Can Franchises Ever Beat Nostalgia?

We all have our favorite game franchises. You know, the ones that make us feel giddy whenever we hear information about them.

But can franchise’s continue to grow and adapt, without nostalgia for earlier games ruining their efforts?

Well, in my opinion, the answer is usually no.

The truth is, in my experience, most franchises will always be held to the standard of whatever the majority of fans favorite game in said franchise is.

There are many examples of franchises that have been somewhat hindered by fan nostalgia. However, when looking at the most obvious occasions that nostalgia has effected fans opinions on games, there are a few key examples.

Assassin’s Creed, Call Of Duty and Final Fantasy, are all clear cases of fans being blinded by their nostalgia and love of earlier games in the franchise, stopping them from engaging fully with the newer games that are released.

To this note, as I have the most personal knowledge of it, when compared to the other franchises listed, lets start by looking at Assassin’s Creeds relationship with nostalgia and fan bias.

In many cases, fans of Assassin’s Creed tend to agree on one thing. The games aren’t as good as they used to be.

Interestingly however, people seem to disagree exactly when the Assassin’s Creed series truly went down hill.

Some say that Origins was a really good game, and it was the last “true” Assassin’s Creed game, with Odyssey, and Valhalla falling short of the mark. Others believe that Black Flag was the high point of the franchise, and that the games before or following it were not quite as good. And finally, there are of course those die hard Ezio fans, who believe that his games are the best in the franchise, and nothing since has been anywhere near as good.

In this way, Assassin’s Creed is a perfect example of a franchise that simply can’t get past fans Nostalgia bias, as there will always be people looking back on their personal most loved period of the franchise more favorably.

This essentially means that the new games are constantly in an uphill battle to impress people that, in many cases, they never will.

In many ways, sadly enough, Final Fantasy’s fan base seems to be much the same as Assassin’s Creed’s. At least in terms of nostalgia bias.

If you were to ask Final Fantasy Fans what their favorite game in the franchise was, or what they think is the best game, they would similarly to the previously mentioned Assassin’s Creed fans, have three answers.

Some Final Fantasy fans consider the full action combat of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and Final Fantasy 15 to be the most developed and impressive the series has ever been. Others feel that Final Fantasy 10 was the high point of the series, adding 3D graphics, a much wider open world, fantastic combat options, and a top tier story. And of course, finally, there are those that consider Final Fantasy 7 to be the best in the series, simply because they grew up on it, or just because for whatever reason it seems to have slotted in as the “objective best” Final Fantasy game. Much like peoples feelings that The Ezio Trilogy is the best Assassin’s Creed content ever.

Now again, there is merit to some of these arguments. Each of these three very specific time periods withing the history of Final Fantasy gave us very different things. But again, by being so deeply focused on a couple of specific moments within the franchise, it blinds people to accepting the new games with open arms.

In fact, although there is a huge percentage of people that love Final Fantasy 7 Remake, there is also a hugely vocal group of people that think its not “enough like the original”, their nostalgia blinding them from being able to enjoy it as its own game.

Lets move on to our final example then. Call of Duty.

Call of Duty fans are, in my experience a bit more vocal on “which games are good” compared to other fan bases. Interestingly however, they do at least seem to agree in many ways which games it is they consider to be the “good ones”. This sense of understanding and agreement something which is debatable within the Final Fantasy fanbase, and all but non-existent in the Assassin’s Creed fanbase. With seemingly the only thing they can agree on at the moment being that the recent games include far too little assassins for an Assassin’s Creed game.

The general agreed point of view within the Call of Duty fanbase, at least from what I have seen, seems to be that the original Modern Warfare and Black Ops games were great, while more recent games such as Vanguard fell short of the mark. In addition, if you want to go back far enough, there are also those that feel World at War was fantastic for its time and is a stand out classic for the franchise, something which, as far as I know, is rarely disputed.

Its interesting to see that unlike the Assassin’s Creed or Final Fantasy fans who all seem to disagree on what games in the franchise are actually good, the Call of Duty fans seem to agree exactly which games are good, but also, that they are the only ones that are actually good.

Despite these examples each varying from each other they all share one thing in common.

They are all fueled in some way by nostalgia.

Now, to be fair, some of the arguments are well founded, and some games within each franchise are better than others, but, this isn’t actually the main issue we are looking at.

The main problem that arises from finding certain games in a franchise to be the only “perfect” ones, is that you are locked in to only wanting one specific thing from said franchise.

This is a sad viewpoint to be stuck in, as it causes one to be unable to enjoy new games from a franchise they love, just because they’re not exactly the same as their absolute favourite.

So, how do companies bypass fan nostalgia, and insure their new releases will be as loved as previous entries in the franchise? Sadly, in many cases they don’t.

A lot of game developers simply cannot get past fans love for one particular game they released, no matter how hard they try to continue to evolve and innovate over the years.

This fan love for earlier projects follows the developers around like a ghost, causing everything they release to be compared to what they did in the past, with any deviation from the classic blueprint being seen as the soul of the franchise being betrayed, at least by certain fans.

In that case, if escaping the curse of franchise based fan nostalgia is indeed truly impossible, what do developers do?

Well, they release remasters, or in some cases, remakes.

Remasters/remakes, are often the way in which companies are forced to adapt to a world in which fans are all obsessed with “that one special game”.

Developers take a look at all the people screaming “you should make a game like…again”, turn to each other, and understandably think, “ah, if this is what they all want so much, lets just give them that again!”.

This, as you can expect, breeds things like the several Assassin’s Creed remasters we have gotten, the Final Fantasy 7 remake, and even the current development of the PS5 remake of The Last Of Us.

Now, we can sit and argue weather or not these remakes needed to be made, however one thing cannot be argued. The existence of these remakes is purely due to fan outcry. If people were content to just enjoy the new releases that they get from the many franchises out there, remasters/remakes would likely not be as prevalent as they are today.

In the end, if you are inclined to listen to my opinion, we as gamers need to accept the future of the franchises that we love with open arms.

After all, its not like we can’t go back to the older games whenever we feel like, to re-experience everything we love about them, so why complain when something new isn’t exactly the same as what you already have.

In short, it’s fine to honor the past, but make sure to remember to respect the future.