My thoughts on sequels in general:
I was originally hoping that this game would have centered around whatever Ruvik got up to when he escaped STEM/Mobius/Beacon in the first game. I thought maybe he'd have looked into something similar to what you suggest, where manifesting his will from his mind came to be in the real world -- or that he found a way to do the Wireless STEM like Beacon but at will using just his mind so he could instantly drag people in to some dark realm where he just steam rolls them with their greatest fears. A bit like Scarecrow from the Batman comics/series in a way.
That said, with this game, if they'd written it a little different, they could've done something similar... where Ruvik was a ghost in the machine... maybe possessing psychopaths and using them to try to get to the core. Think along the lines of horcruxes from the HP series, a bit, I guess? Twist ending, he shows up when you survive the boss rush and Theodore bursts into flames.
Where they are now? It's hard to say. Some new corporation could come in to take over what Mobius was doing and they wouldn't miss a beat, but it'd be hard to get Sebastian to go into the Matrix again. They'd be better off doing something along the wireless STEM from the Beacon incident and having people get pulled in unknowingly... almost like some Nightmare on Elm Street fall asleep and not realize you're dreaming and Freddie has taken control.
Or Ruvik could show up to try to pick up the pieces and do something sinister... maybe he has a grudge against Sebastian for the events in TEW in some fashion and decides to pull him in again... they really need to make some crazy stuff up to get it to work in it's current state though. It felt a lot like they were just trying to tie everything up from the first game (outside of what happened to Ruvik and Joseph after Beacon), so that makes me think they think they might not get to make another game in this series.
That said, with this game, if they'd written it a little different, they could've done something similar... where Ruvik was a ghost in the machine... maybe possessing psychopaths and using them to try to get to the core. Think along the lines of horcruxes from the HP series, a bit, I guess? Twist ending, he shows up when you survive the boss rush and Theodore bursts into flames.
Where they are now? It's hard to say. Some new corporation could come in to take over what Mobius was doing and they wouldn't miss a beat, but it'd be hard to get Sebastian to go into the Matrix again. They'd be better off doing something along the wireless STEM from the Beacon incident and having people get pulled in unknowingly... almost like some Nightmare on Elm Street fall asleep and not realize you're dreaming and Freddie has taken control.
Or Ruvik could show up to try to pick up the pieces and do something sinister... maybe he has a grudge against Sebastian for the events in TEW in some fashion and decides to pull him in again... they really need to make some crazy stuff up to get it to work in it's current state though. It felt a lot like they were just trying to tie everything up from the first game (outside of what happened to Ruvik and Joseph after Beacon), so that makes me think they think they might not get to make another game in this series.
I'm not sure if Guardian respawns indefinitely there... but either way, it's a righteous bullet sponge without a stealth option. The best method for getting gel is to just cruise into NG+ if you like it enough to keep going. After finishing Nightmare and doing NG+ to get the rest of the upgrade and weapons related achievements, by the time I was in chapter 6 I had fully upgraded my entire skill tree and had at least 80k gel to spare. High quality weapons parts were the pain in the ass. I would've been done with the game outside of the classic run by chapter 3/4 of NG+ if I could've found one more. I didn't get it til chapter 6 though.
