Rant: Sequel-itis - A Deadly Disease

Recently, I've come up with a whole list of topics I felt deserved a good rant. Things like open-world “versus” linear titles and the growing popularity of eSports as spectator sports. However, this article from Monday put me in an entirely different mood.

As per reports from A-List Daily, while talking about their investment in new titles such as Watch_Dogs, Tony Key (VP of Sales and Marketing for Ubisoft) stated “We won't even start if we don't think we can build a franchise out of it.”

My first reaction was to congratulate Mr. Key for putting himself one step closer to the level of Bobby Kotick, the head douche-nozzle that's been running Activision for the last several years. The man that coined the term “annualizable”. Then I realized that I wasn't quite being fair. Tony Key had merely been public about what the rest of video gaming's publishers were already doing. The trend of spitting out sequel after sequel after sequel even as a franchise is on its deathbed (see: Guitar Hero) is nothing particularly new to the industry.

Publishers have contracted this deadly case of Sequelitis because they're so terrified of the financial risk involved. “What if nobody likes it? What if we don't make a profit?” are the first questions, but these same questions should be asked before REBOOTING a series that already has a fanbase. The Tomb Raider reboot designed by Crystal Dynamics was a financial disaster, and that game sold 3.6 million copies! SquareEnix took no risk and reaped no reward simply because they didn't do their homework.

And while I can scream and cry about the publishers who aren't willing to take a gamble on a game no one has heard about, it's also the responsibility of the developer as well. Example: Dontnod's Remember Me. This game had a wide variety of interesting concepts both new and old, like the combo lab and the ability to “remix” memories. The biggest issue with it was that the game was FUCKING AWFUL. The combo lab was poorly designed and only allowed the use of a single “pressen” (button) once throughout your entire repertoire of combos instead of once per combo. Memory remixing was a good idea, but was vastly underused. Giving the protagonist the ability to alter people's memories and hardly using the mechanic with the exception of story purposes is frustrating for the player. Imagine playing Infamous or Prototype where you only were allowed to use your badass mutant powers during boss fights.

I also take issue with how the industry has begun to design games to have sequels. This has become a problem because when you build in a cliff-hanger ending to a game that ends up on the D-list, you end up disappointing and frustrating the players that DID enjoy the game and now have no closure to the story, and never will. Bulletstorm did this and I was pissed.  It's not like that game had a particularly fulfilling story to begin with.  But ending it with a cliffhanger that was supposed to lead into a sequel was bullshit.  The game was garbage and while I had fun playing it, there was little to no chance that I or anyone else was going to pick up a sequel even if one was ever made.  Just fucking end the damn thing.  Give me some kind of closure and let me know that the story is finished.  The day is saved (or lost) and I can raise my glass to the fallen. 

Games should be open and shut like cases and frankly I feel like the only people that still embrace this even on occasion are the Japanese.  Sure, SquareEnix shits out Final Fantasy's almost annually, but they're all self-contained stories and most have started to change mechanics dramatically.  Example: the trailer for FFXV looks like Devil May Cry and Kingdom Hearts got together and made a fucked-up flipper baby.  Even your Zelda's don't leave much to the imagination.  Link saves the day and the princess is saved.  Couple years later we'll throw him in an alternate dimension, change a FEW mechanics and start the whole thing over again with a different flavor.

All things considered though, no one, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NO ONE embodies all of these things for which I fight better than SUDA 51 (CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture).  Let me just give you a crash course in titles released in the US that have been written and directed by him.

Killer7 - The assassin Harman Smith has a unique ability.  He is actually 7 different people in one.  Through some crazy-ass psychological disorder, when Harman's different personalities shift, so does his physical form.  Through the use of their different abilities, they hunt the "terrorist" Kun Lan and his evil gang of "Heaven Smiles" (which are basically really creepy zombie suicide bombers).  The game plays like some weird bastardization between a rails-shooter and Resident Evil.  Coupled with its cel-shaded graphics and incoherent story, this was one hell of a game that left me wanting to know more by its end.

No More Heroes - The only Grasshopper Manufacture game in recent history to have a direct sequel.  The game puts you in the shoes of Travis Touchdown, an otaku geek who won a "beam katana" (see: LIGHTSABER) on eBay and gets flung into the world of competitive assassins.  The term assassin is used loosely.  It basically applies to any murderous psychopath.  Over the course of the game, Travis locks horns with a cyborg, a schoolgirl, a superhero, and a sexual deviant all in the name of becoming the top assassin in the UAA (United Assassin's Association).  The sequel plays on roughly the same story.  Travis has been away for a few years and during his hiatus, he's dropped to 51st in the UAA.  He then picks up his quest to return to the top.

Shadows of the Damned - A game headed by the creative dream-team of Shinji Mikami (Director of Resident Evil 1-4) and SUDA51, with Akira Yamaoka (composer for the vast majority of the Silent Hill series) doing the game's music.  This game was part survival-horror, part "action-adventure" and all dick jokes.  After demon hunter Garcia Hotspur's girlfriend is kidnapped by demon Lord Fleming, he decides to kick down the doors to hell and rescue her himself.  Accompanied by his faithful companion Johnson (who can turn into a motorcycle and various firearms, amongst other things), the duo do battle with all manner of the undead to save Garcia's love.

Lollipop Chainsaw - Cheerleader Juliet Starling wakes up the morning of her 18th birthday and heads off to high school.  Only to find that a zombie apocalypse has befallen her city!  No worries though, she's been trained since birth for this kind of thing.  With her trusty rainbow chainsaw and her newly decapitated boyfriend's talking head, Juliet fights back against what are effectively the zombie horsemen of the apocalypse.  These horsemen are all themed after different music genres (there's even a funky poppy zombie that speaks only in autotune). 

Look, the point I'm trying to get at here is WHAT THE FUCK.  SUDA51 is responsible for some completely absurd shit.  Multiple personality assassins, geeks with lightsabers, and chainsaw wielding cheerleaders?  And yet he's the CEO of his own developer and still gets games localized in America. WHO KEEPS FUNDING THIS GUY?  There's no potential for sequels!  There's hardly any potential for sales.  SUDA51 is great at 3 things: 1) character design - every single character from the protagonist to every single boss is interesting and unique. 2) incoherent story - even after finishing a SUDA51 game, you always find yourself wanting to know more about what the fuck just happened.  This is what the internet is for kids. 3) Terrible to mediocre gameplay - Killer7 was clunky as shit.  The game was a long walk down a hallway, during which you occasionally had to scan for enemies so as to not get blown up.  No More Heroes could have played better with more than just one attack button.  There was some potential to be a stylish beat 'em up like Devil May Cry here, but it was wasted.  Shadows of the Damned played like Resident Evil 4, which would have been significantly better if the game had been scary.  Giving a third-person shooter bad mechanics does not instantly make it survival horror.  Lollipop Chainsaw was almost good.  The biggest issue I had with it was that most of the combos that you unlock over the course of the game should have been given to you from the start.  At the beginning you feel like you're playing a clunky, nerfed version of a stylish beat 'em up.  By the end, you've almost scratched the surface of something as comprehensive as Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. 

Despite that last point, SUDA51 gets to keep making games.  He's even got one in development for this generation called Killer is Dead.  In today's market that's oversaturated with brown-n-gray shooters and annual sequels, I am overburdened with joy that someone like SUDA51 exists to continue giving us whatever wacky shit that comes to mind.  And that he continues to be "successful".