The modern format of story telling in MK is so much better than previous Fighting games, cut scenes and explanations of why you are fighting beats out Tekken's "If you win this fighting tournament, you get control of my company." and you mindlessly just fight through opponants. This format was even copied by Tekken in 7 while 6 was still doing it's 'Force mode' basically.

I couldn't even tell you the story in some yet have play all Tekkens.

Maybe a 3rd person combat story driven game is what the writers of MK need to do, as they have been trying to do a more complex story for years now but are limited in their choice of gameplay.

Mafia3, MGSV, TLOU2, Dark Souls 2, Uncharted Lost Legacy, Destiny2, Bioshock 2

Final Fantasy XV. SE tried pandering to the Western Audience starting with 13 and its sequels and 15 took it to another level.

Announced originally in 2006. It took them well over 10 years to make it and still turned out mediocre, 7 years to move on from the origional FF13. And imo it went even worse with the push to higher fidelity hardware and ARPG. Where they had to split the games over multiple years to finish the story. It wouldn't have taken them this long if they a) stuck to what they were good at - turn based combat b) stopped concentrating too much on graphics and put more into the story. I feel they they haven't learned much since the catastrophic failure that was Final Fantasy: Spirits Within.

Final Fantasy VII is going in the same path though it is better its still fragmented into smaller games. I miss multiple quality Final Fantasy mainline games in one generation. Something they won't go back to, unfortunately.

I really like the direction that Breath of the Wild took Zelda.  What I would really like is for them to take elements from Dark Souls and incorporate it into Zelda, especially the dungeons.  Like they could do the overworld in a similar way, but make the dungeons deadly with cool environments like Dark Souls.  Also lots of dungeons with nasty Dark Souls like bosses would be cool.

I'm curious about the Resident Evil part of your answer. When I played Resident Evil VII earlier this year, apart from the fact it's in a first person view, I felt the game was very much old school Resident Evil, there was tension, it was much scarier than 4 to 6, a lot of focus on exploring and puzzles and VIII seems to be heading in the same direction. What would your definition of going back to the original direction be for Resident Evil?

Fair enough. It did feel good going back to fighting zombies in REmake2 and 3.

- Sonic The Hedgehog: it's clear that the franchise lost most of its charm. They should abandon the idea of trying to be "serious/grown up story with edgy characters" and aim for a more cute/naive style for story with magical touches, with characters animations and interactions similar to Disney movies, in a semi open world a la Sonic Aventure but 100x bigger. Oh and the franchise should definitely be handled by a new and fresh (but experienced) generation of developers.

- Syphon Filter: I'm dreaming since a few years now with a reboot of the franchise developed by Naughty Dog. They've mastered the 3rd person shooting/melee/stealth genre nowadays, plus their ability to create realistic real world conflict scenarios. A global pandemic plus terrorists and governments drama, it would set a great deal for ND.

- Virtua Fighter: It desperately needs more characters, they really fell back in this and some other aspects. They need at least 25 characters total. They also need new more appealing/flashy mechanics retaining some core mechanics in order to gather new people, plus they really should add more background story to the characters and a single player mode to uncover some main story.

Sonic Mania is the reboot Sonic needed and all they need to do is more of that for now on.

I would really want a revival of Prince of Persia, that could forgo the complex combat mechanics and feature platforming and exploration, like Sands of Time but more open-ended. I would also want a Tekken game that plays more like Shenmue/Yakuza that would embrace the entire story of the series in a weird and over the top fashion. I always felt that there is some truly fun time that could be had in that universe that is not brawler-centric.

Manhunt revival as a pure horror game with the theme of the first game (snuff production) could also be one hell of a torture-porn ride, especially with what they can achieve today graphics-wise.

Yeah the Kremling had so much personality in their designs it almost felt as they were all characters with a background themselves and K.Rool was always A.Cool. ;)