Games that need sequels

And, lets face it, Bioshack is *exactly* as guilty of being a marketing ploy as anything Electronic Arts releases in response.

That's the problem with games that are billed as 'spiritual sequels' -- they're not the same teams as the original game... they're some developers, and as often as not fairly insignificant ones. Did Erin Roberts develop Tachyon, the 'spiritual sequel' to Privateer 2? No!

It's a marketing trick, and a fairly devious one. Unless they go through the effort of buying the license or reassembling the entire original team, it's not really a sequel.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
And, lets face it, Bioshack is *exactly* as guilty of being a marketing ploy as anything Electronic Arts releases in response.

That's the problem with games that are billed as 'spiritual sequels' -- they're not the same teams as the original game... they're some developers, and as often as not fairly insignificant ones. Did Erin Roberts develop Tachyon, the 'spiritual sequel' to Privateer 2? No!

It's a marketing trick, and a fairly devious one. Unless they go through the effort of buying the license or reassembling the entire original team, it's not really a sequel.
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While I agree on a number of these points, I must also point out that the lead, Ken Levine is supposed to have been the LeaD writer/ designer of system shock 2 and a good portion of the team making Bioshock supposedly worked on SS2 as well. But it's entirely true that they are cashing in on the reputation of System Shock 2. It isnt even close to the same setting really. They don't claim it's a sequel though, rather a game that they promise is going to deliver what everyone loved about System Shock 2 (hence "spiritual successor").
 
AD said:
They don't claim it's a sequel though, rather a game that they promise is going to deliver what everyone loved about System Shock 2 (hence "spiritual successor").
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Thats what LOAF was disliking about it in the first place.
 
LeHah said:
Thats what LOAF was disliking about it in the first place.
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I don't have a problem with it as long as it's true to the formula. But if they muck around with it too much then I'll be unhappy.
 
Lt.Death100 said:
I don't have a problem with it as long as it's true to the formula. But if they muck around with it too much then I'll be unhappy.
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I don't think that matters. It's a different setting, with different methods of gameplay, I'd be pretty disapointed with a boring rehash. IT should maybe keep the suspense etc of what it is claiming to be influenced by, yet why should we bother if it brings nothing new to the table? Why not just play System Shock 2?
 
AD said:
I don't think that matters. It's a different setting, with different methods of gameplay, I'd be pretty disapointed with a boring rehash. IT should maybe keep the suspense etc of what it is claiming to be influenced by, yet why should we bother if it brings nothing new to the table? Why not just play System Shock 2?
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Well, yeah but if it departs too much SS2 then it would probably be bad. That's what I meant in the first place but I probably could have worded it better.
 
Yeah I was probably a bit harsh when talking about EA just hashing something together and putting System Shock branding on it... it just confuses me a bit when games with a successful past (ie. Wing Commander, Sys Shock, even Ultima) aren't followed up with more games. It seems that all space sims now are becoming freelancer clones. I wouldn't mind a few more mission based traditional WC-style ones.
I know there's been stops and starts and cancellations and whatnot. I need something completed!

<Vent completed>
 
While I agree on a number of these points, I must also point out that the lead, Ken Levine is supposed to have been the LeaD writer/ designer of system shock 2 and a good portion of the team making Bioshock supposedly worked on SS2 as well. But it's entirely true that they are cashing in on the reputation of System Shock 2. It isnt even close to the same setting really. They don't claim it's a sequel though, rather a game that they promise is going to deliver what everyone loved about System Shock 2 (hence "spiritual successor").
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I don't know Ken Levine, I don't know how integral he was to System Shock (he wasn't part of the original SS team)... but MobyGames credits him as one of *five* 'lead' designers on SS2.

The 'spiritual sequel' issue isn't just Bioshock, though... there's one for Total Annihilation in the works, and it's been thrown around in relation to some other new projects that escape me at the moment. It's a new industry buzzword, and I don't like it.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't know Ken Levine, I don't know how integral he was to System Shock (he wasn't part of the original SS team)... but MobyGames credits him as one of *five* 'lead' designers on SS2.
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I suppose that at the end of the day - with all this bitter frustration I have towards this Bioshock game, there is one thing I can rest easy with - if the game sucks, it won't have the name System Shock on the box.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It's a new industry buzzword, and I don't like it.
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Still, It's always been around... The weird Terminal Velocity clone, any FPS in the years following Doom, any real life simulation after The Sims, et cetera... The industry coming up with a fancy name for it doesn't change anything. Except that there will maybe be more of them churned out for a short period.
 
Dyret said:
Still, It's always been around... The weird Terminal Velocity clone, any FPS in the years following Doom, any real life simulation after The Sims, et cetera... The industry coming up with a fancy name for it doesn't change anything. Except that there will maybe be more of them churned out for a short period.
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Fury3 was more or less terrible (except for the music), a lot of the FPS games following DOOM were bland (Rise Of The Triad anyone?) and The Sims was just a grandchild of the superior SimCity games.

Not to sound like Doomsday - but games that are simply "churned out" are rarely remembered a couple years later.
 
Yeah, my point was that the "spiritual successor" thing isn't really new, it has been around forever. And of course, you're right that most of them were/are pretty bland.:)
 
Those aren't what we're talking about at all, though -- those are just clones, knock offs, etc. The modern problem is that a game company will find out that one of the people developing a new game worked on some classic title and then use that fact to sell it as a "spiritual successor".
 
They try to play up that angle so that older games get teary eyed at remembering their favorite games from the '90s. Supreme Commander is getting that treatment the most at the moment. Every article/interview mentions the developer (his name eludes me at the moment) as the creator of TA and in all honesty a lot of the screenshots look great, but also WAY too similar to the battlefields of TA.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The modern problem is that a game company will find out that one of the people developing a new game worked on some classic title and then use that fact to sell it as a "spiritual successor".
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Ah, I see. That doesn't really seem fair to the guy that worked on the classic title either.
 
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