Change is nothing to be feared

In this article I discuss how developers making vast changes from established trademarks is something that rarely happens nowadays, but in spite of the risks involved some have taken the plunge with impressive results.

Over the many years of game development that have come and gone, the industry has seen a gross multitude of what are often begrudgingly known as franchises by many gamers. In general these franchises, commonly associated to one another by a common name, follow some set of guidelines related to gameplay, mechanics and even their graphical appearance. While some instalments of these franchises tend to try and reinvent certain aspects of the game with regards the aesthetics – an example of this would be the Unreal Tournament series – for the most part you see an almost religious coherence of styling elements from one game to the next.

In no way am I saying that this is bad; more often than not it is essential that such elements in appearance are adhered to in order to ensure consistency in storylines or other elements that may carry over from one instalment of the franchise to the next. In certain situations, though, this isn’t entirely crucial to be maintained. Again, considering the Unreal Tournament series of games, it is easy to see a distinct style change from the first to the second and the second to the third instalments – not to mention the Unreal Championship games that arc out in parallel to the main three titles. This is very easy for the developers to do, mainly because it is a multiplayer game above all else, and such kinds of games are hardly dependant upon the things that require this kind of consistency, even if they are present at times.

The point of this article is to give credit to the two titles that have recently come out, in which the developers made the bold move of going against this unwritten rule. So much so that the games are only immediately associable to their predecessors by their names. I am speaking of course about Team Fortress 2 and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Naturally, there are other underlying similarities, but at first glance it is a little harder to see than it normally would be.

The changes done on the latest game in the Advance Wars series lie mainly with the design of the characters and the storyline, where Intelligent Systems seem to have decided that the kiddy look they gave war is a little immature, and rightly so. I was personally irked at the way the characters in the advance wars series seemed to consider war as nothing but a fun game for everyone involved, and while it didn’t quite bother me in the first game, it really began to grate when I’d reached the edition released for the DS. In the new one, although considerably reversed in polarity to the other extreme, the general design and aesthetics give a far more realistic outlook of what it’s like to be at war, even though there are certain elements that seem a little convoluted for the sake of gameplay elements. Although there still isn’t any visible gore or realistic violence in the game, the way the characters are portrayed as being far less happy go lucky about killing their fellow man gives it a far more palpable presentation, especially in the campaign. In my opinion, the way Advance Wars: DoR has come together is in every sense a success, even though the changes go against a standard that has been set and followed for twenty years (!) since the very first game in the Nintendo Wars franchise, Famicom Wars.

As for Team Fortress 2, this game’s legacy is far shorter than that of Nintendo Wars, however as with most online games the community associated with it tends to be a bit more vocal than if it weren’t based on the concept of people coming together to play against one another. As with CounterStrike, Valve took it upon themselves to make the sequel for the fantastic game that was Team Fortress Classic. Although purists have gone to the admirable lengths of actually making another TFC sequel that remains slightly truer to its roots, the real successor remains to be TF2 and it is deserving of this role. Although there were various elements trimmed in the shift from Classic to the second one, the most notable and critiqued change is that of the aesthetics and design of the game. The distinctly cartoonish appearance of the whole game was a shocking transition to say the least, though it was not without reason. As mentioned in the TF2 developers’ commentary, the crisply defined graphics were used mainly to give distinctly defined shapes and outlines to the player models and the world around them, but that’s a story for another article. Even in light of these changes which put off many TFC fans, the game has proven very popular with both players new and familiar to the franchise.

These are, of course, only two of the many examples where a change is not to be feared – with any luck other companies will take note of them and try to mix things up more in the future. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.