You know, I’ve always felt like I don’t really
belong in my age group. Not because I’m
more mature than everyone else (if anything, the reverse is true); it’s because
more often than not, I feel like I’m an old man compared to the young ‘uns
around me. I’m no stranger to a nice,
quiet afternoon nap. I consider anything
past twelve-thirty at night to be extremely late. I love eating oatmeal for breakfast, and I
don’t have any problems eating broccoli.
My only saving grace is that I don’t like prune juice…yet.
Nevertheless, the day is coming.
That, and the fact that I’m not completely
crippled by my nostalgia. I’ll allow and
accept change as needed, but as long as it’s within reason. The established canon of franchises the world
round are there for a reason -- they’re a guide, a sort of history that
shouldn’t be defiled by newborns trying to change elements to suit their
fancy. If I may borrow an old adage, “If
it ain’t broke, don’t reboot it.”
…Wait, you mean people don’t say that? Well, they should. I DID say that I’ll allow change as needed.
I’m very wary of the upcoming reboot to the
Spider-Man movie franchise. Not just
because the director of the first three movies shares a phonetic name with a
certain writer, but because I’ve grown fond of them. The movies held a certain charm -- genuine
emotion, plenty of action, and lots of comedy for good measure. Some could argue that they were pretty silly,
and I won’t deny it; bear in mind, however, that Spidey comes from a medium
where one could create a villain named “Animal Mineral Vegetable Man” and not
be laughed off this side of the universe. The camp was part of the fun, adding
to it rather than detracting from it.
Better than the Joker.
Imagine my surprise when I hear that, rather than
a return to form (after the rather poor Spider-Man
3) in a fourth movie, the entire franchise is getting rebooted into The Amazing Spider-Man. It’s coming out in 2012, featuring a new
cast, a revisit of Peter Parker’s origin story, and a much darker, grittier
take on the Spider-Man mythos. My first
thought was “Why?” My second thought was
“I’m hungry. I’m up for some hot
dogs.” My third thought was “What the
hell for? It hasn’t even been ten
years! That’s cheating!” And other miscellaneous threads regarding the
tonal shift, the new suit, and putting mustard on my hot dog.
A friend of mine was quick to reassure me that,
although it IS a reboot, it’s being handled by good people. Talented people. People who aren’t just taking Spider-Man and
running him through the Grimdark-O-Matic 5000.
Fair enough; he’s the movie expert and not me, so I’ve every reason to
believe in him and the moviemakers. By
extension, it’d be downright stupid of me to slam a movie just because it’s a
little different -- especially if I haven’t even seen it yet.
What I CAN slam, however, is the emergence of
reboots in video games. I know them
better than movies, and I’ve got more than enough kindling to spark the flames
of my nerd rage.
Comic books and video games have one thing in
common: timelines. Sure, Superman has
been flying around for some seventy or eighty years now (compared to the
twenty-five of, say Link), but the fact remains that they have established
canons that you don’t want to tamper with too much. Screw around, and there’s a good chance
you’ll do little more than -- to put it eloquently -- piss off your
fanbase. That general rule applies to
franchises that aren’t quite as old as Link; a good number of them are barely a
decade old, but the games that carry their name have certain expectations that
have to be lived up to.
So naturally, game developers and publishers are
suddenly pushing for reboots. New
graphics technology and the need to match market demands mean that new
standards are being put into place.
Realism! Grit! The color brown! Adult situations! Guns!
Familiar gameplay! Seriousness! Viscera!
The Dark Knight! Woe can befall anyone who differs too
greatly, or alternatively makes a shoddy game; the failure of a single project
can close down an entire studio, leading to hundreds of jobs lost. Best to play it safe, then. And what better way to do that than to
combine sensibilities -- the modern climate of tastes with the alluring appeal
of nostalgia?
Franchises from the past are coming back with a
vengeance…some, more vengefully than others.
The demolition derby simulator, Twisted
Metal; the snowboarding extravaganza, SSX;
the archaeology adventure, Tomb Raider;
the demon-busting Devil May Cry. All of these are what I’d consider reboots,
with plenty more either on the horizon or behind us. One would think that with so much money and
people’s livelihoods on the line that there’s no way they can fail. So why is it that, much like The Amazing Spider-Man, I’m still filled
with worry?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that
reboots aren’t the answer to every problem.
The ultimate example of a game reboot gone bad --
one that haunts me to this day -- is Bomberman:
Act Zero. Admittedly, I’ve never
played the game, but that’s only because I don’t play awful games. It was a 2006 release by Konami and Hudson,
and an early part of the Xbox 360’s library featuring everyone’s favorite
little demolition man, Bomberman. Except
apparently, someone jettisoned the memo that said “Insert character with a head
shaped like a lunchbox with a pink pom-pom that everyone loves” into the
blackest corners of space. In place of
the cute little hero synonymous with the franchise, we instead got an Iron Man
knockoff -- a scarred robot (available in purple armor if you choose) with one
oversized claw hand and miscellaneous wires and chains attached to his
person. Why? Hell if I know!
Gigantic titanium oven mitts are in this season.
The result was about what one would expect. The shoddy gameplay and heavy load times
earned no sympathy, and the bare -bones features -- along with, damningly, poor
online play -- led to it getting hammered by reviewers online and off, pro and
recreational. A chief complaint? Why did they redesign Bomberman? What was the point? Why did they turn the colorful, feel-good
adventure into an unimaginative cyberpunk wasteland? Worse yet, the redesigned world raises more
questions than it answers: if the new Bomberman is designed to blow up stuff,
why is he vulnerable to his own bombs?
What purpose does that huge hand serve?
Why is he scarred right out of the production line? Why pit Bombermen against one another in the
first place -- so there can be only one survivor? And then what? Why not put those bombers to better use? Why, in the wake of this universal overhaul,
are the areas virtually identical to the original games? Sure, the cute Bombeman games didn’t answer a
lot of its questions either, but it didn’t need to; it had a separate story
mode that kept your mind occupied, and treated the multiplayer like a fun
little diversion. Act Zero did not. Act Zero drops you into this grimdark
world and explains nothing, rationalizes nothing, justifies nothing -- it’s
just there.
It’s one of the biggest examples of “completely
missing the point” that I’ve ever seen.
Like I said, I’ve never played the game, but I’ve seen enough of it to
know that it’s bad, and read enough to know that the redesign is universally
reviled -- to say nothing of the fact that the next Bomberman game would go
back to the cutesy style while adding
the option to wear silly hats. But the
damage was done; his last game was nothing more than a downloadable release, at
a fourth the price of a retail disk. The
franchise isn’t quite dead, but it certainly has a taint. All because of one misstep in an otherwise
stalwart series.
Stay strong, little bomber. Stay strong.
It makes me think that the reboot movement might be a little short-sighted. You get your product
out there, and then what? If you
succeed, then what do you do with the canon of the past? Throw it out?
Keep going until your rebooted continuity takes a sour turn, then reboot
again a few years later? If you fail,
then what? Backpedal until you can get
somewhere safe? Apologize to the fans you’ve wronged? Cry and drink until you fall asleep?
This is what worries me about the Tomb Raider reboot. It’s the tenth game in the franchise overall,
and it’s slated to be called…Tomb Raider,
as if this is the first one. It’s going
to Take Lara Croft, our feisty, full-figured heroine, back to her origin story;
we’ll see how the young student became the woman that so many of us know today,
as well as build her character beyond the sex symbol she’s reputed to be (which
isn’t helped by the fact that press releases seem adamant to tout their latest
real-life models in sultry poses). Okay,
let’s ignore the fact that the gameplay shown to the public so far features
Lara in a tight tanktop and pants, with the camera going to great lengths to
zoom in on her chest and rear, with the regular “passionate” moans coming from
our de-sexified heroine. And let’s
ignore the fact that the last on-disk game in the series, Tomb Raider: Underworld, was actually an enjoyable and
mostly-well-crafted sequel. And let’s
ignore the fact that Lara Croft has already gotten a reboot in the past.
Lara Croft is busty. Anyone who argues otherwise is just fooling
themselves, and poorly at that; you can take the breasts off the character, but
you can’t take the character off the breasts.*
Ignoring the fact that the developers are assuming that a character
needs to be busty to be a sex symbol -- as if they’ve never heard of Rule 34 --
there’s still the matter of continuity. If
New Lara is destined to grow into Current Lara, then does that mean that she’s
going to grow…shall we say, dimensionally?
Bear in mind that she’s at least twenty in the upcoming reboot; given
that puberty’s over for her (and as others have pointed out, she’s still kind
of chesty), does that mean that our heroine’s destined to have some work
done? Or are the developers assuming
that their work will be so successful that there’ll be no need to have Current
Lara in our minds anymore? And for that
matter, how asinine is it to assume that you can whitewash an old,
memory-engraved character and replace her with some new version with such
boastful fanfare?
The only thing that can beat a filled-out tanktop is a dirty, slightly less filled-out tanktop.
Reboots are like time travel: if you try it,
you’re destined to ass up history. Chances
are that even if you have a success, you’re still alienating a lot of people,
making changes neither asked for nor needed.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the upcoming Devil May Cry reboot, creatively titled…DmC. (We’re gonna need
better naming conventions if we keep making reboots.) Why Devil
May Cry needed a reboot is beyond me, and beyond plenty of fans far more
dedicated and skilled than me. For
starters, the series -- barring the second game -- has only evolved since the
first outing. Hyperkinetic, combo-heavy,
“stylish-crazy action” became the series standard, along with a heaping helping
of camp, randomness, and over-the-top shenanigans through its spirited hero,
Dante -- spirited in the sense that he’ll karate-chop jukeboxes, play guitar
solos on succubae he’d defeated seconds earlier, and wax Shakespearian all over
the damn place. In fact, the last game
in the series, Devil May Cry 4, was
actually the highest-selling installment.
There were criticisms of course, like adding a love-him-or-hate-him new
character and some excessive backtracking, but it was a very solid game. Not to mention that 1) it had plenty of plot
threads left hanging to pursue in a sequel, and 2) Devil May Cry 3 was in itself a reboot after 2, showing Dante’s ascension into badasshood. So why are we stepping backwards now? The series was fine -- the developer, Capcom,
just needed to do a little bit of work bad they would’ve had another hit under
their belts.
So what did they do? Sanction the western developer Ninja Theory
to help make a new game: DmC. Much mudslinging has gone about, with fans
eager to blame anyone even remotely related to the project…and with good
reason. Dante is being taken back to his
origin story, even though that’s in contradiction to 3 (still fresh on many a gamer’s mind). Said backstory is being rewritten to turn him
from half-human half demon -- pivotal to his character development -- into a
half-demon half-angel. He’s got a sword,
a demon axe, and an angel scythe (not too keen on my scriptures, but I doubt
that was in the Bible). And he’s gotten
a redesign that’s left droves of fans making faces so sour you’d swear they’d
eaten genetically enhanced super-lemons.
To say nothing of slower gameplay, a less-than-impressive combo system,
and worst of all, a character who’s less about “stylish crazy action” and heavy
on the “mad at the world” angst. That’s
a surefire way to light the world on fire, right? It certainly doesn’t help that the attitude
of the developers has been “Yeah, that guy you know and love? He’s not hip anymore. So just sit here and enjoy this.”
Pfft. Nerd.
It’s as if DmC
is writing the book on “How to Make Your Fans Want to Burn Down Your
House.” What was the impetus for such an
overhaul? Why draw so much fire to
yourself when you’re an outsider in the grand scheme of Dante’s canon? Why give gamers, an easily-incensed and
intensely focused bunch, a name and a face to hate you by? And most importantly, why turn such a
colorful hero into a husk that few fans would love, fewer neophytes would
recognize, and complete strangers to the series would confuse for Edward from Twilight? If reboots are supposed to succeed on a
short-term level, then why are so many people deeming this a game that’s DOA?
Oh. Well, that explains it.
It’s here where I want to draw the line. I don’t want to keep writing this article
based on the premise that “all reboots must burn” or any other stupid
ranting. Instead I want to admit that,
while reboots can go wrong (and perhaps will, God willing) there are actually
smart, effective uses of a restarted continuity.
Let’s sum
up what makes a BAD reboot:
A bad reboot is one that comes in spite of
unresolved issues and creative potential in the previous installment;
essentially, digging a new hole when the old well hasn’t been fully
tapped. It treats the established canon
as faulty -- one that insults the creators and the fans alike. It creates such a jarring shift in tone and
intent that it becomes something largely unrecognizable. It tries to breathe new life into a
series/franchise; the problem is that it uses tired ideas and clichés to try
and do it -- trying to appeal to an audience’s perceived sensibilities (grit
and edginess chief among them), rather than introducing some new element or
spin. Worst of all, these changes do
little to cover up the end product’s flaws; a game with bad gameplay might as
well be dragged out to the dumpster.
Major offenders: Bionic Commando (again
with the title…), Shadowrun, Sonic the Hedgehog (still no new title,
but referred to as Sonic ’06 -- the
equivalent of a scarlet letter).
Now, here’s what I think makes a GOOD reboot:
A good reboot is one that takes the flaws of the franchise
and fixes them; it’s a reboot in the sense that it’s giving a shamed name a
chance at redemption, or offering the fresh start it needs. Rather than throw out the established canon,
it makes tweaks while offering winking nods to longtime fans. While there’s an element of familiarity,
there’s also enough new ideas and new blood to justify a new start; there’s
something here now that hasn’t been done before, at least not in the
franchise’s context. All of the new
elements work with the old to create a smooth, enjoyable experience. Something that’s -- and this is a key word
here -- FUN…and it does so while keeping the spirit of the franchise. Lifetime achievers: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (and its 2008 installment…Prince of Persia), Street Fighter IV, a handful of Legend
of Zelda games.
Let’s take a closer look at Prince of Persia. That was a
franchise that, up until a few years ago, had vanished into the ether; when Sands of Time came out, it succeeded on
multiple fronts. It went beyond a mere
revival of the Prince for a new generation.
It was a fantastic game in its own right, with snappy writing, fun yet
deep characters, and gameplay that would turn parkour from a misspelling of
“park ore” and into a staple of the game industry. The 2008 reboot would stay true to the
franchise, but branch off -- out of necessity, not to separate itself from its
ancestor. Sands of Time became part of a much-lauded trilogy; that Prince’s
story was complete. 2008 saw a new
Prince, with a new story, new gameplay mechanics emphasizing flowing motion and
combat, and visuals best described as “like, whoa, man, it’s like I’m playing
in a painting.” Positive reception,
positive results -- now, if only the developers hadn’t sold the ending as a
separate downloadable purchase…
Street
Fighter IV is another fine example.
See, in the 90s Street Fighter II ruled
the roost when it came to arcade fighting games; often imitated, never
duplicated, it almost single-handedly gave birth to the genre, as well as
competitive gaming both local and professional.
But all that fury and all those spent quarters went the way of the dodo;
arcades across the states started dying out as home consoles grew more
powerful. While the game was played by
dedicated fans in whatever avenue they could find, even with the beloved Street Fighter III the franchise
disappeared from the world. It would be
roughly ten whole years before another installment came out, to the delight of
fans old and new. And when it did, it
would make a few departures. For
starters, it would be rendered in 3D.
For another, it would take a step back in the canon, nestled between II and III; the consequence being that it would bring back the cast that
had been shafted in place of a new wave of fighters (so yes, you too could play
as a sumo wrestler or hyper-elastic yogi.
Great success!). Gameplay would
remain the same, but introduce a few new mechanics -- the Focus Attack chief
among them, allowing for counterattacks as well as mounting an offense, and
making insane combos a real possibility.
Much like II before it, IV helped bring the fighting game back
in full force; as of this writing, there are no less than six different
fighting games in development. Also,
there was another live-action movie, but the less said about that, the better.
You know, the one where the guy from Spain is Asian. Research!
And then there’s The Legend of Zelda. It’s
almost unfair, comparing any game to a franchise that has ROUTINELY been
excellent. But really, it’s possible
that part of that success comes from the fact that many of its installments
have been -- breathless gasp! -- reboots.
See, a while back a bunch of fans got together and tried to sort out the
series’ timeline, something that’s been in debate for quite a while. It came down to the canon being split into
two separate, branching timelines based on the events in the time-travel-happy Ocarina of Time; one timeline and the
games afterward followed the exploits of Link, our hero, seven years into a
“bad future” after beating the villain Ganondorf. The other timeline followed Link’s
ten-year-old self as if he stayed in the past to look for an old friend. It was a legitimate theory that managed to
sort every Zelda game -- over a dozen
-- into a very succinct and sensible order.
Of course, Nintendo came out and shot that theory
right between the eyes; still, that didn’t stop fans from suspecting that the
theory proved accurate. But Nintendo has
a bit of justification; oftentimes, it seems like they just drop a hero in
green named Link into whatever universe suits their fancy. In one setting, he’s in a Waterworld-style chain of islands. In another, a surprisingly-advanced medieval
world plagued by the Twilight World. In
a third, he’s living in the sky and suicide-dives onto birds passing by. To say nothing of the fact that Skyward Sword is slated to explain the
origin of the series-famous Master Sword.
Nintendo’s free to do whatever it wants with its property’s canon, and
I’d be hard-pressed to say it’s to their detriment. It’s a chance to explore new worlds, and keep
the visuals fresh. It begs for new
gameplay mechanics to be instated each time -- sailing, transforming into a
wolf, or skydiving -- and feels like a logical step rather than some forced
gimmick.
Game of the year for all years.
But no matter how much Zelda may change from game to game, it has barely changed since the
original installment. There’s a very
stable, almost predictable progression.
Go to an area. Get a mission from
some bigwig. Find a special item (or
items). Use that item to find a way/open
a path to the next dungeon. Get new item
from the dungeon. Use that item to clear
the dungeon and beat the boss. Get the
MacGuffin. Do that about seven more
times. Congratulations, game complete!
That’s a major simplification of it, though. See, Zelda
can get away with repeated reboots because a new one doesn’t come out too
often -- and when it does, it’s met with fanfare and angelic chorus. What’s old is new, and what’s new is old;
there’s a formula that doesn’t need excessive tweaking, because at its base the
franchise is largely without flaw. Any
change the Nintendo team makes is one that only utilizes the formula for a
different, yet recognizable output. To
put it mathematically, imagine if a new Zelda
game equals x + y + z; characters, setting, and gameplay. Same formula it’s always used, but altering
the values of each variable for specialized yet expected result. Extreme reboots -- like Bomberman: Act Zero I’d wager -- take their franchise’s formula and
add plenty of variables that distort it.
You may get a similar output, but at what cost? Fans that hate you? A franchise sullied? A blow to the checkbook?
Like I said, I’m not completely opposed to
change. I support it, so long as it’s a
change that makes, you know, sense. Some
reboots -- in video games, and in plenty of other media outlets -- do, and I’m
fine with them. Some gambles pay
off. But others don’t; others are
reboots for the sake of reboots, while missing the point just for a chance to
ride on the gravy train. Developers take
heed: a gamble is still a gamble. Don’t
play unless you’re prepared to lose.
*That sounded kinda sexual. I'm eerily good at this.
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