Friday, August 19, 2016

Five Game-Related Things I'd Like To See In My Lifetime (2016 Update)

ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 2010. New comments will be in bold.

I'll say it right now: I'm tired of all the ports and remasters in the game industry currently. I enjoy creativity and new worlds to explore, but remasters are way too prevalent. If I want to play a game that already exists, I'll go back and play it in its original form. Enough people are willing to shell out all their money for remakes that the game industry will keep going with this trend, though.

In other words, you won't see any remakes on this list.

...or will you?

2016 Note: It's funny that I said that because this post itself is a re-release.



Honorable Mention: Super Metroid, Prime style. Whoa! Didn't I say something about remakes up above? Super Metroid is one of those games that is perfect as it is and shouldn't be touched, so why would I want this? Because it wouldn't really be "touching" the game. We're not talking about a remake of Super Metroid with cosmetic changes here. The fact of the matter is, a Prime-style remake would be completely and totally different enough to warrant the game's existence. It would be mind-boggling to see Super Metroid's environments fully-realized in 3D. Think of the Kraid fight, specifically how insane it would be in a Prime-style game. Yes, this would be a remake I could really get behind. I doubt it will happen, though. 2016 Note: Nothing on this front yet...heck, we can't even get a real Metroid game at all anymore. Yikes.

#5 - A great Terminator game. We've never gotten a "great" Terminator game. T2: The Arcade Game was probably the closest we've ever gotten. In the mid-90's, it was quite the arcade attraction. Since then, we've gotten a string of very sub-par Terminator games, ranging from bad (most of them, especially on 8 and 16 bit systems) to decent (Terminator on Sega-CD and Dawn of Fate on PS2). A great Terminator game, however, has largely eluded the masses. As far as great games go, the closest we've ever gotten to a game set in the Terminator verse is probably Fallout 3 (go on, name your character John Connor), with Halo perhaps in the mix as well. I can't help but wonder what would happen if a company like Bethesda got their hands on a license to create a Terminator game. Chances are, they could do something amazing. I doubt this will ever happen, though. 2016 Note: We've gotten a decent Terminator Genisys mobile shooter, with an RTS on the way in the near future too. Other than that, the series seems to be destined for mothballs, so let's hope the RTS ends up being great.

#4 - A game connecting Mega Man to Mega Man X. After all the hints and foreshadowing of Wily's creation of Zero, it would be thrilling to see an original series game that culminates with a final battle against Wily and Zero. I doubt this will ever happen, and I don't think that continuing that storyline has even been on the agenda for Capcom since about 1999. 2016 Note: HAHAHAHA Capcom will never finish this story.

#3 - A culmination to the Mega Man X series. Technically, this series should have ended with Mega Man X5 (which, in and of itself, should have answered more questions). It didn't, and instead we got Axl and a bunch of sub-par sequels with no plot development. Much like the original series, there was a great deal of foreshadowing that was suddenly dropped for later installments. In this case, the foreshadowing was Sigma's indication that Wily was somehow still around (perhaps in a mechanical form) and was the one helping him build his army all this time. Unfortunately, this story was completely dropped after Mega Man X5 with no resolution. I would like to see an X game that resolves the story, has X finally defeat Sigma, and reveals the new form of Wily that has been pulling the strings the whole time. Having an original series game where you fight Zero and an X series game where you fight some sort of Wily 2.0... I'm not sure which of those things would be trippier. 2016 Note: I'd still really like to see either of those...but no go as of yet.

#2 - A third Chrono game. We never got another Chrono sequel after the somewhat disappointing Chrono Cross. I'd like to see one more Chronoverse game, whether it stars the original characters again or a new cast. As far as the original creators go, I don't know if it's possible to "get the band back together" for such a project. Chrono Trigger had a perfect storm of brilliant minds congregated for its creation, and I don't know if that can be repeated. 2016 Note: Nothing new here either. Well, this is depressing. The entire list still stands, it looks like.

#1 - A true Xenogears prequel. Those eras that preceded the modern world in Xenogears were ripe for being made into their own game/games. Heck, Xenogears even ends with the eerie line "Xenogears: Episode V". Unfortunately, those past stories weren't developed or delved into. Monolithsoft's anemic Xenosaga was originally propped up by the hopes of many Xenogears fans that we'd see a series of prequel games covering Xenogears' past, but it quickly turned out that Monolithsoft didn't exactly have the rights to anything Xenogears-related and simply couldn't connect the two even if they wanted to (unless they had waited until 2009 for the patent to expire, but I digress).

As a result, Xenosaga ended up having nothing to do with Xenogears, though the admittedly rad Xenosaga Episode III came pretty darn close to being Xenogears Episode I by the end. What we have here is more wasted storyline potential, really. Xenogears' past has enough story for four games, or one massive four-chapter prequel. I'd like to see this in my lifetime, but chances are it won't happen. Looking over these lists of mine, you may notice a pattern. There are some story gaps out there that I would really like to see get filled. Terminator, Mega Man, Xenogears...to name a few. They all have a black hole in their continuity that was only alluded to otherwise. Where I see a story gap, I see great potential. 2016 Note: We finally have something new to report. Xenoblade Chronicles X has some strong similarities with what would be Xenogears Episode II, which is a nice follow-up to Xenosaga Episode III being a spiritual Xenogears Episode I. Hopefully all of that made sense. I haven't played Xenoblade Chronicles X yet, but it's near the top of the list.

5 comments:

  1. MP1 and MP2 in the trilogy don't count as remakes. Those are ports.

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  2. Inafune doesn't care much for some of the Mega Man related things that happened back then.

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  3. One could raise an issue to your objection to remakes being followed by a list of sequels you want.

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  4. Remake and Sequel are two very different things. One of them requires a hell of a lot more creativity.

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  5. lennus 3, golvellius 2, shining force 4, lufia 3. Of course I'm not being realistic at all.

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