It will surprise absolutely nobody to learn that this year’sGamescomOpening Night Live showcase had a terribly small proportion of games that you could truthfully call completely new, since the majority were sequels or based on existing IP.
Out of the roughly 40 games showcased, three of them were DLC (Starfield’s Shattered Space, Persona 3: Reload - Episode Aigis, andDiablo 4’s Vessel of Hatred). Four aren’t part of an existing series of games, butarebased on existing IP (Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,Marvel Rivals, Squid Game: Unleashed, andDune: Awakening). Two are remasters (Goat Simulator andAge of Mythology: Retold).
A whopping fifteen are new instalments in existing series (Borderlands 4,Path of Exile 2, Mafia: The Old Country, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, Dying Light: The Beast,Infinity Nikki,Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, Monster Hunter Wilds,Sid Meier’s Civilization 7,Little Nightmares 3, Monument Valley 3,Batman: Arkham Shadow,Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2). Out of the remaining twelve,Reanimalis barely distinguishable from Little Nightmares 3,Directive 8020is part of theDark Picturesanthology, andMasters of Albionis obviously referencingFable’s setting, though it’s not technically part of the series.
You’ll notice that a very high proportion of these games are sequels – close to half, actually. And there are at minimum three more games on top of that that are arguably also sequels, or at the very least, spiritual successors. While this is indicative of a trend we all already recognise and regularly bemoan (namely that the games industry is too focused on IP, sequels, remakes, and reboots), I’m mostly annoyed that some of these sequels look pretty damn good.
Oh, boohoo, look at me complaining about upcoming games being cool. Typical gamer. But a lot of this dread is predicated on the way I’ve been playing through theDragon Agegamesfor the first timein the run-up toDragon Age: The Veilguard. Sequels keep beloved names alive, which is all good and well, but being able to enjoy these games means doing homework. In The Veilguard’s case, Dragon Age has a long-running arc that takes your choices in previous games into consideration. Without experiencing the story all the way through, the newest instalment would lose a lot of its magic and meaning.
While it isn’t the case with every sequel – you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the newFatal Fury,Monster Hunter, or Civ games are hard to play without an understanding of their origins – as a general rule, it’s a good idea to play all the games in a series before trying out the newest one.Borderlandsuses new characters for each game, but there are recurring characters, settings, and storylines that you enjoy more if you’ve seen them in each game, andBorderlands 4will likely be the same.Call of Duty: Black Ops 6is a continuation of Black Ops Cold War’s story.Dying Light: The Beastfeatures the return of protagonist Kyle Crane. The game I’m most keen on,Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, has the same protagonist as the first game, and presumably will continue its story.
I can probably get away with not playing the Mafia games beforeThe Old Country, right? Please say yes.
I wouldn’t mind having to play through several games for the context of upcoming ones, if I didn’t play games for a living and also need to stay on top of new releases. Iwantto play so many of these sequels, and yet I know that to really enjoy them I’m going to end up sinking possibly hundreds of hours into games that were launched years ago. It’s a good thing that games aresticking to continuing stories instead of diluting narrative depthso that newcomers to these series can get stuck in more easily, butdamn, that’s a lot of work that I don’t really have the time to do.As if getting into RPGs wasn’t already hard enough.
