Nailing the sequel of a game can be a big time endeavor to embark upon. How do you capitalize on everything built by the first game without simply feeling like a DLC?
And do you switch characters? Keep the same one and the same general game world? What about gameplay style? It’s all very important when building on the foundation of a franchise. Throughout gaming history, there have been many times when a sequel just misses everything about what came before it in its attempt to grow as a game series.
We’re going to check out some sequels today that just did not hit the mark when it comes to fulfilling what the first game built. That doesn’t mean these are bad games, however, as many of them were a success. But it’s about keeping the same tone that the previous game or games had set up before. All of these titles lost something along the way.
10 Fallout 4
No Sense of Self
Fallout 4 took a long while to come out after the amazing success of Fallout 3 and while it was a hit, something was lost over that time period. While the previous game had already shed its old roots of being a turn-based, isometric, full-fledged RPG, there was still a lot of decision-making and ways of affecting the world that made it feel true to the series name.
Fallout 4 pretty much sheds its RPG name completely. The choices are far fewer than in 3, and the game’s joke of a dialogue system is nothing compared to what Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas had to offer. Yes, the character was voiced now, but at what cost? The dialogue options you choose rarely even reflect what is said, and that whole fascinating back and forth that used to take place in previous games has been dumbed down for the masses.
The world also feels a bit different. It seems like more of a horror game than an exploration of the post-apocalypse. There are ghouls by the boatload here, and they’re the most prevalent enemy in the game by a mile. It felt like the encounter variety was gone, losing the excitement of exploring new places in the process.
It was still a good game, but one that felt much less like Fallout 3 and more like a new genre for the Fallout name.
9 Mass Effect 2
Stars of War
Mass Effect 2 is known as the best game in the series, but in terms of a faithful sequel to the first game, I think it changed far too much. The original Mass Effect was an intriguing, wild goose chase of an RPG full of mystery, huge open lands to explore and planets to discover, and a story that was full of unique twists and turns throughout.
Mass Effect 2 instead goes for a Gears of War-style, high-octane action game which leaves many of the RPG elements on the cutting room floor. And the story is far less elaborate than the first game, devolving into what amounts to a version of “We’re gonna need a team” instead of the sophisticated and twist-filled first game that introduced so many fascinating threads that really didn’t get followed up on until the third game.
I know this is the darling of the series, but it lost so much of what made the first game great. I missed exploring planets, finding weird anomalies and discovering hidden bases with stories of their own to tell. The gameplay is undoubtedly sharper in Mass Effect 2, but the feel of the first game is completely lost.
8 Devil May Cry 2
Lost Its Cool
Devil May Cry 2 is one of the all-time misses in terms of video game sequels. While the graphics were better and there were some more moves in Dante’s arsenal this time around, it completely lost the identity of the first game.
Devil May Cry was a pseudo-horror action game full of incredible boss battles, amazing dark and Gothic environments, and a fun if not simple story.
Devil May Cry 2 is instead a boring, straightforward romp through bland city streets, fights against demonic military vehicles, and a tone that simply said the development team was not interested.
That’s largely because this game was made by an entirely different team, so the writing, the fun quips from the first game, and the energy was completely gone in every way. You had two playable characters this time around, but Lucia did nothing to help make this game feel like the boring, lifeless, complete failure of a sequel that this game was.
7 Dead Space 3
All Out of Scares
Dead Space 3 isn’t the worst game in the world, but that’s a tough sell to fans of the franchise who were treated to two games of absolute sci-fi horror excellence prior.
Dead Space 3 decided to instead go to a high budget, action feel instead of the horror that had been established. The result was a game that had co-op but did little else in terms of making a Dead Space game worth playing.
Where was the dark, quiet atmosphere full of mystery and horror? It was gone in favor of action set pieces and brighter vibes, and it seemed like EA forced Visceral Games into something that felt like it was designed to appeal to the masses while alienating everyone.
It wasn’t good enough mechanically to be a third-person shooter like it intended to, and it wasn’t remotely scary enough to appease horror fans. What was left was a sequel that missed just about everything that made the first two great.
6 Resident Evil 6
Every Genre But the One That Matters
Resident Evil 6 is one of the trickier games to evaluate in terms of sequels. On one hand, it’s a sharp controlling, over the top and wild ride through the Resident Evil universe. On the other, it’s utterly lacking just about everything that makes a Resident Evil game a Resident Evil game.
It’s far more fast-paced, with martial arts maneuvers, team-up abilities, and all sorts of things that you’d never find in the first few Resident Evil games. It’s not a bad game, and it’s actually a ton of fun, but it might as well be a different name for the series.
There are zombies, sure, but everything is so fast-paced, and you no longer feel like you’re against the odds. Here, you’re the hammer, not the nail. The ammo is abundant, you have moves to get out of close quarters situations, and you very rarely feel that sort of primal fear that you feel in the original Resident Evil.
5 Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
Destroying the Original
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 is a cinematic experience with visuals so mind-blowing that they are tough to differentiate from real life at points. However, that does not make for a great game.
The first game was filled with puzzles, interesting environments and some fun combat that had a couple of moves for Senua to use. It also had a unique take on the Norse gods and mythology, as it was basically depicted as being all in the head of Senua. There were no witches, supernatural entities, or anything of the sort. It was all something being depicted by her mental condition. It was brilliant, novel, and wildly original.
The sequel, however, goes a very different route. The puzzles are still there, but the environments are much less interesting and combat is so dumbed down that the game basically plays itself. You have fewer moves to use, and now all combat is 1v1 instead of the group battles from the first game. There is also far less of it, and boss fights barely exist as well.
The story is where it really drops the ball, however. Everything from the first game was turned on its head. Suddenly, supernatural entities like giants are real, and people are actively running from and fighting them in different sequences, so it makes it unclear what the point of the first game even is. It’s a terrible decision that almost makes a mockery of what the idea of the first game was really about, and one of the biggest reasons the sequel was not nearly the success the original was.
4 Dying Light 2 Stay Human
The Thrill is Gone
Dying Light 2 Stay Human was such a disappointment for fans of the first entry. Somehow, the parkour felt far worse, as the weightiness that made the first one so engaging to run around in now felt completely gone, and the zombies were not nearly as scary. Traversing in the original game was terrifying, because the zombies actually felt dangerous. On top of that, wandering around at night was a veritable nightmare, because zombies got more powerful and aggressive at night.
In Dying Light 2, it just feels like they were afraid to be scary. It all feels way more structured, with that Ubisoft-type feel to everything. The danger and excitement was gone. Also, there are no guns. At least, there weren’t until an update came after major fan backlash. A zombie game without guns? It just made no sense, and further supported the idea that this game came out far before it was supposed to. It just lost the feeling from the original, and it’s been a long wait for a game to re-define the zombie open world formula since.
3 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
Switching Genres
Ghost Recon Wildlands may be one of the most successful games in the long-running franchise, but it had to shed a lot of its roots to do so. What used to be a slow, tactical, and realistic military sim was now an open-world, run-and-gun, over-the-top action affair.
It’s easily the most accessible game in the series, but it became so by completely selling out. It was the first foray into the open world for the series and things really started to feel like just another Ubisoft game. Gone were the slow but exciting missions that were carefully designed to feel different from moment to moment and instead, you had the freedom to approach quests however you wanted.
You could call in rebels to attack, use air strikes, or go in guns a-blazing, and it was all acceptable here. It increased the freedom tenfold, but lost what Ghost Recon was about in the process. While plenty loved the game, there was also a hardcore section of the fanbase that wanted no part in something that felt awfully close to a third person Far Cry game.
2 Watch Dogs 2
A Neutered World
Watch Dogs 2 is a favorite of the series, but I think it lost everything the original game was trying to do in the process. The first game is a dark, gritty, action thriller involving shadowy organizations and revenge. Watch Dogs 2 is a sun-soaked trip through San Francisco with meme-ish humor, sophomoric writing, and overall, just a way different vibe from the first game.
In Watch Dogs, Dedsec is built up to be this serious, dangerous hacker organization with untold amounts of power. In Watch Dogs 2, Dedsec is revealed to be a group of 20-somethings with loose motivation for doing anything, painfully bad senses of humor, and just a complete tone shift from what we were gearing up for when told about the organization in the first game.
It was so off-putting and Marcus was a far more light-hearted character than Aiden was, yet still could indiscriminately gun down anyone in his path. It didn’t fit, and it never made sense to me.
1 Dragon Age: The Veilguard
A Blight That No Grey Warden Can Defeat
Dragon Age: The Veliguard is the poster child for not doing your homework in the gaming industry. It looked at everything the original three Dragon Age games did and decided, “Nah, we’re good.” The result was a game that reviewed well enough, but burnt down the legacy of one of the most beloved video game franchises in the process.
The tone from the jump is really off, with a vibe that felt distinctly Disney-fied as opposed to the serious and mature tone established for the franchise to that point. It only gets worse from there, as lore is retconned, characters from past games reappear and seem mere shells of themselves, and the plot feels more like the Power Rangers and less like the serious, complex, and twist-filled journeys the first three games in the series set up.
While the combat was fun for a bit, the enemy variety was hilariously awful compared to even the first game, which released in 2009. It lost the plot both literally and figuratively, giving us a terribly underwhelming end to a franchise we’d been waiting a decade to see the end of. While it was a decent enough game on its own, it completely slaughtered the Dragon Age name, and likely doomed the series to never be heard from again.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
