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The return of a mythic fighting game Mortal Kombat 1 on September 19 has already revealed the number of fighters that it will have in its initial squad. Nine remain to be announced.
Even Square Enix is questioning whether they should still have numbered titles anymore. Media execs just hate the concept these days, I have no idea why. You would think at the very least they would try and avoid naming two games the same name, but nope… We got to have fan-names like Doom (2016) and God of War (2018) now because studios can’t keep their names straight.
Not to mention the absolute clown show of Star Wars: Battlefront (2004), Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005), Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) and Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017). Come on, 4 isn’t even that high of a number.
I’m wondering if the aversion to numbered titles has to do with execs wanting to divert attention from the sheer number of sequels and reboots being churned out by AAA studios, often way beyond their franchises’ reasonable ending points. I remember when Final Fantasy was often the subject of mild ridicule for its absurdly-high sequel numbering, and at this point, a lot of AAA franchises would be starting to get into the double digits. Dropping the sequel numbering may be an effort to get people to forget just how long those franchises have been milked.
That’s not the case everywhere, and I think sometimes on reboots they just want to signify that the franchise is “starting fresh” to a degree (Doom and SW:B for instance), but it’s still aggravating that completely-identical title repeats are for some reason acceptable now.
Always been a fan of subtitles once a game series has too many entries. I’m especially not fond of publishers calling games the same name as one previously released unless it’s a substantial reboot decades later.