Where to Begin?

I've always been a fan of long-running serialized fictions. Whether information technology was following the cast of the Hernandez Brothers' decades-spanning comic series, Love & Rockets as they aged in existent time, or keeping up with the labyrinthine underworkings of Baltimore in The Wire, there's something that's always appealed to me about following characters for a long period. It gives them time to breathe and grow, more than than would be possible in a man-to-man film, book, or episode of a TV show.

It would stand to reason, then, that videogames, with their stress along sequels and long-running series (just look on at Mega Man's 120+ sequels and spinoffs) would be the flawless vehicle for telling monumental, several year spanning epics. Unfortunately, that's often not the cause.

Umpteen videogame sequels aren't rattling sequels at all, but rather games connected by motifs and mechanism. Supposedly there's any openhearted of chronology to Castlevania's 20+ titles, but you'd never know it. As long equally we can plow through a castle slaughtering zombies, lycanthropes, and apparitions on the way to Dracula, we're happy. We're not exactly the virtually demanding bunch up when it comes to continuity in storytelling.

And there's good reason out for that; videogames series are hard to hold over track of. They ingest a long metre to play, bulge out on different systems, and date themselves promptly. Information technology's no wonder few rely on presumed knowledge as they don't want to alienate newcomers.

BioWare's Mass Force series is ambitiously brawling the odds with its story-heavy trilogy that carries over all the role player's choices between titles. If you require to catch up with the story so further before beginning Mass Effect 2, you'll have to go direct hours of running from point A to point B shooting enemies, driving the Mako shark, and mucking virtually in your inventory. Granted, this is what makes it a game, only it also makes it a time sink besides.

If all you want is story, you could study a Mass Effect wiki to review the plat in a affair of minutes. Though if you're a "learn away doing" someone like me, operating theatre want to take vantage of its strange choices, you'll have to put in a 20+ hour investment acting it. To couch that in perspective, indefinite could keep an eye on the entirety of Party Down's two-season run in half that clock and feel like they've spent much thirster with its characters.

Patc combining plot and quality development into gameplay is tricky, length can equal denatured and episodic gaming could prove more inviting for those transmittable up with a series. Committing to 20 hours can be intimidating, only chopping it leading into various smaller chunks meant to be played separately is easier to swallow.

Half-Life 2's episodic content provided tantalizing nuggets of story while their brief four to six hr length made them completable along a lazy Sunday afternoon. This would wealthy person worked brilliantly had the episodes actually stuck to a short let go of calendar, but with 16 months between Episodes One and Two and Episode Three MIA for the past three years, it seems that Valve bit off much they could plug. This was not the lawsuit with Telltale's bevy of episodic adventures. Surface-to-air missile & Max, Tales of Monkey Island, Strong Bad, and more recently Back to the Coming have pleasingly delayed their end of the bargain, each month releasing a deuce to five hr episode of the various serial publication on time.

Long-formatting storytelling is also difficult in games is attributable hardware incompatibilities. To play Shenmue (legally), you'll have to turn up a Dreamcast and gild the disk online since rattling few retail stores stockpile games older than a few years at most. De Blob 2 is gettable on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii (likewise atomic number 3 a separate DS version), yet its predecessor was a Wii exclusive. Those World Health Organization own a Wii might be capable to traverse dispirited a copy of de Blob, but those with only a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 may non be indeed eager to jump into a game with a "2" in the title if they haven't played its predecessor.

This was also the case with the knotty Kingdom Hearts serial publication. The first-class honours degree back was a PlayStation 2 exclusive, but it had sequels on the GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PSP. For a serial publication steeped in heavy mythos, that's expecting fans to pick up very much of hardware just to completely sustain with Sora's adventures in the Magic Kingdom.

Even if we sustain the necessary ironware and spare part metre needful to start an on-going series from the beginning, games are a medium reliant on e'er evolving technology, making it harder for them to withstand the examination of time. Graphics, control methods, and even game design are constantly changing and what was the average a decade past often feels antediluvian when viewed under the harsh lens of the current time.

When I tested to play Metal Paraphernalia Unanimous 3 I found IT whole impenetrable, having not played the first two. What I found was a game that controlled terribly, had awful voice acting, and didn't look as good as what I'd mature wont to to. This was every par for the course at the meter and IT was even so a great game, just playing two senior games before I could fully appreciate one fres title was a herculean effort that many would plainly not bother with.

Making matters worsened, Metal Gear Solid itself was a sequel to two games from 8 and 11 years prior, the secondment of which was not released in America (until it got ported to PlayStation 2 as fillip content in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence). Getting into the serial advanced, I'd assumed that Metal Gear wheel Worthy was a reboot, just its storyline is heavily predicated upon events most players would have no knowledge of without the internet. At this point atomic number 3 the series requires Cliff Notes hardly to get into.

Information technology doesn't help that the industry is obsessed with focusing on the latest and greatest. Our popular gamey magazines and websites focusing mostly connected reviews and previews, but little so connected retrospectives OR critiques. While I'm certainly biased as I make a life guardianship up with play, even ahead I worked in the industry and had the freedom to play whatever I wanted, it mat up like in that location was some genial of intangible force pressuring me to play whatever new oversized hit had just come away. I wanted to be part of the on-going conversation, and IT's a fast-moving train.

Patc there are plenty of sequels out there, so many of them are only tangentially related and not concerned in telling a big tale. Even well sequels like BioShock 2 were not intentional when the first spunky was created. Original IPs are a heavy risk, and creating one that doesn't tell a complete story is an even big one. IT worked small for Assassin's Creed, which grossed enough for a sequel, but eight age later, we're still ready for On the far side Good & Diabolic 2 to wrap upwards its predecessor's cliffhanger ending.

As very much like I have it away the idea of an ongoing series where every plot point matters, this is an especially difficult proposal for videogames as they have greater barriers of entry than any separate medium. They'ray farseeing and effortful relation to how much essential narrative they contain, it can prove difficult to keep up with a serial publication' installments if they'Re multiformat, and ever-changing technology renders experient titles difficult to take without trepidation. This International Relations and Security Network't to say it shouldn't live attempted – and I applaud Telltale and BioWare for trying – but rather that story-worrying sequels are an progressively intimidating prospect in an industriousness that ne'er looks back.

Jeffrey Matulef is a freelance writer founded in Portland, OR. His work has appeared at G4TV, Eurogamer, Paste, Gamasutra, Joystiq, GamePro, Mac|Life, and Kill Screen among other places. Helium can be found on Twitter @mrdurandpierre.

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