Do you miss the days of when single player games had sequels within a generation?

Remember when we used to have games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in one generation? Or Resident Evil 2 and 3, Final Fantasy 7,8,9 etc. I guess now that development takes longer, we don't see that as much anymore. It looks like we get one franchise game per generation. Do you miss those days, SW? Or do you like that developers are spending more time on one game?

Thats the biggest problem with this generation. there are very few games in quantity with sequel taking 5 years to develop.

although best sequel this gen is releasing soon that is Doom Eternal.

Hopefully it doesn't get delayed or what else would you play this year? lol

I kind of miss it but I understand games these days have huge budgets and development time.

very few amazing games pop once or twice in years. very few...

Development times have to be taken into account

Sort of. I miss the days when "franchise" wasn't bandied around so much with each new title, and sequels weren't treated as potential liabilities to the value of an IP. When there's so much investment involved, I guess you have to treat IP's with kid gloves though. It's easy to get bored waiting, and often tastes and tech have developed so much in the intervening years that studios are forced to take low-risk, broad appeal approaches to development and rely on the name and marketing to sell sequels.

When even Ass Creed has to take the odd year off, you KNOW development is getting harder/longer/more expensive!

I'm broadly OK with it. Less sequels is probably a good thing. The Last Of Us II and GTAVI and Elder Scrolls 6 will feel more special when they do eventually drop.

No not really and to be honest I hardly even noticed. There’s so many great games coming out these days that I want to play that I really don’t have any down time waiting around for sequels.

As long as the games good I don't care either way.

A lot of these sequels were vastly different too.

If we get sequels now in the span of 2 years you can bet your ass it's just a carbon copy with some UI elements switched around.

A mind blowing one is...

GTAIII, Vice City, San Andreas.

I get where you're coming from, but I don't see that as always being such a bad thing. I'm thinking Crysis -> Crysis Warhead vs. Crysis 2.

But then I suppose you've got Far Cry 3 -> FC 4 etc. I don't know, it's hard to generalise too much.

True, and sometimes sequels took years to make and still turned out really poor. Like Duke Nukem Forever for example.

@R4gn4r0k: Heh, I'd rather not, thanks. Yeah, it's a good example.

There is also the strange case of games that had gold in their hands in the original games and then went a different route for no reason in the sequels

• Dead Space: first one was a horror hit, but as the series progressed it became more action and less horror
• FEAR
• Crysis, like you mentioned. First game was just gold, and I'm playing Crysis 3 right now and keep wondering: where is my power mode? where is my speed mode? The game feels really limiting compared to the original and warhead

I miss it.

But hey, you get ten assassin creed games per gen!!

Honestly I don't really miss it

FEAR was saddest of all.

Hey, we've got this great original FPS, whose expansions are really well received. How about we keep the name and the spooky Alma moments, gut the rest and fill it with the same "tried and tested" dumb elements from every other generic shooter out at the moment... I'm sure if we throw enough money at the presentation and marketing, it's bound to do just great! I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Such a waste.

Ummm.... this thread makes no sense. Do you not pay attention to companies like Ubisoft and their whoring out of franchises each gen?

Two of the greatest games this gen is Divinity: divine Divinity 1+2 came out 2015 and 2017. They shit all over 99,99% of the big budget AAA releases. So no, I guess.

GTA hasn't even had one game this generation :(.

We are reaching diminishing returns in terms of graphics and new gameplay ideas imo. As we’ve seen what people want most are close to photo realism graphics, what the think are good stories and some good gameplay. So the graphics l, voice acting is going to be at the forefront going forward and that takes time and $$

Elder scrolls 6 will probably be next gen and that disappoints me.

Yeah, those were the good old days. Gaming back then was better unlike nowadays where many games are flooded with microtransactions, DLCs, season passes in order to expand its lifespan.

Look at Square-Enix with FF13 saga, they made FFXIII, FFXII-2, FFXII-3 in a single generation. That's right, two sequels in a single generation, no re-releases whatsoever.

DLC covers sequels for the most part. Take gen 6’s Xbox masterpiece Rainbow Six 3. Ubisoft later launched Black Arrow as a stand alone product at full price. By today’s standards, it’s content would be considered DLC as nothing in Black Arrow changed the mechanics of the formula but added additional missions, weapons, modes, and multiplayer maps. All content we’d see today in a season pass or DLC.

You may see it at less content because your disc collection stays the same, but you are getting the same amount of gaming. Perhaps more as additional content is released. And believe it or not, you may be paying less.

Many of those sequels recycled so much content that today they would get blasted for doing so -- except if they're nintendo.

I am not against doing so in principle btw. Sometimes it is necessary to speed up the development while using familiar schemes for a sequel.

It's weird when developers have a really great original idea, execute it well. But then for the follow up they'd rather copy what is popular, and do it in a really bad way :/