10 Games That TRIED to REPLACE Their Fans

(logo chimes) - [Falcon] So, game comes out marginally successful but not massive breakthrough hit, right? Manages to get a few fans, sometimes even a lot of fans. But for the sequel, the people behind the game, like the developers and especially the publishers, wanna grow the audience and make more money, which is natural.

Everybody wants the next game to be more successful than the previous game. Some games do it by iterating the formula, you know, the normal way and some games just disregard their original fans and use their name to chase a totally different audience. (record player scratches) Yep, that's me.

You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. Uh, those are the games we're looking at today, folks. It's Falcon and today on Gameranx, 10 games that tried to replace their fans.

Starting with number 10 is "The Devil May Cry" 2013 reboot, "DmC. " This is a perfect example of this trend. In 2013, the Japanese games industry was in a weird place.

They were increasingly relying on getting Western games studios to reimagine their games in an attempt to make them more appealing to the global audience. Those attempts mostly failed, by the way. Um, Capcom was really going in on it.

Had "Lost Planet 3," "Resident Evil: Raccoon City," or "Operation Raccoon City" I guess, uh, but most infamously "DmC," the "Devil May Cry" reboot game. If there's one thing that most obviously was just trying to bring in new fans at the expense of the old ones, it was this game. We know it because we have that infamous GDC 2013 presentation where it tells us exactly what the developers at Ninja Theory thought of the old "Devil May Cry" games.

The entire presentation is such a hilariously misguided time capsule of that era, comparing the old games in the series to "Batman & Robin" and "Brokeback Mountain" while saying, "New Dante would be cool and Western and grounded and stylish. Bleh! " And they're all, like, brutally lame attempts at humor trying to make fun of the old games.

Yeah, they're goofy as hell, but what are they doing here? Why insult the games that you're literally making a follow-up to? It's not like I'm expecting 'em to be tediously reverent to the source material or anything like that marketing materials now, but this is too far in the other direction.

It's straight up just insulting the old games for no reason. The good old "Devil May Cry" were intensely challenging, score-focused action games with a very high skill ceiling, and the reboot was a dumbed down basic experience in terms of combat complexity. (Dante grunting) (sword swooshing) - [Dante] Yeah, I hear you.

- [Woman] Attack its face! (guns shooting) - [Falcon] It was clearly made to appear to a more casual audience might be turned off by the kind of Japanesism of the original names. Japanisms, I don't know.

But they managed to put in a whole bunch of different, equally off-putting elements into the reboot. So, it didn't end up appealing to. .

. It. .

. I don't know. I don't know how to describe it.

They went total cringe, I guess. - So, you must be the secret ingredient. - Who are you?

- I'm your prime bait, you ugly sack of shit! - [Falcon] And that isn't to say, like, it was even that bad of a game. I actually liked a lot about it.

And if they called it something else, it probably would have a small but more loyal fan base to this day, but it's called "DmC: Devil May Cry," and for some reason, the devs went out of their way not just to ignore the original games and to flat out insult them in this desperate attempt at headline-grabbing, I guess. I don't really know why they did that. It did not work.

The game underperformed and they switched back to the original continuity with "Devil May Cry 5," and the upcoming animated series is also based on the original games. So, I think the fans won here. (blade whooshing) - Whoa!

(metals clanging) Hmm. Not in a million years. - [Falcon] And number 9 is "Redfall.

" Um, with this game, it was the fans of the studio, rather than any one specific series that were being replaced, and the results were not good. Up until "Redfall" was announced, Arkane was well known for being the immersive sim guys, making complex single-player experiences that didn't make all that much money, but they were highly respected. Then they decided to make a live service game.

"Redfall" started development back when ZeniMax was looking to sell. They were encouraging the development teams to make live service games and alleged boost attempt for their market value. They didn't care that Arkane was known for making ambitious single-player games rather than multiplayer ones.

Fans didn't care about the game and significantly, the developers also didn't care about the game. Nobody wanted to make it. And that was explained in insider articles like the big Bloomberg making of article by Jason Schereier.

And apparently, about 70% of the staff who made "Prey" left Arkane during the development of "Redfall. " Not were fired, left "Redfall," because they didn't wanna make a live service multiplayer game. Internal development was going so poorly that people were seriously hoping Microsoft would just cancel the project.

(gun shooting) (gun cocks) (gun shooting) That's how little enthusiasm there was for it. "Redfall" was a game nobody wanted. Fans of the studio didn't want it, the studio didn't want it, and its failure ultimately led to the closure of Arkane Austin.

Out of all the single player studios chasing live service success, either willingly or not, like Crystal Dynamics, Rocksteady, or even Naughty Dog, Arkane Austin is so far the only one that really got totally shut down. It's also. .

. Yeah, yeah, it stings. (crows cawing) (gun shooting) (glass shatters) And number 8 is "Battlefield 2042.

" You know what game "Battlefield" fans like? Uh, "Battlefield. " I know, shocking but true.

So, what did DICE and EA decide to do rather than make another big "Battlefield" game? Well, they made it "Call of Duty" and "Apex Legends" at once of course, um, 'cause that's what the fans wanted, right? Again, that takes out a lot of the stuff that makes "Battlefield" unique and replaces it with ill-fitting awkward ripoffs of popular features from other games.

Yeah, good idea. People like distinct characters in games like "Overwatch" and "Apex," so let's throw them in here. Put in a bunch of powers that feel outta place in this series and take all the distinct maps and fun destructible features.

Just make really big, empty generic maps for people to ice skate around in. (gun shooting) (guns shooting) (characters yelling) (gun shooting) That's what people want, right? Obviously, DICE is trying to bring in more casual FPS players with all these changes.

And who knows, it might've worked if the actual game wasn't such a mess at launch. "2042" eventually did get cleaned up, but it took years, and the game never managed to break through and actually become successful like EA would've wanted it to. And the failure of "Battlefield 2042," along with a number of other high profile games underperforming put EA in a pretty tough position.

After trying to push out traditional "Battlefield" fans, they're now groveling back all the marketing materials, making it clear as possible this time they're gonna listen to the fans, all comes up off as desperate, like DICE doesn't really even know how to make a proper "Battlefield" game anymore. Uh, like when you're watching some YouTube video where they're constantly asking, "What should we do? Or what do you want us to do?

" It's obvious they don't know. They have no real vision of their own. I mean, it could be marketing junk, maybe DICE knows what they're doing, but for "2042," makes it seem like they don't.

Also, there's "BattleBit Remastered" out there, if you're looking for "Battlefield. " Like, do that. (bullets clanging) - [Woman] Out of this (indistinct)!

Keep coming, fire! (gun shooting) - [Falcon] And number 7 is "Hyper Light Breaker. " Um, when game series seem to go outta their way to abandon the original fans, it's not always some diabolical move by a greedy publisher forcing a team to make something they wouldn't have made otherwise.

Sometimes, the developer is perfectly capable of taking a series known for one thing and making a sequel that's completely different. "Hyper Light Drfter" was one of those breakthrough early Kickstarter success. You know what I'm talking about, right?

The game had incredible pixel art, a unique vibe. It was a one of a kind game that was clearly made with love and passion for top-down action games. (sword whooshing) (calm music) (character zooming) (gun shooting) Many years later, they put out a follow up.

"Hyper Light Breaker," you would guess the same but more, right? Uh, but no, it's a very, very different game. Instead of being a sequel to the first game, it's more like "Risk of Rain 2.

" It's a roguelike third person co-op shooter with 3D graphics and procedurally-generated levels. Basically the polar opposite of the original game in most ways that matter. And the handmade level design's just gone.

The immaculate 2D artwork, gone. Mysterious single-player story is gone. It's a completely different game.

It left a lot of fans of the original pretty unhappy with it. Now, I wanna be clear, I don't hate "Hyper Light Breaker. " I actually think it's a very interesting game.

And a sequel going in a totally new direction isn't always a wholesale abandonment of fans, there are of course sequels that take a series in a whole new direction without bringing their old fans along for the ride. Uh, even when that happens, it's not necessarily a bad thing automatically. Sometimes, developers just wanna do something new and that's fine.

I mean, look at "Yakuza. " Yeah, I mean, that's crazy how different that is sometimes, but also crazy how the same, and maybe it's not a perfect comparison. Whatever.

For a lot of fans, "Hyper Light Breaker" feels like it's trend-chasing rather than making a natural follow-up to the original. It's just too different. It's not what people who loved the first game wanted.

So, why put Hyper Light in it other than for the brand recognition? I don't know, it's still an early access. And honestly, it might turn out to be fantastic.

I think it's pretty fun, but Steam reviews are pretty mixed. Overall player counts are pretty low. So, it seems like a risky pivot towards a multiplayer-focused roguelike, um, and the audience clearly doesn't care for it.

(monster roars) (gun shoots) (monster screeches) (footsteps pattering) (chest clangs) (icon whooshes) And number 6, the "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. " So many examples of single-player devs being coerced into making live service games in this industry, it's almost never a good fit. Sure, in the mid-2000s, we had single-player games getting tacked on multiplayer.

That wasn't great. But these live service things are so much worse. All the publishers saw the success of games like "Fortnite" and they were like, "Mm, let's do that.

" What they didn't realize is that they can't do that. What they ended up making is crappy co-op games with too much story content and cut scenes that didn't mesh with the core gameplay loop. Long-term support basically impossible, 'cause the production values are too high.

The glossy cut scenes and elaborate bespoke content just don't fit with the live service model. It doesn't work. These games ended up being fatally flawed from the outset.

They're trying to reach a new, more multiplayer-focused audience who might be more willing to drop 20 bucks on an overpriced season pass in skins in comparison to a hardcore gamer who's a lot more critical. But games like this don't really know what they are, so they manage to alienate everyone. It's frustrating how this game tries to have it both ways, desperately clinging on the legitimacy of the "Arkham" games to give the story more gravitas and barely including the stuff that everybody likes about those games.

- "Gold kryptonite. " Ugh, that's so. .

. What's the word like tacky, but for rich people? - Gauche.

(fingers snap) - [Falcon] It's superficial and hollow. The new audience of live service enjoyers don't care for it and the old "Arkham" audience is frustrated and confused. Maybe people are sick of the IP, but I don't know about that.

I feel if the game had been marketed properly. . .

I mean, it wasn't marketed properly and it just didn't look very good. But in terms of sales, it crashed and burned. It's currently in maintenance mode.

There's no more updates planned for a little more than a year now that the game has been out, I guess. Um. .

. Ultimately, their attempts to replace Rocksteady fans never worked out. It sounds like they're crawling back to the Arkhamverse, which is good.

They should do that. - [Boomerang] Blow up! Hide!

- [Brainiac] An object lesson, units. Don't let the shark close the distance. (explosion booms) - [Destroyer] Smash to pieces!

- [Falcon] And number 5 is "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. " The "Castlevania" series is in a weird place right now. It's got a popular and long-running Netflix series, but no actual games to show for it, you know.

There's room for "Castlevania" to go 3D. It's not like series is totally defined by being a side-scroller, and there's a lot of overlap between "Souls" fans and "Castlevania" fans. They made a new one that's sort of a Souls-like, but a little less difficult and maybe understands a little bit of what's going on with "Metroid Prime.

" Not that we would want it to be first person or a shooter. There's just some of the level design stuff that worked really well in "Metroid Prime" that translated from the old metroidvania type games anyways. "Lords of Shadow" was not the things that I'm talking about.

It was an awkward attempt by a Japanese studio that hired a Western dev to reboot their series. This time by taking it in a decidedly more "God of War"-like direction. Uh, "Lord of Shadows" is just "God of War" with a whip instead of the Blades of Chaos.

It's second only to "Dante's Inferno" and how it blatantly rips off Kratos and the jolly murder adventures that he has. Um, it goes without saying that this is not what traditional "Castlevania" fans wanted. Um, it barely even had most of the basic elements you'd expect from Konami's classic series.

There's no mummy, there's no Frankenstein. All the things that people want were gone. There are places with a bunch of QTEs and an orchestral score, it's very good actually, but it doesn't feel like "Castlevania" at all.

The first game was pretty far from fan expectations, but the sequel was even crazier with a cyberpunk setting and forced stealth sections. It's not that like it's a bad thing. It's not good, but it's also.

. . I mean, it could be good, but they managed to alienate their player base, not just once, but twice in a row.

Just make a damn "Castlevania" game. (swords whooshing) (objects crashing) (character grunting) (weapon clangs) And number 4 is "Drgon Age II. " These games are consistently inconsistent, right?

Every game's wildly different from the last one. The original "Drgon Age" ended up being a surprise success. so EA was like, "BioWare, put out a sequel in a year and a half!

" Pretty much pre-ruined the sequel. So, time was working against, and that's almost impossible by any metric. But the marketing also didn't help the game.

The second "Drgon Age" fans heard the infamous push a button and something awesome happens quote, uh, they knew the game was not for them. - We have one motto on the team in terms of combat and that's, "When you press a button, something awesome has to happen. So, button, awesome connected now in "Drgon Age II.

" - [Falcon] The first "Drgon Age" was an intentionally old school RPG. It wasn't about looking cool or being badass, it was tactical combat-oriented, dialogue trees, player choices, dorky lore dumps, everything. EA never knew what they had with the franchise, even from the beginning.

Remember that embarrassing Marilyn Manson trailer? Yeah, that was 2009. Little late on that one.

It does keep some of the elements from the first game. It does feel like it's by necessity, 'cause the short development time, though. The stuff fans of the series still like, like the complex politics and character dynamics.

I mean, I guess that's there to some extent, but the stuff meant to bring in the new audience, like the art style and the brainless combat, it wasn't well-received. It tried to expand to a new audience, just didn't work. Instead of doing the smart thing and just making a proper sequel to "Drgon Age," they kept trying to reinvent the wheel with increasingly diminishing returns.

I mean, it's not actually true. "Inquisition" was the bestselling game in the series and it is its own beast. So, constantly doing something new worked out one time, then they took that momentum and completely squandered it.

(sword whooshing) (characters grunting) - [Man] I believe the (indistinct) a lie! (voice echoes) And number 3 is "Resident Evil 6. " Uh, maybe the ultimate example of Xbox 360 era excess.

It's handholdy to a fault, full of forced walking sections, QTEs, and cinematic moments that break up the gameplay. It's ridiculously bloated. And overlong, the whole thing is a mess.

It's the game where the series almost completely gave up on its survival horror roots. Uh, "4" and even parts of "5" had elements of the classic games in them, like inventory management and puzzle-solving. "6," it ditched that.

Exploration was almost entirely gone. Uh, there's no weapon upgrading, um just kind of run and gun shooting with horror. Themed with horror, I guess, would probably be the better way to say it.

- [Woman] We can't take them all! - Now we know where all the infected were hiding out! (alarm blaring) (gun shooting) (infected groaning) (glass shatters) (smoke hisses) - [Falcon] The stuff old school fans loved about the original games, it was gone.

Long gone, even. Almost everything that makes the series unique was just scrubbed. Turned it into a generic action game.

In this case, the game wasn't a failure. It actually sold pretty well, but it wasn't the game fans of "Resident Evil" wanted. In a different world, we'd be saying this about the follow up "Resident Evil 7," 'cause at least in the lead up to the release, it didn't seem like it was going to be a "Resident Evil" game.

Felt like "Resident Evil" in name only. Um, looked like it had more in common with "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" or "Outlast" or something. The final version of the game ended up having way more "Resident Evil" stuff than the series it had in it in years.

And while they were clearly courting a new audience with that game, it was staying true to the series with the exploration-focused gameplay, the puzzles, the inventory management. It appealed to both old and new fans in a way that most game sequels just rarely pull off. It's really a tour de force, and "6" really wasn't.

I mean, it has gotten a little bit of a critical reevaluation in recent years, but it's really just not the kind of game people like "Resident Evil" for, you know. (monster groaning) (intense music) (footstep stomps) - [Man on Radio] HQ to Alpha we have an emergency! The missile is preparing to launch!

- [Man] How in the hell It's Ada. She knew we would try to stop it! (monster groans) - [Man on Radio] We're out of time, Alpha.

Permission to destroy the missile granted! - [Falcon] And number 2 is "Command & Conquer 4. " Sometimes, dumping the old audience for a new one makes a certain degree of sense.

And then there's situations like this where almost every decision just doesn't. It doesn't make sense. No sense.

Yes, RTS games were on the way out by the time "C&C 4" rolled around, and they're being superseded by free-to-play MOBAs. But the way this game attempted to appeal to that market is absolutely baffling. The game tries to MOBA-fy the series by focusing on multiplayer, dropping the unit counts, focusing the hero units, generally streamlining gameplay away from base building that the series is known for, but they did it wrong.

Like, they went about it all wrong. It's a terrible game from the bottom up. Um, just an unplayable mess.

There's no fun for anyone in it. "Commanding & Conquer" fans hate it. MOBA fans hate it.

It's offensive to people who like good games. And I can't spend more than a half hour playing this thing before I'm both baffled by the terrible design decisions and infuriated by how. .

. It's boring! It's so boring!

I love "Command & Conquer" and I hate "Command & Conquer 4. " Let this be an example to anyone out there. If you wanna make a MOBA-style game, it might help if you actually play a MOBA.

If you're gonna just rip off a genre, like, try the genre, 'cause they clearly didn't. And finally at number 1, it's "The 3rd Birthday. I do not know what was in the water at Square Enix when they made this game.

It must have been something bad, 'cause even more so than "Command & Conquer 4. " Everything about "The 3rd Birthday" was a bad idea. Instead of being a proper sequel to, you know, the "Parasite Eve" games, especially the first, which is still very well-regarded among fans, they decided for the third game to dump the name, already an odd choice, dump almost everything related to the first two games, even stranger choice, and dump the entire fan base to court, the potentially lucrative basement dwelling creeper who likes perverted stuff, which I.

. . Let me go ahead and say this.

I'm not dumping on some pervy crap in some games, okay? But if a game is clearly only TNA, it's probably not a good game. We've obviously seen games with some very pervy stuff in it that are also very good games, and that is kind of the platonic ideal of the video game for many people.

But we're not talking people who like games, we're talking about people who like being able to control cameras. Anyways, I hope that explanation made sense, 'cause I don't wanna shame people for liking pervy stuff in games. Pervy stuff in games is fun, okay?

But it's gotta be a good game. "The 3rd Birthday", holy shit. Calling this not a good game is such an understatement for how not good, how bad this game is.

It's got a clothes get destroyed system, which, on its own, fine, give me the clothes get destroyed system. Also, give me "Parasite Eve 3" a survival horror RPG hybrid. That's not what this is, uh-uh.

This is a time-traveling, body-swapping third person shooter and has a plot that is indecipherable to the smartest of the smart. They do not mention mitochondria even once in a "Parasite Eve" game. If it were a true sequel, they'd be mentioning the powerhouse of the cell, like, every other sentence, just like a "Parasite Eve" game does.

"Parasite Eve" is such a cool series, honestly. They weren't originally pervy and they didn't need to be. Like, they were good games.

If you make a good game that's pervy, cool. If you make a good game that's a good game and not pervy, also cool. Or maybe I'm just remembering them relative to this third game.

It's so pervy like maybe it made the other one. . .

I don't remember, are they pervy? Actually, leave comments about that. I do have a bonus for you before you do that, or I don't know, while you do that.

"Fallout 3. " Yeah, this has all been negatives, but this one, let's, for our bonus section, give you one that doesn't end in tragedy and disgrace. Sometimes, it works out exactly as intended.

The old interplay "Fallout" games had a small but very devoted fan base. Uh, they had amazing atmosphere and world building, but their hardcore RPG creds made 'em difficult to get into for casual gamers. Like, most fans at the time, I was pretty blown away when "Fallout 3" was announced by "Bethesda.

" You mean the guys that made "Oblivion" are making the new "Fallout" game? Okay, yes. However, audiences for "The Elder Scrolls" games and the original "Fallout" games were basically diametrically opposed at that point.

Just because I was receptive doesn't mean I wasn't also completely shocked, I was. "Oblivion" was about as friendly to the player as possible for the type of game it is. And the original "Fallouts" were confusing and outwardly hostile to the player.

The strength of the IP and Bethesda's ability to make a fantastic open world game, relatively speaking, made "Fallout 3" a huge hit. Even if a certain segment of the old fan base absolutely hated, it doesn't matter. They're kind of irrelevant now.

The new fans dwarfed the old ones 10 to 1. And then "Fallout: New Vegas" came around and it made everyone happy, for a little while, at least. With the "Fallout" games, there's always gonna be this divide between old fans and new, but you can't deny that Bethesda's efforts are what's keeping the series alive.

If not for them, then all anyone remember about "Fallout" was too ugly, old CRPGs, a middling tactics game, and a really bad console "Diablo" ripoff. Regardless of what you think about Bethesda's "Fallout" games, and I am fond of both eras of "Fallout", if I'm completely honest, uh, I will say I think it's a net positive for the franchise overall. And that's all for today.

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