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For ongoing franchises, do you prefer more compact games releasing in a short gap or games with expanded scale that's taking longer to come out?

How would you like developers to deliver games in an ongoing series?

  • Short and sweet experience for faster consecutive releases

    Votes: 21 46.7%
  • Full blown games with larger scale and more side contents, but takes significant longer time

    Votes: 24 53.3%

  • Total voters
    45

LectureMaster

Gold Member
In the light of Ragnarok, I actually decided that I want to play through the whole GOW series chronologically in release order.

As I was checking the release timeline, it really strikes me that how closer the earlier games released next to each other.


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Granted, starting from last gen, games naturally take more time to make as they gets more complicated technically, but for the non-open world story-driven games from Santa Monica or Naughty Dog, over time, the developers also deliberately aimed to deliver a larger volume game which requires longer developing time. For instance, while the classic Uncharted 2 was a sweet 10 hour linear adventure, naughty dog's latest TLOU2 can easily require you 25 hours just to finish the main story; similarly, the Greek trilogy of GoW average around 9 - 10 hours each game, the new North mythology's main story is around 25 - 30 hours.

Meatier games mean more time to get immersed and longer enjoyment of a well crafted work, however it comes with the key downside - the waiting time is much longer. Ragnarok, which is heavily dependent on the framework from the last game, still takes more than 4.5 years to bake while the old Greek games pretty much came out every two years. One reason is clear - the new GOW games have much more side contents in terms of exploration, RPG elements, and side activities.

Had they not including the full nine realms in Ragnarok, the game could have probably come out sooner to meet the original 2021 targeting time. Cory Barlog said Ragnarok is the conclusion of the North mythology because he did not want a trilogy that requires more than 10 years. Definitely true if each game is simply getting bigger. But would you rather take a trilogy just over 6 years if that means each individual game was just an essential, compact core experience of the story (less of extra exploration or side contents)?
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Left behind and Lost Legacy are unbelievable games so I’d lean towards that. I revisited Miles Morales yesterday and even though the writing is corny as fuck it’s a good game if you just skip all of the skippable cutscenes.
 
I would like the approach of giving us a new base game every two or so years and additional story/map content between. Like Resident Evil 7/8.

I also liked the episodic style of the Hitman game a few years ago, but most people seemed to hate it.
 

Elysion

Banned
Depends on the game and genre. Something like Zelda, or rpgs like Elder Scrolls, should always be huge, so long development cycles for those make sense (though not too long of course). If anything, some franchises (like Pokémon) are in desperate need of longer development cycles imo, especially now that they’re open world.

But something like Uncharted doesn’t need to be longer than 8 hours imo. The Resident Evil remakes for example are all pretty short, but still good games (though RE3 might be a little too short). God of War Ragnarok is long enough that it could’ve been turned into two games; the first half could’ve been a cross-gen game in 2021, and the second half a next-gen-only release in 2023. That way we would’ve gotten the first half of Ragnarok a year early, while the PS5 would’ve gotten a proper next-gen showcase in 2023.
 

Daneel Elijah

Gold Member
Nintendo does the 1 game par generation since at least the N64 and it worked pretty well for them. When the team is good( already established with a distinct culture and a good support structure like Sony big teams, Rockstar...) having 1 game and 1 DLC like Uncharted and TLOU did is perfect for me.
 

Flutta

Banned
Hmm hard to say. I enjoy both tbh. It all comes down to execution. If the game is good but short i tend to wish it was longer and vice versa.
 

D-ray

Member
As far as I wish for a game taking long in order to come out good, I can't expect commercial phenomenons like Pokémon to stay quiet for 2 years before putting out a new game. Not only because of sales, but because that 75% of the community wants a game every year.
 
I also like what the rumors say about GTA VI – that they release the big game like they did before, but they expand the map from time to time.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Whatever size game that has 2 - 3 years between entries.
(Assuming they are in the same generation, I can understand between generations you might want to keep it in the oven for longer).
That way we can atleast assume a trilogy can be completed in a single generation.

Waiting 5+ years for a sequel?
If to complete a story its gonna be 15 to 20 years of my life?
fernando-alonso-race-driver.gif

Get fucked!



Insomniac Games save us.
 
Regardless of time between releases, a 12/15 hours game is perfect fine for me.

It will take me two months or so to complete GoW R 😐.
 
Cory Barlog said Ragnarok is the conclusion of the North mythology because he did not want a trilogy that requires more than 10 years. Definitely true if each game is simply getting bigger. But would you rather take a trilogy just over 6 years if that means each individual game was just an essential, compact core experience of the story (less of extra exploration or side contents)?
That would make sense, the side content is annoying if you are a completionist. Also, this content is too big and in your face in the case of Ragnarok, complete side regions with their own subquests. These things should be one room here and these, well hidden and all, this is an action game and fake exploration should not have been such a distraction during development.

This game would have benefited from a better focus on the main adventure.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
Spread them further apart, let the developers properly iterate and innovate. The reason why Ascension was generally disliked is partly due to series fatigue that seriously started creeping in at that point. Shorter release window also contributed to lack of ideas, and their grand plan for that game was just to add multiplayer that no one asked for and iterate on the combat in the shittiest way possible. After that it took Santa Monica 5 long years to reinvent the series into something that felt fresh and awesome again.

This is also why series such as Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed are getting so much shit for being the same game every year. And don't even get me started on sports games, these basically gave up sometime in the mid-2000s.
 
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deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
One or two year gap only for spin offs, three to five for the main saga is the perfect number

The game doesn't need to be the biggest shit ever, just better enough to be settled as a sequel
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
The former, way too big game overwhelme me and I don't like being stuck in a single game more than I wish... That's the reason why AA gaming has been a bless to me this gen, though some games have kept me playing for more than 40 hours, that's mostly due to me wanting to play more and not because the game demands that amount of time to complete
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
what insomniac & capcom are doing. big games are cool and all but they take a shitton of time out of me, you have to commit a month or a week to them. Games that can be beaten in 3 days but are full of unique and cool content will always resonate better with me
 
Depends.

I like God of War 2018 and Ragnarok MUCH more than the original games (which were pretty good in their own right). So, yes, the wait was worth it.

Final Fantasy has been the opposite. The longer they take, the less they click with me compared to the SNES and PS1 years where we got a new mainline entry every other year.

There's plenty of other stuff to play, so I'll wait on quality. I just don't like waiting for games that are long for the sake of being long.
 
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Umbasaborne

Banned
Sucks we will never get back to the way things were. I fucking hate how long these games take to make now. Now we usually only get one game per franchise per console cycle
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
The longer they take, the less they click with me compared to the SNES and PS1 years where we got a new mainline entry every other year.
i agree with this, i like how the new FF16 looks but really all i want is a good old ps1/ps2 turn based rpg with a great story, better combat mechanics, and cool pre rendered backgrounds for me to have an eyegasm at. That's what FF is to me tbh and its why im glad bravely default exists, though i don't think its as good as those older FFs
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Spread them further apart, let the developers properly iterate and innovate. The reason why Ascension was generally disliked is partly due to series fatigue that seriously started creeping in at that point. Shorter release window also contributed to lack of ideas, and their grand plan for that game was just to add multiplayer that no one asked for and iterate on the combat in the shittiest way possible. After that it took Santa Monica 5 long years to reinvent the series into something that felt fresh and awesome again.

This is also why series such as Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed are getting so much shit for being the same game every year. And don't even get me started on sports games, these basically gave up sometime in the mid-2000s.

God of War Ragnorok - 2022

God of War C1 - 2027 - PS5
God of War C2 - 2033 - PS6
God of War C3 - 2040 - PS6/7

Mate youll probably be dead by the time they complete the next pantheon.
It shouldnt take 5+ years to make sequels.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
God of War Ragnorok - 2022

God of War C1 - 2027 - PS5
God of War C2 - 2033 - PS6
God of War C3 - 2040 - PS6/7

Mate youll probably be dead by the time they complete the next pantheon.
It shouldnt take 5+ years to make sequels.
I never said that they should be making each one for 5 years lol.

I'm just saying that if they start saturating the market with more god of war games like they did between 2005-2013 then it's gonna turn to shit again sooner or later.

Also, who said we need to see like 10 more sequels or whatever? I'd be perfectly happy if they ended it with Ragnarok and moved on to a different IP.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
I never said that they should be making each one for 5 years lol.

I'm just saying that if they start saturating the market with more god of war games like they did between 2005-2013 then it's gonna turn to shit again sooner or later.

Also, who said we need to see like 10 more sequels or whatever? I'd be perfectly happy if they ended it with Ragnarok and moved on to a different IP.
God of War was your example so i just used it.
This thread is about sequels.
If you want 5+ year dev cycles for sequels, then every trilogy series will take atleast 15 years to complete.

God of War:
God of War - 2005
God of War 2 - 2007
God of War 3 - 2010
God of War A - 2013

Basically a 3 year dev cycle for the HD generation.
You say thats too short.

So if its 5 year dev cycles which you praised for God of War'18.
Then my point still stands.....trilogy series will not be covered in a generation.
Heck chances are even duologies wont be completed in a generation.

2 - 3 year dev cycles are fine, Im surprised you thought a 3 year dev cycle was too short and saturating the market.
Dont you actually want to complete these stories before you die?
 

Laptop1991

Member
I'm not sure it's one or another, it used to be both with Bethesda and Rockstar over 10 years ago, so full scale games that shouldn't take 5 to 10 years to make would be my vote, but that isn't a choice on the poll, so i abstained from voting lol.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
If it's a sports or FPS game I want frequent releases. I dont mind playing these kinds of games with incremental improvements or new maps.

But for RPGs, I dont mind if they take their time.
 

GymWolf

Member
Whatever size game that has 2 - 3 years between entries.
(Assuming they are in the same generation, I can understand between generations you might want to keep it in the oven for longer).
That way we can atleast assume a trilogy can be completed in a single generation.

Waiting 5+ years for a sequel?
If to complete a story its gonna be 15 to 20 years of my life?
fernando-alonso-race-driver.gif

Get fucked!



Insomniac Games save us.
You can't make some games in just 3 years.

Insomniac is fast because their last 3 games were a linear cartoony shooter with a 8-10 hours campaign, one of the smallest open world games from past gen (both campaign wise, map extension\variety wise and sidecontent wise) and a 8-10 hours spin off that re-use a lot of assets.

They are not gonna make something one the level\scope of tlou2/hfw/ragnarock in 3 years, let alone gigantic quality stuff like rdr2 or gta6.
 

MAtgS

Member
I tire of bloated games that take forever to end. Why does Sonic need to be be open world? Sonic games are better when they're short.
 
No more than 2 years per game and no more than 3 games in a series then kill it off for something new.

Edit- Uncharted 4 is my favorite in the series. So don't listen to me.
 
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Drizzlehell

Banned
God of War was your example so i just used it.
This thread is about sequels.
If you want 5+ year dev cycles for sequels, then every trilogy series will take atleast 15 years to complete.

God of War:
God of War - 2005
God of War 2 - 2007
God of War 3 - 2010
God of War A - 2013

Basically a 3 year dev cycle for the HD generation.
You say thats too short.

So if its 5 year dev cycles which you praised for God of War'18.
Then my point still stands.....trilogy series will not be covered in a generation.
Heck chances are even duologies wont be completed in a generation.

2 - 3 year dev cycles are fine, Im surprised you thought a 3 year dev cycle was too short and saturating the market.
Dont you actually want to complete these stories before you die?
Maybe try re-reading what I just said in my previous post.
 

NahaNago

Member
I'd prefer more compact games. These larger games these days just make me reluctant to even start them knowing how many hours it will take to finish them.

On the other hand it depends on the game. If your game is this massive open world rpg like game, then it shouldn't be compact. Also I'm thinking about how many entries will be in this FF7 Remake just makes me groan and also just thinking about how long it will take for all of them to eventually come out.

I do think they should try to have a shorter development times for games. 4 to 5 years to make one game is nearly a whole entire gen.
 
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