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Underutilized Universes

Some franchises have just amazing fiction but games that just don't match up to, or only display one aspect of, that fiction. Here are some of those franchises and how I would make an awesome game for that franchise.

List items

  • Harry Potter has always been more about the universe than about the title character. Hogwarts is an amazing and truly realized setting, but all EA has done is pump out basic movie cash ins. And Quidditch World Cup I suppose but I'd rather forget about that. The possibilities for this license are endless- MMO, RPG, Adventure... and yet the last HP game was essentially a bunch of minigames with an open world and an occasional plot sequence. EA can do better and they should- hopefully we'll see them having some fun with this universe once all the movies are out and tie-ins are no longer required.

  • Yes, the show has starfighter battles. The starfighter battles aren't what made the show so great, but it's what the games focus on exclusively. The show was fantastic for it's portrayal of life on a military ship after being the sole survivors of a genocide. If we ever get another Battlestar game, it should focus on life aboard the ship.

  • "Lies, I'm really enjoying this list and imma let you finish but HALO is one of the most milked series OF ALL TIME."

    I hear you. You're completely wrong, but I hear you. Halo seems a bit different from the other titles on this list. The universe it puts forth in the games is pretty cliche sci-fi stuff, lots of it ripped almost directly from Aliens. But we digress. The game's story isn't great, I agree, but here's the thing: the peripheral fiction is great. GREAT. You've got books about the SPARTAN training, black ops teams, the earlier years of the war, more of the Forerunner mysteries explained, it goes on. But you only ever get this stuff outside of the games (and in the Terminals from 3, but that was an obscure out-of-the-way sidestory). Bungie (Microsoft now I suppose) has a great universe, but they put the WORST parts of that universe into the games. Hopefully Reach shows us some of this great expanded universe stuff.

  • Speaking of Expanded Universes, Star Wars has one of the largest of all time. Books, comics, audiodramas, movies, TV shows, Star Wars has it all. The stories in the EU are incredibly varied and occasionally actually quite good too. Unfortunately, the Videogame arm of this EU operation is pretty weak. Well, weak nowadays I suppose; back in the 90's it was doing pretty well for itself with the X-Wing and Dark Forces titles. These days, everything is focused on Jedi, and more importantly (due to LucasArt's general direction) the Clone Wars era. People who aren't Jedi exist in the Star Wars universe and it's great to step into their shoes every now and again. Remember Republic Commando? Remember how AWESOME Republic Commando was? Remember how awesome Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance was? I thought not. The last legitimate EU linked title we got was 2005's Jedi Academy, which appears to have had exactly NO impact on anything. But hey, four years later we're getting a novel with Jaden Korr as the main character, like 30 years after the events of the game. Which makes no sense. But I digress. Nothing positive games-wise has come out of Star Wars since then, except for maybe TOR.

  • Spider Man 2 came close, but I'm not sure a superhero game has ever really nailed the essence of one of these guys. I'm hearing good things about Batman Arkham Asylum though, so perhaps other teams will learn from Rocksteady and we'll get some better Spider Man games soon.

    Who am I kidding we'll get a shitty SM4 tie-in with no effort whatsoever that still uses the web-slinging system from SM2 :(