By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Angelus on 30 January 2020
Edit Thread
coolbeans said:
Angelus said:
I've never played a Perfect Dark game myself, but I don't particularly see the upside of bringing back an IP that had….1 (?) beloved game. Even if I take it on faith that there are enough Perfect Dark fans out there to make a revival worthwhile, why would they want said revival to take the form of a very cinematic, third person action/adventure game? The original is an FPS, correct? Seems to me, you'd be likely to piss those people off by turning it into something completely different. So then, if you potentially alienate whatever amount of existing PD fans are out there - probably not all, but likely a notable percentage - you're left most appealing to who? Well...everyone else. People who either don't know PD, people who do, but never played it, or people who played it and didn't like it. For 2/3 of those people, you're already approaching them from a worse starting disposition than you would be with a brand new IP. Are those existing Perfect Dark fans, the ones who actually take kindly to this complete overhaul of the game they loved, really worth using that particular name brand, rather than just creating something fresh? That everyone can approach without any preconceived notions of whether it's living up to the past, justifies it's revival, whether it can win over those who never cared for it, or means nothing to, etc?

I mean hey, whatever they make, I hope it's great, and if they really wanted to work on Perfect Dark....god bless. I just don't know that it makes a whole lot of business sense, unless they absolutely, 100% knock it out the park, and that's a lot of pressure to put on a new studio.

I have to disagree with your analysis there, as a modest PD fan.  Look at something like the RE titles: throughout the successive years of them pumping out sequels, prequels, and spin-offs they've made dramatic changes that've kept the series going.  

I think Perfect Dark has had enough time to be out of the limelight that fans would be just fine with redefining their approach to such a flexible character.  It's not like Duke Nukem where it's become an expectation for players to do something 'offensive' from the first-person perspective.  If they're able to refashion Joanna Dark in a way that keeps some of the core ideas of PD (difficulty options that expand objective list, setting, weapons, etc.) I'd love to see what a new roster of developers do with the character.  

I'm not sure your comparison here makes a lot of sense. RE has undergone a lot of changes over the years, yes, but it's also a very long running series, spanning many entries. It's much more natural for games within such a franchise to eventually experiment with the formula in various ways, do spinoffs, maybe even reinvent the wheel entirely at some point in an effort to stay relevant.

Perfect Dark, as far as I'm aware, really has one iconic game that it's fans recognize as encapsulating what it is to be a good Perfect Dark game. The only other entry, again - correct me if I'm wrong, is Zero, and while it reviewed pretty well, I've never seen anybody talk about that game when they talk about PD, or their desire for more. As I've never played either, I can't pretend to know what the key distinguisher is between them, or why one has faded into obscurity, but the bottom line is, the qualities that define what PD means to people all boil down to only one previous experience. So if that experience meant something to them to the point that they're still to this day hungry for a new entry, I have to imagine they'd have some pretty strong ideas about what that new entry must look like.

That said, you played it, I didn't, so maybe the things you mentioned - setting, difficulties, weapons - are a lot more important than the player perspective, how that influences level design, etc. If so, fair enough. It just seems to me that one could create a game with similar, PD inspired (which I'm sure is derivative of something else, anyway, everything is) elements, without the baggage of living up to an idealized memory of a 2 decade old game.