10-17-2016, 08:17 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-18-2016, 05:59 AM by RepentantSky.)
Not sure how this is gonna go, but if does well, I might try making this a regular thing. This year alone, we have seen a ton of Sequel's like Bravely Second, Mafia III, Final Fantasy XV, Watch Dogs 2 and many, many more. For the most part, these games are out, getting great reviews, and generally selling well, and for those that aren't out yet, a lot of them are highly anticipated. Sequel's can however, do really poorly, just looking at Duke Nukem and pretty much every Final Fantasy Sequel, except maybe Tactic's games, and you have proof of that. Some just end up being in the middle, and then some end up blowing our expectations so far out of the water that they never really fall back in.
Taking a look at sequels from a few generations ago, one that I probably the remember most, is the .hack://IMOQ (Infection, Mutation, Outbreak and Quarantine) vs. the .hack://GU series. As a series, dot hack itself is an interesting one. It started out as a manga about an MMO where the real world and the digital one became affected by one another, then was adapted into anime, and that anime got something akin to a sequel in the previously mentioned, IMOQ games. Those prompted the story to continue despite the last game being incredibly short and by extension incredibly rare. I mean seriously, the last game lasts about 12 hours maybe, as opposed to each other one lasting at least 20 hours and with interesting sidequests to complete.
The continuation of the series from there was another anime called .hack://Roots and led to the three sequel games, the aforementioned GU games, which led to more manga and eventually a few games that never left Japan on PC and PSP respectively, although not entirely in that order. The games I want to focus on today, are IMOQ and the GU series.
Dot hack as a game was basically an MMO, which is not a shock considering that it was made to play like one and the game's world was focused on one. The problem with that idea though, is that it didn't play out quite as well as it should have, depending on how you look at it. IMOQ were basically action RPG games that used a menu system to use skills, items and magic, which would always pause the game, stopping combat entirely, kind of a like a turn-based RPG. That meant though that the only actions you could take without a menu while playing the games were basic attacks and running or walking. Not inherently a bad idea, but one that needed work. The first four games in the series, weren't exactly difficult but if you wanted to keep the action going and not pause all the time, you needed to rely on basic attacks. Again not exactly a bad idea, but it meant that you had to get hit more as well leading to you still pausing the game in order to heal up. The other option post battle wasn't any better either was you heal slowly after battle with both your HP and MP, and every time those reached a certain number, you heal more each time you sat around waiting. The problem with that, is that healing was slow. You'd only heal once a second, and that heal would usually only be about 5 percent of your total HP and close to 10 percent of your MP, which meant that it not only took a long time, but you had to do it after every battle if you didn't want to use items. To make matters worse, if you sat around long enough waiting to heal, your party members would have text bubbles show up that would nag at you for waiting. It was as if the game itself didn't want you to use a mechanic that they had placed in it.
After 4 games of this system and another anime, things took a slight but amazing turn in the series. Dot hack GU came out and some small, but amazing changes to combat were made. As I said before, in the previous games, there was a lot of waiting and pausing, in dot hack GU, they made the waiting and pausing shorter and therefore sped up the combat. Rather than having to enter a menu to use attacking skills, you would press a button and 4 attacks would show up that would be assigned to triangle, Circle, Square or X, and you could switch them up, anyway you wanted. This seems like a small change but it completely altered combat. For example, when you initiate a skill, you only have a certain amount of time before the option would disappear. This meant that unlike the previous menu system of combat from IMOQ, you had to think a little quicker instead of pausing everything and taking as much time as you want. Another thing that changed was how rewarding combat had become. There was just something fulfilling about picking the move you wanted to use as quickly as possible but also a sense of failure if you tried to be too quick and hit the wrong button, and if you did that, you couldn't be mad at the game, because you made the call, so it was your fault. The game also added in a thing called Rengeki which would, after a certain criteria was hit (usually getting an "x" amount of hits in a combo on a foe) slow your attack a bit, but not enough to offset the action. The attacks were slower because in a Rengeki combo, your attack would do more damage so it felt more impactful because it was slowed down just enough to make it feel like it hit harder. Finally, Rengeki would give you extra exp after the battle, and every time you hit one, people would yell "Rengeki" making it feel faster because the way they said it would get you hyped up and make it feel like an accomplishment.
The last thing about combat that really made it stand out, was the ability to have a character in Haseo that could change their style, ultimately leading to 4 types of combat, which fit the 4 skill slots you could use in battle. Each one had a different reason for being there as well. Want to attack fast, use the dual blades that Kite always and only ever had. Fighting an armored foe, use your large sword to break that armor faster, surrounded by enemies, get out your large scythe and hit'em with a move to push them all back, feeling like fighting at a distance, bring out the duel guns and go to town. The best part about this system of classes was the fact that you would change to a class using a skill that was exclusive to your class. If you want to switch from the guns to using the scythe, just use a skill from the list of scythe related skills and you are now in that class. Another good thing about it, was that it would deepen the customizing of your character. You could choose to have one skill for each class, or not use a certain class very often and instead use the equipment option to use it against certain enemies and then switch back in combat using a skill after you no longer needed or wanted that class. IMOQ, never did this, they simply had Kite as a class that wielded two short swords and only ever gave you a very limited number of skills to use, a lot of which would be recycled with a different element or name, prompting you to have to carry more than one blade at a time, then having to stop yet again to switch between weapons for the best advantage in combat. The GU series did away with that, and it's a better combat system for it.
The combat wasn't the only thing that GU improved upon, as the story was done just a bit better. In IMOQ, the characters were mostly either with you, or against you, until they were with you. No one really broke that mold and it shaped every action they took. In GU, there was a lot of that, in fact it was also mostly that, but there was a difference, and some it stems from the fact that the previous games had existed. For example, Alkaid who becomes one of the more important characters in the series, originally sees you as next to nothing and maybe at best, a threat to what she believes is her claim, which is being the head of one of the ranked PvP tournaments in the game. She felt cheated out of her place because another character had used a technique that she couldn't see or do anything about that caused her to lose. When she inevitably looses to you the same way, she hates you, and claims she will never forgive you for cheating. As time goes on though, she ends up needing your help when one of the other tournament champions starts acting strangely. After certain events, she sides with you willingly and then, when late in the third game you are accused of cheating in the tournaments, she shows up and lets you know happily that you've been acquitted of the claims against you.
Alkaid is actually one of the best examples of how character development, and by extension, story are greatly improved from the previous title. She changes her perspective on things when it makes sense, when you, as the playable character, do things to make her realize that maybe she needs to look at things a different way. The closest the previous games came to do that, was a character named Balmung, who spent most of his time ignoring you or trying to get your character deleted or at least off the case of trying to save the friend you both lost, which is the basis for the game and everyone's motivation, they are all trying to save someone. Blackrose one of the main characters from the first games is trying to save her brother, Balmung, your mutual friend, and that's as deep as they ever go. Alkaid is not only trying to save a friend like you are, but in the process she starts understanding you and accepting you. Balmung, even though he's trying to do the same thing you are, opposes you at every turn for most of the game because you have the same power that hurt his friend. He refuses to see difference in how you use it as opposed to how it was used before you got it. Alkaid on the other hand, sees a friend in need, thinks you can help and that it might be connected to what you are already doing in the world, and gets over her problems with you enough to get over herself and ask you for help. Balmung changes his mind because you save him from a monster he can't kill without your help, even though you didn't know he was there where you fought the monster, and then suddenly he's your best buddy, like nothing ever happened. Alkaid is basically how character development should be handled in gaming in general, but she's more than that and it makes her a lot more likable than most of the cast despite her being seen as an enemy at first. The whole game series of GU uses this as a theme for characters, as Haseo, the main character you play as changes a lot during the game. He goes from being brash and mean, and being highly annoyed by one of the other main characters Atoli, to allowing people to talk just as harshly as he did to others at one point and actually possibly having feelings for Atoli, and how he changed all makes sense.
I'm gonna take just a quick second while Alkaid is still in my thoughts and hopefully yours to help make a point about character deaths in say something like SAO vs. the main theme of drama in the dot hack series, coma's, because dot hack did it better. Kirito as a character was already sort of motivated by a mistake he blames himself for that caused the death of several characters, but it never makes that much of an impact on him, save for a few flashbacks here and there, sometimes that are even used to manipulate watchers of the show and players of the games. Haseo on the other hand loses someone to a coma, one they may never come out of, and he spends half a year in the game looking for answers which changes his personality from be reserved and cautious to aggressive and angry. When the second character he might lose forever, Alkaid goes into a coma, not only does he cry, he doesn't allow it to change him as much, because he was there for it unlike the first time, but it does become extra motivation, and the scene itself where Alkaid does falls into a coma is much more dramatic and tells a better story then any death scene in SAO. Also, because a coma is something that people can come out of, it gives the player extra motivation to keep playing to maybe save them. When someone in dot hack falls into a coma, it's always much more dramatic then when they die in SAO because most of the time the number of people dead is just mentioned, and not really talked about properly or felt by the characters, which makes it mean less.
Anyways, going back to the games of IMOQ and GU, I'm actually pretty much done. There's not much more to say about the games outside of combat and story, but it's all just to prove a point about how a sequel should be made, versus how it shouldn't. Excuse the extra long post, but I've always wanted to make this one and the timing just seemed right. If you like this, let me know, and I might make more.
Taking a look at sequels from a few generations ago, one that I probably the remember most, is the .hack://IMOQ (Infection, Mutation, Outbreak and Quarantine) vs. the .hack://GU series. As a series, dot hack itself is an interesting one. It started out as a manga about an MMO where the real world and the digital one became affected by one another, then was adapted into anime, and that anime got something akin to a sequel in the previously mentioned, IMOQ games. Those prompted the story to continue despite the last game being incredibly short and by extension incredibly rare. I mean seriously, the last game lasts about 12 hours maybe, as opposed to each other one lasting at least 20 hours and with interesting sidequests to complete.
The continuation of the series from there was another anime called .hack://Roots and led to the three sequel games, the aforementioned GU games, which led to more manga and eventually a few games that never left Japan on PC and PSP respectively, although not entirely in that order. The games I want to focus on today, are IMOQ and the GU series.
Dot hack as a game was basically an MMO, which is not a shock considering that it was made to play like one and the game's world was focused on one. The problem with that idea though, is that it didn't play out quite as well as it should have, depending on how you look at it. IMOQ were basically action RPG games that used a menu system to use skills, items and magic, which would always pause the game, stopping combat entirely, kind of a like a turn-based RPG. That meant though that the only actions you could take without a menu while playing the games were basic attacks and running or walking. Not inherently a bad idea, but one that needed work. The first four games in the series, weren't exactly difficult but if you wanted to keep the action going and not pause all the time, you needed to rely on basic attacks. Again not exactly a bad idea, but it meant that you had to get hit more as well leading to you still pausing the game in order to heal up. The other option post battle wasn't any better either was you heal slowly after battle with both your HP and MP, and every time those reached a certain number, you heal more each time you sat around waiting. The problem with that, is that healing was slow. You'd only heal once a second, and that heal would usually only be about 5 percent of your total HP and close to 10 percent of your MP, which meant that it not only took a long time, but you had to do it after every battle if you didn't want to use items. To make matters worse, if you sat around long enough waiting to heal, your party members would have text bubbles show up that would nag at you for waiting. It was as if the game itself didn't want you to use a mechanic that they had placed in it.
After 4 games of this system and another anime, things took a slight but amazing turn in the series. Dot hack GU came out and some small, but amazing changes to combat were made. As I said before, in the previous games, there was a lot of waiting and pausing, in dot hack GU, they made the waiting and pausing shorter and therefore sped up the combat. Rather than having to enter a menu to use attacking skills, you would press a button and 4 attacks would show up that would be assigned to triangle, Circle, Square or X, and you could switch them up, anyway you wanted. This seems like a small change but it completely altered combat. For example, when you initiate a skill, you only have a certain amount of time before the option would disappear. This meant that unlike the previous menu system of combat from IMOQ, you had to think a little quicker instead of pausing everything and taking as much time as you want. Another thing that changed was how rewarding combat had become. There was just something fulfilling about picking the move you wanted to use as quickly as possible but also a sense of failure if you tried to be too quick and hit the wrong button, and if you did that, you couldn't be mad at the game, because you made the call, so it was your fault. The game also added in a thing called Rengeki which would, after a certain criteria was hit (usually getting an "x" amount of hits in a combo on a foe) slow your attack a bit, but not enough to offset the action. The attacks were slower because in a Rengeki combo, your attack would do more damage so it felt more impactful because it was slowed down just enough to make it feel like it hit harder. Finally, Rengeki would give you extra exp after the battle, and every time you hit one, people would yell "Rengeki" making it feel faster because the way they said it would get you hyped up and make it feel like an accomplishment.
The last thing about combat that really made it stand out, was the ability to have a character in Haseo that could change their style, ultimately leading to 4 types of combat, which fit the 4 skill slots you could use in battle. Each one had a different reason for being there as well. Want to attack fast, use the dual blades that Kite always and only ever had. Fighting an armored foe, use your large sword to break that armor faster, surrounded by enemies, get out your large scythe and hit'em with a move to push them all back, feeling like fighting at a distance, bring out the duel guns and go to town. The best part about this system of classes was the fact that you would change to a class using a skill that was exclusive to your class. If you want to switch from the guns to using the scythe, just use a skill from the list of scythe related skills and you are now in that class. Another good thing about it, was that it would deepen the customizing of your character. You could choose to have one skill for each class, or not use a certain class very often and instead use the equipment option to use it against certain enemies and then switch back in combat using a skill after you no longer needed or wanted that class. IMOQ, never did this, they simply had Kite as a class that wielded two short swords and only ever gave you a very limited number of skills to use, a lot of which would be recycled with a different element or name, prompting you to have to carry more than one blade at a time, then having to stop yet again to switch between weapons for the best advantage in combat. The GU series did away with that, and it's a better combat system for it.
The combat wasn't the only thing that GU improved upon, as the story was done just a bit better. In IMOQ, the characters were mostly either with you, or against you, until they were with you. No one really broke that mold and it shaped every action they took. In GU, there was a lot of that, in fact it was also mostly that, but there was a difference, and some it stems from the fact that the previous games had existed. For example, Alkaid who becomes one of the more important characters in the series, originally sees you as next to nothing and maybe at best, a threat to what she believes is her claim, which is being the head of one of the ranked PvP tournaments in the game. She felt cheated out of her place because another character had used a technique that she couldn't see or do anything about that caused her to lose. When she inevitably looses to you the same way, she hates you, and claims she will never forgive you for cheating. As time goes on though, she ends up needing your help when one of the other tournament champions starts acting strangely. After certain events, she sides with you willingly and then, when late in the third game you are accused of cheating in the tournaments, she shows up and lets you know happily that you've been acquitted of the claims against you.
Alkaid is actually one of the best examples of how character development, and by extension, story are greatly improved from the previous title. She changes her perspective on things when it makes sense, when you, as the playable character, do things to make her realize that maybe she needs to look at things a different way. The closest the previous games came to do that, was a character named Balmung, who spent most of his time ignoring you or trying to get your character deleted or at least off the case of trying to save the friend you both lost, which is the basis for the game and everyone's motivation, they are all trying to save someone. Blackrose one of the main characters from the first games is trying to save her brother, Balmung, your mutual friend, and that's as deep as they ever go. Alkaid is not only trying to save a friend like you are, but in the process she starts understanding you and accepting you. Balmung, even though he's trying to do the same thing you are, opposes you at every turn for most of the game because you have the same power that hurt his friend. He refuses to see difference in how you use it as opposed to how it was used before you got it. Alkaid on the other hand, sees a friend in need, thinks you can help and that it might be connected to what you are already doing in the world, and gets over her problems with you enough to get over herself and ask you for help. Balmung changes his mind because you save him from a monster he can't kill without your help, even though you didn't know he was there where you fought the monster, and then suddenly he's your best buddy, like nothing ever happened. Alkaid is basically how character development should be handled in gaming in general, but she's more than that and it makes her a lot more likable than most of the cast despite her being seen as an enemy at first. The whole game series of GU uses this as a theme for characters, as Haseo, the main character you play as changes a lot during the game. He goes from being brash and mean, and being highly annoyed by one of the other main characters Atoli, to allowing people to talk just as harshly as he did to others at one point and actually possibly having feelings for Atoli, and how he changed all makes sense.
I'm gonna take just a quick second while Alkaid is still in my thoughts and hopefully yours to help make a point about character deaths in say something like SAO vs. the main theme of drama in the dot hack series, coma's, because dot hack did it better. Kirito as a character was already sort of motivated by a mistake he blames himself for that caused the death of several characters, but it never makes that much of an impact on him, save for a few flashbacks here and there, sometimes that are even used to manipulate watchers of the show and players of the games. Haseo on the other hand loses someone to a coma, one they may never come out of, and he spends half a year in the game looking for answers which changes his personality from be reserved and cautious to aggressive and angry. When the second character he might lose forever, Alkaid goes into a coma, not only does he cry, he doesn't allow it to change him as much, because he was there for it unlike the first time, but it does become extra motivation, and the scene itself where Alkaid does falls into a coma is much more dramatic and tells a better story then any death scene in SAO. Also, because a coma is something that people can come out of, it gives the player extra motivation to keep playing to maybe save them. When someone in dot hack falls into a coma, it's always much more dramatic then when they die in SAO because most of the time the number of people dead is just mentioned, and not really talked about properly or felt by the characters, which makes it mean less.
Anyways, going back to the games of IMOQ and GU, I'm actually pretty much done. There's not much more to say about the games outside of combat and story, but it's all just to prove a point about how a sequel should be made, versus how it shouldn't. Excuse the extra long post, but I've always wanted to make this one and the timing just seemed right. If you like this, let me know, and I might make more.
