Sequels, love 'em or hate 'em, are the cornerstone of the industry. Nearly every big project that comes out is a sequel, and even the new IPs are born with the hope that they will spawn a franchise. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. There are a lot of folks who just flatly dismiss sequels as the cancer killing all the beautiful and creative snowflakes out there, but the fact of the matter is that people, including myself, like games that are like the games they like. They like characters and settings that they already know.
I got to thinking about this because I just finished playing Crysis 2 (a very good FPS campaign if you're looking for one), and it got me thinking about things people do in sequels that I don't like, because of a few things that Crysis 2 does that I will describe. Crysis 2 is a game that is trying to bring in new players, first and foremost. To do this they've done some pretty obvious things, like make it available on PS3 and Xbox in addition to the PC, and streamlined the suit mechanic significantly (to the benefit of the gameplay, actually. The old suit was a bit unwieldy with it's powers), and that's fine. It also tries to something that a lot of sequels try to do, and usually fail at doing, and that is make a story that can stand on its own without having played the first game. Ideally, when doing this, new players should feel welcome, and returning players should feel like what they did in the first game is informing what's going on in the second game.
Crysis 2 gets the first thing right, but so much so that throughout almost the entire game, in the back of my mind, I was thinking "What the fuck does this have to do with the first game?". There is exactly one returning character, and it's not even the protagonist of the first game. The setting is different, the alien M.O. is completely different, the mood is completely different. The only thing that's the same is you've got a nano-suit, and somewhere to go. Again, I stress that all of the things I just listed are really, really well done. Apocalyptic New York is beautifully realized, with the same kind of staggering vistas you'd expect from Crysis in the middle of Manhattan, and if I had never played Crysis I would feel like I knew why I was there, and what it all meant, but having played the first game I just find myself with this constant little cognitive dissonance buzzing away at me all the time.
I can honestly say that this is the first time I've ever played a sequel that is functionally better than the first game, but somehow made a worse experience for having played the first game. It makes me think they should have just not called it Crysis. In fact, I think they might not have were it not for the fact that they still wanted to use the same basic nano-suit mechanic. I guess the question becomes "When is a sequel no longer a sequel?". Would it have been all right for them to do something like Final Fantasy, and just have a similar theme, keep the nano-suit, and disconnect the narrative completely? Because, barring a few hints here and there, that's practically what they did, and I almost wish they'd just gone all the way with it.
This became more about Crysis 2 than I intended, so I'll try to bring this back around a bit. This year I am looking forward to a number of, what I hope to be, fantastic titles. All of which are sequels or follow-ups. Portal 2, The Witcher 2, Dark Souls, and Mass Effect 3 to name a few. Dragon Age 2 and Crysis 2 just came out, Gears 3 is in the pipe as well, it just goes on and on. Is this too many sequels? The question gets asked every year. So many sequels, where's the new stuff? Are the sequels burying the brilliant new ideas that must be hiding out there? Honestly, I don't really think so, at least not to a huge degree. Yes, it's harder to get a new IP published than it is for an established franchise, but those franchises get established for a reason. How many new IPs out there are really that good? One in ten? And that's from the ideas compelling enough to get through to be published to begin with. Not to mention that, even if your new game is good, there's no guarantee that it will sell. Take Mirror's Edge. Great game, extremely strong first entry in a potential franchise, but it doesn't sell. Game companies aren't charities, so the sequel gets delayed indefinitely in favor of more Battlefield games, which are proven sellers. Proven further by the fact that Bad Company 2 actually does sell extremely well, so we get Battlefield 3.
So we get sequels, and more sequels, and will continue to get sequels, but most of the time, I really don't mind.