Conventional movie wisdom pre-“Matrix” trilogy? There’s no surer thing than a sequel. But after the bottom fell out of Neo’s brainjack epic and Charlie’s angels fell to earth during their second flight, Hollywood is rethinking its protracted case of sequel-itis. And after 2003, the video game industry is doing the same.
Titanic flops such as “Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness” proved that return trips to past successes are no longer a license to print money.
There are two kinds of sequels in the video game biz. The most common are those generated strictly by money — when a publisher strikes it rich with a successful game, a second chapter often is immediately greenlighted in hopes of repeating the results. Sometimes these sequels soar, such as Rockstar’s “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City,”which offered more of the same addictive, visceral gameplay before the hype started to wane.
The other breed of sequel is the organic follow-up, a story that demands to be continued or a breakout character who deserves a starring role. Square Enix had never made a direct sequel to a “Final Fantasy” game until last November’s “Final Fantasy X-2.” Yuna, the sequel’s star,was a supporting cast member in “FF X” — but enough fans took a shine to her that Square decided she deserved the spotlight. The game just crossed the million-seller mark.
Interplay’s new “Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance 2” (PlayStation 2/Xbox, $49.99) actually straddles both categories. The original “BG: DA” was a runaway hit. More than a million gamers played it and loved it. And when the game ended, fans were left wanting. They’d had a 12-hour taste of this world, and it demanded a second visit to check up on what had now become old friends.
So, a sequel should have been a cakewalk down the yellow brick road, right? Not necessarily. With game budgets in the millions, even tried-and-true formulas must prove themselves to the money men. And the first bump “BG: DA2” encountered was the defection of Snowblind Studios, the development team that crafted the original. Snowblind was hired away by Sony to develop “EverQuest: Champions of Norrath” for the PS2. Not surprisingly, “Norrath” is a swashbuckling dungeon crawler with more than a passing resemblance to the original “Baldur’s Gate.”
And then there was last year’s legal dust-up between between Interplay and distributor Vivendi Universal Games, a financial crisis that threatened to derail the game’s release, but was patched up behind closed doors.
Despite these setbacks, Black Isle Studios, the replacement developers, pressed on with Interplay and set about making the sequel fans wanted.
“Sequels need to push boundaries and make strides forward,” says Albert Perez, Line Producer at Black Isle. “The first thing we did was to decide what elements of game play would be kept and what needed modification based on the feedback we received on the first game from fans and critics alike.” These improvements included a new visual gloss, more engaging characters, and a weapons creation system that challenges gamers to come up with some pretty wicked hardware.
The result of their hard work paid off. Reviews for the new game, which was released last week, have been stellar — the most common compliment is that “BG: DA2” is a smoother, more refined affair, but still has the same “can’t put it down”-ness of the original. Perez says that was of utmost importance to Interplay and Black Isle.” You can bore your fan-base and/or fail to impress the critics if you don’t innovate and add to your game feature list in a significant way.”
Of course, the Sword of Fire +3 swings both ways. There is such a thing as changing too much and completely alienating your audience. (A lesson SEGA may learn with this spring’s “Phantasy Star Online III,” which trades in the successful hack-and-slash adventuring that earned a few hundred thousand fans for trading card warfare.) “You need to be careful not to stray too far from your original formula or you lose that which made you successful in the first place,” Perez says. “It’s a balancing act between maturation and innovation.”
And it looks as if “BG: DA2” is walking the tight rope just fine.
