How Do You Perceive the Idea of "Returning to Roots" in Media?

[Mido]

It is common to hear the phrase "[insert franchise] will be returning to its roots" in the realm of media. Often, a "return to one's roots" allows for a franchise that has either become stagnant or proven too divisive in its direction to reestablish itself and remind its audiences of, to put it simply, "the good old days." Having said this, a franchise "returning to its roots" does not guarantee the good will of audiences for whatever the reasons may be despite the ordinarily good intention behind the return to the roots. In prefacing this sort of decision-making in media, I present the following questions:

1. What does the idea of a franchise "returning to its roots" mean to you?
2. Do you/do you not find that franchises that do this usually succeed in their efforts? Why or why not?
3. Depending on your answer to no. 2, I am interested to see if you have any particular examples of successes/missteps related to the "return to roots" phenomenon.

 

[Dizzi]

charmed tried to do a return to its roots in a feminist way....it didnt need the reboot and the original Charmed was more feminist than the few eps i watched...sometimes it works sometimes its worse than your memory of it

 

[Dio]

I take it to mean a franchise that has strayed from its original formula which has lost the essence of what it once was, then returning to a state more like it was before. For instance Resident Evil was originally more horror based and less action by the time of Resi 6 it was pure action and little horror. With 7 they brought it back to the horror style. That is what returning to roots means.

 

[Spirit]

I hate 'returning to its roots' as a phrase.

For me it depends what the original incarnation of the franchise was defined by. For video games was it the gameplay or narrative concept?

A game can go back to its roots via story or gameplay but it depends which one was the one that was the better loved at the time that fans want to see return.

That is if the original concept is even understood at all, which it often isnt.

Take Resident Evil, that series was always supposed to be a loud and brash B movie love letter, but Capcom were damned by the tech at the time so the games were slow and they used tension in gameplay, yet in cutscenes we have helicopters crashing, zombie dogs chasing people through forests, hulk-like monsters breaking down walls, oil tankers exploding in the streets and god damn ****ing nukes!

That is just the first three games yet people always say that 'oh no Resi is scary not action'. With Resi 6 Capcom managed to finally do what they started out wanting to do. The only difference now is that we can play the cutscenes we loved long ago.

We can pilot that crashing helicopter, we can run away from that exploding tanker, we can try to take on monsters knocking down walls...

But no, people didnt like that because it didnt play like the first games, even though the series up until that point had been a loud and bombastic cacophony of mayhem.

So what then? How does a series return to its roots when the core concept was misunderstood by the fanbase and the series had kept to its roots all along and even finally made those roots playable?

'Returning to series roots' is up there with 'coming of age' and 'return to form' as concepts that can never be fully realised because the original intention is often always misunderstood by different portions of the fanbase.

 

[Cfrock]

1. What does the idea of a franchise "returning to its roots" mean to you?

Honestly, nothing. Hearing someone say that is more likely to get an eye-roll from me. It means nothing. It usually comes up when a franchise has either a divided fanbase or is universally considered terrible. It's a platitude dragged out to try to appease long-term fans without actually having to do anything. "Oh good, they're going to make the next one like the old ones." Sure, but in what way?

Like @Spirit talked about, what makes a thing good is different to everyone who enjoys it. Taking Resident Evil since it's getting singled out here, what aspects of the original game should the devs return to exactly? For people who enjoyed it for the game design then you could say returning to its roots would involve a game set in an isolated location with a recursive design. Well, RE4 has that. You could say it would involve the player teetering on the edge of not having enough ammo and healing items. Well, Revelations has that. You could say it would involve a small inventory that requires careful management. Well, RE5 has that. For players who enjoyed the original for the horror aesthetic then you could say returning to its roots would involve traditional horror tropes and concepts. Well, RE4 has that, too. So does Revelations 2. For players who enjoyed the original for the characters and story elements then you could say a return to its roots would involve a game featuring many of the series best-loved characters and resolution to long-standing plot threads. Well, there's RE5 and RE6 for you.

All of the Resident Evil games I've mentioned are derided en masse for 'straying from the series' roots', but in what way? Depending on what it was about those early games you loved, the new games haven't strayed at all. The most significant difference between pre- and post-RE4 games is the core gameplay and level design, yet when people say the post-RE4 games have strayed they specifically cite the lack of horror, by which they usually mean slow-paced, atmospheric tension. But all post-RE4 games have slow-paced, atmospheric tension. It's easier to level these criticisms at RE6 because it has a lot more in the way of pure action set-pieces, but Leon, Ada, and Sherry's campaigns all have plenty of tenser moments. Even Chris's has them, just not as many. All pre-RE4 games have fast-paced action bombast. Hell, literally all of them end with a mad dash against the clock with plenty of weaker enemies to mow down before one, or several, set-piece boss fights, usually involving rocket launchers and in one case a rail gun, before the building you are in explodes. Neither 'style' of Resident Evil game is purely one or the other, they have always been a mix of both horror and action, with some skewing the balance a bit further than others, but a balance always being there nonetheless.

So when Capcom said RE7 would return to the franchise's roots, what did that mean? Did it mean RE7 would have no action? Did it mean RE7 would be about the surviving STARS members? Did it mean RE7 would be set in a mansion that loops in on itself? What did it mean?

Most people will tell you RE7 does return the franchise to its roots, but I will make the argument that the series never strayed from those roots in the first place, that the core of what made Resident Evil a franchise worth playing to begin with was maintained in RE4's transition to a third-person shooter, maintained in RE5's introduction of co-op, and maintained through every helicopter crash in RE6. So when Capcom said they were "returning to the franchise's roots" it meant nothing to me because it told me literally nothing about what RE7 would be like. They may as well have not said anything.

2. Do you/do you not find that franchises that do this usually succeed in their efforts? Why or why not?

I don't have too much to say on this point because my first-hand experience of franchises that have very self-consciously done this is not terribly extensive. With regard to Resident Evil, the series has seen a renewed perception of quality since RE7 and the RE2 remake have been released, so it's worked tremendously there. Zelda also had a similarly monumental renewal with Breath of the Wild.

But then you could look at something like Star Wars. The sequels are something of a return to the series' roots, an idea solidified by the fact that The Force Awakens is basically a straight remake of A New Hope. The sequels have divided the Star Wars fanbase between those who hate these new films for various reasons, those who love them for various reasons, and plenty of whack jobs on either side whose sole purpose in life now seems to be disagreeing with the other side as vociferously as humanly possible. Sales of Star Wars merchandise is down, the brand is a laughing stock in certain circles, but it's expansion seems to be ongoing regardless. For Star Wars, it's not been a huge success, but it hasn't been an outright failure, either.

As for why/why not, I could only speculate. For Resident Evil I'd say it was Capcom addressing largely aesthetic issues that served as easy fodder for criticism. The RE2 remake and RE4 are so alike in most ways that to say one is a betrayal of the franchise and the other its saviour is incomprehensible to me, yet it seems Leon not being able to roundhouse kick his enemies and more blood on the walls is enough to shift public perception in the opposite direction. For Zelda, they reimagined a central pillar of the fantasy and gameplay of the series, exploration. To be brief, I think BotW was successful because it catered to the very idea of what a Zelda game is about, exploring a world to stop evil. Technically they all have been, but BotW translated that into gameplay in a purer form than anything since the original certainly, arguably A Link to the Past. For Star Wars, most people just wanted a coherently told story after the prequels. The sequels didn't deliver that for many fans, and in some ways corrupted those very roots, and so the "return" has been a failure for them.

Obviously, the success and failure of these franchises involves more than just those points, but I'm boiling them down to my central feeling on the matter.

Thank you for coming to my ZeD Talk.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

So since @Cfrock brought up Star Wars, I'm enough of a Star Wars fan to bite the bullet here and dig in deep.

1. What does the idea of a franchise "returning to its roots" mean to you?

It's pandering for nostalgia. For some reason or other the series has evolved from aspects that originally defined what it was, so on some level the series is going to try recapturing core elements from its past.

2. Do you/do you not find that franchises that do this usually succeed in their efforts? Why or why not?

Now, like with Cfrock's view on RE, honestly I don't think Star Wars is a very good series to say it had a "return to roots" because arguably it never strayed, atleast in my opinion. The prequel Trilogy, although negatively criticized, still has all the same elements that define a typical Star Wars film. There are so many ongoing traditions in Star Wars films that have come to be expected, from the iconic intro of letters scrolling in space, to the film beginning in space with spacecrafts being shown; epic musical scores; lightsabers; unique alien creatures and robots; the force; the line "I have a bad feeling about this.", I could go on but my point is made. The prequel films didn't lack any of this, nor has the new trilogy. The only problem with the prequel films was that at the end of the day you were watching films that were leading to a predictable climax.

3. Depending on your answer to no. 2, I am interested to see if you have any particular examples of successes/missteps related to the "return to roots" phenomenon.

So the new trilogy, launched by The Force Awakens was made to be a "return to roots", which it's inaccurate to say the series ever strayed, like I pointed out above, so really this new trilogy was made specifically to not end up like the prequel trilogy. This is maybe where the mistake was made. Rather than actually planning out the entire trilogy, they focused only on The Force Awakens. They left a few unresolved arcs that could have been picked up on in future films, but that was the extent of future planning, there was no real direction planned out from the start. The Last Jedi failed to touch on many of the arcs The Force Awakens set up, some of them were actually outright cast aside, like Supreme Leader Snoke, who the Knights of Ren are, or how the character, Maz, even found Luke's Lightsaber. With A New Hope there also wasn't a direction planned out from the start, which is why the movie ended with the Rebels blowing up the Death Star. It was somewhat of a resolution but Darth Vader didn't actually die, leaving the possibility of a sequel. Here is where the Original Trilogy had its edge, when The Empire Strikes Back was made the plot of Return of the Jedi was already planned in advanced. The Last Jedi failed to set up any solid direction for the final film in the trilogy, so it's all been a very messy patchwork of a trilogy and there is no way I can see there being a magic fix. I think the last film will be better than The Last Jedi, but even so the Trilogy as a whole is probably ruined beyond repair.

What made the original trilogy's plot so good was the intrigue, it was something new. A seemingly irrelevant but ambitious desert rancher dreams of joining the rebel cause to fight the corruption of the Empire. This man meets a mysterious hermit who is well versed in an arcane power and holds secrets to the man's relatively unknown past. The man joins the rebellion, and it turns out he becomes instrumental in the Empire's defeat. But plot twist, the main antogonist of the films is actually the man's father! The man hopes to save his father if possible, and in the end he does. It's a simple plot, but there is enough depth there for it to be interesting and suspenseful, and that isn't even a full plot break down of the original trilogy. It had so many other elements and overlapping arcs. Not to mention the philosophical depth that Luke faces - is it better to give in to anger and tap into easily gained power, or stay calm in perilous situations and tap into power through serenity, which is much harder to do? The only theme that interested me so far in the new trilogy was Luke's bitterness toward the jedi order. And of course, the new characters in the new trilogy are a tad more dull in comparison to the characters in the original.

The misstep here was the notion Star Wars needed a return to roots. Ultimately, the reason the new trilogy has failed is precisely because it attempted to draw too much inspiration from the original trilogy and ended up being compared to it, which wouldn't have been that big of a deal if the overall plot, and characters, were better.

 

[Moblinking5000]

1. What does the idea of a franchise "returning to its roots" mean to you?

Going back to what made it good in the first place, usually after people bring to attention the fact that it's lost its way.

2. Do you/do you not find that franchises that do this usually succeed in their efforts? Why or why not?

Depends.

3. Depending on your answer to no. 2, I am interested to see if you have any particular examples of successes/missteps related to the "return to roots" phenomenon

Let's look at Sonic, for example; some people were getting tired of the 3D Sonic games, as they had too much filler with gameplay styles such as fishing that do not belong in a Sonic game, as well as the fact even the main gameplay was bogged down by too much automation. Sonic 4 was made by SEGA to be a sequel to S3&K, returning to gameplay in a 2D space(albeit using 3D graphics; ''2.5D'', if you will), meaning that it looked like there would be hope...until people played the game. It only took superficial aspects of the Genesis games, such as some of the enemies, and forgot why people loved the Golden Age of Sonic from 1992-1994; momentum based gameplay based around having fun with slopes and loops and such where you had to actually earn your speed by utilizing the environment, great physics, and having to reach higher paths by doing some skillful platforming instead of mashing the A button five times. Sonic Mania was another attempt to return to the roots of the series, and was actually successful, due to the fact that it actually had all of that and the best level design of the series, making it not only the best Sonic game in years, but the best game in the series, IMO.(Although I can see why people might still prefer S3&K)

Look at Arrow, for a non-gaming example; after season 4, which was the worst season in the series due to obnoxious, juvenile love triangles and introducing magic to the show(despite the fact that it's supposed to be the more realistic show of the DCCW universe), it returned in full form in season 5, which is the best season in the series, by going back to the grittiness of the first two seasons, taking a well deserved break from olicity, introducing characters like Rene, and having the best villain in the series, as well being up there with S2 as being the most consistent. Even though S6 wasn't as good as 5, it had quite a few episodes that are individually great along with some strong moments, and S7 has been pretty good so far, so it seems like things aren't going to get bad again before the show ends.


So, to sum it all up, whether a franchise successfully returns to its roots depends on whether the people behind it understand what made the roots so great in the beginning. Without understanding the fundamentals of what drew people to a franchise in the first place, you will most likely fail.