Painted Into a Corner: 10 Game Franchises with Nowhere Left to Go

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You ever noticed how many reboots and retellings have come along in recent video games? There's a good reason for that: Video game continuity is even more of a horror show than comic book continuity, and the people who write the stories for video games aren't very good at coming up with endgame scenarios that leave their successors open to further exploration.

So, video games tend to do the same thing that comics began doing with DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths and Star Trek did a few years back: Start over from scratch. Maybe make some vague allusions to what's come before, but generally go about business like you're getting a fresh start. See also Tomb Raider, Thief, DmC, DOOM, and so on. That's fine and all, but it seems like taking the easy way out. What about all those countless hours we fussy nerds have spent picking apart the minutiae of these video game narratives, huh? Was all that pain for nothing?

Well... yeah, maybe. Maybe it has to be. Some series have degenerated into such a mess there's no real alternative. These 10 franchises in particular have "disaster" written all over their timelines. But is a reboot the only alternative? We'd like to think there's still room for a creative solution....

World of Warcraft

The Problem: After a decade of millions of people logging in hundreds of hours each month to kill stuff in the world of Azeroth, there's not much left to kill. All the big bosses and evil dudes are pretty much dead, from Deathwing to the Lich King. Once Sageras and the last of the Old Gods are done with, the World of Warcraft won't have much left to offer in the way of war. So it'll evolve a game about farming flowers or something.

The Solution?: Besides putting off those final confrontations for as long as possible, Blizzard doesn't have a lot of good options. Sure, they could go the "Oh, wait, here's the even Older Gods we never mentioned!" route, but it always rings false when a secret behind-the-scenes villain shows up that no one mentioned over the past 10 years. A better solution might be to introduce a new, otherworld threat — maybe let Warcraft's world bleed into other Blizzard franchises and let everyone deal with a Zerg invasion, for instance. Or maybe by the time the villains are all done for, Titan will finally have launched and everyone can just play that instead. Ha! Good one, right?

Mega Man

The Problem: At the end of Mega Man Legends 2, we discovered the entire human race was actually extinct, Mega Man was part of the problem, and a horrible cabal watched over the world in secret from outer space. Also, Mega Man was trapped on the moon, perhaps never to return. This marked the furthest point in a story line that started back in the year 20XX with the original Mega Man and just kept getting bleaker. There's no happy ending for the series, it seems... especially now that Capcom appears to have abandoned Mega Man on the moon by leaving the franchise (and the character) stranded with no sequels.

The Solution?: Everything bad that has happened in the Mega Man franchise came from the well-intended works of Dr. Light and the schemes of Dr. Wily — yes, even the extinction of humanity. If we ever see a third Mega Man Legends, it's practically has to involve some kind of cosmic reset button or time travel or something. Of course, there's the question of whether we'll ever actually even see a third Legends (unlikely), so the real world solution would be for Capcom to just give up and let Comcept handle the Mega Man license... all according to Keiji Inafune's plan.

God of War

The Problem: All the Greek gods of myth and legend are pretty much dead. Given that Kratos' entire schtick is being angry at the gods and killing them, that really narrows the possibility for further God of War sequels.

The Solution?: Well, it's not like Olympus was the only pantheon out there. Kratos could always go for the Greek gods' thinly veiled knockoffs, the Roman gods. Or head up north and tackle the Norse gods, throwing a monkeywrench into that whole "Ragnarok" thing by killing Odin before Fenrir has the chance. And hey, if Sony wants to really drum up some controversy, just think of all the gods that belong to active religions like Islam and Christianity!

Metroid

The Problem: At the end of Metroid Fusion, Samus Aran had become a fugitive from the law. She had also become more or less all-powerful, with a supercharged suit that had grown into an integral part of her body. Also, all the metroids were totally dead. Oh, and every planet that she had ever visited on her missions had exploded, too. There's nowhere left to go, both in terms of locations and in terms of play mechanics — and in any case, the sheer ineptitude of Metroid: Other M's story makes us wary of the series' future narrative possibilities...

The Solution?: There's only one way forward, and that's to say "the heck with it" and turn Metroid into something totally new and different. Up until recently, Nintendo had never been afraid to completely reinvent a series when it began to grow stale, and if any franchise could stand that sort of devil-may-care approach it's definitely Metroid. Look, the indie community has the metroidvania thing down pat, and the genre's fundamental premise — exploring ever further afield as you gain more and more powers — wouldn't work for the new Samus without some kind of ridiculous plot contrivance to weaken her yet again. So why not embrace the fact that she's the most kick-ass warrior in the galaxy (the last metroid, as it were) and build games around her resistance to the corrupt Galactic Federation? One woman versus a galactic armada sounds about like the right odds.

Castlevania

The Problem: What is there left to do? The Lords of Shadow trilogy kind of closed the door to future stories when (spoilers!) Dracula killed off both Death and Satan and wandered off to die or whatever. And the "original" Castlevania continuity doesn't have much of anywhere left to go, either — Soma Cruz rejected the Dracula part of his soul and destroyed Chaos itself, for crying out loud. The timeline between Leon Belmont and Soma doesn't offer much in the way of openings for additional vampiric resurrections. Every century of the cycle is accounted for, and then some!

The Solution?: Forget the past, embrace the future. Soma's ultimately just a powerful mortal, right? At some point, he's gotta die. So let's look far into the next century as Space Dracula descends upon humanity from his castle on the moon. Yes, this means embracing Castlevania's innate cheesiness. Why not? The series got its start as a riff on schlocky horror movies of the '50s; in terms of vampire narratives, it has even less gravitas than Twilight. Let's just go full-on goofy. Make Castlevania fun again, rather than all broody and dark.

StarFox

The Problem: Fox McCloud blew the pudding out of the sinister simian Emperor Andross... and then he did it again. And finally one last time, in Starfox Adventures. Since then, the heroes have gone up against an increasingly lame array of foes, whose underwhelming nature probably not coincidentally parallels the quality of said games. Once you've beaten a giant megalomaniacal triangle head that pulsates at the center of the galaxy, what more is there to do, really?

The Solution?: Well, the obvious Nintendo solution to being unable to come up with a more interesting villain is just to bring back then old one without really making much effort to explain why — hence Bowser, Ganon, Ridley, Tom Nook, etc. But that's lame. There are plenty of story possibilities left in StarFox; Nintendo just needs to put some actual writers on the case rather than leaving story development as a half-hearted afterthought.

Monkey Island

The Problem: At the end of Monkey Island 2, you witness a curious scene: Protagonist Guybrush Threepwood and his nemesis LeChuck are presented as children at a carnival. Moreover, LeChuck is presented as Guybrush's mean older brother. Many fans have taken this to suggest that the Monkey Island games were meant to be a childhood fantasy of swashbuckling — that is, "it's all a dream." Or maybe the childhood thing itself was a dream. In any case, original writer Ron Gilbert hasn't been involved with subsequent games and won't reveal the truth, and Monkey Island sequels have backpedaled on that plot point harder than Lance Armstrong about to steer off a cliff, leaving the series full of jarring inconsistencies.

The Solution?: That's an easy one, in our own happy fantasy land where everything works perfectly and real-world matters like "business" and "ownership" and "crushingly soulless corporations" don't factor in: Get Ron Gilbert back on Monkey Island to pick up from where Monkey Island 2 left off and reveal all those other games in the interim as "just a dream." See? Simple.

Valkyrie Profile

The Problem: Well, Ragnarok happened. All the gods are dead, humanity is gone, the world has ended. I mean, that's pretty much about as final as it gets.

The Solution?: We've seen a Valkyrie Profile prequel or two, and the series definitely lends itself to more of those. But how come no one ever explores the Norse post-apocalypse, eh? All those stories end with the gods dying and the Midgard Serpent crushing the world and the Frost Giants high-fiving. What's next? The one attempt I've seen to explore that question, in a sense, was Jack Kirby's New Gods comic series. And frankly, who wouldn't want a tri-Ace RPG in which Big Barda and Orion battle Metron and Darkseid? I mean, come on. Dig into that licensing cash and make this happen, Square Enix.

Metal Gear Solid

The Problem: At the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, Snake couldn't bring himself to put a bullet in his head... but still, he had like sixth month left to life before his body degenerated. Big Boss was dead. Liquid and Solidus and Ocelot were dead. The core cast was basically out of the picture, and as Metal Gear Rising demonstrated, the only way forward is to turn Metal Gear into a preposterous sci-fi extravaganza in which "normal" guys like Snake don't stand a chance against cyborgs that can slice through helicopters like it ain't no thang.

The Solution?: Pfft. Like it matters. Hideo Kojima calls the shots for Metal Gear, and Kojima's gonna Kojima. Maybe he'll go right ahead and turn the series into some bizarre futuristic abomination in which robots sneak around and try to infiltrate military fortresses on some faraway asteroid. Or maybe he'll just keep making prequels about all the suspiciously Snake-like dudes throughout history (he does love him some Assassin's Creed). Then again, he's just as likely to remake all his previous games and implement massive retcons that completely undermine every important plot point of the past 25 years of Metal Gear games. And then, as fans fume, he'll laugh long and loud to himself.

Mass Effect

The Problem: No matter what ending you picked at the end of Mass Effect 3, that's pretty much it for the status quo. Either you destroyed the Reapers and their technology, putting an end to hyperspace travel and isolating every galactic civilization in its own solar system; or you absorbed the Reapers into the sum totality of organic life, putting a peaceful end to the ancient conflict that ravaged the galaxy; or you just let the Reapers do their thing and annihilate all life. Whatever the case, there's just not much left to be done; BioWare has even said Mass Effect 4 will take place outside the original trilogy's storyline... which raises the question of, "Well, who cares?" Mass Effect was the story of Shepard versus the Reapers, and it pretty well touched on (and locked down) all the other major threads of the galactic storyline.

The Solution?: Rather than shy away from the post-finale status quo, it would be much more interesting to see Mass Effect explore the effects of the trilogy's ending. Yes, that means they'd have to (gasp!) lock down a definitive, canonical ending, but that's a small price to pay. (As long as the canonical Shepard is the redheaded lady version, we're all cool.) So now robots and people are the same thing and no one can travel between stars in a timely fashion because the warp gates are gone — that's interesting! How does galactic civilization go about restoring itself in a post-Reaver universe? How do people deal with being half-robot (and how to robots feel about being half-meat)? What happens when the galaxy relinks to the newly genophage-free Krogans and there are trillions of angry dinosaurs with shotguns eager to conquer the universe? These would be much more interesting topics to pursue than some prequel story with a foregone conclusion.