On the long list of ways that some gamers unwittingly invoke the monkey's paw, there are few chants more insidious than this: "Don't reuse assets." The idea that all games should start from scratch, reinventing a perfectly good wheel or putting out one fire just to light another one right next to it, will at best lead to a whole lot of wasted time and money, and at worst a lot of bloated or even dead games. More to the point, as Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed veteran John Ebenger reckons, directly building on established tech can lead to sequels that end up better in every conceivable way.
Ebenger, who worked as a cinematic designer on multiple Dragon Age and Mass Effect games and also handled cinematics in the likes of Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order – and is now, you guessed it, cinematic lead at Concord developer Firewalk – waded into some classic Developer Discussion earlier this month. Amidst a rash of anti-recycling asset naysayers seemingly spurred by the new Assassin's Creed having the audacity to reuse a fine jump animation which brings character and consistency to the series – but I digress – Ebenger said, in so many words, sequels rule.
"I love working on a new project, but the sequel is when a team has its tech, people, and processes together and can make the game they really wanted to make the first time around," he said in a tweet. "Working on Mass Effect 2 hammered that home for me early in my career. Long live the second game!"
From Ebenger's resumé, Mass Effect 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 are probably the strongest examples of sequels stealing the show. Dragon Age 2, to put it mildly, is more divisive, and I don't have time to put it any less mildly than that. Ebenger wasn't alone, either. Paul Marino, another Bioware cinematic vet, agreed with his post. Here's hoping Dragon Age: The Veilguard becomes the next sequel to point to.
Fellow Mass Effect and Dragon Age veteran John Epler says people join BioWare "to build a story-focused, single-player RPG" - so we probably won't see a repeat of Anthem.
