Hogwarts Legacy – would a sequel take too long? (pic: Warner Bros.)
The Friday letters page celebrates the greatness of Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime, as one reader worries about Square Enix’s recent poor form.
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Live forever
I was thinking about how well Hogwarts Legacy has done and the Warner Bros. execs implying there’ll be a sequel, but now I wonder whether that’s what they actually meant. There’ll obviously be DLC and, I would think, spin-offs, but consider how long a sequel is likely to take to make. It couldn’t really come out before 2028 and if you assume it would take longer, because it’d be next gen only and need more complex assets it could easily not be until 2030, which seems a crazy long time away.
It’s like this for a lot of sequels and exactly the reason why the Norse God Of War games aren’t a trilogy: because they would all be picking up their pensions by the time they finished it and had a chance to do anything different.
I do wonder whether live service games are going to end up the future of gaming, not just because companies like microtransactions but because it’s the only feasible way to keep new content coming out. Long gone are the days of yearly sequels and before too long I think they’ll be at least a decade apart. So maybe there won’t be a Hogwarts Legacy 2? Just lots of DLC and a next next gen update when necessary.
Cranston
No change, no refunds
So Microsoft are getting closer and closer to the greenlight on their Activision Blizzard buyout and I’m sure now that they will be allowed to do it. But, apparently nothing will changed? Including maybe not even getting modern Call Of Duty games on Games Pass? Was that really worth turning the games industry on its head for a year for?
And what happens to Phil Spencer’s bosses when, after spending $69 billion, it’s found that it didn’t make any difference to the success of the Xbox? I guess their bottom line will go up, because Call Of Duty makes money, but if it’s not exclusive in any way it doesn’t sound like it’s going to convince anyone to buy more Xboxes.
It’s the same with Minecraft, like Microsoft said, and I don’t really see the point of it all. They’re playing a long game so long I’m going to be pushing up the daisies before I find out what it is.
Focus
Blood out of a stone
I can’t remember if you covered this story in your own right. However, I really hope this is an announcement about a PlayStation 5 remaster/upgrade for Bloodborne.
Despite having a hiatus from PlayStation for a number of years, I recently came back after picking up a PlayStation 5 and a Bloodborne remaster is probably my biggest wish.
Oh, and also for the Activision Blizzard / Microsoft deal to fall through, unlikely though that may be (it’s just a matter of time, and the concessions Microsoft agree to). I don’t want to see any exclusivity deal being struck over Diablo 5 by Microsoft. All the arguments so far are obsessing over Call Of Duty, and I understand that, but Diablo IV seems to have been lost in the shadows a bit.
June/Diablo is too close now for any shenanigans anyway, so at least the main release will be left unaffected due to pre-orders. But who knows what lies ahead beyond that, Diablo is a game with a long shelf life right?
r-s-w
GC: As much as we’d love to see Bloodborne get a proper PlayStation 5 version, Bluepoint have repeatedly said their next game is not a remake. Diablo 4 will be unaffected but all bets are off for Diablo 5. As you imply though, that’s not likely to arrive for a decade or so.
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Backing up
With the Wii U Store and 3DS Store closing soon I would like to ask readers for some advice. Could you recommend games to get before the store closes down, please? Also, I want to make a backup of my Wii U and 3DS digital games in case the hardware breaks or fails in future. Can I backup to a SD card for the Wii U for the games and saves? Or do I need to buy a compatible external hard drive?
On the 3DS I plan to buy a new micro SD card and download the games to it and then copy the contents on
to my PC so I can keep it safely backed up. I have a Wii U Premium 32GB console and a New 3DS XL. What is the largest hard drive Wii U will support, as it’s obviously quite old now. Sorry for all the questions.
Andrew J.
PS: I am waiting for The Last Of Us Season 1 to come out on disc before I watch it, so having to be careful about spoilers even though I have completed the two games and DLC for 1.
Crazy idea
I really don’t see how Sega is going to bring back something like Crazy Taxi in the modern. It’s probably the most shallow, but still good, game I’ve ever played and I don’t really see how you keep the same tone and make it more complicated.
Seems to me that games like Golden Axe and Shinobi have a lot more potential. All you need to take is the basic premise and beef up the gameplay and you’ve got more arcadey versions of God Of War and Sekiro, which I imagine has a lot of appeal. What can you do with Crazy Taxi though? Even giving it realistic physics would ruin it because the jankiness was half the joke.
Woodruff
Final chance
So, even though Final Fantasy 14 continues to print money for them, do you think Square Enix are in a bit of trouble at the moment? They’ve dumped high profile properties for a steal in order to (maybe) get bought by some mega corporation. But no suitors thus far. Well, at least I haven’t heard of any.
Then you have Balan Wonderworld, Babylon’s Fall, and Forspoken all coming out at roughly the same time of year, all being failures. Some more than others. And for similar reasons boiling down to poor judgment and mismanagement. Three years in a row. Three for three. That’s not an encouraging sign.
Final Fantasy 16 is meant to be out this year and while some fans seem worried, it really can’t afford to drop the ball. It’s not cross-gen, which didn’t surprise me somehow as I must have already heard it from somewhere else.
Forspoken was not cross-gen, which kind of did surprise me. It didn’t look so special that it could only have been done on PlayStation 5. But I’m a doctor, Jim! Not a video games developer!
DMR – possibly not a real doctor.
GC: Square Enix has certainly had a poor run lately but there’s nothing to suggest they’re in any financial trouble.
No room
The thing that gets me about all these hundreds of new Assassin’s Creed game is that Ubisoft didn’t have space for a single Prince Of Persia game. I know the remake is supposed to still be going but when was the last time we saw it, and even if it was good it’s still a remake and not a new game.
I’d really like to see a good sequel. 3D platformers are so rare nowadays, especially non-cartoony ones, that it seems to me it’d be much more novel and interesting now than at any time before.
Tacle
Twin classics
I’m currently playing Metroid Prime Remastered and Resident Evil 4 HD on the Nintendo Switch and they really are two of the best ever.
I thought I’d play Resident Evil 4 again as the remake is out very soon and reading your preview and enthusiasm has got me very excited, but…
I’m asking myself does Resident Evil 4 need a remake? It’s already been remastered in HD and playing it has made me realise just how good it is!
There’s sections of the game I’d completely forgotten, it’s incredible how much variety it has. Playing it on a first playthrough is tense but for me playing a second run with the upgraded weapons is incredible fun.
The set pieces are fantastic, the character designs and dialogue are a masterclass, and the weapons… oh my the weapons!
There’s no way the remake will have the same impact the original did, and I hope there’s an option for the classic control scheme?
I remember when the original was released and how I bought a GameCube just to play it and that’s also how I got to experience the original Metroid Prime. The fact that both remasters/remakes are coming out so close to each other is just a dream come true!
I shall of course be buying the remake, just to see the new visuals if anything… the 24th of March can’t come soon enough!
wasimr34
Inbox also-rans
I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to the new Resident Evil 4. The whole thing seems so perfectly done I really don’t understand what was going on with Resident Evil 3. I know it was a different team but why were they allowed to do it like that?
Gorf
I’m still waiting for the guy that plays Cal in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to be in one of the shows. He was a pretty good actor as not-Joker in Gotham. Better than Jared Leto, definitely.
Waldo
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The Friday letters page celebrates the greatness of Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime, as one reader worries about Square Enix’s recent poor form.
