In recent days, a new official trailer of the remake of Dead Space, series that returns almost ten years after the third installment of the series. A very successful series that, however, right after Dead Space 3, has ended up in oblivion and will return (hopefully) in vogue with the remake of the first chapter. It is not the first time that a franchise, to be revitalized, retraces its steps by proposing a remake of the first chapters of the series, and in this sense Dead Space is no exception. But how do you get to the death of a series? What are the causes? Or better yet, what are the titles that have decreed the end of a successful brand?
Dead Space 3
Let's start with the franchise that inspired this article. Born with Dead Space in 2008, the series immediately gained incredible success thanks to horror atmospheres combined with the sci-fi setting, with clear influences on cinematic classics such as Punto di non ritorno e Alien. The series continued with Dead Spade 2 in 2011 and, always maintaining the horror atmosphere that had characterized its predecessor, this second chapter added some action elements which made the experience even more varied.
Unfortunately the boys of visceral Games, probably following the directions of EA, pushed excessively on the action aspect in the third chapter, Dead Spade 3, released in 2013. This choice, combined with the addition of the cooperative, he pushed the fans away from the series. In this third chapter the horror aspect was almost totally gone, instead making room for atmospheres and sequences closer to action titles like Uncharted. After this ominous third episode of the series, nothing was heard of it, and so did the Visceral Games development team it was closed a couple of years later. The remake of the first chapter could bring the franchise back to life, whose fate is now in the hands of the Motive Studio team.
Fallout 76
Fallout is a hugely successful franchise with a huge following from fans. This large group of fans of the franchise pushed Bethesda to develop a title in the series focusing on the online multiplayer component and, despite some doubts about the format change, fans were eager to try this new title, called Fallout 76. However, Fallout 76 turned out to be a bitter disappointment, embodying all the typical problems of the titles developed by Bethesda but much more bulky than usual.
Fallout 76, at the time of release, was suffering from numerous crash, bugs,, glitch e frame drops, oltre to a serious server instability on all platforms. In addition to this, the title was criticized for the almost total lack of NPCs, A 'poorly curated artificial intelligence it's a outdated graphics engine even by the standards of the development team.
There were also numerous controversies outside of the playful context, as the Fallout 76 Collector's Edition was supposed to contain a canvas bag which, however, at the time of purchase turned out to be made of poor quality nylon. Opinions about the game have greatly improved since the expansion was released wastelanders (a little less since The Pitt update), and in the four years since the release of the title they have been done numerous steps forward as regards the content and technical aspects. Many fans of the franchise, however, were still burned and for the time being a Fallout 5 seems a long way off.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter
It is clear that it is difficult to say when and whether or not a video game killed a franchise. Dead Space will return after almost ten years with a remake, for Fallout instead perhaps too little time has passed to get an idea about the future of the series. But what about Medal of Honor there is little doubt given that, after the poor reception by the critics of fighter, then EA COO Peter Moore stated that the series it had to be suspended.
Released in 2012 in the midst of "modern warfare", Warfighter it's an embarrassing title to say the least, having a trivial and not at all exciting plot, A 'deficient artificial intelligence, for an gameplay lineare and numerous bugs, e glitch. Warfighter does nothing to surprise the player, unlike some of the previous games in the series, and what it does (badly) is simply ride the wave of "Modern Warfare" launched by Call of Duty in those years. In 2020 it came out Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, a lazy WWII shooter focused on the virtual reality. Released for PC only, the fact that probably you have never heard of this title can make you guess what the current state of health of the series is.
Dino Crisis 3
Dino crisis is often described only as the "Resident Evil with the dinosaurs" and this was probably the element that made the first two chapters of the franchise successful, given that in the late 90's thanks to Jurassic Park there was a fever of "prehistoric lizards". However in 2002, for reasons still unknown today, Capcom did a real shark jump with the series, moving the setting of the franchise in the space. Dino Crisis 3 in fact it takes place in one remote space station and presents mutant dinosaurs, a choice that after twenty years is still inexplicable today. The problems with the title didn't stop there, as the gameplay was undermined by one bad camera handling, for an poor design, embarrassing checks e repetitive shooting phases.
Dino Crisis 3 killed one of the most underrated survival horror franchises in history, a franchise that would probably still live exactly as today. resident evil, series that despite some slips and missteps remains one of the cornerstones of the gaming industry. For years there has been talk of possible remakes of the first two chapters of the franchise, with operations similar to the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, but in the current state of things it seems that Capcom has no interest in reviving this series. Never say never, but there's no denying the fact that Dino Crisis 3 had a devastating effect its a franchise dall'enormous potential.
Crackdown 3
When a title has been in development for many years, between postponements and various production issues, it is never a good sign, and Crackdown 3 is no exception in this regard. With the second chapter released in 2010, Crackdown arrived on Xbox One and PC in 2019 after more than five years of development. What we ultimately achieved was clearly not the team's original vision, and while Microsoft promised Crackdown 3 would be the "ultimate sandbox" with a fully destructible city, the end result it was disastrous to say the least.
Crackdown it looked like a 2007 game, indeed it looked like the first Crackdown released for Xbox 360 in 2007. The alleged innovations were nowhere to be seen and all the problems of Crackdown 2 were still present in this third chapter, but even more evident and in the way. The city was flat and lifeless, physics system was dated and on a technical level the title was plagued by various related problems bugs, e Artificial intelligence. If Crackdown 3 had actually been released in 2007, perhaps we would be talking about a good title, but unfortunately it was not and after so many years of waiting the series leaves the scene in an awkward and tragicomic way. If Microsoft had plans to continue the series, Crackdown 3 made sure the franchise did died definitively.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
The first chapter of the series Deus Ex was released way back in 2000 and mixed elements of shooter, stealth and role-playing games by receiving the critical acclaim. Of course, a sequel was developed after such a success, namely Deus Ex: Invisible War, which was released in 2003. The title managed to repeat the success of its predecessor but, despite this, for many years the series did not continue. To see the brand reborn we had to wait for the intervention of Eidos Montréal that with Deus Ex: Human Revolution in 2011 he succeeded in revitalize the series, proving to live up to the prestige of the original title.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Deus Ex franchise is alive with ups and downs and the 2016 sequel, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, failed to maintain the same momentum as Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Despite him having received favorable reviews and won numerous awards, Mankind Divided at the sales level turned out to be quite disappointing. Although it topped the sales charts during its week of release in the UK, the game had a far below expectations debut, and this factor probably affected the continuation of the franchise. For years there has been talk of a possible third installment of this modern trilogy of the series, but from Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix there seems to be no intention to continue the franchise.
Prince of Persia (2008)
As far as the popularity of the series Prince of Persia has been achieved thanks to Ubisoft trilogy, the aforementioned franchise was born in 1989 with the iconic Prince of Persia by Broderbund. As mentioned, however, the series became popular thanks to Le Sabbia del Tempo trilogy, which ended with The two thrones in 2005. After this trilogy, Ubisoft bravely decided to turn the page and restart the series with a new reboot, so in 2008 it came out Prince of Persia, a title which, however, was negatively received by critics for theextreme ease and too many changes from the original trilogy. This courageous experiment, therefore, did not have the desired results, and probably did not help the duty pay separately for the true ending of the work (cardinal sin shared with Dead Space 3).
Two years later it came out Prince of Persia: The forgotten sands, a timid attempt to ride the movie release with Jake Gyllenhaal e bring the series back to the origins of Ubisoft management. The rest is recent history, as a remake of The Sands of Time was announced during the Ubisoft Forward 2020. It was originally scheduled for January 21, 2021 but, probably due to criticism of the first trailer shown, was postponed earlier to March 18. 2021 and later on date to be allocated. Later the development of the remake passed from the hands of the Ubisoft Mumbai and Ubisoft Pune teams to those of Ubisoft Montréal, but two years after the announcement of the remake they seem to have lost track of them. A series that, after the historic Ubisoft trilogy, seems unable to come back to life.
Konami, tra Metal Gear e Silent Hill
Here we are not talking about a single video game that killed a franchise, because in this case it is difficult to identify the blame for the death of a brand in production choices made for a specific title. In fact, in recent years Konami has (willingly or not) killed two of its most iconic franchises, or Metal Gear e Silent Hill. It is impossible to find a single title responsible for the decay of the respective franchises, given the choices made by Konami they have often been inexplicable on several points of view.
As for Metal Gear, the death of the brand could be blamed on Metal Gear Survive, but the problems for the series already arose with the production of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain with lots of attriti con Hideo Kojima. These production divergences spilled over Silent Hills, directed by the creator of Metal Gear and Guillermo del Toro, which was canceled after the famous director said goodbye to Konami. For Silent Hill, however, the problems had already started with Silent Hill: Downpour e Silent Hill: Book of Memories, which were received badly (and with reason) both by critics and the public. To this is added the infamous Silent Hill Collection, which was developed with a incomplete source code provided by Konami.
A series of disasters to which Konami, currently, does not seem to want to remedy. Although for years we have been talking about hypothetical remakes of the first Silent Hill or the first Metal Gear Solid, currently only radio silence from Konami. Of the series covered in this ranking, the death of two historical franchises such as those of Metal Gear and Silent Hill it is definitely the most painful one to accept.
