THE OBSERVATORY - ENTRY # 0049: FAIL

by duvalia
June 27, 2010

To me, one of the most disappointing things I can hear is that a series is in jeopardy due to conflict in development. Of course, a few resignations or firings may not indicate that a particular series will be dropped, but for me the original intent/storyline is gone.

Change isn’t always bad, so I suppose the disappointment I feel arises from preparing myself for a new installment that might not quite meet my standards.

One example, is the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series. CoD4 was the top selling game worldwide in 2007 and MW2 sold over 14 million copies worldwide as of March 2010. I’ve heard varying opinions on the ‘greatness’ of the games, but I honestly love them both. That aside, the Infinity Ward founders were fired, which led to a stream of loyal workers resigning to follow their development leaders.

So… what happens now? From how well the MW series is selling, there’s no way that Activision won’t capitalize on the potential profit of a third game in the series. However, with the majority of the development team gone can we really expect MW3 to remain true to what was originally intended? Especially considering MW2 ended on such a cliffhanger.

Another series is the Dead or Alive fighting franchise. Despite the bouncing breasts fan service, the series had amazing graphics, an intriguing, albeit sometimes vague, storyline and a fresh counter based fighting system. Problems arose with the Tecmo President, which forced the story and character creator to resign. Though rumors of a DoA5 have circled the internet, the 2005 DoA4 remains the last of the main series.

An anime series that continued despite legal disputes with the original character designer is Weiß Kreuz. However, the dramatic changes in designs between the first and second seasons are enough to ask whether the characters are really the same. I’ll admit that sometimes it’s nice to see a character get a makeover, but when it goes as far as not being able to tell if two characters are the same person then we have a problem.

And the movie industry is so full of these disputes, I’m not even going to try. Replacing characters, killing them off early, recasting in the middle of production, the list goes on. Fights and disagreements are bound to happen, but it sucks when the fans have to suffer for it.