@KratosMD There in lies some of the issue. Not every game can 'change' too much and still keep the fan-base that made it popular in the first place. Halo 4 changed a bit but wasn't as well received as 3, ODST and/or Reach and Halo 5 was poorly received (from a campaign perspective and divided the MP community) because it barely featured Master Chief and the MP was a bit too 'CoD' like and eSport focused. On the other hand, Gears 4 was regarded as too 'safe' - maybe understandably after the difficulties 343 had after taking on Halo so the Coalition wanted to show they could make a 'Gears' game first - it was better than Judgement though.
Halo could be the right time to be rebooted after being on a downward spiral for a while - you could argue that games like Tomb Raider and God of War were on a downward spiral but the reboot breathed life into these franchises. You still have 'fans' of GoW saying that the latest, whilst a good game isn't really 'God of War' any more. Change too much or the 'wrong' thing (like Dante in DMC4) and it can still be a 'big' disaster. They are almost damned if they do and damned if they don't. You almost have to wait until these franchises are at their lowest ebb or been out of the spotlight for a while and then 'reboot'.
Perfect Dark is rumoured to be a Third Person and a reboot so that may well turn out to be what the Xbox needs - a well known franchise (albeit one 'great' but quite under-played because of the need of the expansion pack on N64 and one 'mediocre' game) - this is also rumoured to be the Coalitions next game. The Fable games were good but its been long enough since Fable 3 that they could reboot the franchise, change it up significantly and its also rumoured to be developed by Playground games - the developers behind Forza Horizon. The next Gears is rumoured to be lead developed by someone else - not the Coalition who are supposed to be working on Perfect Dark (and assisting with PUBG too) so a different perspective may help Gears 5.
You say you are looking forward to Forza Horizon but that hasn't really changed over its 3 games so far. Forza too is very similar. The only real change this year was the X support - 4k HDR - and the weather is more 'dynamic' but its still the same basic game. Forza is helped by its history as one of the best racing games and despite games like Project Cars coming out, Forza has continued to be at the top of the genre - also helped because Turn10 will not accept anything less than locked 60fps performance regardless whilst the others will drop when pushed.
In all honesty, what I think the big issue is not that the games are too similar, its that their is little 'new' and these games are not exactly 'unique'. If we don't get another Halo, there is other games that can feel that void - some better too. It would be similar on PS if GG had released 'another' Killzone competing with CoD, Battlefield, Battlefront, Titanfall 2, Halo etc. Halo would need to be 'outstanding' to stand out against that market. Forza Horizon succeeds because there isn't really anything like it. Gears 4 was good but didn't stand-out against other 3rd Person cover shooters inc the predecessors. The 'new' games - like Ryse, Sunset Overdrive, Screamride, Quantum Break, Recore etc all didn't take off either and their most 'unique; and exciting game was cancelled. If we were getting 'great' new franchises, then the old stalwarts wouldn't also be carrying the weight of expectation. People wanting them to be better than they ever could be to justify their console choice. When these games launched, Halo and Gears were unique on console and that also helped boost their status - like people having great memories of Cod 4 or MW2 because that was their 'first' CoD - even though they then got fed up with the same game every year (even though they did change a lot), when the franchise finally did change, it was too much and now they want CoD4/MW2 again - go back to the same formula they got bored with long before Ghosts came along...
Like I said though, you can change too much and not enough at the same time and upset the majority for all different reasons - whether its because its been changed or not changed enough. Sometimes its better to actually take a break and build something 'new' - like ND did with Last of Us and GG have done with H:ZD rather than try and build the franchise game to appease 'everyone'. Give it time and then reboot or even give it long enough and people will 'miss' what these games offered and want the 'nostalgic memory'
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@KratosMD I agree and I prefer Horizon to Motorsport to because its more 'fun'. I too play Halo and Gears for their Single Player but if you drop MP or don't 'expand' on that, both 'eSport' games, then you risk upsetting the MP community. Both though are quite linear games which have felt 'dated' in todays open world, sandbox games with choice on when you tackle the next 'story' mission. Even though God of War is very linear and also very structured with the path you can take on land, it still offers a bit of 'open world' feel. If you look at virtually every 'on foot' area - its virtually a single path but does have some 'wider' areas where enemies tend to spawn most but even these have one path in and one path out with maybe some paths that lead to loot. Even all the little bays around the lake of nine are linear and you have to get back into the boat to move to any of the other bays. You can 'fast travel' I guess if you don't want to travel the linear paths but t hen have to put up with the loading screen hid behind that 'tree' you can walk around in a circle - which I guess is better than just a black screen. Anyway that's a bit off topic but it also shows how you can build a 'linear' game and still make it feel more like an open world game. I think Halo would struggle more with this but I could see Gears going this route successfully. I do think though that Gears would have to lose some aspect of its MP to do that which would upset the MP community. If Halo went that way, with games like Destiny doing that, it may seem like a desperate attempt to copy - even if its not 'online' focused.
As I said, its almost better to drop these - at least for a few years and develop 'new' IPs until people want them for what they were not what they want them to be which is often different from person to person. Either that or wait long enough and then reboot them...
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I would be surprised if MS come out with a bunch of unexpected first party titles, it will be the same ol same ol Forza, Halo, Gears and Crackdown 3 (lol), backwards compatibility and 4k stuff for the X. They may have something like they had with Anthem, but I don't see many of those marketing rumours being true. And I doubt very much there will be any timed exclusives a la Rise of the Tomb Raider as I'm sure Spencer said they won't be doing that anymore.
I honestly think they won't be putting a great deal of effort into this gen anymore and start building things up for next gen. Not necessarily at this E3 mind.
Sony well it will be mostly stuff we already know about. Will FF7 remake be there? Days Gone and TLOU 2 are defo there and I imagine they will double down on VR. There will be no more announcing tiles which we won't see for 2 - 3 years. Oh and Bloodborne 2 for next Spring pleeeeeeeeeeease.
As for Nintendo I just wanna see something of Metroid 4.
To me, E3 this year will be a bit of a placeholder for MS and Sony. Nintendo are only a year or so into the Switch's lifecyle so may have a fair bit to show.
MS, it is rumoured, is investing heavily in games development but I suspect that with AAA games taking at least 3 years for new IP's etc., we may not see anything other than existing IP's. There may be some teases.
I think Sony will double down on what we know to be honest, and throw in a couple of surprises. I'm actually kinda interested in third party games. Cyberpunk being a big one I think for most people.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
I often see people complaining that Halo and Gears are the same, but no one complained that we have 5 uncharted games in 10 years which are also the same. Okay, maybe TLL changes some of the formula and lead characters but the 4 main entries are basically the same games with different locations. I find that really interesting.
On topic, I have no interest in Nintendo so I'll watch Ms and Sony conferences. I just hope Sony's conference will be a lot more interesting that the last one, which was quite a snooze except for that Spiderman gameplay.
@NecuVise The difference is that Sony allow their studios to try different things, when's the last time MS have done that? 343 industries make just Halo games, The Coalition just Gears of War, Turn 10 just Forza and Lionhead before they closed just Fable games. It all adds up things getting stale. Compared to Sony where 6 of it's studios over the past 7 years have created 8 new IPs.
@adf86 I do agree that MS Studio's do appear somewhat locked into a franchise. 343 was created to make Halo games and they are not ALL FPS games though as Halo Wars is a RTS (with Creative Assembly too its true) and Halo: Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike are top down twin-stick shooters.
The Coalition has only made 1 Gears game thus far though and are (rumoured) to be making a Perfect Dark game. Also the next Gears is not expected to be spearheaded by them either - its rumoured that Splash Damage will make the Campaign at least due to Job Listings - it may not be true of course.
Turn10 really don't need to make anything other than Forza Motorsport as they are regarded as one of, if not the best at what they do. Its no different from Polyphony Digital just making Gran Turismo games - both 'sim sports' titles. Playground games may well only make Forza Horizon games - at the moment - but they also expanded recently and are the rumoured developers of Fable. Talking of Fable, Lionhead only made 3 titles - Fable, Black and White and a business simulation called the Movies and it was when they tried something 'different' with Fable Legends that things went very south for them.
For years though, you get devs that stick to what they know - look at Call of Duty with the 3 devs all just making CoD games - although Treyarch did make more games at one point. Some studio's tend to have 2 or maybe 3 games in their repertoire that they make too and Naughty Dog may have given us the Last of Us which isn't all that dissimilar from Uncharted - darker tone maybe with some very basic crafting but its not greatly different from Uncharted in structure or game-play - not saying that's a bad thing but its not like going from a FPS linear and MP game to a big third person SP open world action RPG game like GG has - who for years basically only made Killzone.
We all want diversity and something new and unique - but we also want our favourites to return and bring back what was special about those games - change enough to make it feel new, modern and fresh but still retain everything we fell in love with. Like I said if you change too much without it being a 'reboot', it can alienate the loyal fans.
A pessimist is just an optimist with experience!
Why can't life be like gaming? Why can't I restart from an earlier checkpoint??
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@YummyHappyPills That's not fair, I thought you were talking about the title screen. Anyway, I didn't know that, and partly because I've never heard anyone call them Metroid 3 and 4
@adf86 that's another topic and I was not talking about that. Sony is guilty of that too. Santa Monica made the same game over and over again, polyphony same game, naughty dog for the last decade the same game except for tlou which is very similar, media molecule made 3 lbp games, gg made several killzone games etc.
It's just that Sony has more studios so their portfolio feels a lot different, especially with new IPs and reboots in recent time.
@NecuVise Media Molecule only made LBP1 and LBP2, they also made Tearaway and they're currently working on Dreams. I don't think you can accuse them of making the same thing over and over again!
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