Games That Have Nowhere Left To Go

[The Blackangel]

The idea for this thread came to me while I was replying to @Yaramaki's thread Videogame Franchises that outstayed their welcome?

There are a lot of game series that the developers have shot themselves in the foot with. One of the biggest examples is the RDR franchise. Not counting Red Dead Revolver, the first RDR had a lot of promise to starting up a new series. But at the end of it, things really had nowhere to go, considering the time frame it would take place in. So then RDR2 came out which was a prequel. Now what? A prequel to a prequel? A sequel to the first one? Is Jack going to run with Al Capone? Is he going to be a lawyer like his mother wanted? RDR has absolutely nowhere to go now. Unless something huge happens, it's dead. Maybe they'll release a game from the viewpoint of the O'Driscolls. That one wouldn't sell as everyone is more attached to the Van der Linde gang at this point.

What are some others that have left themselves nowhere to go?

[Withywarlock]

I'd mentioned this in the other thread, but it fits here just as well: Space Hulk. The idea being that you play as the Imperium of Man's Terminator-armoured Space Marines. They are the best of the best of the Adeptus Astartes or so we're told, but in all of the Space Hulk games save for two (Vengeance of the Blood Angels and Deathwing) they get shredded to pieces as easily as the genestealers they're supposed to go up against.

That's all Space Hulk is: board floating debris in the vastness of space and burn aliens in righteous promethium fire. Be it in first person or in a turn-based tactics game, it's been done to death and for long enough. If you try do anything else with it, it's just a Warhammer game, and not Space Hulk.

[Yaramaki]

16 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

The idea for this thread came to me while I was replying to @Yaramaki's thread Videogame Franchises that outstayed their welcome?

There are a lot of game series that the developers have shot themselves in the foot with. One of the biggest examples is the RDR franchise. Not counting Red Dead Revolver, the first RDR had a lot of promise to starting up a new series. But at the end of it, things really had nowhere to go, considering the time frame it would take place in. So then RDR2 came out which was a prequel. Now what? A prequel to a prequel? A sequel to the first one? Is Jack going to run with Al Capone? Is he going to be a lawyer like his mother wanted? RDR has absolutely nowhere to go now. Unless something huge happens, it's dead. Maybe they'll release a game from the viewpoint of the O'Driscolls. That one wouldn't sell as everyone is more attached to the Van der Linde gang at this point.

What are some others that have left themselves nowhere to go?

I don't know about you but rockstar can still do a lot with the Rdr franchise but the question is will rockstar do something with it other then a remaster of the first rdr and maybe a remake of revolver. Pretty sure the online part of rdr 2 did below rockstar's expectation and was probably something they wanted to keep going for another couple of years to come.

If you start thinking outside the box like what happened to Sadie and charles after the first game, where do they both end up? how about Landon Ricketts pretty sure you could go back in time and make a whole rdr game about him like lead it up until the point he meets john in the first game. I feel like we've seen enough of the Van der linde gang now, maybe it's time for something completly new. 

My apoligies as that was quite offtopic from my part, i just coulden't help myself.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Yaramaki

[Yaramaki]

To stick to the topic

Crash Bandicoot seems like a franchise that has nowhere left to go anymore, The remasters were good, the recent one Crash bandicoot 4 : it's about time was also fairly good but i feel like what more can you possible do with Crash bandicoot as a character and a series like how much appeal does Crash bandicoot have towards a younger audience. I'd say the same about the spyro series but i'm afraid a certain somebody will likely want to have my head so i'll leave the little purple dragon alone (for now).

Mario party could also be a decent fit for this thread, everything that could have possibly done with the mario party franchise has been done, i don't doubt nintendo will reinvent themselves at some point but until that happens it's another franchise that has nowhere left to go.

The first 3 games of Mass effect also comes to my mind, Where to the point all there is to be said has been said and the series wrapped up nice enough to give it a rest. Sure the world and lore of mass effect is too good to waste and not do something with it, but bioware can't afford another andromeda fiasco because that would push the series into the requirements needed to list it into this thread. 

Same could be said about the Witcher franchise as Geralt his story is done.

Edited July 29, 2022 by Yaramaki

[Withywarlock]

40 minutes ago, Yaramaki said:

I'd say the same about the spyro series but i'm afraid a certain somebody will likely want to have my head so i'll leave the little purple dragon alone (for now).

I'm That Guy™ (AKA Herald of the Amethyst Drake), but in all seriousness there's not a whole lot you can do mechanics-wise. The elemental breaths introduced in Enter the Dragonfly were at their best in in the next instalment A Hero's Tail. Enhancing his core abilities was done in The Legend of Spyro trilogy and in Skylanders especially. Any new ideas mostly involve vehicles (Enter the Dragonfly, Spyro: Fusion/The Cortex Conspiracy) or new characters (...so not a Spyro game).

The most you can do with Spyro today is more of the same which isn't necessarily bad like in the sense of my earlier nomination with Space Hulk which is literally the same ruleset repeated. As you go on to say with Crash Bandicoot, you can't take the characters further but the level design and challenges you absolutely can. Why there's not been more in the way of DLC for their respective remasters I've no idea.

[Kane99]

21 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

The idea for this thread came to me while I was replying to @Yaramaki's thread Videogame Franchises that outstayed their welcome?

There are a lot of game series that the developers have shot themselves in the foot with. One of the biggest examples is the RDR franchise. Not counting Red Dead Revolver, the first RDR had a lot of promise to starting up a new series. But at the end of it, things really had nowhere to go, considering the time frame it would take place in. So then RDR2 came out which was a prequel. Now what? A prequel to a prequel? A sequel to the first one? Is Jack going to run with Al Capone? Is he going to be a lawyer like his mother wanted? RDR has absolutely nowhere to go now. Unless something huge happens, it's dead. Maybe they'll release a game from the viewpoint of the O'Driscolls. That one wouldn't sell as everyone is more attached to the Van der Linde gang at this point.

What are some others that have left themselves nowhere to go?

RDR has a lot of places to go. We've already explored how John's story started out with RDR2, and how it ended in RDR1. But they could always go back 10-20 years to see the start of Dutch's gang, hell maybe we can actually play as Dutch himself. Though I don't think gamers want to really play as Dutch. But we could see this world from new eyes, just like what we got with Arthur. Hell, give us younger Arthur as a playable character. 

Or, it could be a whole new story in the RDR world with completely new people. Or, we could be put into the shoes of one of the other characters in RDR. Who is left alive in RDR1? Maybe we go back further in time to see what some of the other gang members rise to fame was. 

5 hours ago, Yaramaki said:

I don't know about you but rockstar can still do a lot with the Rdr franchise but the question is will rockstar do something with it other then a remaster of the first rdr and maybe a remake of revolver. Pretty sure the online part of rdr 2 did below rockstar's expectation and was probably something they wanted to keep going for another couple of years to come.

If you start thinking outside the box like what happened to Sadie and charles after the first game, where do they both end up? how about Landon Ricketts pretty sure you could go back in time and make a whole rdr game about him like lead it up until the point he meets john in the first game. I feel like we've seen enough of the Van der linde gang now, maybe it's time for something completly new. 

My apoligies as that was quite offtopic from my part, i just coulden't help myself.

Nah, they clearly had no intentions of supporting RDR2 online all too long. From the get go, online was a chore to play, and it took Rockstar forever to kinda help get things going. They gave us gold bars, and guns, clothes and other free stuff once in a while. But rarely bothered to release DLC for the online mode, which is what they seem to continue doing for GTA Online. 

I think how slow the online mode is, is what caused Rockstar to not keep up with it. On top of that, you can't get too crazy in RDR2 online. with GTA V you can have rocket bikes, flying cars, jetpacks and so on. But RDR2, you're limited to horses and the stuff you could use in that time. I don't think you can even fast travel unless you're in a passive mode or something. 

Either way, RS didn't show it enough support from the start, and they never cared to listen to fans when we asked to make it less of a grind and to give us more to do. 

And for sure, there's a lot of spin-off stories you could go to. I mean, we didn't know who Arthur was before the game, so we could always go with a prequel that tells a story about another character. There's a lot a RDR3 could be. 

[The Blackangel]

5 hours ago, Yaramaki said:

Pretty sure the online part of RDR2 did below Rockstar's expectation

RDR2 Online was a massive flop. There are die hard gamers who play it, but they are few and far between. It didn't generate subscriptions anywhere near what Rockstar thought it would. They saw it as a money making scheme, but it has so far ended up costing them more than they've made. It's why on the website for a long time they were trying to sell gold bars. To lure people into playing the game.

But since the online version failed, and the game wraps up with John building a house and back into the outlaw life, which leads up to the events in RDR, they still have nowhere left. Like I said, Jack would be in the 1920's era, which offers nothing.