General News - 5 RPGs that destroyed their Franchise

Carnifex said:

How on earth did Dragon Age Two not make this list? Honestly it flat-out slaughtered what Origins had established, the taint is so vile I'd never even consider replaying the second game, let alone going any further in the series.

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Um, because there is a Dragon Age 3, which was very successful, and there is a Dragon Age 4 in development?

Nereida said:

I guess the point of what I was saying is more that those RPGs don't feel like they destroyed much of anything and the maker of the video has a veiled underline that says "BG3 has/will destroy the BG franchise" which is pretty asinine, and clickbaity, because the list itself is not valid.

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There's a simpler reason why such an assertion is asinine. The last time a game was released with the Baldur's Gate name was, if I'm not mistaken, in 2004. And the last time a proper BG was released was 2000. Baldur's Gate 3 not only isn't "destroying" the franchise, it's undeniably and demonstratably doing the exact opposite considering it's the first BG in SIXTEEN YEARS.

My 2¢

MMIX killed Might and Magic. It was outsourced, much like BG3, to a European company who wasn't given enough time or resources to do the job properly. Hopefully, Larian won't have that issue.

MMX isn't a franchise reviver, it's a totally different game with a similar name. Again, much like BG3.

Fallout 3 killed Interplay's tiny franchise of Fallout and created the Behemoth Franchise that is Fallout 3 and 4. It remains to be seen if Fallout 76 killed Bethesda's version of the Fallout franchise. The point is likely mute since Bethesda takes decades between releases in a series. Everyone reading this will be long dead before Fallout IX.

Skyrim was the last TES game and it may be dead due to the lack of a work ethic by Bethesda A decade between games is ludicrous.

I wouldn't call Two Worlds a franchise. I don't think either game had much of an impact anywhere.

Agree with folks thoughts on Gothic IV. Killer game and not in a good way.

Sir Tech killed Wizardry, nothing wrong with W8, though that's a perfect abbreviation for the combat in that game. Only Larians games are worse for lengthy battles one right after another.

Agree with Sacred 3 and Dungeon Siege 3 killing those franchises.

Of everything mentioned, I would love to see a new Might and Magic game with the heart and soul of MM 6-8. I thought was a series that could have been churned out yearly as long as they kept up with evolving graphics. Similar to how the developers of Assassin's Creed go about it.

That was more like $20, nut.

Unless the game bankrupts the company you can always redeem a franchise with the next game. Kind of like Dragon age. I don’t think it’s all the way back but DAI was a step in the right direction from DA2.

Eschalon Book III would have fit in the vid. While reading about it after completing it it turns out many of it's faults were the end result of lots of failures to make a dragon sprite. Amazing but bizarrely true. Though it's not officially dead, of course. Just like Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls aren't officially dead. Yet.

showtime said:

HoMM was shot in the leg with 4. 5 was good but the fanatical crowd was lost and after that was total disaster.

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Sounds to me almost like a case of "Pandering To The Base" : https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanderingToTheBase

From there :

Furthermore, the overall quality of the property can begin to suffer; just because someone is intensely committed to a particular work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean they know what makes good fiction work.

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crpgnut said:

Skyrim was the last TES game and it may be dead due to the lack of a work ethic by Bethesda A decade between games is ludicrous.

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It's coming this Friday!

I think Dark Souls might be "dead", but not because any of them were bad and made sequels unviable. I think they're just ready to move on to other things. Which is fine with me. Elden Ring is my second most anticipated game.

showtime said:

HoMM was shot in the leg with 4. 5 was good but the fanatical crowd was lost and after that was total disaster. I tried 6 and 7 and it was horrible experience.
I really think HoMM4 killed the franchise.

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Perhaps, but I certainly enjoyed IV much more than V, even though III will probably remain my favourite.

I think first we'd need a proper definition of "destroyed".

It seems like there are two things mixed here:

1. Changed the franchise dramatically. Like Fallout 3 to Fallout 2. Fallout 3 must have been quite successful though.

2. Was so bad, that no other game after that was released. Or all games in that franchise after that were terrible.


I think 1. is pretty clear and can be done in an objective way. Ofc Fallout 3 changed a lot to Fallout 2. Imho both good games. But I can also understand if you only like one of them. Thing is, that they are very different.

The 2. point makes it more difficult, but comes closer to the meaning of "destroyed".
Then again it still comes down to personal preferences, or if you consider financial success.

Might and Magic was mentioned a couple of time. M9 was apparently quite bad (never played it). MMX was quite good, yes it was different than 9. But 9 was different to 6,7,8 and 6,7,8 were different to 3,4,5 which were different to 1,2, so what...
MMX was not a financial success, otherwise there would have been a successor. At least it sounded that way from the MMX Developers back then.
So...for me M9 did not ruin the franchise as I liked MMX.

XCom Apocalypse was mentioned as well. While the combat wasn't as good as pure turnbased, I actually liked the game quite a lot. I'd say that XCom Intercepror then "destroyed" the franchise. That is of course until Firaxis "undestroyed" it, if you liked their games, which I don't. But they were financially successful.

I can name 5 RPGs though which ruined a franchise further and further:
Jagged Alliance Back in Action
Jagged Alliance Crossfire
Jagged Alliance Flashback
Jagged Alliance Online
Jagged Alliance Rage

I mean, seriously...which company at this point would want to try their luck next?

JFarrell71 said:

There's a simpler reason why such an assertion is asinine. The last time a game was released with the Baldur's Gate name was, if I'm not mistaken, in 2004. And the last time a proper BG was released was 2000.

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Actually it was 2016, Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear :lol:

crpgnut said:

MMIX killed Might and Magic. It was outsourced, much like BG3, to a European company who wasn't given enough time or resources to do the job properly. Hopefully, Larian won't have that issue.

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Pretty sure this is wrong, I've read multiple articles over the years about MM9 that always seem to indicate it was developed in-house by their usual guys, there was just a lot of corner-cutting, not many people who gave a shit, and they shipped it too quickly.

One such example (an interview): https://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=118

Kordanor said:

Might and Magic was mentioned a couple of time. M9 was apparently quite bad (never played it). MMX was quite good, yes it was different than 9. But 9 was different to 6,7,8 and 6,7,8 were different to 3,4,5 which were different to 1,2, so what…

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Personally I thought MM9 was fine when I played it at the time it came out, didn't even realize it was generally hated until I started reading about that years later. Sure, it wasn't as good as 6-8 but those were masterpieces.

Stingray said:

Personally I thought MM9 was fine when I played it at the time it came out, didn't even realize it was generally hated until I started reading about that years later. Sure, it wasn't as good as 6-8 but those were masterpieces.

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That's how I felt about Ultima 8 and 9.
Well, I actually didn't play 8 for long as I didn't like it thaaat much, but it was still nice. Never played any previous game of the series.
And well..back then I had an decentralized backup copy ofc, so not really a need to get my money's worth.

Stingray said:

Actually it was 2016, Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear :lol:

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Can't say I forget about this one because I've never heard of it. :lol:

Kordanor said:

I can name 5 RPGs though which ruined a franchise further and further:
Jagged Alliance Back in Action
Jagged Alliance Crossfire
Jagged Alliance Flashback
Jagged Alliance Online
Jagged Alliance Rage

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I read that Back in Action was decent as they tried to do 3D real-time instead of turn-based:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-17-jagged-alliance-back-in-action-review

SpoonFULL said:

I read that Back in Action was decent as they tried to do 3D real-time instead of turn-based:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-17-jagged-alliance-back-in-action-review

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They had to make it real time as it was 3D. That's a developer statement.

Had a (professional) metacritic score of 62: https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/jagged-alliance-back-in-action

So...I'd still say it's the beginning of the end.

SpoonFULL said:

I read that Back in Action was decent as they tried to do 3D real-time instead of turn-based:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-17-jagged-alliance-back-in-action-review

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It was the best of the ones I've played, and I really enjoyed their take on a RTwP system. Sadly it lacked the personality and charm of JA2, and the scaling made enemies legions of bullet sponges. The foundation for a good game was definitely there though.

Man. Why does everyone pick on Mass Effect Andromeda, sure its plot line was practically a rehash of previous games but it did some interesting things with the setting. It is still on my hard drive to be completed. It has the blue Aliens of non specific gender to romance, and apparently that is an important feature for me. Apparently.

So the Jagged Alliance 'franchise' ended when Sir-tech went under after JA2:UB. The rest were half-assed spinoffs by starving developers, trying to capitalize on the title.
Anyone can build maps and characters, but it's the AI that makes the game work. All of the spinoffs had horrible enemy AI, which killed those games.

Most of the hardcore JA fans don't believe the franchise is dead. It just needs some real money and manpower to make the game we want. I'm surprised, with the overwhelmingly successful reboot of XCOM, that a legit developer hasn't rebooted JA.

ChaosTheory said:

So the Jagged Alliance 'franchise' ended when Sir-tech went under after JA2:UB. The rest were half-assed spinoffs by starving developers, trying to capitalize on the title.
Anyone can build maps and characters, but it's the AI that makes the game work. All of the spinoffs had horrible enemy AI, which killed those games.

Most of the hardcore JA fans don't believe the franchise is dead. It just needs some real money and manpower to make the game we want. I'm surprised, with the overwhelmingly successful reboot of XCOM, that a legit developer hasn't rebooted JA.

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Hrm, I'd disagree regarding the AI here. Well...maybe the AI in the spinoffs was worse. But it certainly wasn't the strength of JA1/2 either. You could easily trap and execute them one by one. I'd say that the strengths are:
1. Authentic replication of real firefights (name one other game where interruptions can be interrupted or you sidestep with your character to avoid interruptions. XCom doesn't even calculate the trajectory and ignores all obstacles if they are not infront of the target).
2. Tons of freedom in how to tackle challenges. Do you want to lockpick the back door? Do you want to try to sneak in? Or do you just want to place dynamite and blast a big hole into the wall?
3. Lots of personality(humor) and Characters. The game did a lot of "unnecessary" stuff, like allowing you to get captured or to send flowers to the enemy. All characters have a "personality" and background. Tons of character voice lines recorded, only a fraction of people will ever encounter.


And I think these strengths also show why the successors didn't work out and why it's not as easy to make a successor to JA as it is to XCom. "Easy" as in "Risk Friendly".

Previously mentioned Reason 1 can make it complicated to completely understand the game and closes doors to a big audience.

Previously mentioned Reason 2 requires a very open world approach and lots of different systems which work together. Much harder (and more expensive) to accomplish than a more or less linear campaign with set missiongoals.

Previously mentioned Reason 3: Costs tons of money for rather little effect

So why does nobody make a new JA? Because it costs tons of money, it's very hard to do right, and at the same time the expected target audience is rather niche.
None of this is the case with XCom. XCom just had the issue of a potential niche audience. But they countered that by putting a bit more bling bling into the game (like kill cam) and simplifying systems.

And after these failures the risk of an additional failure and expectations are lower than ever before.
I'd personally not expect a real JA successor by a big company because they won't take the risk and not by a small company because they lack the money.

So we have to be content and hopeful with JA Elements being implemented into other tactics games. Like Xenonauts 1/2, Stellar Tactics, Graywalkers: Purgatory and the biggest resemblance so far I see in Urban Strife.
All Indie Games, and you cannot expect to get 70 characters with lots of voice overs, but at least indie developers will pick up on core concepts.