8 Coolest Things Gaming Doesn’t Do Anymore
4. Creative Risks And Reinvention
The Resident Evil franchise is a franchise that should be lauded now for its willingness to try new things, although during the period it was a little more expected.
Through the 2000s the series tried early online gaming, weird mixes of perspectives and of course swapped its main gameplay style with RE4. Whilst it has done it again in recent years with Resident Evil 7, a shift to first-person is hardly as ground-breaking.
Franchises just play it safe these days. Because games take so long to produce, spin-offs and experiments are harder to come by as they can't just be a case of putting something together in a year to see how it feels. Everything needs to be each developer's new magnum opus and, to stand a chance of succeeding, needs to appeal to as many people as possible.
Ergo, franchises are less likely to try a surprising left-turn than they were before because the damage can be devastating. Instead, games stay in their lane, opting for nostalgia or a homogenous mishmash of proven successful features from their contemporaries.
When a series, like God of War, does reinvent itself, other franchises don't consider going back to the drawing board. Instead, they steal from the God of War because it's proven to work.