How would you continue a video game series?

Pick a series you'd like to see more of (or a game you'd like a followup to,) and describe how you'd do it if you had artistic control.

My first entry:

Breath Of Fire V

The setting is several hundred years before the first Breath Of Fire game. Unambiguously, none of this "is it a different time or a different continuity?" nonsense. The game focuses on the first appearance of the goddess Myria, who was already sealed up by a band of heroes as of the beginning of the first game.

The Dragon Clan is at the height of its power, and has not yet split into the Light and Dark Dragon Clans. Few in number, but powerful, the current leader of the clan has used his power and connections to establish himself as the de facto most influential person in the world, without bloodshed. He's not actually a nice person.

The Dragon Clan leader summons the goddess Myria, and publicly proclaims that with her blessing, he will usher in a new utopian civilization. He begins to unite the world under a single system of governance, with (apparently) little resistance. In both games in which she appeared, Myria tried to put on a good public face. In the first game, you have the advantage of already knowing that she was evil and had to be sealed up. This time, your characters don't, and that's going to be played to the hilt. The Dragon Clan leader is very careful to keep any rumors of wrongdoing under wraps, and until his pride and greed (subtly encouraged by Myria) get the better of him, it's not clear that the other races are becoming worse off under his rule. The first part of the protagonists' journey leads up to the discovery that the antagonists are a threat at all.

The split between the Light and Dark Dragon Clans occurs in the latter half of the game, over whether to continue their world unification under Myria, or to let the various countries and clans keep their autonomy. The name Myria's supporters give themselves doesn't stick in the long run.

Your characters must encourage the various nations to resist the advances of the Dark Dragon Clan, defeat the clan leader and develop and use a device to seal up the immortal Myria. The machine used to seal her up is created with the help of a Magitek Gadgeteer Genius, and you go on various missions to create the elemental keys used to lock it up (the same keys that you journey to find in the first game) out of their very elemental-ey components.

Gameplay-wise, continue to use the Master-system from the fourth game, where new moves are learned from various masters not by leveling up under them, but but by completing various challenges they impose on you. Bring back the dragon gene transformation system from the third game, but instead of finding sealed up dragon essences as in the third and fourth game (the Dragon Clan is at its peak right now after all,) you generate them in yourself through various experiences (plot and sidequest based) or have them passed down to you by ancestors of the clan, as in the first and second games.

edited 28th Mar '11 2:48:40 PM by Desertopa

... There was already a Breath of Fire V.

There was Breath Of Fire Dragon Quarter, but that was basically a gaiden game, having no plot connection to the other games, and very little thematic or gameplay connection. Titling the next entry in the series proper Breath Of Fire VI would be more confusing rather than less.

edited 28th Mar '11 11:43:19 AM by Desertopa

I wouldn't find it confusing in the slightest, but it would likely please the fanboys who violently hate Dragon Quarter for so much as existing as well as those who just think it would fit better (you're in this relatively sane group Desertopa).

Now...beyond that...I love you. Very much so. Though I also want to add the combat system from 4 because I loved it immensely. WHEE SWITCHING BETWEEN TWO FIELDS AND CHARACTER POWERS.

I can't help but wonder if a fair number of series that have hit the Polygon Ceiling would do better if they restricted themselves to 2D. Sonic The Hedgehog in particular never seemed very well-suited to a 3D environment, and it's worth noting that even after people started wailing about how much all his 3D games sucked, the Sonic Advance games maintained a consistent level of quality. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the gaming public is ready to accept the idea that a technological step backwards is an artistic step forwards.

I always figured Myria was an artificial goddess created by what's-his-face from Breath of Fire IV. You know, the Karma Houdini. That seemed to be the direction it was going to me. In that sense though, it'd be very hard to have a game about her origin without containing maybe a few more direct references to IV than we'd like, so maybe that doesn't work. Unless the guy makes himself immortal I guess.

Incidentally, that proposed plot sounds a bit more like a Tales game than a Breath of Fire game.

edited 29th Mar '11 1:13:52 AM by Clarste

Well, if it means anything, Sonic Colors had a pretty positive overall reception in the public eye.

Imperial Saga

Start off with A Taste of Power: the heads of La Résistance have driven The Empire to its breaking point and launch a final raid on the Emperor's last stronghold. They don't meet as much resistance as one might expect; public opinion has turned against their ruler, and you witness infighting, rioting, servants and civilians undermining the defenses. You even see guardsman turn against the more loyal followers, unwilling to lay down their lives to support a tyrant on his last legs. Ultimately, the emperor is slain, setting the stage for the game proper.

Many years later, the land is still divided. No single leader has yet emerged to completely unify the former kingdom; some aspire to such ends, but thus far, any such attempt has been squashed. Alliances and rivalries are ever-changing, and an uneasy peace reigns, both helped and hindered by the proliferation of monsters. As with several of the previous games, you have a variety of lead characters to choose from, including:

• The displaced descendant of the Emperor, whose mother was smuggled out of the castle — or at least, so she has always claimed, while raising her son with dreams of reclaiming what should have been theirs by birthright. All she has to prove this claim is a signet ring, yet she holds firm, and believes her son should share her conviction. But given what he's heard of the empire, he can't help questioning whether recreating it would truly be for the best...
• The adult son of two of the rebel leaders; one of his parents passed on years ago, and the other is ailing, putting him on the cusp of inheriting the small country they carved out of the chaos. Needless to say, he isn't looking forward to dealing with the court, which is filled with people who honestly support his rule and those who would rather see one of their own take control...
• A Farm Boy whose family has attracted the unwanted attention of a Cattle Baron trying to unify the surrounding lands. To be fair, the baron's stated reasoning for bringing everyone together is so they can present a united front against the roaming monsters and any other threats that might come from the surrounding areas... such as other countries looking to expand.
• A Fallen Princess whose family has slid into hard times following the ousting of the Emperor. They attempted to marry back into wealth via her sister; unfortunately, the guy turns out to be a Jerkass who moves away with his new bride, leaving her family in the lurch. Not about to take that crap lying down, she goes after him.
• The Fallen Princess's sister. Her husband geniunely loves her — or so he keeps telling her — but felt her worthless family was dragging her down. A Wide-Eyed Idealist, she only wishes to help everyone she sees suffering, much to the dismay of her bodyguards.
• A clumsy apprentice blacksmith. After messing up one too many times, his irritated master sends him on a quest for several long-lost, ancestral weapons. Being a classic Idiot Hero and utterly unaware it's a Snipe Hunt, he happily sets off on his Fetch Quest, eager to please.
• A Cute Witch Hustler who actually does have talent as a Fortune Teller, but prefers to use her talents to con people out of their money. Keeps having visions of some great-but-irritatingly-vague threat to the land, which she's covertly investigating as she travels.
• A cheerful girl with a natural affinity for monsters. Since people tend to freak out upon seeing her pets, she's become a drifter, relying on her pets' hunting skills to survive. However, she soon notices that the monster population has been drastically rising, and finds herself falsely accused as responsible.

The game itself would be a Wide-Open Sandbox, in the vein of Romancing Sa Ga, with tons of Side Quests to explore along with each character's main scenario. Depending on who you play, you could find and recruit several other 'main' characters, along with an assortment of 'side' characters. Your choices could also lead you into direct conflict with others: for instance, one quest might send you after the Fluffy Tamer, and you'd have to decide whether to apprenhend her as you were hired, let her go, or try and befriend her.

There would also be major decision points that would drastically change the scope of each story arc. Such as the displaced descendant: do you ulimately choose to try and revive the Empire, or go against your mother's wishes and squash the planned uprising? Does the Wide-Eyed Idealist choose her husband over her family, or vice-versa? Does the Fluffy Tamer side with the humans or the monsters, or try to broker some sort of peace between them?

And of course, there would be New Game Plus features to carry over whenever you finished one scenario and started another...

edited 29th Mar '11 3:21:00 AM by FoominBlue

Exile Zero

(edited from an embarrassingly rant-y old fan letter of mine)

A little after Exile III shipped (I might be misremembering this, but I _think_ that's when it was,) Vogel said that he was contemplating various different sorts of games he might make now that he'd reached a major plateau in the Exile series, and one of his ideas was a game like Exile but with a party five or ten times bigger.

The idea instantly struck me as one of the most immensely appealing, and stuck with me ever since. The idea of leading around something with about as many stats as an RPG character in a wargame, leveling up and equipping all those characters into perfect fighting machines, swapping them in and out to deal with casualties or twink, and taking them into real battles in a game with a real story… Pure. Distilled. Awesome.

In my mind, the game usually works about like Exile's outdoor and encounter views, with the player characters cast as a small military outfit (I.E.: Glen Cook's Black Company) rather than a commando-sized warrior band. Some parts of the game might still let you use individual characters outside battle, like directing detached squads (hand-picked from your main force) through special missions, or wandering around towns with an honor guard while the grunts are encamped outside.

The combat system and interface in Spiderweb's games is already pretty much perfectly suited to big battles (although area-effect spells might need to be toned down some,) and the player could retain direct control over everybody. The character training and interface screens would be the only parts of the interface in need of retooling, preferably allowing the user to compare and alter the stats and equipment of multiple characters at once. The tactical warfare motif would also mesh perfectly with and enhance some of the core fun in RPGs: Twinkin' and lewtz.

Character creation, which is one of the most fun parts of actual RPGs, is usually only a once-per-game thing in CRPGs. This tactical CRPG would allow you to create more characters throughout the game (maybe instead of recruiting all pre-built characters, some recruits you pick up could be obtained in a partly unfinished state, with lots of unspent points you could “train“ for free upon recruitment, like a collapsing quantum waveform.)

Character tuning is also somewhat limited in a smaller party, since there's so many types of characters one can make in an RPG, but you'll only get to play as 1-6 of them at a time. A big tactical RPG like this would let the player really stretch out and explore all the niches in the system's range. I'll admit, though, that Genoforge's “create-a-party“-based gameplay solves both of these problems to an extent.

Loot is something of a double-edged sword +1 in a normal RPGs: On the one hand, you've got all this delicious loot that's fun to use. On the other hand, you have to sell (or worse, leave behind!) most items because you can't carry them, nobody in your party can use them well, or you've just replaced them with better stuff. With a huge party, you could carry more items, you'd have more kinds of character “build“ to equip, and you'd have some similar characters to give hand-me-downs. The “padding“ this would give to your inventory would also make some sort of item customization work especially well.

Setting and story-wise, there is just so much that a game like this could do. An interesting scenario would be a prequel pitting the player against an untamed wilderness as part of the Empire's first expedition to the Caves.

Eric,

edited 29th Mar '11 5:00:37 AM by EricDVH

The Castlevania series hybridizes the God of War control scheme with a Batman Arkham Asylumn-esque 3D labyrinthine design. The plot introduces the elements of Transylvania at the time into the game - i.e. make the Belmonts Turkish men. Boss fights will be more creative than "whack until dead", something situational, like burning them with a funeral pyre. The whip will not feature into movements, as thats just stupid - instead, relics taken off the dead bosses will allow aid your movement.

Hmm, I like these kinds of threads... Time to show my sucky creativity.

Breath of Fire V:

Make the Deathevan/Death Evan/Death Haven/whatever is his correctly translated name big bad, make furries races look more like races from earlier games, sprite graphics in beautiful way or the kind of graphics that Tales of series seems to use, dunno what was the name, give that dragon transformation system from third game, but without ultimate form being basically a super sayan form.

Fallout:

Make a gaiden game on handleld system with sprite graphics and original gameplay because those wouldn't sell on these days and make Russia the game's setting since that would allow me to do stuff without ruining any canon from main games.

Star Control 3(the real 3 doesn't count):

Dunno, I lack ideas and hate fan fiction like continuation or unimaginative, I would ask original developers if they had any ideas of their own for the sequel and do something based on that. Or hire them.

Too lazy to continue now..(one of reasons why I would suck) And yes, I'm sucker for sprite graphics. And yes, I suck.

It's ambiguous whether IV is supposed to be part of the same continuity as the others at all, and Capcom hasn't issued a decision either. I vote no; it's better not to have to fudge things around in order to make sense of the continuity.

I'd have Myria be a proper goddess. She appears to the Dragon Clan leader in a dream, and he decides to reject his monolatry of the Dragon God, and unite the entire world under her.

I would definitely play this.

edited 29th Mar '11 7:58:48 AM by Desertopa

A few notes:

The whip has actually never been used, to my knowledge, for Metroidvania-style exploration tricks. It's always been special relics that you find after beating bosses, as you describe. However, it would be nice to use the whip to swing from certain things, like you can do in Super Castlevania.

Also, I think it'd be best if boss fights have two phases: one where you deal a bunch of damage, and a final phase where you have to cut the rope.

As for me:

Viewtiful Joe 3.

The premise is easy enough to think of: the second game already set it up. It would take place, at least initially, in the dark castle that appeared at the end of 2. The bad guys would be named ZADOW (or something else that follows the pattern of JADOW, GEDOW, and MADOW). Sylvia would need a bit of a change to her fighting style to be on par with Joe: I'm thinking wither a replacement for her zoomed shoulder hit, an increase in power for it, or allowing her guns to be affected by Repeat. The final battle sequence would, of course, involve a fight in an even bigger version of Six Majin than before.

...OK, yes, this is just another "Continue Viewtiful Joe already" post.

Continuing an existing game series would be difficult for me. The only games I tend to want sequels to are ones that haven't had sequels in some time and are still fairly unique gameplay-wise (Rocket Jockey, Mole Mania, Magic Carpet, and a few other games that elude me right now), and with those, there either isn't much of a plot to begin with, or I find it a very distant second to the gameplay.

So what's the continuation with those? Bringing them back with modern technology to a new audience, really, since they're firmly in the "Needs More Love" category as far as I'm concerned.

edited 31st Mar '11 11:04:13 AM by NamelessFragger

Dino Crisis.

Forget 3 ever happened and continue Regina's story.