7 Hard Pivots for Games That Shouldn't Have Worked But Did

some games are synonymous with a particular genre here tomb raider and you know you're most likely diving into a 3d person action adventure hear dark souls and you know you're diving into a pillow fort after being smushed by a giant dragon for the 50th time only in the pillow fort find i ease however not all series will keep to the same genre occasionally a sequel will veer wildly from the original path and without even having the courtesy of being called a full reboot not only that but sometimes these genre pivots go really well and don't completely blow up in the game maker's face figuratively that is so strap yourselves in and expect some whiplash as we look at these hard left turns for games that shouldn't have worked but did help make this more difficult most of you watching will hear the name fallout and think of this man there's so many bugs in these games indeed the fallout series is currently famous for its first person exploration of the nuclear wasteland picking up as many bottle caps and free outfits as you can find oh just my size but it wasn't until fallout 3 that the game was built like this in its previous two iterations the fallout series was top-down isometric adventuring with turn-based combat full of exciting exploration intriguing character conversations and interesting mission choices both fallout 1 and 2 were highly praised by critics and still considered by many to be some of the best games of all time so how come we're not still playing top-down fallout games well despite all this critical acclaim in 1998 publisher interplay found itself in bankruptcy court they stayed operational but eventually as the financial situation didn't improve the interplay owned developer of the original two games black isle studios was closed in 2003 with black isle studios dead and gone in 2004 interplay sold the rights to make a sequel game in the fallout universe to a little company you might have heard of bethesda softworks four years later in 2008 fallout 3 was released into the world this game still heavily leaned on the theming and world design from the work of black isle studio heck even the much-loved vats the vortec assisted targeting system was based on a targeting system in the first two fallout games but now you could bullseye rad roaches in 3d nice fallout's rich fiction blended perfectly with bethesda's immersive brand of first person fully 3d open world rpgs this seemed to work out pretty nicely as the game made bethesda 300 million in its first month after shifting more than 4.7 million copies for comparison fallout 1 sold 600 000 copies total in its lifetime that was still a huge hit at the time but now the fallout series was in more homes than ever like some horrible rad roach infestation but more fun but the nuance and the magic of the first two games was not lost forever amongst the bits of rad roach therapists scattered around the wasteland some of the original black isle development team ended up working at obsidian entertainment on fallout new vegas another first person follow-up which also sold like hot fancy lad snack cakes over 5 million copies in its first month to be exact the series has continued to have a huge fan base with the switch to first-person shooter action rpg and the vat system proving to be big hits [Applause] get it big hit sorry how long did you say this place has been abandoned three years clancy get a shot of this let's make a great cutaway so uh hillbilly joe and his family go missing not hillbillies the bakers jack and marguerite baker and they were quiet not backward you can't underestimate the importance of the original resident evil games they broke new ground with innovative gameplay puzzles and stories that played out from multiple viewpoints [Music] it's me chris resident evils one and two set the high watermark for horror in video games with a tense foreboding atmosphere that is the reason we still get nervous opening doors even though we know these are really just loading screens but as the years progressed a series that was originally known for nail-biting survival horror would eventually drift in a different direction one defined by huge action set pieces quicktime events and increasingly hard to follow albert wesker family tree-centric stories that like a tolkien dwarf delved too greedily and too deep into resident evil lore less the minds of moria more the minds of moira burton by 2016 the resident evil universe was more or less out of control with the main games failing to recapture the ammo conserving seat of your pants fun of the originals and as many dodgy spin-offs as there were now types of viruses imagine our collective shock then when developer capcom took an abrupt pivot in the summer of that year introducing the world to a new kind of resident evil this new game ditched almost everything fans had come to expect from the series in favor of a first-person horror story set entirely in a swamp now imagine our shock when it turned out that it was really freaking good though mechanically and aesthetically a departure from everything resident evil had come to represent resident evil 7 biohazard worked because it recaptured what made the early games so much fun tense crawls around echoey corridors never certain you have enough bullets and first aid spray to survive whatever freaky mutated horror lurks around the corner and although it had always been a third person franchise playing in first person as protagonist ethan felt brilliant because capcom built an entirely new engine for the game the re engine which naturally stands for resident evil oh no wait it stands for reach for the moon fine a critical and commercial win capcom's gamble paid off paving the way for a direct sequel and best of all did it all without mentioning albert wesker oh unless you count this gun being named after him we'll allow it but you know watch it resident evil dynasty warriors is a cult favorite series of hack and slash games based loosely upon chinese history [Music] really really loosely boot up one of these titles and you'll usually find yourself in the middle of a battle kicking the ever living out of a multitude of soldiers usually with some ridiculously fancy looking weaponry this view against many gameplay can be pretty cathartic helping you to build up combos as fast as the dynasty warriors can pump out sequels spin-offs and spin-offs for entirely different franchises but these huge battles had much humbler beginnings as the very first dynasty warriors was actually a more traditional 1v1 fighting game a la tekken and soul calibur complete with a ridiculous title intro this fighting game is a far cry from the sweep em up beat em up style gameplay of the later installments mainly because one enemy is a lot less than approximately 5 000 enemies [Music] however for dynasty warriors 2 released in 2000 publisher koei decided not to fight against the dozens of 1v1 beat em ups available at the time and instead have its players fight dozens of people at the same time still kept the ridiculous opening titles though traditions are important since that sudden turn then there's been no looking back with fans enjoying a combat style that could be best described as everybody fight me at once the gamble paid off and the series has ballooned in size in the past 20 years with the main games reaching nine titles in total tekken and street fighter might have sold more copies but dynasty warriors managed something more special forging a new and successful genre all of its own and bonus completely ruining my already thin knowledge of chinese history wait you're telling me there weren't giant on fire tigers i just assumed they went extinct you know because they were on fire [Music] metroid is so closely associated with the kind of 2d platformer where you get a power up that lets you backtrack and explore a previously inaccessible part of the map that the genre is even named after it metroidvania no idea what the vania part means maybe because metroid gets under your skin so after three hit games in the metroid saga imagine the grits nintendo must have had to summon to pivot their precious 2d platform baby into a 3d fps series [Music] metroid prime then developed by retro studios and released in 2002 could have been a catastrophic failure and yet it was a space exploration romp on par with any of its 2d predecessors with fantastic shooting puzzle solving and even platforming in a 3d world something that other first person games struggle with to this day cough do maternal cough cough [Music] the secret was a control scheme that relied heavily on the left shoulder button which locked samus onto important objects meaning the left joystick usually used to turn samus left and right could now be used for strafing it worked alarmingly well and was a big part of what made this abrupt departure for the series work these quirky controls didn't exactly catch on with almost every other first person game since preferring to handle navigation and aiming with two analog sticks but will always be an ore of how well the metroid series pivoted to 3d evacuate immediately and even more impressed they repeated the trick five years later using the wiimote for heaven's sake which was about as naturally suited to controlling a run-and-gun first-person shooter as oh say the kitchen spiralizer fine hurry it up or they'll find us i know i know just a little more you keep an eye out for me up there kites the early final fantasy titles are iconic a cute little bunch of pixel characters all stood in a line waiting their turn to hit one of the monsters stood on the other side of the screen but as a series with so many entries and spin-offs much like someone handcuffed to a roll of coins things are bound to change indeed as the series progressed the combat was tweaked with changes like the addition of active time battle or the atb gauge which determined when party members would use certain attacks while the graphics changed from 2d sprites to 3d models though the combat itself was largely unchanged yes cloud had pointier pointy bits on him than any previous final fantasy character but overall the gameplay was still the same final fantasy 10 may had gone 3d and introduced a new conditional turn based system but one thing was sacred final fantasy must be turn based the only real change was that no one was guaranteed a turn each round as if you're playing a tabletop game with a particularly forgetful dm not exactly earth-shatteringly different gameplay that doesn't count final fantasy 10 however the next two games saw bigger changes first off was final fantasy xi being an online mmo rather than a single player experience but the second and most impactful change to the entire series was final fantasy xii throwing turn-based battles out the window entirely in 12 instead of all neatly standing in a line and deciding what each player would do one by one you only had control of one character usually van and you set up commands for how the rest of your party would fight for you and if you got stuck in a tussle you could move yourself about to avoid attacks as you were no longer rooted to the spot like a deer in headlights this was a huge departure for the series roots but it proved very successful as since then the game has continued to move even further away from turn-based gameplay new systems such as command synergy battle in final fantasy xiii and active cross battle in final fantasy xv took even bigger steps along this new real-time fighting path turn on final fantasy 7 remake and you'd be astonished to learn that this fast-paced system of switching between characters and wailing on monsters with enthusiastic button mashing was once an orderly line of characters [Music] nothing orderly about this whole situation still cloud is still just as pointy [Music] yay [Applause] [Music] so [Music] when you've been around as long as the legend of zelda you're bound to have gone through a few changes hey even link had an emo phase but on the whole the legend of zelda format has stayed largely the same go through a series of dungeons in hyrule with bosses in them and gain a piece of equipment in each that will help you get through the dungeon or get into the next one finally use all of your gear and skills that you have acquired from navigating the dungeons and killing their bosses to reach ganon and then play tennis with him [Music] then the legend of zelda breath of the wild came along and said here's an open world game with no set order in which to do things and also while the previous games use cliffs to funnel you to your next objectives in breath of the wild you can climb all the cliffs you want like you're some kind of blonde squirrel when it was first revealed like any zelda fans we were a little worried about the changes but once breath of the wild arrived we fell in love with it and we would like to take this opportunity to apologize for ever doubting you nintendo although the weapon durability did split fans opinions much like how this branch split into pieces when we smashed it over the head of a pokolin the new format turned out to be so popular that it became the best selling zelda title of all time shifting over 22 million copies for that it's now getting a sequel in the same vein albeit with some extra floaty islands about the place for link to warp through like he's made of goo [Music] but we don't yet know if they've done the most radical thing of all actually maker legend of zelda game about zelda in the yakuza game series you play as a member of an organized crime syndicate in the fictional tokyo district of camaracho it's up to you to help these gang members thrive in the criminal underworld and do really well at karaoke unlike in the italian mafia here it's good to sing like a canary when you're not doing one of yakuz's many ridiculous side quests you'll usually be running around and punching seven bells out of your rival yakuza clans or anyone else who annoyed you that day this open world beat em up gameplay was a staple of all the yakuza games with the only significant changes being some new moves for the characters such as breakdancing people to death or just beating them to the ground with a nearby bike i never get tired of that move it's off the chain sorry about the puns i'll give you a break i'm fired aren't i [Music] so when it was revealed that yakuza 7 like a dragon was going to be a turn-based rpg with a brand new protagonist in a different city yokohama there were questions some fans weren't sure how well it would work would yakuza 7 feel like a yakuza game those fans didn't have to worry though as the reveal of yakuza 7 as a turn-based game was just an extremely elaborate april fool's joke [Music] however they're worrying had to commence again as the makers of the game decided to make their joke real why because amid all those concerned there were plenty of yakuza fans who responded that it might be an april fools but actually hell yeah they would totally play a yakuza game like that so the developers spent the next few months retooling the combat entirely just a few months before release [Music] finally it was released to the public and it turned out to be pretty great actually it scored solid reviews with steam users in particular being very happy awarding it an excellent 10 out of 10. plus our resident yakuza fan mr randy farren loved it so much that we recommend you don't ask his opinion on it unless you don't have anything planned for the rest of your day the game at its core was still very much a yakuza game with lots of fun side missions and plenty of karaoke and the turn-based combat was still every bit as dynamic as it looked in the joke trailer both enemies and allies were able to move around and still use environmental attacks so the action looked every bit as absurd and humorous as its previous titles [Music] some fans did see it as a joke taken a little too far but many more saw it as a perfect new addition to the series and possibly the best so far you could say it turned out all right i'm super fired aren't i so those were seven hard pivots for games that shouldn't have worked but actually in retrospect they did they were good these were these were good games can you think of any other examples of when a series just like you know slammed on the handbrake pow just drifted coolly round a bend in a way wow you thought they're gonna spin out but oh man oh man boy boy did they take that racing line uh let us know in the comments if so and if you enjoyed this and why not check out some of the other videos that we have made on this channel here's a couple just on screen now for your perusal so check those out and if you did like this then you can support the channel um just by hitting the like button and the notification bell as well that way you will get sent a notification button next time we release a new video right thanks very much until next time goodbye

Channel: Outside Xtra

Views: 335,750

Rating: 4.9443026 out of 5

Keywords: Ellen Rose, Luke Westaway, Outside Xtra

Id: 5ykBL4yD12U

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/nuttyprofwd]

Since Andy couldn't say it, I will, boooo