Just to be completely up front here, I’m totally about to rip off an idea from Alex’s sequel article from last week. “In the biz” we like to just think of it as “expanding” or, in this instance, “making it better.” But really, I’m pretty much just taking a good point he had and running with it because we really didn’t get to give it the time it deserved on the last episode. Of course, I would never tell him it was a good point so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either. So without further adieu, we begin our look at game sequels and the stories they never give us.
It’s no secret that the name of the game these days is franchise. Every publisher in the industry is looking for that one magical game that they can turn into a multiple-release, money-printing powerhouse. This seems to happen so much in fact that developers are even starting to conceptualize their games as multiple-release epics before the first entry even hits store shelves. When this happens, the game’s story often remains extremely open-ended until the last entry. This does nothing but leave gamers with an unsatisfying play experience and a two year case of anxiety as they wait for the next entry that they hope is coming. I’m here to tell those developers who are playing this mean trick on us one thing. Cut the shit! The video game industry is a fickle mistress, and you never really know which games are going to get sequels and which will be a one-and-done. Therefore, from a narrative standpoint, give players a complete enough narrative so that they feel justified for having just spent $60 on your game.
If you think I’m being overly harsh here, I’m pretty sure I only need to utter one word, and you’ll see my point: Shenmue. Originally billed as a multi-chapter, multi-game opus from famed creator Yu Suzuki, Shenmue’s tale of Ryo Hazuki and his search for the man who murdered his father never got to come to an end. While two installments were released, the second ends in a cliffhanger that has caused the game to always rank high on fanboy wish lists. However, due to its huge budget and lukewarm sales, the third game has only ever seen the earliest stages of development and currently has no steam behind it at all.
This is highly unfair, and potentially unethical, of developers and publishers to do to players. While I can respect the ambition to create games of this size and scope, I don’t respect any developer that can’t deliver on their promise of completing the series. We don’t accept this from other types of narrative media so why would we accept it from games. You wouldn’t go pay for a movie ticket knowing that you were only going to be shown the first two thirds of the film. So why are we expected to shell out six times that amount to play a game that has no intention of giving us a decent ending?
Now before you jump down my throat about The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and other film franchises that have planned sequels, let’s look at how those projects were and are being carried out. Each movie in those franchises have been adapted from existing works, and those existing works are already written in ways that adhere to successful formulas for dramatic structure. So anyone paying to see those films knows what they are getting into. The established fan base maintains a demand for these films, thereby giving viewers a sense of security that all the parts will be released.
Looking at this release strategy from strictly monetary terms, a developer that has no intention of giving you a complete story/experience until the last title is charging you $180 for their complete product, assuming it’s a trilogy. $180?! Have you ever thought it was a good idea to pay $180 to play any game, watch any movie or hear any story? I didn’t think so. But even assuming that you are ok with the practice, let’s say the last game, like Shenmue 3, never comes out. Now you’re down over a hundred bucks with nothing to show for it.
All the best trilogies in history stem from a solid first entry that was then built upon for later sequels. It’s pretentious to assume that your game/movie/story is so great that it will hold an audience’s attention, not to mention their money, for two more entries. So all the best ones don’t make this assumption. Look at the first entries in the greatest trilogies of all time and how they ended on a note that gives fans enough closure so that if there were never going to be another installment, they can walk away happy. Luke blows up the Death Star. Neo kills Agent Smith. Ripley kills the alien. Sure each one left plenty of room for sequels, but they also gave the audience a cathartic enough ending that they felt satisfied with what they had seen and didn’t require more movies to feel like they had gotten their fill.
So are there any games that have done this whole trilogy thing properly? Yes, and it took the power of a god to make it happen. The God of War trilogy is a shining example of how to execute a proper trilogy in the game industry. The first God of War gives players a story that is epic unto itself and an ending that put a stamp on the story, all the while leaving just enough room for a sequel should fans have wanted one. It even got the second game’s story right by employing the trilogy tool of leaving the second a little more open ended than the first, but it still gave players a feeling of completion and success at the end. And of course, the recently released God of War 3 puts the bow on top of the whole narrative package. Each game tells a complete three-act dramatic story keeping in line with the story of the trilogy. It’s the only fair way for developers to do it.
Developers are only recently figuring out how to put a satisfying story into a single game. It seems like assuming they can stretch one out for multiple games that we are all expected to pay $60 each for is definitely putting the cart before the horse. And even then, those great single narrative games are still few and far between. I know that on Pixelosophy we often plead with developers to take their game narratives as far as they can, and that remains true. But there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. Getting players to shell out their hard earned money for an incomplete experience is absolutely the wrong way. Give us a reason to play another entry by making the first one the total package. The trick is to leave players wanting more based on the experience you gave them; not needing more because of the experience you didn’t give them.