We caught up with Visceral's Julian Beak at Gamescom, and he had plenty to tell us about the studio's take on the Army of Two franchise, The Devil's Cartel.
He told us why Visceral are sticking with two player co-op instead of expanding to four: "We're not going with four player co-op because we feel that the co-ordination of getting all four players to do that [work together toward complicated goals] often leads to a lot of frustration. If you're doing simple things, like taking on enemies, there's a lot of four player games that do that really well, and that's a lot of fun."
The game is set in Mexico, and Beak explained why that particular setting was chosen: "We wanted to put it in a setting that's quite serious, and recognisable. Really accessible, people understand what the challenge is when you go down there. If you're going to protect a politician, which is what Alpha and Bravo are doing, in a scenario where the cartel doesn't want you to, you already know who your adversary is going to be, you already know what tension is going to be brought to that situation."
Alongside death, taxes and terrible Adam Sandler movies, video game sequels are just another crushing inevitability of life. Sequels and franchises are the lifeblood of the industry, so you can bet any halfway successful game will be aiming towards at least five more follow-ups and spin-offs in pursuit of more delicious money.
Yet even major franchises tend to run themselves into the ground eventually, where they can either reboot themselves and come back stronger than ever (think the new Tomb Raider games) or stay buried in the past.
Replies(2)
We all have game franchises we love so much that we don't care what others
think. Then there are games that the majority just agree shouldn't exist.
Sometimes it just takes one of these to kill our most beloved series.
It Takes One Game to Kill a Franchise
Street Fighter V and SoulCalibur V come to mind.
^^ i agree .....i also damn totally agree with Halo 2 ...if it wasnt the huge fanbase behind the first one and the huge potential of the franchise would be a dead IP ...HALO CE for me is still an unsurpassed FPS but HALO 2 completely trashed the series to below mediocrity quality levels...i also partly agree with MGS2 ...it had ridiculously convoluted and gibberishy plot considering what masterpiece MGS1 was ...but it narrowly escaped...also RE 4 could be considered such type of game ...RE was doomed after that
Interesting that you would pick Halo 2 over 4 or 5. I have yet to play 5 but as for the other 4, not one of them has disappointed me in terms of story or play mechanics. Halo 1 is a classic and 2 improved on everything while being a cliffhanger and then 3 having the dual story lines was a nice way to bring things to a close (of that trilogy).
4 was an interesting take on trying to create a new story where it had initially ended. The demand of knowing what was going to happen next for MC was what prompted them to come up with the new trilogy. I hope 6 will bring all things to a proper close... for now.
More like it takes one guy or team to kill a franchise. Its not the game fault it's the person behide it. Same with movies.
True, and it depends on what the devs learn from the experience whether or not the franchise can make a comeback. Or even make it's first "comeback". Like with Nier. Nobody cared about the first one, but it's hype all around for the sequel :p
Sometimes a game can kill a franchise even before it starts, if it doesn't perform as well as expected. The Order 1886 is an example of this.
I want to say socom with socom 4 as it was by far the worst but confrontation had its issues also. However compared to socom 4 confrontation was amazing. Still not socom 2 but it worked.
Only in gaming can you engage in multiple planet-clearing world wars or explosive shootouts where one man somehow takes on hundreds of opponents. There's stiff competition as to which game really has the highest body count, so to make it simpler here we're going to generally avoid anything that's too “big picture” in the death department. Check out the top games with the most ridiculous body counts now!
