Weekly Opinion - Sequels

Sequels are a common thing in just about any story-driven media. Books, TV shows, movies, and one could argue that music fits in too (an artist putting out several albums, one could argue that the other albums are sequels to the first, and then there are artists who tell a story that may branch out over several albums....it happens). Games are no exception.

Just like the aforementioned media forms, game sequels can be both good, bad, and mediocre. The reasons for this can vary as wildly as possible, so I won't delve too deep into that (I have neither the time nor the space to possibly cover every reason why a sequel could be any of the three). Instead, I will give some examples of good, bad, and mediocre, along with some games that I feel fit the categories.

I also want to warn, I may touch upon some plot points, so spoiler warning ahead.

The Good...

A good sequel builds upon an already established world in some way. Sometimes a sequel will have a large visual improvement (Warcraft 1-2-3-World of Warcraft; Half Life-Half Life 2). Sometimes they'll expand the world (Warcraft again, Half Life again). And sometimes they'll introduce new ways of playing (Wa-...just read the previous examples).

I've talked quite a bit about WoW so I'll put that aside for now and focus instead on the Half Life series.

Half Life, developed by Valve, is notorious in the gaming world for a number of reasons. It was one of the first First Person Shooter games that allowed for extreme modifications to be made to the game engine. Thanks to this, fans were able to create endless mods. One such mod I mentioned previously, the popular Counter-Strike.

But this is about Half Life, not it is easy to modify. Half Life's story was fairly simply. You're Doctor Gordon Freeman, a rather low leveled scientist in a top secret facility in Black Mesa, Arizona. Due to a mishap (which you learn in HL2 isn't quite a mishap), you tear open multiple portals to a "world" (in the loosest sense of the world) of Xen, unleashing countless creatures upon your scientist buddies. You now have to escape. At the end you suddenly find yourself in a tram car hurtling through space. A bland looking man, the G-Man, as he is known, is before you, offering you two choices. Stay and do nothing, or go through the door, accept his proposal of a job. You really only have one choice to end the game, go through the door. As you do so, the game ends.

Half Life 2 took quite a while to come out, but it did, and it, thankfully, picked up where things left off. In a sense. Freeman has been in a sort of stasis for about 20 years in the game, so he comes out to a world that's quite a bit different. There he learns much of what truly happened while he pushed the crystal sample under the laser and unleashed hell on Earth. Though some questions are answered, more are asked, and HL2 (and its sequels too) are weaving a great storyline.

That, I think, is a good, even great, sequel. It uses the previous game(s) as a foundation.

The Bad...

I previously wrote a review about the game Tribes. Tribes is a cult classic, and finally spawned a game, Tribes 2. People, such as myself, were quite happy. The game wasn't that hard to emulate, all we wanted was better graphics, more modes to play, the ability to modify it like the first game.

We didn't get much. Graphics were better, yeah. But the game blew otherwise. It tried to have a story. A story for a game whose predecessor was renowned for its multiplayer. It also clamped down on the speed of players, which was a bad move. Tribes players loved the original because you could go extremely fast at times. That's why you had jetpacks, for Pete's sake!

And while mods in the original Tribes had various vehicles, they weren't the main focus. Tribes 2 changed that. And most of the vehicles sucked.

Some say it got better. But for me, I left it.

And the Meh...

Another game I went into previously was Homeworld. In the case of Homeworld 2, it was an expansion that was ok in some regards, meh in others. Story-wise, it was pretty good, expanding upon the story of the Hiigarans and their homeworld, as well as expanding upon the background of their Mothership, the friendly alien Bentusi, and the origins of the warp cores.

However, in my experience anyway, the game kind of failed in the Real Time Strategy portion. Some RTS games are renowned for their need of micromanagement. Homeworld didn't need it, outside of needing to keep track of your ships' fuel amounts (removed in Cataclysm, thank god). Homeworld 2 required a lot of micromanagement and you had to go through various bars to research things.

It wasn't a bad game, by any means, but it wasn't a good game either. There was potential, but it failed.

Final Thoughts
It can be hard to create a sequel. I think the creators have to truly be a part of the game, to love it to create a good sequel. That's not to say there couldn't be flukes. I'm sure there are some awful games created by lovers of the game itself. I couldn't name one as I don't know of one, but I'm sure there's one or two out there.