I sort of wish I had known / realized that the Resident Evil 2 game I am finishing up was so different as a remade/remastered version of the original from 20 years ago. I wasn’t even thinking of 90s graphics at all. But in looking at the mastery of titles like RE2 or RE7, it’s astonishing how mishandled the film IP were for those products, almost bafflingly so.
I would love to see material updates to Metroid, Castlevania, and the likes. Even fleshing out Atari IP like Pitfall, etc could be interesting. I have a feeling the next phase of IP mining, like the 50+ years of comic books we’ve seen for the last 25 years, will be digging far deeper into gaming IP. I imagine the next gold rush is among us for the production houses that get how sophisticated narrative and storytelling have been to recent video game franchises. Imagine stand alone tentpoles of Castlevania or Metroid universes!! =) Diablo, Grand Theft Auto, No Man’s Sky, Alien: Isolation, and more. It will be interesting to see production houses consolidate rights to content beyond just movie IP.
Skyrim could be an epic like Lord of the Rings. But until now, gaming IP has been affordable to churn out low budget b-movies that cash in at the box office, without respecting the content a skilled production-writing-directing crew that you might get out of a Star Wars or Marvel property.
