Why are Videogame Sequels better than Movie Sequels?

by Trevor Hinkle , COMMUNITY WRITER

Monday, July 13, 2009

Editor's Note: I generally agree with Trevor that game sequels are better than movie sequels...though I think you'll find plenty of quickie cash-ins in both industries. I won't argue that game sequels are usually technically superior, though. What do you think? -Greg

Take a moment to think about every good movie that resulted in a sequel. Were any of those sequels as good as the original? Heck, no. Movies sequels often fall into the trap of trying to completely copy the original movie but adding an aspect to the movie that didn't need to be there.

A good example is the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was called Dead Man's Chest. Dead Man's Chest tried to completely copy The Curse of the Black Pearl, which just milked the original concept and made it well-worn.

The aspect that was added to the original idea was comedy, which while being sort of funny, didn't fit with the rest of the movie. There are some exceptions to this rule, though. For example, The Dark Knight was leaps and bounds above Batman Begins.

Well this is an epic pirate tale.

Now think about all the sequels to good games you've ever played. Have they been generally better than the original?

They are almost always, in my opinion. Was Gears of War better than Gears of War 2? No. Was Killzone better than Killzone 2? Who would say yes? And Uncharted 2 looks a lot better than the original, in my opinion. Even Area 5's Matt Chandronait predicts that the yet-unannounced Infamous 2 "will kick major ass."

Wait...what's the train holding onto?!

What is the reason for this? I have a two theories:

1. A game sequel usually looks better. You can't always say that for movies. The quality of graphics is something that almost always is improved in a sequel, while image-quality technology in film advances significantly more slowly.

2. One word: interactivity. With a "third dimension" (audio is "x," visual is "y," interactivity is "z") of changes, developers have more things to add to videogame sequels. In a movie, you can improve the dialogue and the setting (the "x" and "y"), but you can improve the dialogue, setting, and add co-op ("x," "y," and "z") in a game.

Now this also means that videogame developers have more factors to worry about -- but that's what QA is for. Videogames probably also have more focus-testing than movies (I have nothing to back this up, however).

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Readers: What do you think? Why are sequels to games better than sequels to movies? Or do you disagree with that statement?

Tags: Killzone 2, Gears of War, Movies, Area 5, sequels, Gears of War 2, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Killzone

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Trevor Hinkle

July 10, 2009

Somebody read this!! I personally think that this is my best post and it has by far the least hits.

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Demian Linn

July 10, 2009

We actually have some kind of problem with the hit tracking on profile pages right now, trying to figure out what's up.

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Lance Darnell

July 10, 2009

I agree in general, but I think it comes down to creativity. In a movie sequel, if the same thing is done with a few minor improvements then people complain that it is simply a rehash. Yet, in a video game sequel we EXPECT the same thing with a few minor improvements.

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Trevor Hinkle

July 12, 2009

I guess we are sort of used to it.

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Marc Boatman

July 14, 2009

I think this mainly has to do with the technology background of video games. With the first game, programmers and designers have to start from the ground up. What's the gameplay going to be like? How will you control your character? Now add to that the focus on creating a great (or in many cases, simply not horrible) story and character development, and it really is a huge undertaking to get accomplished before a deadline. Now with the sequel, many of those concerns are no longer in the picture. The gameplay and style have already been established and you have a base program to build off of. If you don't have to focus on building the game from the ground up any more, you can focus on making the improvements you really want to make, like say a better story, better weapons, enhanced graphics. In the movie world, even though it's a sequel you are still starting over from scratch. Casting actors, building sets, shooting/editing, and special effects have to be done from scratch all over again. Having video game sequels be, in reality, "software upgrades" allows for greater noticeable improvement between sequels than you can see in movies.

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K. M. Fox

July 14, 2009

In movies, I think it is the unplanned sequels that generally turn out to suck. I mean, just look at the example you use, [i]Pirates of the Caribbean[/i], the first was honest and original; as far as I know (I could be wrong) there was not a sequel waiting in the wings. After it was insanely successful however, they filmed a sequel that would attempt to capture the essence of the first, but it fell flat on the face of that little monkey who always grabs that one dude's eyeball. It might also have something to do with the times too, because [i]Back to the Future Part I[/i]I is my favourite of the BTTF trilogy.

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Daniel Feit

July 14, 2009

I hate to say it, but this is an indicator of how simplistic video games are as stories go. When all you're doing is saving a princess or shooting people in the head, there's not much that can disappoint when you do it all over again in Part 2. And video game fans seem to want exactly that in their sequels: more of the same. When sequels stay too far from the formula of the first game (Zelda II and Super Mario 2 come to mind), people often complain. A good movie sequel, on the other hand, has to build upon what happened in the first film and somehow expand that story in an interesting way or come up with a brand new story that resembles the first one without being a complete retread. Look at Alien vs Aliens. Sure, they both have an antagonist in common, but the films are completely different in tone and the main character changes dramatically.

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Jordan Vincent

July 14, 2009

I'd agree with Marc that the software base for game sequels is a huge factor in their improvement. Instead of taking a lot of the development time to decide how basic actions are to be performed and to mo-cap everything, developers can go straight to tweaking the base they already have to work with from the first game. This leads into another reason I think game sequels fare better than movie sequels: game reviews are often written in the form of a guide for developers to go on when making a sequel. This was good, this was bad. This was good, this was bad. Kind of the this, but this theory of game reviews. By simply reading a lot of game reviews about the first game developers can easily identify many of the problems in the first game and fix those for the second. Movies (as far as I know) don't have this luxury. Most movie reviews I've read only go so far as to say "Johnnie's New Car is a heartrending story that will make the whole family fall in love with a Volvo. Definitely a must see." Then again, I don't read the reviews from enthusiast movie critics.

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Daniel Feit

July 14, 2009

"Enthusiast" movie critics are not critics, they are factories that generate nothing but positive quotes for advertisements. See Larry King and everything he has ever said about movies. Filmmakers have nothing to learn from that.

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Reed Brown

July 14, 2009

"Take a moment to think about every good movie that resulted in a sequel. Were any of those sequels as good as the original? Heck, no." See Godfather 2, Empire Strikes Back, The Spy Who Shagged Me, Wrath of Khan, Terminator 2, and Mortal Kombat 2 (just kidding!) for many examples. Many people site movie sequels as always being terrible and I always feel like I have to defend them. I'd say it's about an 80-20 split.

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Alex Androski

July 14, 2009

Movies and Games are delivery methods for different types of content. A movie, in most cases, is conveying a narrative. There's a story to tell, focusing on various characters and how they relate to each other--and in good movies, how they grow. The viewer's emotional response is generated via empathy for the characters. Movie sequels fail when they mistake a chain of events (thing A happens, so thing B happens, which makes thing C happen) for a story (Hero's Journey, or Falling In Love, or Fall From Grace) or leave the characters as static caricatures because their character arc was completed in the first movie. A game, on the other hand, is about conveying experiences. The player's emotional response is generated from their own actions. When the main character in a game does something smart, it's the player that feels clever for having done it, rather than feeling impressed with someone external to them. When the main character is in danger, the player feels the adrenaline directly, rather than the stress of wondering what's going to happen. When the main character is exploring, the player gets to examine a gorgeous world rather than see the bits of it a filmmaker thought was important. Unless a character is part of what makes the experience work, like solving puzzles or performing combat with Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2, characters in games are a world-building technique rather than a defining characteristic. Game sequels work for the same reason that games are replayable--even if the story is the same, the experience is still different. When replaying a game, it's subtle differences, like enemies cropping up in slightly different places, or missing a jump you've made the previous time. It's enough to make sure the emotions are still drawn out by the experience. In a sequel, there's even more variety--new environments, new encounter designs, and new surprises to elicit similar emotions in new ways. Of course, that's not to say that games and movies don't have any overlap. The climax of Bioshock is identical the climax of The Usual Supspects--both consist of the viewer/player realizing they've been led along the entire time, forcing them to immediately re-evaluate their assessment of what they've seen/done over the course of the narrative/experience. It's a highly effective technique and, as far as I'm concerned, the key reason both titles are regarded so highly.

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John Brando

July 14, 2009

I think that at this point in time, the video game industry is growing technologically and creatively at a quicker pace than the movie industry, and with that, each successive sequel builds on the positive aspects of the predecessor in much more noticeable ways than a film can. One of your examples is that Killzone 2 is easily considered a superior game to the original Killzone. Would that notion be as easily acceptable if Killzone 2 had come out this year on the PlayStation 2 instead of the PlayStation 3? Of course not. Once video game graphics stop advancing so rapidly from one generation to the next, which may well happen in the very next generation, it will be the other elements, such as story, characters, and game play, that developers will be forced to improve upon when they are crafting a sequel.