If you haven't noticed (or lived under a rock for a long while) many video games have been grouped into 3's. For example Gears of War and BFBC have created their 3rd sequel and are waiting to sell it. Another example is Halo. Yes I know what your thinking, What about Halo: Reach and ODST?. Well, to be honest ODST is still part of Halo 3 (as shown by the name) And Reach is practically a backstory, As it lacks the story proceding Halo:3 and doesn't carry the title Halo:4. And Halo Wars, well, I don't think I really have to explain that.
Well, if you can find any other patterns in video games, list 'em below, don't be shy, we can't bite you over the internet.
Well, to be honest ODST is still part of Halo 3 (as shown by the name) And Reach is practically a backstory, As it lacks the story proceding Halo:3 and doesn't carry the title Halo:4.
Not necessarily. I'd consider Reach to be more like Halo -1, considering it came before Halo: Combat Evolved.
And ODST's story falls between Halo 2's and Halo 3's. So it would be more like Halo 2 and 1/2.
So I don't think Halo would be part of that pattern.
The very thing Idon'tsuckthatmuch said defines Halo as a Trilogy, as what Gears of War is headed towards. I also believe God of War is a Trilogy, unless they plan to make another sequel to it.
Patterns in video games....I need my thinking koolaid. Before I get that though, I'll say that video games go through a relatively-constant game concept before being hit broadside with a highly-popular game that has something the other video games don't which the gamers like. For example, Halo. Before Halo, we had popular shooters with health bars and you had to find health packs or go through checkpoints in order to refill the health. After Halo, we all of a sudden have NO HEALTH, but a "death threshold" with regeneration; you go through a certain amount of pain, which is indicated by the background around the screen, and if you get away just in time, the background dissipates to normal. You can see this in Gears of War and Call of Duty, mostly.
It's not a trilogy, it's a way to take more money from people. They know that your game is a hit, so they make a sequel with 10% effort ( they have all important parts in game that they are making sequel for ) and they sell it for lots of money. Dragon Age 1-exelent game. Dragon Age DLCs ( good but expensive ). Dragon Age expansion ( not as good as DA, but still i bought it because of DA).
Okay, let me just take a few different observations:
After MW2 - No intense care on PC gaming, Shooters being Competitive never became a concern (which is why CoD4 and Counterstrike is still very popular), and the campaign handholds you with scripted events that lack freedom. Battlefield (not Bad Company) and Crysis has not had this and I'm fairly confident that Battlefield 3 won't see this trend.
The other is as the Halo one, HP bars refilling is much easier and does show the "Back in my day we pulled our weight" thing. The next trend is yet again from MW2 - Those dang map packs. Since people have bought them without any thought (otherwise why else would they still play the game? ) its made a good business decision impression to other people - it kinda is. I don't agree with it, however.
Other than that, the only pattern is the lack of any RTS's over the last 2 years. No, I'm talking about ones that have high-marketing and relatively high standards. The only one on high popularity (as in being televised in Korea) is Starcraft II, the latest Age of Empires was 4 years ago and that was an expansion - now it's becoming an MMORTS this year I believe. Command and Conquer was shut down a small ways ago, but barely with the popularity and public knowledge of games before it - that and the fact many people think it was a bad game ultimately.
Other than that, what is there?
RPG's are getting better, mostly. I like that Lionhead Studios (the developers of Fable) are willing to significantly change the game each time they release a new one, it actually makes it feel like its worth buying and furthermore it shows some great ideas that run through, how and if they work. Here's some examples:
Fable I - Had armor from equipment you wear to reduce damage dealt to you. Fable II & III - No armor, probably for appearance?
Fable I - All magical abilities were accessed (on PC) by using a scroll wheel and holding SHIFT (I think). Fable II - Magical Abilties were selected on a "Charge-Up" bar, meaning you could only use 5 abilities all on different levels of power (you could use the same ability on more than one level of power, though). This made it difficult to be fluent in using all the abilities but did allow more "Class-ish" builds for people, for instance I used Time Warp as rank one for teleport, my AoE would be rank 5, if I wanted people at bay I'd use a rank 2 fireball, and etc.
I usually only used the first and last abilites lol.
