided to make it into a hybrid of Call of Duty and Halo 3, leaving it to kinda frantic yet unbalanced because equipment sets don't counteract each over.

At least the Forge was good but unlike Halo 3 you could only do it on one map really (Forge World, the rest were pants). It didn't have the variety of Sandbox either. If you don't know what Sandbox is, look it up, it's awesome. I guess it was pretty as well, and the ending was actually decent and didn't end on a cliffhanger. Currently the only games to not end on a cliffhanger are Halo Wars (arguably), Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach and Halo 4. Halo 3 does if you count the canon legendary ending.

 

[Nosferatu2]

DA2, I'd say.

Personal tragic story, set in a single city, plenty of potential political intrigue... they could have made Kirkwall alive, given importance to so many characters and events, but it all just... fell flat into a mire of disconnected story, dull setting, repetitive combat and copy/pasted dungeons.

I don't hate DA2, but see it as the skeleton of a giant. They just needed more time and more ambition to flesh it out.

I'll add ME3 to the list of recent Bioware games I felt had plenty of wasted potential,.One only has to look at the scrapped scripts to know that game could've been great if there were't two ego driven men on the writing team.

To be fair with Mass Effect 3 The citadel DLC is like my favorite DLC ever. But I guess that just kinda highlights it's wasted potential.

 

[scorptatious]

For me, it was probably Sonic 06. I LOVED the SA games as a kid, and I was hoping this game would take what those games had, improved upon them and make a fantastic game.

Boy was I let down.

It's a shame really, the soundtrack was pretty good, and looking back, I do like the concept of some of the levels.

Another one for me is Mirror's Edge. I like the concept, but I felt the execution was kinda sloppy. Level design was kinda confusing and frustrating, fighting system didn't work the way it was intended, and there was barely any story worth mentioning.

It does look nice though at least.