[Waraddict]

I think C&C 3 is a perfect example of the sequel problem, when making a sequel you want to cater for two main things...

1. Continue on from its predecessor in some way.
2. Make a good game.

typically these two can conflict, usually 1. limits the game concepts to a degree, using our example though, I think C&C 3 had the opposite problem, the game concepts could have been more rich if they borrowed a few concepts from TS and expanded on them or reused them in a different way (e.g. plasma artillery).

The bigger long-term problem with game series though is that 1. conflicts with 2. in that if you pull too much stuff from the predecessor, new comers to the series won't have a clue and your target market is severely reduced just because you attempted to continue on a complicated situation from the predecessor. This is the main reason I believe why EALA fiddled with tiberium and avoided as many TS aspects as possible.

Question is, is it possible to create a sequel that both acts as a satisfying continuation of a predecessor, has its own concept character and doesn't confuse new comers?? and if it is, how difficult is it?

Feedback from the Petro staff would be excellent, I would love to hear this from a games developer point of view.

[Bittah Commander]

Well, with C&C3 I think the main problem is that the game(s) EA is making a sequel to wasn't created by them in the first place, meaning there's a new story writer for C&C3, who is going to have to continue an existing story. EA isn't aware of what intentions Westwood Vegas might have had, EA has their own ideas and they might also have their own look on the story (which might be different from the way the original story writer looked at the story or how many C&C fans looked at the story) and eventually the story of the sequel might not properly connect to the story of the game(s) it's supposed to be a sequel to, making it a bad sequel.

The very same thing happened with movie The Terminator.
Someone wrote the script for the Terminator and it turned into a good movie... Then the same person wrote a script for The Terminator II and it turned into an even better movie.
Then however, someone else continued the story -a story he didn't make up himself- and he also had the problem he couldn't use a certain actor from the previous Terminator, because that actor appeared to have some problems with drugs...
...So Eventually the Terminator III was released and the story sucked compared to the story of the first to and it was only visually better compared to the first. This is exactly the case with C&C3 in my opinion:
Someone is continuing someone else's story and certain actors from the prequel couldn't be used for some reason.