I think nowadays there's an extended abuse of certain franchises that's made innovative original stories a very rare thing. All we recieve are new statements on already existing wolrds or franchises.

Although that's not necessarily bad, It has reached a point where I think it is. All around the internet I see people claiming for more Borderlands, more Fallout, more Elder Scrolls, more Wolfenstein, more Star Wars, more Jurassic Park, more Star Trek, more Transformers... more of what we've already seen.

I understand people asking for something they like, but it's starting to look like drugs. "I can't wait for Season 7 of my favourite series" or "I'm really excited about the next film in this franchise, they're about to be 6 film by now!" I hear.

I personally think that with every new iteration a bit of quality is lost ( sometimes a big amount of it), just because it's something we've already seen and is no longer a fresh surprising idea. With each new film you make, you have to squeeze your mind even more to find something people will like: "In the first film we were original, now we have to show great special effect, the next one will have great character development, the other..." even if you don't want to loose quality you forcely have to, and in the end, what keeps us watching the show, willing to watch the next movie or play the next game is our addiction, curiosity, or hype.

Sadly, we are the ones responsible, because any company would make so many sequels if people didn't ask for it. We need to learn to let things go.

Don't you think there should be more innovative art? Please let me know

(btw Im not trying to start an argument or rant with this, its just my opinions and if you dont agree with them then thats fair enough)

I do agree with that each new title a bit of the quality is lost and I think there should be more innovation also, with every new film or game that gets released some of the magic that was there at the start fades away. I’m going to use Call of Duty as an example of this (just an example, I’m not trying to start a rant or anything) at the beginning it was great, new ideas and features made it so much fun, MW1 and 2 were great hits and MW3 was good also in my opinion (I know MW3 can be a touchy subject sometimes) the black ops series was good also (wont mention black ops 3 for the same reason as MW3) but at this point it had a lot to live up to, Ghosts came around and then it all started to change, the magic was fading a little more each year and overall the reviews started to fall. Overall I think COD is a good view of how the quality can go down each year in some cases (but the new world war one may gain some of that magic back, we’ll have to see) But a series that I think doesn’t lose a lot of its magic and is generally pretty well received is Star Wars. There’s always so much build up and hype about new films of it coming out and in my opinion they do follow through. The Force Awakens and Rogue One were amazing and with The Last Jedi releasing soon that may live up to the hype also.

To overview I agree that the quality and magic is lost with each new iteration but I do think that some series like Star Wars can keep it going for a long time and I don’t really see people getting too fed up with Star Wars any time soon. But I do think that there should be some more innovation when making a new game, movie or tv show also, not just bleeding the same stuff dry. Without innovating, all the things we like will never change and that gets boring as hell after a while.

@Fuster There is certainly a limit with sequels and how many are made. There just might come a time when developers just have to do the leg work and create a brand new game, not a rendition of a title made 12 years ago. Your mention of movies got me. It seems that some films are notorious for just becoming bad after their 3rd or 4th round. Then you have movies that just can't stop. Take Fast and Furious 8. 8 (eight) movies! In my opinion that is too many. There is only you can do so much with the same characters and the same ideas after no long. You are right about the fact the we the consumer are responsible for this. We vote with our wallet, and every November we are at the polls for that new big AAA title

@PresidentWalru5 CoD is an excellent example of just too many and the "first is the best" trope. Personally I loved Black Ops 1. It is still to this day my favorite CoD game. Great story, great multiplayer and great zombies. But I am not blinded by my fandom. Black Ops 2 forced a lot by the way of story, and I only got Black Ops 3 for the Zombies. The biggest problem with CoD is the fact that it is almost too big to fail. That it is an expectation for the two studios to pump out another game every November. I agree that retelling the same story does get old after a while.

sequels can be very important for a franchise as they can improve the standard or be the ruin of the franchise, take AC: Unity for example, ubisoft lost a lot of cred for that mess. i think sequels can make or break a game myself

@"PsychicKaiser" Yeah Ubisoft and the Assassins Creed series is kind of similar to Call Of Duty’s, good at first but slowly going downhill, their newish games aren’t the worst and can be pretty enjoyable for some people but its losing its touch, although I do like them stopping for a year to rethink everything (I think more companies should do this if they're losing their thing) and with Origins it could be good again. They’re trying something new which could work out or maybe they’re innovating in the wrong direction though. Only time will tell though.

I spent a few minutes trying to answer this question but I just deleted what I was typing every time because I genuinely don't know how to answer this. Are sequels in general bad? No, that's too broad to answer, some are great and some aren't. Something I've notices as well is that usually the people getting angry with sequels aren't the people playing them or watching them. For example: I see everywhere people complaining about assassins creed saying how its like 8 games in and is still the same as the first few, on a very base level that is correct since it still focuses on its 3 pillars (stealth, parkour, and combat) but the way each of those plays now, especially with the one that isn't out yet. That probably sounds familiar because that's what happens with almost every sequel or series. Battlefield, CoD, Far Cry, they each go through radical changes (almost) every time while remaining what the series is, then people complain about it because they don't play it and want to complain about something. That doesn't mean their criticisms are totally invalid however.
Sequels are made because often they're a safe bet for making sales and if people want more to be made, they would have to support new IP's especially from larger Devs. Ubisoft has been really going all out with new IPs for the last few years, but people are quick to hate on them because "its le boobisoft " or in other words, people like to hate ubisoft because it's ubisoft as opposed to offering valid and well thought out criticism, often it works like with Rainbow 6 and it's devs making the game better for everyone and acknowledging issues and going out of their way to fix and improve the game, sometimes they're like The Division dev's where the issues were either fundamental or too technical for them to fix without rewriting half the game, or like Ghost Recon Wildland's devs and they just ignore everything the community says because they didn't make enough sales for a lot of post release support.

So to summarize what my feelings are: Sequels can be really great and I don't mind them as long as equal or more effort was put in, that's why I feel that (I'm gonna get hate for this) Watch Dogs 2 was an excellent sequel and Fallout 4 was a terrible sequel. Watch Dogs 2 is a very good game especially when compared to its first game, which was really just average. The Devs acknowledged the shortcomings of the first and did their best to fix them in the second resulting in more fleshed out and fun gameplay. In fallout's case the devs totally misunderstood why people enjoy fallout so much, they planned fallout 4 around quests giving context for combat and killing whereas in previous fallouts combat and killing provided context for quests, if this weren't the case then fallout 4 would be considered the best fallout game.

I really agree with what @"PsychicKaiser" has to say. Honestly, a good sequel can entice new generations of gamers to the series, heck, they may even invest in older games. However, a bad sequel can just ruin the game. Personally, there are certain franchises that I cherish, and will gladly be a fanboy of (Fallout), and play no matter what. However, I am NOT a fan of the 'yearly releases'. I am sorry, but like a good piece of literature, a good story needs time to write. Not just pump out the same, slightly varied storyline. That is why we play games. That is why games are so excellent. It bridges the world of imagination and a book. It lets us view the entire iceberg. If it is the same iceberg each time, I won't care enough to look at it.

@PsychicKaiser With sequels there is almost a kind of apex quality. Take Assassin's Creed for example. AC 2 seemed to be the highest quality game there was. But after that it was an annual event. Now that might be the problem for big titles. there is such an expectation for these huge games to sequels and prequels and massive story archs. The mix of hype and brand name almost dooms itself. I don't to stray too off topic here, but this is kind of the reason why I think Half Life 3 will never come out. The expectations would be so high that valve might never be able to meet it. Anyways, I agree as well, a well done sequel can make a franchise last a long time and make the series very well.

@GoofyGoo6er Yearly releases can kill the quality of a game very quick. Especially competing titles. Take Battlefield 4 competing with Modern Warfare 3. BF4 was a buggy mess upon release due to it being rushed through production in order to meed CoD's November date. BF4 was playable later, but no after patches. Like you said in terms of literature, a good story takes time. I would rather have a compelling story and polished game play instead of a yearly retelling of the same old "good vs evil+crazy yet predictable twist."

Dayum seems like i made a legitimately good post lol, but seriously, what does everyone think of fallout 4 as a sequel, personally i think it was an appalling Fallout, now i'm not saying it was a bad game, quite the opposite i think the gameplay was brilliant, i just didn't think it fitted into the fallout games legacy well, it was more of an open-world action game than a fallout RPG, without the karma, newly added reputation system which worked perfectly, removal of skills and a large focus on combat rather than story

@PsychicKaiser In my opinion, since each story is so different, I don't really ever consider the fallout games as sequels. Moreover, I just think of them as different installments. Anyone else?Just me? My nan?

Right, the Fallout games are not exactly sequels. They share lore, but tell different stories, in different settings, with different characters, and sometimes different gameplay. Installments seems accurate as the correct word, but I'm refereing to them as well, since installments have sometimes the same effect. Maybe I should've clarified more in the post title.

PsychicKaiser wrote:

Dayum seems like i made a legitimately good post lol, but seriously, what does everyone think of fallout 4 as a sequel, personally i think it was an appalling Fallout, now i'm not saying it was a bad game, quite the opposite i think the gameplay was brilliant, i just didn't think it fitted into the fallout games legacy well, it was more of an open-world action game than a fallout RPG, without the karma, newly added reputation system which worked perfectly, removal of skills and a large focus on combat rather than story

As I said in my post above, Fallout 4 is (nearly) objectively bad as a sequel. I say this because it totally flips the formula of what fallout is about, that being questing and exploration, Fallout 4 is about combat with the questing and exploration providing context for the combat as opposed to the opposite. In almost all the other fallouts (because 3 is debatable) the combat provides context for quests and is there to make the world feel alive and dangerous.

I don't see any problem with sequels, however the problem is Forcing a sequel like Hey, this game/Movie/TV Show made a lot of money, let's produce another sequel so we can squeeze as much money as we can, there are some games in which their sequels were better than the prequels, like Far Cry 3 when compared to Far Cry 2, and there are games that their sequels were kind of good, Deus Ex, Dishonored..etc, so in my opinion, sequels aren't the problem, the lack of creativity and ideas and forcing projects to make as much money as possible is the problem.

@GoofyGoo6er, the exact same thing could be said about the COD series, I mean they don't tell the same story and all of them have different characters, but they all share the same military theme, so they would be counted as sequels.

It's quite funny how certain forms of media can change( or stay the same after several sequels). Look at final Fantasy. The have had dozens of games with most of them to be fan favorites. The core concept of turn based RPG hasn't changed all that much within the series, but what has changed within the series was the story. Many people love it for what it is. Don't get me wrong, A LOT of games would NOT do well with that many sequels. For a game to stay fresh, it needs to either change the story, the mechanics of said game, or even change genres. Examples: Fallout 3 was definitely a fun and new look into the Fallout series. Fallout New Vegas was another great game, with a wonderful story and atmosphere, but wait? Didn't it share a lot from the previous game, like the same engine? Yes, and it did so with pride. The developers had some time to tweak the mechanics to the point where it felt familiar and worked quite well( ACTUAL iron sites!!!). The story was what you made, like how a good RPG should be. FNV was a great sequel to a beloved franchise.

I think the problem with sequels is when they stray too far away from their roots. It's fine to experiment a little to get some inspiration, but losing site of what you were is a real problem. Fallout 4 is a prime example of this( personally I liked it, fight me ). Did the newest Fallout game have good graphics? Yes, absolutely. Was the the combat fun? Fighting is so smooth and shooting was on point. Hm, what about the role playing experience? Uh... That is where the game faults, the most crucial point of an RPG. The ability to decide. With the introduction of voiced actors left the developers with little room to add choices. The ability to be an evil, heartless, bastard was taken away from the game while only leaving a rude, sarcastic douche in it's place.

Sequels can make or break any series. Staying too close to a franchise can cause series fatigue while straying too far can alienate it's most loyal fanbase.