The theme of disappointing sequels and what is going on

Developers have pretty much maxed out what they can do on realistic budgets. Development time and costs have reached their limits and as a result, the power leap this gen has been focused on resolution and a shift to 60fps standard.

Next gen will hopefully see a big visual leap when we get GPUs capable proper ray traced global illumination and path tracing.

Imagine how much better current-gen games would look if developers could flip a switch and enable photo-realistic lighting.
 
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diffusionx said:
God of War 2 came out 2 years after the first one.

I don't think anyone would be complaining if we were getting these games every other year. But even then, it wasn't always like that - Jak 2 came out 2 years after the first game and was an entirely different game.

i don't understand how a studio needs thousands of people and 5 years to make the same game over again with light tweaks here and there techically that you only notice when you put ti right next to the old one in a YouTube video. Something is majorly broken, but I have a feeling that nobody is talking about it because it benefits the friends of people like Schreier.
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of course you don't understand, that's fine, you don't and have never made games (probably). Even indie studios make a 2D side scroller sequel in 5 years, not sure what you're trying to argue other than you want 7 hour games every 2 years at full price
 
tmlDan said:
you don't and have never made games (probably)
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Have you? Maybe you can explain us why sequels take so long to develop nowadays then.

For reference, Baldur's Gate 2 took 20 months to develop, and Fallout New Vegas took even less. Both sequels that look the same as the previous game but still managed to be really, really good games.
 
It can be sum of things: years of waiting, how much these sequels improved or not, the previous one being less praised months or years after its release, etc.

I will say about a VERY praised sequel and a the same time considered as a megaexpansion: Doom II: Hell on Earth. Graphics were similar and base mechanics too. So what happened then? it pushed a lot of strengths of the previous game to its limits: much more enemies at the same time, the abstract level design became even more varied and experimental, levels became bigger, the challenge was pushed, the new enemies and the new weapon were very game changing for its formula, not more losing your arsenal two or three times because not following the episodic structure anymore, etc. If we focus on values out of quantifiable ones, it was a sequel clearly made for people who mastered the first one, not for any new audience, without any pull of its punches. Oh, and it was released only 8-10 months after the original (still a powerhouse at the time), and it's an even bigger platform for modding, being the real "Eternal" Doom game.

You put a list of sequels (at least a some of them, I won't talk for all of them) not following the natural step from the previous one, repeating or making worse their previous mistakes, not enough improvement for such a long development or following the tiring "being of everybody (anyone actually)". And of course after years of waiting and expectations you think "is that all?" . And we can't forget their prices. Like I said, there are lots of reasons and not just a single one.
 
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There are a million reasons. From Covid, to lowest common denominator (writing and gameplay), to flat out having to be extremely risk averse due to the size of the corporations.

Hence why the games that have captured the minds of gamers (BG3, expedition 33, Elden Ring) were all done by smaller and focused teams who made a game they wanted to play.

Turns out, gamers like to play what other gamers like to play. And don't like playing what corporations say they all should like.

Clearly, we are witnessing a shift in the industry right now. Where it goes, I don't know, but this has been a very uninspired generation (but for a few glorious exceptions)
 
tmlDan said:
of course you don't understand, that's fine, you don't and have never made games (probably). Even indie studios make a 2D side scroller sequel in 5 years, not sure what you're trying to argue other than you want 7 hour games every 2 years at full price
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An indie studio with 3 guys working on it part time? Yea it's going to take forever.

A game that barely iterates upon the last one when you have 500 people and 2000 contractors working on it full time? No reason to take 5 years, none. And I keep going backk to AC but we know Shadows had major issues with its development. They should have been able to get Shadows out in 2022 or 2023 at the latest.
 
AAA studios stopped taking risks and being more creative a long time ago, especially after the cost of development got so insanely high. They don't want to fail, shut down, etc. It's why I loved Death Stranding as much as I did when it first dropped. It felt like the most unique and risk taking AAA title we had seen in a LONG time. It felt like a breath of fresh air, even if it wasn't for everyone. I feel like the sequel did the same as well, if not even more so.

The result is a bunch of games that are safe, pretty similar, etc. The most "unique" things you'll see in them in a small mechanic or two to make them stand out, but then everything else just kind of feels like a been there done that kind of thing.

The AA and indie market has been the complete opposite, where you tend to see more unique and creative titles being released there. That's something that has always been the case, but it continues to as well.

That being said, while some of the games in that list may be considered "safe" or "the same", I still think a number of those games are actually solid. I mean, they cater to their previous players, as well as new ones. You can't expect AAA studios to just completely rewrite everything when it's existed in their previous titles. They just need to improve and build off of it. Make it look and/or play better, add more content, etc. If there's any kind of improvements anywhere and the game is a solid experience then I think it's safe to say that they will have accomplished their goal.

Gripsx said:
oh right obviously
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Yeah, I don't understand that one at all. It looks like GoT, but more/better, kind of like what you'd expect from a sequel. But I guess you know, women bad, or something, I don't know, lmao. GoT as a title had some unique properties, but as a whole it too felt like a pretty safe title IMO. So, seeing a pretty safe sequel doesn't really seem like a stretch. It's the same experience, but there's more. You know, kind of what you'd expect in a sequel. It's not suddenly going to be first person or add some kind of wild mechanics or systems that didn't exist in the previous game. They want to cater to their previous fans, while maybe acquiring some new ones.
 
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BbMajor7th said:
Two words: BIG DATA. Most major corporates these days are looking to validate every business decision with a stack of data. Sadly, data can only show you what worked previously. As such, they iterate rather than innovate, taking what was successful and making more of it. The big crash we're seeing in games right now is almost wholly accountable to this: an assumption by corporate middle-management that you can take an industry predicated on risk and innovation and run it on iteration and restatement.

What most of these corporates refuse to accept is that there is no safe and predictable way to drive success in this industry. You have to be unpredictable and disruptive: in an era that driving grey-brown realism and cinematic action you have to build a game like Minecraft; when every other studio is driving fast-paced real-time action, you have to build a game like Baldur's Gate 3. And importantly, you have stick to your vision, even when it doesn't set the world on fire the first try: accept middling success with a few attempts (DOS1&2) before you finally crack the nut.
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This is part of the problem. The industry went from intuition based decision-making into an era where they began using data as "raw facts" to rationalize the creative decisions/designs they reigned in, from above devs, in the present and in the future. Its resulted in a near fullblown conceptual stagnation on the AAA side. Especially, in the west. Pure authentic and personal creativity is a chaotic beast that can't be wrangled or tamed like some number crunchers and pencil-pushers believe.

This is in combination with AAA pubs and studios getting ill advice from industry consultants about mass hiring and chasing GAAS, supposedly. We're seeing the consequences from that right now.
 
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I thought most sequels falls into the category of disappointments because they bring nothing new but reiterated and refine their first game (which was probably were made with less budget and a huge question mark)

Among modern games which were the sequel that had been really good ?

RDR2 (Rockstar shouldn't count)
Borderlands 2
And that's it.

We are comparing PS3 level with PS5 developments.
 
Shut up a sequel is a sequel, they mean a games sequel is dlc as an insult these people's ranking system as to what clarification a sequel should be is insane
 
tmlDan said:
of course you don't understand, that's fine, you don't and have never made games (probably). Even indie studios make a 2D side scroller sequel in 5 years, not sure what you're trying to argue other than you want 7 hour games every 2 years at full price
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I wouldnt mind a 12-15 hr AAA game every 3 years.
 
BbMajor7th said:
Two words: BIG DATA. Most major corporates these days are looking to validate every business decision with a stack of data. Sadly, data can only show you what worked previously. As such, they iterate rather than innovate, taking what was successful and making more of it. The big crash we're seeing in games right now is almost wholly accountable to this: an assumption by corporate middle-management that you can take an industry predicated on risk and innovation and run it on iteration and restatement.

What most of these corporates refuse to accept is that there is no safe and predictable way to drive success in this industry. You have to be unpredictable and disruptive: in an era that driving grey-brown realism and cinematic action you have to build a game like Minecraft; when every other studio is driving fast-paced real-time action, you have to build a game like Baldur's Gate 3. And importantly, you have stick to your vision, even when it doesn't set the world on fire the first try: accept middling success with a few attempts (DOS1&2) before you finally crack the nut.
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This so damm much. And its not just affecting video games either. Its destroying multiple industries at once.
 
FewRope said:
Edit: I forgot to add Death Stranding 2, a japanese game that is facing the same problems with being basically the same game but a bit better, but I think DS2 is a COVID game and it shows
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How so please? I've heard nothing but praise?
About to pull the trigger…so some insight would be useful.
Thx in advance
 
Sequels to games are more about refinement. There are some great examples of big changes, but there are just as many bad ones. Shit costs too much money now to gamble with.

As long as it's in a genre I want to play though, I don't need much change at all. Space marine and stellar blade have to be dumbed down and smoothed out a bit so that they can hit a big enough audience to justify their not-insignificant budgets. They don't do anything too risky. But I like those less hardcore action games with the sparkly graphics. So go ahead and keep releasing more of the same.

Many of my favorite games this gen seem to sell 1-2 million. 🤔
 
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Mismanagement, greed and diversity hiring probably didn't helped.

SOME of these sequels are better in most aspects but overall worse than the first game with some exceptions like tokt (for me), so they are not complete failures but they felt underwhelming.

(Some were complete failures like veilguard)
 
OP you are asking a question where you already know that 1/3 of the answers will be about graphics, 1/3 of the answers will be about innovation, and 1/3 of the answers will be about culture war talking points.

Most of the answers here don't really change, they are just repeated and slightly tweaked.

Try and find your own enjoyment out of the hobby in modern times, or join one of the thirds.
 
For the majority on that list that I have played, it's almost exclusively down to the writing. It became just….really shit? Like vapid, shallow, boring, sometimes preachy. The characters became dull, the missions bleh. Sometimes they'd even throw out lore and vibe of characters or the world/universe.

It's not just games. The office was abuzz the other week with the new sex and the city. Just absolute dogshit tier writing, it was also like they hadn't watched or had any respect for the core lore and existing characters personalities.

These are major major entertainment products with the highest of budgets, they should be able to be hiring the best writers, but they are clearly all appallingly bad. I'm not sure what explains this. The only thing I can think of is the handful of major screenwriters strikes in the last decade, meaning the best writers were for sometimes large chunks of time unavailable (due to their guild membership), so companies were forced to hire outside of that ecosystem and hire less experienced, younger and often poorer quality cheaper writers. This in turn gave those shit writers credits on major blockbuster games and films, which in subsequent years have been able to leverage into ever more projects whilst the prior higher quality writers have aged out. These newer writers, by virtue of being younger may be perceived as being more connected to the younger "modern audience" demographic, it would not be too hard to leverage that to further dictate the perception of senior management of what type of writing and stories the audience want, it just happens to be the shit type of writing and story that they themselves are capable of.

It's either that, or all the good writers died and education has deteriorated more than I thought.
 
The best way to enjoy this hobby is to not engage in anything related to games you want/like.

No game will make everyone happy and the loudest people are always the ones who dont like it and are trying to get attention. Its just the society we are living in. There games with 90+ meta/open critic scores and still people open threads about how aggressively they hate the game and that it encapsulates everything thats wrong with gaming and society as a whole.

I always say its ok to not like a thing, for me its more about the inability of many people to voice their dislikes like a grown up human being. Everything has to be extreme, its either the best or worst thing ever. A few bad textures are on the same level as a game literally not working because of technical issues. For many people there is no in between anymore.

Personally I just dont engage with anything about a game I want to play before having played it, since there will always be people drive by shit posting and I dont need to subject myself to that.
 
N1tr0sOx1d3 said:
How so please? I've heard nothing but praise?
About to pull the trigger…so some insight would be useful.
Thx in advance
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Same game mechanics but with more toys and noticeably easier.

Not a bad game but not a revolutionary sequel in the slightest, if you loved ds1 you are gonna love this one aswell unless being too easy is a problem for you.
 
cormack12 said:
Someone suggested we break this out into a separate thread, so why are some high profile sequels being dismissed as 'DLC', 'expansions', 'lazy' or 'iterative instead of innovative'. It seems to be striking a large number of games these days and no one is safe. These arent my person opinion just an example of all games that came under flak for their delivery

God of War
Hellblade II
Doom: The Dark Ages (Eternal was also divisive)
Monster Hunter Wilds
Halo Infinite (but let's face it, guardians could be here too)
Mario Kart World
Tears of the Kingdom (divisive)
Spider-Man 2
Forbidden West
Dragon's Dogma II
Greedfall II
Life is Strange
Ghost of Yotei (immediate reactions)
Veilguard

Many others as well, but what is happening? Are we all just too cynical these days? Is the quality suffering? Are you expecting sequels to change things up a lot more (e.g. Helldivers)

Season 8 Wtf GIF by The Office
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The majority of gamers are dumb and have nothing better to do than bash their keyboards with hate speech, a consequence of their frustrations in life and their utter ignorance of how games are made and what the video game business entails.
 
The sequels nowadays look too similar to the original. TotK for example, was a fucking insult.
So if the sequel looks and feels the same, the only two things that can keep me going are story and interesting characters. I've been playing Yakuza games for 15+ years and I still love that series, because the stories are intriguing and I love the characters.
Most of the games mentioned by OP have either absolute shallow stories or are an exercise in virtue signalling. In both cases, they're not getting my money.
 
What I want from a sequel of a game I liked.

More of it, but expanded/better....doesnt have to reinvent the wheel but give me more.

Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory were nigh perfect sequels in my eyes, its was more Splinter Cell just more refined with new tools and techniques to use.
Even Conviction was a good sequel from a gameplay perspective(I didnt use Sonar as a hardmode for myself).



A bad sequel is one which takes out what I liked about the prior title.
And games do this all the time, features/abilities people like, the devs inexplicably remove or dumb down making the sequel a worse game.
Stares at Ninja Gaiden 3 and Def Jam ICON



The sequels listed in the OP other than veilguard which I promise ill get to, dont seem to be "bad sequels", Monster Hunter pretty much every game does some different shit and you never know if itll work or not.
Dragons Dogma 2 had a fucking hard time beating Dark Arisen.....it missed the mark, but its still a solid game.
Id a swapped Infinite with Guardians Campaign, Infinite as a sequel to 5 is better in pretty much every way, its also a better package than 4.
Guardians Campaign was an insult to Halo fans.....ironic that the Multiplayer of Guardians is legit good and I keep hoping they will port Halo 5 to PC with cross play so the servers can come back alive.
 
Pedro Motta said:
The majority of gamers are dumb and have nothing better to do than bash their keyboards with hate speech, a consequence of their frustrations in life and their utter ignorance of how games are made and what the video game business entails.
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Great, thread wrapped, consumers are dumb. Don't ask questions, buy and consume product, move on to the next. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Are you EA's or Ubisoft's CEO?
 
Outside of indies, you shouldn't expect innovation anymore.

AAA gaming is at the most boring it has ever been.
Ragnarok was the worst offender for me, it was straight up (more of the same) DLC sold as a sequel.
FromSoftware DLCs have more quality than certain sequels we get nowadays (like Spider Meh 2).
 
A sequel being the same isn't a problem when it's enjoyable, has a good story and characters and doesn't become a chore.
Sadly most recent sequels suffer from exactly that.
Better graphics, more refined gameplay but everything else is lesser then the original.
 
For me, it's just a pattern the industry has fallen in. I remember during the GCN/ps2/Xbox and Wii/ps3/360 gens games were extremely
Unpredictable and studios were mixing things up drastically between releases and ideas were flowing.

Now, it's like things are focused group and played so safe that we fell into a pattern starting with the ps4/switch/x1 generation. We can almost perfectly imagine in our heads what the next game from each studio will look, feel, and play like because they seem to be churning out products that are so similar to their last.

I used to be excited for ever Zelda reveal because it meant something drastically different from what came before. Now, even though I'll buy it day one, I just get this feeling the next Zelda game will be very similar to BotW/TotK in ways of look, feel, and play.

I can apply this type of thought to almost any game studio nowadays working on a sequel. I see it with GoY, DS2 just did this, Borderlands 4 is doing this, I'm sure RE9 will be like this, the next Monster Hunter will be like this, and so on and so on. Everything will continue to look and feel familiar.
 
Sony's disappointing sequels are pretty easy to explain. They know that they have some exisiting fans already so they're shoving as much messaging as possible, ruining the story and in many cases established characters. Also their sequels simply lack innovation. Sure a game like GoW Ragnarok had Atreus sections and various 'sidekicks', but the core of the gameplay was still the same and if you've played the original for xx hours you can be disappointed (and bored) with what the sequel is offering.
 
AAA sequels are pointless. Nowadays those are massive games that take 7 years to make, they dont leave any good ideas nor good content on the cutting room floor.
This isn't the 90s where you had enough great left-over for 3 games. Now they're already scrapping the bottom of the barrel on the first game, let alone the second.
 
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winjer said:
For most games, it's just that the older devs left the studio and were replaced by people with little talent and passion for games.
There is also the problem that a lot of studios hired political consultants, and that means that writing is reduced to it's lowest form.
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this 1000%
 
I agree that there are some letdowns on that list, but half of that list has sold well and been positively reviewed and well recieved by fans. What's the standard for non-disappointing, universal appeal?
 
It's not unique to game development. Look at any industry when it's young, innovative, agile and disruptive vs. when it's mature, iterative, slow and predictable.

The space industry is an obvious point of comparison. We are struggling to get men back on the moon. We are failing at Mars Sample Return. There have been no new attempts to land on Venus in decades.

The automobile industry is probably another good example, as is the airline industry, the film industry and others.

I don't know if this is the rule but it seems to happen often.
 
Bojji said:
Woke bullshit is ending but there are still games that started development when it was normal to spread this propaganda in games.
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Yeah there are still many games that needs to be flushed out before it's over. Everything that has gone into full production and has had voice recordings done won't be changed. Maybe by 2027 things will be back to how it was before.
 
diffusionx said:
Also, consider: Rockstar used to be one of many. A lot of companies were able to make games to their level.
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R* games used to be 'low-budget' by contemporary standards. That was especially true of anything 'not GTA' but even PS2 GTA games looked low-fi compared to everything else on the platform(s).
They compensated by scope, but it wasn't the 'no expenses sparred' approach they took on from 4 onwards.

diffusionx said:
Now, I would argue it's simply impossible for anyone else to make RDR2 let alone GTA6.
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There's literally noone else that is willing to burn even close to their amount of money on a single project (except Chris Roberts - but that one is not game-dev).
You could argue there's no other IPs that allow the same risk - but it boils down to the same thing.

diffusionx said:
Something has changed significantly to where devs need 3x more time to make a game that is 1/3rd as impressive.
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We've been on the exponential curve with cost increases since at least the 90s. It's just that the slope of those curves is something humans are 'incredibly' bad at recognising, that's why everyone acts surprised when the things really kick into gear. But no - there were no significant changes, it's literally just a growth over 30+ years that's held consistently - like Moore's law.
 
At least DEI is dying out. Now we have to kill the forced retarded sections of gameplay nobody wants. Like playing as MJ / the deaf girl in SM or Atreus in GoW.
And Horizon? Well, letting Aloy have at least some emotions would be a start.
DA Inquisition was already garbage, so I wasn't surprised the reception of Veilguard to be bad.

Haven't played the others games on your list (yet).
 
From that list, I had a great time with games like Doom The Dark Ages, Mario Kart World, and Tears of the Kingdom.

Over the last few years also enjoyed the heck out of sequels like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Splatoon 3, MH Rise, Metroid Dread, Doom Eternal, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, etc.

I feel like negativity is just more pervasive online nowadays due to social media algorithms promoting ragebait as it drives engagement and hence revenue.
 
Only a few good sequels recently but at least there's a lot of upcoming ones that would most likely be great like

Space Marine 2 - already out
FFVII Rebirth - already out
FFVII Part 3
Stellar Blade 2
Space Marine 3
Resident Evil 9
GTA VI
Fallout 5
Elder Scrolls VI
Atomic Heart 2
Witcher 4
 
Baldur's Gate 3
Kingdom Come 2
Astro Bot
Death Stranding 2
Street Fighter 6
FF7 Rebirth
Space Marine 2
Helldivers 2
Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth
Alan Wake 2
Mario Bros Wonder
Dead Island 2
Armored Core 6
Octopath Traveler 2
 
FewRope said:
Somehow DEI is the cause of +6 year dev cycles lol
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Didnt you hear? They needed a year to add pronoun text options into Avowed then another year to remove it. 😄

Cynicism makes people lash out at the strangest things. Long dev times on todays games, "must be all the blue hairs". Bunch of people lose their jobs, must be all the woke people. 5 years from now when something else bad happens, "they must have came back".
 
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