Yeah, I should mention that despite my gripes and totally agreeing with you, I also really like X-2.
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Sequels that ruined the overall story and characters of a series
- Thread starter Baphomet
- Start date
every regular mario character in TTYD is portrayed like ass imo. the game had different writers from PM64 that didn't understand what Mario characters are really about and it really showed. TTYD has some decent originals, but in terms of how it handles the core mario cast, it's one of the worst.
- Mario lost all of his fun little extra flourish animations from 64 and got basically nothing to make up for it, unless lame text choices that don't even work for the character are your thing. TTYD has one of the most unremarkable Marios in the series and, like the white bread JRPG protagonist the game treats him as, every female party member is attracted to him. why did they give mario a harem. it baffles the mind.
- Luigi randomly becomes this incompetent and egocentric type who is ignorant to the suffering he inadvertently causes for other, which is possibly the worst take on Luigi i've ever had to sit through. Even SPM, for how much i dislike its writing, got what Luigi is about. He's a kind-hearted and reluctant hero who can step up to the plate when the chips are down, especially if he has Mario next to him.
- Peach has an amazing portrayal in PM64, actively trying to escape her situation while being critical to Mario's continued success along the way by being the one who figures out the locations of the Star Spirits. TTYD Peach lacks agency, following the directions of a computer (who also falls in love with her), is made to strip naked and run around invisible at one point, and doesn't really accomplish anything at all. Shadow Peach has a cool design though.
- Paper Mario 64 Bowser was the first instance of what I like to call "Modern Bowser". He's the first instance in the games (that I know of) of Bowser personality traits that have become iconic and core to the character today. It's the first instance of Bowser having a crush on Peach, rather than just wanting to seize the mushroom kingdom for power, and he's equal parts silly and competent, which is very easily seen in several of his modern portrayals. Bowser in 64 is puerile, foul-tempered, easily fooled, and generally a goof, but he's also untouchably strong for 95% of the game and conniving enough that, without Peach's assistance, Mario wouldn't have even known where the Star Spirits were hidden. TTYD Bowser is just a joke. Sure, he's a pretty funny one, but he's completely irrelevant to the story to the point that he could be cleanly excised without losing anything (heck you'd probably have better pacing, overall). It's one thing for bowser to get clowned on by new villains to show off their threat level, M&L did it all the time. But he's just sorta... there in TTYD. Also, as a bonus, Kammy Koopa goes from a serious and reasonably competent minion to a wacky senile comedic relief sidekick for bowser to get mad it.
I get why people like TTYD but it'll never not leave a bitter taste in my mouth for how it botches the actual core mario cast.
This but also Shadow's own game was what really ruined his character imo. The alien backstory, the guns and sweat words. Shadow wasn't edgy in SA2 the way he was edgy in Shadow onwards.
Splinter Cell Conviction ruined Third Echelon and Grim. The plot is just completely ridiculous compared to the older games.
Splinter Cell Blacklist turned Sam Fisher into a typical boring Tom Clancy protagonist with no personality due to Ironside not being available. Probably should have went with a new agent.
Splinter Cell Blacklist turned Sam Fisher into a typical boring Tom Clancy protagonist with no personality due to Ironside not being available. Probably should have went with a new agent.
Third Birthday for sure.
Changing Maeda from a shy, but well meaning and good natured dude into a borderline sexual predator might be one of the worst character assassinations I've seen in gaming.
I'll go with Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. For a game by a bunch of fans that was as slavishly devoted to respecting the source material as this game it sure liked fucking with what worked for no reason.
Bro, I feel so betrayed right now.
Bro, I feel so betrayed right now.
There was something really appealing to me about Lightning Returns and how it was just such a strange departure for the characters and setting. It was like some strange fan fiction that got turned into a game. Not that I'm saying it's the quality of fan fiction, but just that it seems like some bizarre OC versions of the main cast.
I do have a real fondness for that game, though I don't really think its very good.
Yes, clearly that game and not this one:
Honestly never heard of it. What is it?
But that's backwards. Baby's-First-Science-Kit Ema is vastly inferior to Disillusioned-and-Apathetic-but-Somehow-Still-Immature Ema.
Thank you. Yes, ST shits on WWs amazing end and I hated it for that.
Spirit Tracks, as a direct sequel, ignores THE WHOLE POINT of Wind Waker.
i've warned you in the past of my scorching hot paper mario takes
these flames don't choose who they burn
FFXIII-2 destroyed Lightning. LR made her even worse, although I gotta admit her ending was pretty emotional to me all the same lol
Mass Effect 3, a game I still adore, made two critical narrative errors as far as I'm concerned that seriously diminished the previous exposition and intrigue.
Strike one was the Geth, and the choice to take them on a Pinocchio journey. The Geth were fascinating precisely because they were an intelligence that was totally alien in function and form of consciousness. Mass Effect 2 in particular explores this in an interesting way, with Legion challenging Shepard on a perception of consciousness and identity, the importance of not projecting a bias formed from the standard biological evolution of consciousness on the unique Geth experience, and the inherent dissonance between biological and machine intelligence and challenges of forming a future together. The Geth are pursuing a unique consciousness singularity, as a sense of purpose, in a way that biological organisms cannot. Mass Effect 3 completely uproots this narrative, and for all AI too including EDI, by transitioning the theme of consciousness to rigid biological constraints and forcing the Geth to pursue a sense of identity identical to our own. It completely abandons the uniquely alien yet totally plausible intrigue of their form of conscious for a dumb, whimsical, and overly romanticised idea of conscious limited entirely by our own existence. That the Geth's "solution" to their form is to just become exactly like us is an awful, uninspired, and completely vapid erosion of the great framework established before.
Strike two is the Reapers, because BioWare clearly had no fucking idea what to do with them. I don't subscribe to the notion that the Reapers need to be magical, but the way they're presented in Mass Effect 1 and 2 is in deep contrast to how they're resolved in Mass Effect 3. They begin as an omnipotent, powerful, and intimidating species that for all intents and purposes can be assumed to be an apex species (maybe the very first apex species) that views other living creatures like ants (a very real philosophical concept in AI theory) to be consumed for energy and resources, nothing more. By the time Mass Effect 3 is coming to its conclusion they're no longer an intimidating threat, but a runaway AI process aimed at preserving organic material that doesn't actually mean any harm at all. This idea is fine on paper, and the Leviathan DLC adds substance; a plot involving a runaway AI coming to unintended unethical conclusions based on prerequisite functions and goals set by its creators is not an original idea, but it's tried and true and again a theory in AI. But Mass Effect never, ever, not once implies, hints at, or presents the Reapers as anything less than totally conscious, deliberate, methodical, and overly intimidating and ruthless with a fully formed perception of organics. That being organics are disposable fuel and nothing more. It's the worst of twists because it's not reasonable or believable, has no substance given what came before, and seems to only exist to reframe the Reapers in a way that surprises the player and challenges them to think. The problem here being good stories need substance to pull that off, they need plausibility and logic for the twist to be believable, and with Mass Effect 3 it was like they just inserted a random idea for the Reapers right at the end that it's total contest with everything that came before.
So yeah. I know others will be a lot pickier and put scrutiny on many more narrative beats within the trilogy; characters, arcs, Shepard, etc. But those are the two that stand out and bug me the most, because they're the ones that left me very unsatisfied and can't readily be "fixed". They're highly indicative of writers who, for some reason, decided in the very last chapter that narrative threads would be about something entirely different from what they started, at the cost of the most intriguing and fascinating science fiction ideas.
Strike one was the Geth, and the choice to take them on a Pinocchio journey. The Geth were fascinating precisely because they were an intelligence that was totally alien in function and form of consciousness. Mass Effect 2 in particular explores this in an interesting way, with Legion challenging Shepard on a perception of consciousness and identity, the importance of not projecting a bias formed from the standard biological evolution of consciousness on the unique Geth experience, and the inherent dissonance between biological and machine intelligence and challenges of forming a future together. The Geth are pursuing a unique consciousness singularity, as a sense of purpose, in a way that biological organisms cannot. Mass Effect 3 completely uproots this narrative, and for all AI too including EDI, by transitioning the theme of consciousness to rigid biological constraints and forcing the Geth to pursue a sense of identity identical to our own. It completely abandons the uniquely alien yet totally plausible intrigue of their form of conscious for a dumb, whimsical, and overly romanticised idea of conscious limited entirely by our own existence. That the Geth's "solution" to their form is to just become exactly like us is an awful, uninspired, and completely vapid erosion of the great framework established before.
Strike two is the Reapers, because BioWare clearly had no fucking idea what to do with them. I don't subscribe to the notion that the Reapers need to be magical, but the way they're presented in Mass Effect 1 and 2 is in deep contrast to how they're resolved in Mass Effect 3. They begin as an omnipotent, powerful, and intimidating species that for all intents and purposes can be assumed to be an apex species (maybe the very first apex species) that views other living creatures like ants (a very real philosophical concept in AI theory) to be consumed for energy and resources, nothing more. By the time Mass Effect 3 is coming to its conclusion they're no longer an intimidating threat, but a runaway AI process aimed at preserving organic material that doesn't actually mean any harm at all. This idea is fine on paper, and the Leviathan DLC adds substance; a plot involving a runaway AI coming to unintended unethical conclusions based on prerequisite functions and goals set by its creators is not an original idea, but it's tried and true and again a theory in AI. But Mass Effect never, ever, not once implies, hints at, or presents the Reapers as anything less than totally conscious, deliberate, methodical, and overly intimidating and ruthless with a fully formed perception of organics. That being organics are disposable fuel and nothing more. It's the worst of twists because it's not reasonable or believable, has no substance given what came before, and seems to only exist to reframe the Reapers in a way that surprises the player and challenges them to think. The problem here being good stories need substance to pull that off, they need plausibility and logic for the twist to be believable, and with Mass Effect 3 it was like they just inserted a random idea for the Reapers right at the end that it's total contest with everything that came before.
So yeah. I know others will be a lot pickier and put scrutiny on many more narrative beats within the trilogy; characters, arcs, Shepard, etc. But those are the two that stand out and bug me the most, because they're the ones that left me very unsatisfied and can't readily be "fixed". They're highly indicative of writers who, for some reason, decided in the very last chapter that narrative threads would be about something entirely different from what they started, at the cost of the most intriguing and fascinating science fiction ideas.
Can't help there as I haven't played the game/series haha
it's so weird that dirge of cerberus and crisis core came out around the same time because crisis core is so good at expanding on the established lore and dirge of cerberus is so, so bad
I googled it, seems to be some kind of adventure game with locked room puzzles.
In MGS4, quite a few characters regressed back to their old despondent selves from previous games. Take Raiden for example:
One of the biggest messages of MGS2 was about finding something important to pass on to the future. Raiden finally ends up finding that something with Rose and their child in the ending scene of MGS2. Other people (Solidus, The Patriots) have been writing Raiden's story for his whole life. But now he's given a chance to break away from his dark + violent past and write his own story with a bright new future. Then MGS4 comes along and takes a huge steaming Johnny sized crap on all of that....Raiden ends up abandoning Rose and their future together, he becomes a mechanical cyborg because reasons, and he goes right back to all the fighting and killing which is exactly what Snake insisted he not do at the end of MGS2.
A visual novel tied around escape room puzzle, player choice, and some other spoilery scenarios. The first two games has very interesting characters, arcs, and overall plot, but the third was bad when all these loose ends were tied together. As a man once said, "Life is simply unfair."
Still worth playing, even if the third game destroys the story, characters, plot of the first two.
I was just about to post Prototype 2. The story went from something that had interesting places it could go to what the hell do you do next? That sucks because I enjoyed the gameplay.
I feel like I'm the only one in the world that really enjoyed both Danganronpa V3 and ZTD. I really liked what ZTD with returning characters and tying things together especially, though I felt it was incredibly budget constrained and am annoyed it has a sequel bait non-ending when it was clear there would be no sequel. And strangely enough I didn't like the story of VLR that much, though I felt it clearly by far had the best escape rooms.
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep. It's the turning point in the series storytelling, where we went from a series of tragedies about kids growing up and how friendships are hard and take work, to... a world where nobody dies, filled with friends who are friends because they're friends.
At least UnionX has a murder mystery and characters with real goals and motivations to get invested in.
At least UnionX has a murder mystery and characters with real goals and motivations to get invested in.
First post nails it.
Halo 4 had some neat ideas but holy shit Halo 5. What were they thinking...
Metal Gear has done this several times over
MGS4
- The identity of the Patriots
- Edgy, mutilated cyborg Raiden
- Everything Naomi (UGH)
- Big Boss(!)
MGSPW
- Everything centered around The Boss and her legacy.
MGS5
- Ocelot. I just can't look at him the same way. He used to be so interesting, but this lame version sucked all the fun out of a once charasmatic wild card.
- Big Boss being a lame passive do-nothing. Again.
- The final, hugely unnecessary twist that further strips away a major aspect of Big Boss that used to make him interesting.
MGS4
- The identity of the Patriots
- Edgy, mutilated cyborg Raiden
- Everything Naomi (UGH)
- Big Boss(!)
MGSPW
- Everything centered around The Boss and her legacy.
MGS5
- Ocelot. I just can't look at him the same way. He used to be so interesting, but this lame version sucked all the fun out of a once charasmatic wild card.
- Big Boss being a lame passive do-nothing. Again.
- The final, hugely unnecessary twist that further strips away a major aspect of Big Boss that used to make him interesting.
Mass Effect 3 affected the series negatively imo. Andromeda also, but it's also kind of separate from the main trilogy.