I think a lot of that is due to the genre of the game. I’m not sure what you can innovate with a rail shooter. There’s a video that argues exactly this. Can’t find it right now unfortunately but it talks about Star Fox as well as Katamari and Banjo Kazooie, basically great games that exhausted their entire premise after two installments, leaving nowhere else to go but down.
Sure if they want to adhere strictly to the SF formula. But if they let go of that they can push the franchise into a new direction. Like Nintendo did it with Zelda since the old LttP formula was rehashed too many times. Like they can add RPG elements like upgrading characters and ships and being able to change party members. Or procedural generation with rogue lite elements for example. Nintendo basically has zero imagination when it comes to StarFox, they could have at least created a new story line.
There are so many obvious things they could try.
-New stages (imagine, a new level)
-Differing weapon options/customizable ships (don’t even get me started)
-Reactive galaxy map (ie: after each mission, Andross takes a “turn” and does something that changes missions or works toward his own win state)
-Open world stages (would work great with the above, wherein, like 64, completing different objectives prompts a different path or different outcomes)
-Multiple vehicle options for a single stage (Corneria in the landmaster, for example)
-Squad control (ie: after you help out Bill, he can be sent to other planets to impede Andross’ actions away from where you’re going, or stay with you for extra gun support on your own levels)
-Flight challenge stages, where there’s little to no shooting, but getting through without crashing is very difficult (allows blocking off weird routes so Andross doesn’t have to be everywhere, but a path can still be obstructed, as well)
And that’s just off the top of my head, and ignoring stuff they tried in, say, Assault
I think a lot of that is due to the genre of the game. I’m not sure what you can innovate with a rail shooter. There’s a video that argues exactly this. Can’t find it right now unfortunately but it talks about Star Fox as well as Katamari and Banjo Kazooie, basically great games that exhausted their entire premise after two installments, leaving nowhere else to go but down.
Sure if they want to adhere strictly to the SF formula. But if they let go of that they can push the franchise into a new direction. Like Nintendo did it with Zelda since the old LttP formula was rehashed too many times. Like they can add RPG elements like upgrading characters and ships and being able to change party members. Or procedural generation with rogue lite elements for example. Nintendo basically has zero imagination when it comes to StarFox, they could have at least created a new story line.
There are so many obvious things they could try. -New stages (imagine, a new level) -Differing weapon options/customizable ships (don’t even get me started) -Reactive galaxy map (ie: after each mission, Andross takes a “turn” and does something that changes missions or works toward his own win state) -Open world stages (would work great with the above, wherein, like 64, completing different objectives prompts a different path or different outcomes) -Multiple vehicle options for a single stage (Corneria in the landmaster, for example) -Squad control (ie: after you help out Bill, he can be sent to other planets to impede Andross’ actions away from where you’re going, or stay with you for extra gun support on your own levels) -Flight challenge stages, where there’s little to no shooting, but getting through without crashing is very difficult (allows blocking off weird routes so Andross doesn’t have to be everywhere, but a path can still be obstructed, as well)
And that’s just off the top of my head, and ignoring stuff they tried in, say, Assault