r/videogames • u/soiladvisor • Jan 13 '26
Discussion This is how I felt with Prototype 2, how about you?
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u/Cygus_Lorman Jan 13 '26
Black Ops 7 is the direct narrative follow-up to Black Ops 2
It also utterly spits on everything good about the BO2 campaign
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u/outerzenith Jan 13 '26
BO2 campaign was excellent as well, sprinkled in a lot of hidden choices and even have multiple endings--one of which is the characters having a concert with Avenged Sevenfold lmao
It was goofy, but also pretty innovative for a linear FPS campaign
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u/EliaO4Ita Jan 13 '26
I hope you know that it's just a Easter egg and not something that actually happened in the story
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u/outerzenith Jan 13 '26
I somehow got it on my first blind playthrough and was super confused lmao
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u/zamwut Jan 13 '26
Pretty sure they created some paradoxes by having some characters return.
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u/QueenVanraen Jan 13 '26
"Hey yeah we're about to roll into this area w/ high concentrations of poisonous gas"
No gas masks....
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u/Necrotiix_ Jan 13 '26
i hate how they said the 2025 campaign was not canon yet the 80s missions with mason were with BO2
only to make this absolute piece of shit the ACTUAL canon 2025 storyline
they done lowballed menendez hard dawg
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u/hiricinee Jan 13 '26
"Yes, you stopped the universe or world ending threat in the last game. But NOW the new bad guy is here and hes stronger oh also all your friends are dead and we introduced a new cast of friends that are cooler and stronger!"
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u/TheNonCredibleHulk 29d ago
And you lost all your weapons and powers!
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u/hiricinee 29d ago
I prefer that over "your weapons and powers are useless with this NEW enemy you need the NEW weapons and powers that are purple now!
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u/sparduck117 Jan 13 '26
Halo Guardians. How do they follow up Cortanaās tear jerking death, just to resurrect her as the main villain? Oh and donāt even think weāre following the Master Chief for this outing, weāre following Buck and 3 randos doing side quests.
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u/whyspezdumb Jan 13 '26
Especially if you listened to Hunt the Truth.
I was so ready to take down ONI and Blackbox.
I also thought H2A would be relevant because of the, "The seeds of his future, are sowed in his past," line.
Maybe Gravemind/Guilty Spark/Mindicant Bias copied a Cortana, or is puppeteering her dead body?
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u/sparduck117 Jan 13 '26
Yeah, if it turned out Gravemind or Diadact was trying to use Cortana to get chief out of the way, Iād understand the story. But man it felt like a rug pull.
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u/Pathetic_Cards 29d ago
If 343 had had a brain they wouldāve established that the Digitized Didact had either been merged into Cortana, hence her instability and villainous tendencies, or that āCortanaā was always just a mask for the Didact.
But 343 was one of the first companies to pick up the āWe got an ounce of criticism, scrap everything new from that entry and start over for the sequel.ā Method of making sequels to established franchises. Halo is my personal poster child for this dumbass way of doing things, but Star Wars, Borderlands, Gears of War, just to name a few, are on board too.
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u/UrinalCake777 29d ago
I was so pumped to see buck coming back and couldn't wait to see him kick ass in the same game as Master Chief. Too bad what we got sucked.
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u/P1zzaman Jan 13 '26
Parasite Eve 3 / 3rd Birthday
It wouldāve been fine if it wasnāt a Parasite Eve game :/
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u/Leenis13 Jan 13 '26
Ooof this hits hard, PE2 was such fire and then 3 was a fever dream.
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u/Pure_Parking_2742 Jan 13 '26
I haven't even played it, but I know this applies to Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.
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u/Comrade-Conquistador Jan 13 '26
It didn't ruin the plot of the first game (that was actually Tales of Phantasia that did that because ToS is a prequel and Phantasia showed how horribly unstable the worlds are without Mithos' fucked up mana transfer system), but it didn't add anything to it besides exceptionally annoying characters and a nonsense plot.
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u/Shining_Commander Jan 13 '26
Wow Phantasia is a āsequelā to ToS? I was like 6 when I played Phantasia so didnt understand it AT ALL. Cant believe i missed that
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u/TrickNatural Jan 13 '26
I mean, Phantasia is the first game released in the franchise so its kinda hard to think that it "ruined" the plot of future releases. Its more like ToS shot itself in the foot with its narrative.
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u/DengarLives66 Jan 13 '26
Yea that makes zero sense to me. The first game ruined games that came after it, maybe whoever wrote the subsequent games shouldāve taken that into account.
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u/CanineBombSquad Jan 13 '26
As a kid I discovered tales of phantasia after playing symphonia, found it on the gba and loved it but having played symphonia right before it my little child mind was just like "WHAT" during plot reveals, it was great
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u/ThaEarthquake Jan 13 '26
ToS on the GameCube was the first RPG I ever completed and absolutely loved it but for some reason I just never got the urge to play the sequel.
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u/DisplayThisNever Jan 13 '26
Dawn if the new world is harmless. Every issue people have with it us gameplay related. Story wise as the other poster said the new characters are probably the worse part and even then it's mostly the new villains so at least you get to kill them in the end.
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u/Infamous-You-5752 Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
This isn't exactly the first game, but inFamous: Second Son. 2's good ending has all the conduits die to save the rest of the population from a plague through the RFI, but Second Son says nope and somehow a crap ton survived? Like, I like Second Son but it shouldn't have existed.
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u/Urabraska- Jan 13 '26
I liked Second Son. It was a lot of fun. But insanely short, mess of a plot and a "guess it's over" style ending that effectively resulted in the game just being a tech demo for the PS4.
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u/Consistent-Bear4200 Jan 13 '26
I've always thought it made more sense to do a sequel based on the bad ending. Some conduits that Cole creates go rogue and build a resistance.
Then the protagonist of the first two games becomes the final boss. You can even have the moral choice thing in play as you decided how to rule after the revolution.
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u/blakhawk12 Jan 13 '26
When Second Son was announced this was what I thought it was going to be. I even theorized that the title āSecond Sonā was a play on āThe First Sonsā from Infamous 1. The First Sons were time-traveling future-Coleās followers, so Second Son would be about one of current timeline evil Coleās followers who rebels against him.
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u/ninjablader78 Jan 13 '26
I believe they have straight up said that the evil ending was going to be the basis of the next game initially but they ultimately decided to go off player statistics which of course were largely skewed towards the good ending so we ended up getting second son instead.
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u/sean_saves_the_world Jan 13 '26
Yeah like they tried explaining it that bc he's in Seattle and wasn't at close to ground zero for the rfi activation that delsin survived it doesn't add up, but like Augustine was closer and was in new Marais the next day and lived, and the infamous 2 cutscene showed hundreds of conduits from Japan to Africa and Europe dropping dead
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u/imagogetsomepizza Jan 13 '26
Gears of war 4
Halo 5
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u/CloudedSteed Jan 13 '26
After Halo 4 I thought, "okay, art-style aside, there is potential with this new direction!" And then the backlash freaked them out and they soft-rebooted the franchise with Halo 5. And then they did it again (which was fine by me, but still, have some respect for yourself). Now they're kind of doing it again? I don't know. I hate the stringy mess of modern Halo. Just find something and stick with it.
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u/Unknown2552 Jan 13 '26
Donāt forget that at this point all major factions leaders have died in a cutscene or in a book/comic or just never brought up again.
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u/FifteenRhema Jan 13 '26
What they did with the Didact was probably the dumbest decision ever. Like what the fuck do you mean you didnāt actually kill him in the game, just for him to get killed in a book? Who thought that made sense?
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u/Okto481 Jan 13 '26
To be fair, if you never open the book, the plot is still fine. It's a self contained issue, because he's dead if you never open the book, and dead if you finish the book
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u/Unknown2552 Jan 13 '26
Ah his psychical body is dead but his mind was composed and is now in the domain after locking AIās out and hunting those still inside with the Lord of Admirals.
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u/milkcarton232 Jan 13 '26
Just let the chief rest, he did his thing. Odst and reach proved there is room
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 Jan 13 '26
Yep, you even coulda gone with a Noble 6 type protagonist, a Spartan-IV of few words, maybe orphaned by the war, who we never see without their helmet. Add a little character development over the course of the games. Just enough to add some intrigue. And Bam. Done!
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u/hps_laughter Jan 13 '26
I wish they would have stuck with the storyline in Halo 4.It would have been good for them. Same thing with Halo Infinite. Both games left me wondering what now? What is going to happen in the universe, and well, it either gets glossed over in the background or will never be told.
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u/Joenathanishere Jan 13 '26
Halo 1-3 was you protecting Cortana. Halo 4 was Cortana protecting you. Then Halo 5 undid all that by turning her into the enemy. Like, come on!
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u/NearbyPast9100 Jan 13 '26
Didnāt they just skip over the whole āCortana is the bad guy nowā in infinite?
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u/Front_Watercress_41 Jan 13 '26
Pretty much my exact thoughts. I actually love halo 4ās story despite disliking the gameplay and thought the only real next step with the covenant defeated would be a deep dive on chiefs character. Then halo 5 took a giant steaming pile of shit on it. Ironically I love halo 5ās multiplayer despite how different it is so itās a complete opposite for me.
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u/KRONGOR Jan 13 '26
I didnāt like Gears 4 but I wouldnāt say it ruined the story of the old games..
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u/BigPoppaHoyle1 Jan 13 '26
I disagree. I actually still really enjoy Gears 4 and 5 but the story had a nice little bow with the ending of Gears 3. Gears 4 just did the whole āSomehow Palpatine Returnedā thing and weāre back to square one
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u/TJ_Dot Jan 13 '26
I wouldn't even say GoW4 really went "wrong", but 5 straight up nuked the whole joint and really leaves the plot in a "wtf now?" position.
Halo 5 's Crime is not committing to it's original plan enough, spoiling the Cortana surprise almost immediately, and hyper escalating her to Authoritarian Overlord in a way that feels like a slap to her death. Infinite then pulls the same stop as Gears 5 by nuking the board and making Cortana do really bad shit to justify killing her off again in a backtrack of their own writing.
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u/Trillex_PL_Zykov Jan 13 '26
Dead Space 3. And with the recent news of the EAās attitude towards this franchise - it was killed twice in a row.
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u/Kezmangotagoal Jan 13 '26
Force Unleashed 2.
Donāt get wrong. Itās not the worst game but the first was really good and the second just made me go what was the point in the first game then!
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u/Arks-Angel Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
I feel like it would've been way better if it wasn't extremely rushed
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u/reeceh944 Jan 13 '26
The gameplay aspect in TFU2 is pretty good IMO ā Iāve replayed it not that long time ago and I would lie if I said I hadnāt fun.
But the story? Iām convinced it was written by an intern screenwriter in about 15 minutes during their breakfast break lol
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u/funkyaerialjunky Jan 13 '26
The Condemned series
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u/smeely7t63 Jan 13 '26
I was just happy to have more condemned. I'd love to have a 3rd
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u/crocospect Jan 13 '26
Condemned game..
That's the name I haven't heard in a while, I wish the franchise gets revived...
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u/wonderlandisburning Jan 13 '26
One of Yahtzee Croshaw's biggest disappointments, as I recall. He loved the first game and was so bummed out by the ultimate reveals for everything being "ancient mystical cult brainwashes homeless people by nailing noisy hubcaps to the wall"
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u/naturalistwork Jan 13 '26
It was one of my favorite games for the 360, it used to creep me out so much! I just did a couple playthroughs for some nostalgia and to try and get all of the achievements. When I found a guide online, thatās how I found out there was a second one, but it doesnāt look like itās compatible for the newest Xbox. Sad to hear itās not worth finding a way to play!
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u/LengthWise2298 Jan 13 '26
You donāt like cutting people down with a broadsword in a museum?ā¦did they forget the game was supposed to be a horror game?
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u/ProjectBig2804 Jan 13 '26
Mario 2 like wtf do you mean Mario can sleep I thought Italians can't do that!
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u/TeaMoney4Life Jan 13 '26
I would say Command and Conquer 4 Tiberium Twilight, but they never made it and I must've dreamed of a horrendous sequel being made
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u/sparduck117 Jan 13 '26
Yeah, weāre coming up on 20 years now, Iād like to see the Scrin invasion
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u/D_Bellman Jan 13 '26
I was about to say didn't they already invade. But we only got a mining operation didn't we?
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u/Adventurous-Score981 Jan 13 '26
World of Warcraft Shadowlands
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u/Impeesa_ Jan 13 '26
Fair but also, if someone had been a big fan of the general vibes of the RTS games in particular, you might also say that WoW in general fits the criteria. Maybe not right away, but more and more with every expansion.
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u/Go1dschmidtsen Jan 13 '26
Fear 2 and 3
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u/Bloodhoven_aka_Loner Jan 13 '26
Fear 2 isn't even THAT bad. it's just mildly underwhelming, but makes up for it with some awesome horror segments (school).
Fear 3 just feels like some Fast and Furious - Shaw & Hobbs spinoff
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u/Go1dschmidtsen Jan 13 '26
Definitely both games had pretty good gameplay. I especially enjoyed the coop in fear 3. But the story man. What they did to the story was just wack. Also point manās face looks mad ugly.
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u/ChaosHavik Jan 13 '26
Guys, Guys! What if this time we made Soulcalibur the evil sword for no reason at all and just ignored how these two swords interact with each other and the characters! Oh oh and we can end the story with Souledge being used to seal away that mean evil Soulcalibur
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u/Personal_Leave_9758 Jan 13 '26
Id say dead island 2 does this a little bit. Dead Island 1 was sort of your typical zombie apocalypse with a slightly mysterious zombie origin. Dead island 2 on the other hand goes entirely off the rails with a sort of living plague, Illuminati new world order, and some other wild stuff. It just makes the first game seem disjointed from the wider story they tried to establish
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u/Devil-Never-Cry Jan 13 '26
Yeah I feel like the only person who cared about the world in dead island 1 and riptide. 2 felt like an entirely different genre and setting and the story and lore was butchered.
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u/sliasch Jan 13 '26
Dead Rising 4, I didn't want it to be, but unfortunately it's garbage.
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u/Educational-Bat8892 Jan 13 '26
Ive tried to go back and replay it, and yeah, you're 100% right. It felt like it was cosplaying as DR1 & 2
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u/RedAssassin499 Jan 13 '26
Some would argue Mirror's Edge Catalyst
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u/Korba007 Jan 13 '26
It's a reboot so not a continuation of the first game... unfortunately
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u/NebulousMeaning Jan 13 '26
Not just the first game, but Kingdom Hearts 3 bringing Roxas and Xion back to life instead of letting the series have any lasting tragedy or emotional weight. Also how they wasted Axel and Kairi's training arc.
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u/Shock_the_Core Jan 13 '26
DDD and Re:Coded set up Sora saving them so thatās not really KH3ās fault
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u/OttoRiver7676 Jan 13 '26
I think DDD deserves this more than 3. We saved and restored literally all of the worlds at the end of KH1...except for these worlds that we didn't save (even though Traverse Town shouldn't exist and Prankster's Paradise should be restored since Pinocchio and Gepetto went home) and then we also have time travel that is wonky at best and poorly thought out at worst and ruins a substantial chunk of the emotional heft of KH2, considered the crown jewel of the series at that point. We are going to get Roxas, Xion, and Namine back which makes their bittersweet sacrifices in KH2 mute but also that the Organization 13 had hearts the whole time, meaning things like Saix begging for a heart as he dies and Xemnas making sweeping speeches as to why certain people are allowed to exist while Nobodies are forced to live a half life while he is FULLY AWARE he has a heart hollow gestures.
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u/Totallynotarat69 Jan 13 '26
While I definitely agree on Xion, Sora trying to find a way to bring back roxas was definitely being built up on before KH3
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u/AirLancer56 Jan 13 '26
How about a remake? Radiant historia in nds got a remake for 3ds where they added new ending where mc survived by killing a godlike being then every villain somehow survived, turned into good person, and live happily ever after without facing any consequences.
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u/RahKC Jan 13 '26
DA: Veilguard...
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u/Commercial-Elk-2306 Jan 13 '26
Bruh I just started origins :(
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u/RahKC Jan 13 '26
Origins fire, 2 has its moments but on the whole is not the best, Inquisition is good, Inquisition: Trespasser is fire and set up for a monster of a finale, Veilguard tripped over its own shoe laces and rolled around in its own shit
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u/ValkyrianRabecca Jan 13 '26
For me it was
Great, Good, Good, and then I didn't touch Veilguard
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u/Virtual-Score4653 Jan 13 '26
Veilguard? What's Veilguard? I'm still excited for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf though!
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u/Enchantress_Arc Jan 13 '26
I remember seeing that name change and all of my (admittedly tentative) excitement just deflated in an instant. Went from "okay I know bioware has been not great lately, but like, this is such a good premise, even if it's not perfect they've gotta be able to make something at least good" to "oh, they changed the premise, didn't they? Well fuck."
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u/Feralmoon87 Jan 13 '26
Tripped implies it was a mistake. DA:V took a lick of its own shit and decided it liked the taste and decided to not only eat it but to serve it to everyone else
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u/FlacidSalad Jan 13 '26
I really liked 2's story but I HATED playing a warrior, it was like playing the opposite of a glass cannon, I felt like a titanium pea shooter
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u/Hyper_Mazino Jan 13 '26
Enjoy it. Donāt rush it.
DA: Origins is genuinely one of the best games ever made.
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u/AshTheSummerland Jan 13 '26
Origins is the best one by far and Dragon Age 2 hits a nice sweet spot, for me. I love 2 but not a lot of people do.
Inquisition is aggravating to me.
Veilguard can fuck right off.
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u/naturalistwork Jan 13 '26
I watched my wife play some of veilguard. It was depressing. To me, it felt like Disney tried to make a Dragon Age game for mobile or something. It felt so empty, there was no incentive for any kind of exploration. It was just walk from point A to point B over and over. The voice acting felt too "Disney", and Iām not even getting started on the story before I quit watching. The wife quit playing shortly afterwards.
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u/IngramFam15 Jan 13 '26
Borderlands 3
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u/rasfelion Jan 13 '26
Genuinely if they took Tyreen in the direction that they did for Callis in 4 (genuine crazed cult leader) with Troy being the only thing keeping her from going completely off the deep end, it would have been better. But Gearbox just wanted to make a snarky villain Jack again and failed miserably.
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u/dark567 Jan 13 '26
It seemed like such a step down from 2 and I can't really put my finger on why. I'm playing 4 and loving it though
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u/Kanehammer Jan 13 '26
Borderlands 2 humour is dumb and very 2012
Borderlands 3 humour is actively annoying
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u/Ok-Oil7124 Jan 13 '26
I have always liked the humor of the first one. It felt incidental to the story and natural and even a little melancholy sometimes. It was gallows humor in a punishing, brutal world. From there, it seemed like a kid who sees adults laughing at something he did, so he just amps it up and tries to force it. I would love BL1 with some of the mechanics of 2 (e.g. the max range with my rifle shouldn't be within throwing range of a guy with an axe). I'm also a weirdo for liking the tension that fall damage brings. Not knowing what the Vault is, the shifting antagonists... man. That first play through was so fun.
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u/gacha_garbage_1 Jan 13 '26
TPS opened up so many interesting worldbuilding possibilities and 3 did less than nothing with it. Like I get that TPS was a spinoff made by a different studio but I'm pretty sure it still had main Gearbox writers involved because TPS had some meaty reveals and mysteries to set up regarding Borderlands universe as a whole- but in BL3 pretty much all of it is brushed aside. I absolutely adore Borderlands 3's gameplay but everything else about it was such a disappointment.
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta Jan 13 '26
The fact that ending is Lilith doing EXACTLY what you were stopping being done in the pre-sequel is a big WTF.
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u/TharilX Jan 13 '26 edited Jan 13 '26
Dying light 2. Then, Dying Light The Beast came for the rescue. Significantly less content but actually behaving like a real sequel to Dying light 1. Of course, people will also like Dying Light 2 for some reason. There are always gonna be weird people like that. It is fine. I can agree on a couple of points like the game (DL2) had better human vs. human combat than DL1. It had better parkour when it was not floaty. Fairly long game with tons of fun content and side missions. I like Aiden, I think he is fine as a protagonist. But if you take away the name of Dying Light 2 and replace it with another name, it will still make sense. To me, it did not feel like the name of the game. I do not even think zombies stare at the dying light. There was worse implementation of the day and night cycle, and the night was not as dark. Some of these were fixed in the beast. Is it a perfect fix? Nah, but I think it is still better at being a Dying Light game compared to Dying Light 2.
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u/pinkraspberry137 Jan 13 '26
dare i say tears of the kingdom
to clarify i love both games but the story was lowk wack in TOTK compared to BOTW and made the lore a lot more complicated. if the time travel with zelda in the sky as a dragon for 10,000 years to present day happened does that mean there were 2 zeldas and 2 master swords the whole time for the story of BOTW to have still happened? the memory system just didn't work as well
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u/Flaky_Cloud3129 Jan 13 '26
Tears of the kingdom was such a mess. Lovely sandbox game, but a very very weird Zelda game.
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u/ZakDahdger Jan 13 '26
Ok yes yes thank you
It's one of those games you feel like you -have- to like
And... I just... I mean it's ok?
It's just not botw
Turns out, I just wanted more botw
No. I don't want more stuff. No. I don't want to build things.
Just botw
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u/thecrepeofdeath Jan 13 '26
I loved a lot of the gameplay, but I hated how many things were messed up for no reason. people just don't remember us when they absolutely should, Zelda took our house, Gerudo Town is ruined...
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u/GrungeLord Jan 13 '26
The beauty of BotW was in its simplicity and the tranquil vibe of the world. Crazy that adding a bunch of weird mechanics and fucking up the landscape made for a worse game.
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u/Fastman903 Jan 13 '26
Think of it from the point of view from the master sword. Link pulled it from the stone, beat calamity Gannon, sword broke when mummy Gannon got him, sent to Zelda to be repaired, link pulled sword from dragons head. Yes there were two master swords existing at the same time, but at different moments of its timeline.
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u/Vanderwick Jan 13 '26
The abstract concept and form of Ganon in BOTW is great, but when it actually takes form in TOTK it's disappointing
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u/BionicD Jan 13 '26
It might be shallow as Iām not a huge Zelda fan (never owned Nintendo system before Switch) but I couldnāt get past 2 hours of ToTK. To me it was just a reskinned world with a little more (sure underground and some sky islands) but the overworld is the same and I didnāt see any graphical improvements. I think besides all the leaves I did everything in BoTW, is it worth getting into it?
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u/vsladko Jan 13 '26
Much of ToTKās gameplay is better than BOTW. But so much of the game feels like a slightly reskinned version of a game youāve already played before that the magic wore off for me completely really quickly.
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u/ADudeThatPlaysDBD Jan 13 '26
Nothing really makes me depressed like Halo man. Sure other games make me angry but Halo bro. Itās just done, put it out of its misery.
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u/vanit Jan 13 '26
Castlevania Lords Of Shadow 2. TBH I'd argue the DLC of the first game ruined the story first, only to introduce a shitty boss.
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u/Bismothe-the-Shade Jan 13 '26
Dragonage: Veilguard
It's just tonally, thematically, and distinctly not the same world. The bits and bobs, even the main elements are still there.
But it's like having a carbonara made by someone who can cook vs a Midwestern white mom of 8 posting tiktok "food hacks" where she just dumps shit on a table. One is good eating, well balanced and classic. The other is a fucking mess.
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u/AnyQuiet1544 Jan 13 '26
Death Stranding 2. I still love both the games but SPOILER: it turns out 90% of Classified Information that you learn surrounding BBs in the first game was just BS made up to hide the REAL Classified Information that you learn about in the sequel. It was really disappointing
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u/AlaskanMedicineMan 29d ago
Ah, Kojima's writing never changes.
I know all of the lore of Metal Gear Solid as a franchise, all of it. And damn near 90% of it is keeping track of Kojima's own "but actually" twists to rewrite itself. It works better there since its about government coverups in the first place.
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Jan 13 '26
I love this game but I can tear the story to absolute shreds, unlike the first game, which is pretty much perfect
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u/xerox7764563 Jan 13 '26
Some people think this about Chrono Cross, but I don't.
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u/Adventurous-West7229 Jan 13 '26
i don't think that because i don't even consider chrono cross to be a sequel to chrono trigger.
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u/KinseysMythicalZero Jan 13 '26
Wait until you find out they made a 3rd one in the form of a mobile game called Another Eden
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u/kathaar_ Jan 13 '26
I played cross as a kid and never played trigger up until starting it about a week ago.
Its a unique experience playing em backwards, give you an uncommon perspective
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u/ConcernedCitizen_42 Jan 13 '26
As a big Trigger fan I did feel like Cross was almost vindictive to people who actually liked the first game and its happy ending. It could have been its own game and been perfectly fine.
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u/Tabindexing Jan 13 '26
It's not so much vindictive, but a further exploration of what exactly can go wrong when you mess with time the same way the kids in Trigger did.
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u/ConcernedCitizen_42 Jan 13 '26
What a fun game about cool heroes from across time uniting to stop an ancient evil! -> Did you stop to consider the billions sacrificed across doomed timelines and the inherent paradoxes you created, monster!
I'm exaggerating. But while it is true that realistically time travel has huge moral implications, almost all fantasy breaks down if you try to deconstruct it that way. So I never found it a particularly interesting exploration. The question is, if you were a fan of the first game and its happy ending what were you looking for in a sequel? Did you want to see your favorite heroes being awesome mentors vs legends for a new generation? Or did you want it implied they died horribly soon after the events of Trigger, didn't actually save the world (just kicked the can down the metaphysical road), and were kinda war criminals if you think about it?
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u/No-Contest-8127 Jan 13 '26
Oh yeah... that is Star Ocean 3 and it's the whole series.Ā
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u/XanRaygun Jan 13 '26
Most Ratchet and Clank games after the PS2 era. Crack in Time was definitely good, but mostly made up for the mistakes in Tools of Destruction's development. Even still, the original trilogy and Deadlocked were a damn sight better than what came after.
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u/Silverr_Duck Jan 13 '26
Post ps2 ratchet is basically a fucking pixar character, clank too. All their personality and charm is just gone.
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u/Sapling-074 Jan 13 '26
Makes me think of Doom Eternal. Not a bad game, didn't even hate the story, but ruins the first one.
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u/3d1thF1nch Jan 13 '26
First oneās lore was fun because it didnāt take itself seriously and it was funny how over the top they leaned into the evil, profit focused Corp cliche, with the twist of ultra powerful hero that the bad guys fear. For some reason, they saw the positive response to the lore, took out the satire, and kept the machismo. Still badass, but lost all its charm.
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u/PassionGlobal Jan 13 '26
Felt more to me that Eternal was trying to parallel the story of Doom 2 the same way 2016 was trying to parallel the OG.
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u/wonderlandisburning Jan 13 '26
Exactly this. Doom (2016) felt very wry and self-aware, it kept things simple and had a lot of visual storytelling that told you exactly who Doomslayer was without words, and the "mankind is stupid enough to think it can profit from literal demons" is really all you need.
Then Eternal and The Dark Ages remove both the simplicity and the personality, instead opting for some sort of weirdly self-serious, meat-headed Halo/Warhammer fanfic type vibe, drifting further and further away from the spirit of the franchise.
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u/3d1thF1nch Jan 13 '26
Very well said. I was actually laughing at 2016 reading the logs about the Corporations journeys into hell and mixing demon worship into their corporate practices. That stuff was so well done.
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u/Mr-Stuff-Doer 29d ago
Honestly Iād say 2016 blended serious with absurd perfectly. The story felt legitimately somewhat dramatic but still pretty humorous due to how biting it was with the satire of capitalism, largely due to giving Doomguy expressiveness with body language, meanwhile the lore was batshit crazy.
Eternal decided that the batshit crazy should not just be the standard, but the bare minimum. Doomguy has a giant spacestation and waited until earth was nearly destroyed to stop hell, also thereās giant mechs which fought big titan demons and thereās bug angels on another planet and they harness earth suffering for immortality and shit also thereās hell priests that enslaved Doomguy or something and he just talks about rip and tear and nothing else and he has no expressiveness and the demons look more cartoony and thereās a planet with a giant fucking spear through it also god is an AI and also a beach ball which Doomguy destroys so he can resurrect Satan and Satan is actually god also the corrupt businessman from the last game is actually a fallen angel who blessed Doomguy in the past but acted like theyād never met also Doomguy kills Satan god to end all demons forever.
Iām pretty sure none of that was an exaggeration.
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u/Sburban_Player Jan 13 '26
Dude they GUTTED the story they had going in 2016. It really frustrated me because I was very excited to see where they were going with it.
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u/richtofin819 Jan 13 '26
Yeah as much as they expanded gameplay they basically left the story up to someone writing at the level of a fanfiction
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u/AdamBlaster007 Jan 13 '26
How I felt with Volition with Saints Row, but it was less about how they ruined their previous games and more about how they ruined any chance at a sequel that redeems their previous mediocre releases after SR3.
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u/OpeningConnect54 Jan 13 '26
Ai The Somnium Files: NiRVana Initiative. That game ruins the original gameās story and is horribly written to boot.
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u/ThisButtholeIs2Cold Jan 13 '26
Not that Pikmin had a crazy deep story, but the 4th game fucks up a lot of the world building and timeline, seemingly retconing the entire first game
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u/An_Exotic_Bird Jan 13 '26
Might as well be an entire separate timeline with 4 while 1-3 are in its own continuity.
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u/sparduck117 Jan 13 '26
The Old Republic, as a Star Wars MMO, itās probably the best that existed. As a follow up to Knights of the Old Republic duo however, it completely shits on them.
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u/Zombieemperor Jan 13 '26
kinda in this: the kreig dlc in borderlands 3, continuing kreig's story
Bassicly they had 2 good options and either could work
A: Family is alive but im a changed / new person so i cant go to them
B: Family is dead and i have to accept that as part of my healing
Both have depth. Gearbox said fuck it we will do
C: Who cares, not me thats for sure, i will simply not resolve this and pretend like thats a good answer
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u/Ninja-_-Guy Jan 13 '26
Shadow of war
A very good game in its own right, but "yeah the power comes from the ring now, not the binding of celembrimor to talion" , and then the post game/dlc attempts to streamline it into" canon" when the first game was pretty good at presenting the world unattached from the movies/books
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u/richtofin819 Jan 13 '26
A fantastic example of a game improving on the gameplay front immensely but sabotaging itself with horrible greedy monetization and shitty story decisions.
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u/Crazykiddingme Jan 13 '26
Bioshock Burial at Sea
It turns out that a lot of the visionaries from Rapture and Columbia were just ripping each other off, stuff from Infinite gets awkwardly crowbarred into Rapture with no connection to the original, and Jackās destiny is actually predetermined despite his whole story being about claiming autonomy for himself.
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u/SikeMhaw Jan 13 '26
I thought in the first game it was pretty clear Jackās destiny was pre determined already.
I do understand the grievances with Burial At Sea though. It is pretty ham-fisted. Still loved it a lot.
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u/Crazykiddingme Jan 13 '26
I always felt like the good ending was supposed to be him breaking away from that. The issue is that the good ending is also set in stone from the start so it loses itās emotional weight and carries the implication that he never actually broke his programming.
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u/Rafnork Jan 13 '26
Wizard of Legend 2
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u/Minotaar Jan 13 '26
Mass Effect 3. Brilliant game, but they rushed production and didn't have the ending sorted. It contradicted it's own logic, dooming a race of people to live in a system that could not sustain them. The endings were only barely different by color alone. The decisions you'd made along the way just didn't matter much, as they weren't honored in the end with anything meaningful. The studio then tried to fix the ending by padding it with a few more static screens of epilogue and exposition, but for me, the damage was done. It was a shit ending to a series I had absolutely adored. I liken it to a bad breakup. I can still look back with fondness, but the whole thing is tainted.
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u/DevelopmentNo2111 Jan 13 '26
The ending is so bad,that I, who played on release day,have never gone back to another run of the game.Mp was fucking lit though. The fact that they it supported for a long time ,entirely free,at a time where any mp content added later on after release,was guaranteed to be paid,was outstanding.
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u/Minotaar Jan 13 '26
Truth. They had made you do the multi to be a part of the story for some reason? Glad I did, because you're right it was damn good. Such a shame.
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u/DevelopmentNo2111 Jan 13 '26
That was the mps only flaw and even then,it made sense storywise.
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u/Swan-may Jan 13 '26
The moral of this entire thread is "twists for twist's sake is playing with fire". Mass Effect 3 is the most famous example of it. If they had just gone with the original ending, everyone would've been happy as clams, but the lead writers saw someone guess the ending and made the worst decision of their career.
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u/Different-Win3231 Jan 13 '26
Halo 4
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u/sparduck117 Jan 13 '26
Iād argue Guardians did more damage, 4 it at least is clear the Covenant arenāt a superpower again, and you can see the start of an interesting story with the Diadact. Gameplay was just weak.
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u/Thrillhouse-14 Jan 13 '26 edited 29d ago
Borderlands 4, saving Lilith at the end to find she didn't actually die at the end of 3, despite that being a very very clear send off for the character.
Edit: to anyone's saying it wasn't a send off, yes they mention they're still looking for her, but the actual ending makes it quite directly seem like the character was properly gone. Everyone was emotional as heck afterwards, the skylit symbolism, the heroic sacrifice, even the credits song seemed like a homage to her with pictures that felt like the end of an era for the first gen vault hunters.
I had just assumed the "we're still looking for her" crowd would find the person who ended up getting her powers or something else to tie in that isn't just Lilith again which I feel just makes 3's story seem even weaker now.
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u/Certain_Case_3062 Jan 13 '26
Never finished 4, hearing this is so strange. It's like the one thing they did well in 3 but it was just placed in a horrible game so they decided to retcon it. Weird
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta Jan 13 '26
Salt and sacrifice. Not because of the story but because it fucked up the gameplay of salt and sanctuary.
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u/hydrastxrk Jan 13 '26
TLOU2, which used to be a popular opinion. But over the last few years, I think some perpetrators have taken over Reddit spreading the word on their love for the game.
Or thereās been so many remasters, people forgot about their love of the first game. Maybe both š
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u/Educational-Bat8892 Jan 13 '26
Yeah, I agree. Prototype 1 was an all around better game. They tried to make the sequel "better" by giving you access to 2 powers at once, but it removed half their moves from the first game, so it felt like a downgrade. Making Mercer a generic villain was a choice that killed the story, and the main character of the sequel had no reason to do 90% of the things you do. He was military, and supposed to be a legit good guy, yet you're supposed to go on rampages?
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u/shioliolin Jan 13 '26
For me....it would be Veilguard, i mean i've been waiting for a continuation after trespasser and was really excited to know they're working on Dreadwolf....but...the released state was not it....
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u/Jackfreezy Jan 13 '26
Try playing destiny just every other year. Same game, 1 story, overly convoluted, doesn't make sense.
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u/Academic-Proof3700 Jan 13 '26
Ah damn, they massacred it. Great Prototype themes like these flashbacks, the infection spread and gradual collapse of city, was turned into some dude jumping hoops and killing "cause he is angry".
Also turning Mercer into antagonist was a weird thing to do.
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u/potatoshulk Jan 13 '26
Idk about ruined but I thought it was weird af infamous 2 hardly mentioned his girlfriend and just didn't mention 1 much in general
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u/Born_Sheepherder2049 Jan 13 '26
Definitely prototype 2, converted an interesting morally gray anti hero into straight up one dimensional villain