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How to Make a Great Sequel


deanb
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http://gamrfeed.vgch...-a-good-sequel/

 

Decent article that breaks down it's reasoning.

 

For those who can't be bothered to read the full thing the rules he came up with for making a good sequel (not necessarily for a financially better, just higher reviews) are:

1) Don't spend too much time on development.

2) Change your engine every so often, and if you can, use one that you've developed yourself.

3) Try to keep the team the same, especially if the original was good.

4) Don't get rid of the parts of the original that people loved.

5) Don't try to evolve too much and forget what made the original great.

6) Improve everything, because one bad aspect can bring the whole game crashing down.

So, do you agree with these rules, would you add or amend any?

Also any other sequels you think fit the bill quite well?

p.s it'd be best if Yante, Chew and probs a couple others don't read the article.

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Well you're in luck, I can't read the article. (I'm assuming it is praising Uncharted 2 though...) I think the best examples of great sequels are recent. Assassin's Creed 2 listened to the wealth of criticism about the first game and then grew and changed based on that without leaving behind what the fan base loved about the original. It's probably one of the best examples of doing a sequel right.

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Yeah Yante AC2 is on the list with a jump of 78 to a 90 (then to 91 in Brotherhood)

 

AC3 should prove his theory right or wrong specifically for rule number 3 since Patrice has now left for greener pastures.

The two year rule I think is one of the more important. 2 years is a good time to make a game in. 1 year could end up too short, you push out so many and it can start to become stale. There's only 2 football games and billions of footy fans, but for FPS games you've got something like 15 or so high profile FPS games out next year, some of them really spicing up the formula, so a yearly deal is going to start to wear thin. And of course if you wait too long, it builds such unimaginable levels of hype. GT5, FFXIII, DNF n Ep3 all have this.

Actually for most of the series the FF games fit pretty close to all of these. Recently the rules the series has adhered to has started to drop like flies, and thus the ratings to the point where XIV happened.

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The single year cycle (outside of sports games) is only usually done with two separate development teams which already violates one of his other rules. I am not a fan of the way that COD alternates development teams.

 

Final Fantasy also kind of violates the rule too just because a lot of the original team has been gone for some time.

Edited by Yantelope
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Yeah but with FF it's been for the most part a gentle change, you still had like 80% of the team going into the millennium. But now it's changed so drastically and long term folks dropping off here n there. I don't think his rules expect people to be working at the same company for 25 years :P

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