Sucky Sequels

Just like with the COVID-19 pandemic since the end of 2019, most people hope that the following year will be better. 2020 came and went and so did 2021, both marked by countless personal tragedies – some big, other small. Either way, fuck these sequels, I’m ready for a fresh start. Maybe 2022 will be it?

So far, my hands are full with my personal life (work plus the two puppies), so I can’t really commit to any lengthier writing at the moment. That is why in January of 2022 I went over my 30 Second Reviews and made some tweaks and corrections. I’m about halfway done; you can check the Video Game Reviews and Board Game Reviews, still working on updating Movies and Series.

One of the major changes is that I decided to split some reviews up. Last year I thought to just review a trilogy or sequence of films (games) together but then I came into problems where one part is good and the others are not. Ergo, the title of this blog post, the sucky sequels.

So let’s talk (complain) about sequels for a moment!

First of all, board games don’t have this problem, as they either get expansions or get remade, but there’s typically no sequels since every board game is its own self-contained unit. And at least in my experience, the expansions for board games are fantastic, improving on the base game and extending it. In fact, sometimes they’re so good, they get included in a second edition or remake – e.g. Kingsburg (Second Edition) or Kemet: Blood and Sand. 

When it comes to movies or TV series (and books / graphic novels for that matter), there’s only one of two possibilities. Either the story continues into new and hopefully unexpected directions – because it was planned or it organically made sense – or, it’s because of money. Hollywood is especially bad with the latter one. So many movies simply did not need to exist at all. And it shows in terms of plot holes, inconsistencies, regurgitated material and whatnot. Matrix 4 (aka The Matrix Resurrections), Star Wars episodes 7-9, Indiana Jones 4 (aka The Kingdom of Crystal Skull), etc etc…

A special mention goes to MARVEL who I enjoyed watching up to the point where they started adding TV series on top of their movies. Fuck off, if I want to invest that much time I’m going full anime. MARVEL ain’t got shit on JoJo’s Bizzarre Adventure, Dragon Ball, One Punch Man and others!

All in all, when it comes to traditional storytelling and narrative the main question really is: do you like the plot and characters?

This brings me to the most complicated part of this post. Video Games. They are in a league of its own. To be fair, they too can have sequels for story reasons or for money. However, that is usually not enough to justify a complete new entry.

If there’s just plots that need to be tied up, that can be done with expansions or DLCs (downloadable content). If it’s for the money, well, you’ll see a whole bunch of micro-transactions, games with unnecessary grind forcing you to pay to advance, “live service games” (they deserve a special place in Hell since they often get abandoned if there’s not enough money in it, leaving fans empty handed) and recently even NFTs. To not even mention exploitation of artists and programmers through crunch and taking advantage of their passion for video games!

But that is a topic for another time.

Going back to the topic of sequels, if a game gets a continuation of some kind, it needs to improve on game mechanics and overall offer more than the previous entries. Not to mention sometimes the devs need to switch the engine they use to build the game with, or there’s a new generation of consoles coming out with its own set of advantages and drawbacks.

As a result, what can happen with video games is that they end in this weird situation where the sequel is overall arguably better, however, there’s just too much of it.

The Gothic 3’s where the ambition of the team is bigger than what they have the funds for. Similarly, any games that try to outdo their predecessors by making a larger map / world typically end up feeling empty, or filled with repetitive quests to the brim. The various Assassin’s Creeds, Far Crys and whatnot (Ubisoft really reigns supreme with bullshittery here), but also some overall acclaimed titles like Zelda: Breath of The Wild. Yeah it’s fun to climb and glide, but there’s also just vast empty spaces. I personally rushed from one location with a teleport to another, uncovering all and always transporting myself as close to a mission as possible. To be clear, Zelda is still a fantastic game, yet all of that space makes it exhausting in my opinion.

Another big problem that I’ve encountered sometimes is when a game tries to add too many gadgets and mechanics. If I gotta use half the keyboard to play a game, it better be the next Command & Conquer, Age of Empires or Warcraft. A Real Time Strategy game is about the only genre where it is absolutely justified to have so many key bindings.

There are two sequels that come to mind with this type of issue right away (both fantastic games otherwise). Batman: Arkham City, as well as Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (the first one) already had a lot of tools to work with but with the sequel, Arkham City, it became absurd!! It’s more fun than ever just flying around the city and discovering everything it has to offer, so why the hell was there a need to add even more gadgets? I get it, Batman has everything his money can buy, but it truly becomes unmanageable and as a result, unusable.

Similarly as I just recently  played the follow-up to the phenomenal Ori and the Blind Forest. They tried to make the combat better by adding more fighting tools and in my opinion it is still forgettable (not that it matters, Ori is a platformer game and that’s what I care about). They added new weapons out of which I used none. To be precise, I didn’t even buy any combat skills except the smash that’s needed to progress.

Wether it is ambition or just being unable to decide on what to focus on; all of the examples above come from excellent games. You can tell that the devs were all-in, without a doubt. Still, there is such a thing as having too much. Not every game has to be an open world first person flying cooking RPG rogue-like potato. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.