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What has been the worst thing to happen to your favourite franchise/series?

The longer something goes on for, the more likely it is that it'll produce something wholly crap.

For me, Metroid Other M ruined Metroid and was the worst thing to ever happen to the series and probably will remain so.

Others who are fans of the likes of Halo have also had to suffer terrible installments.

But this extends to movies and TV shows and books too.

What are the worst things to ever happen to your favourite franchises/series?
 

Cfrock

Keep it strong
Joined
Mar 17, 2012
Location
Liverpool, England
The Simpsons continuing after Season 11
Even by then it was a shadow of its former self, but it was still worth a watch. After this, though, it's just plain crap. There's the odd joke here and there that'll get a laugh, but the show as a whole has been a shambling zombie for almost two decades now. It's probably not fair to plant the blame at Al Jean's feet, but worth mentioning that the show started going to **** once he became the sole show runner.

Benioff and Weiss losing interest in Game of Thrones
It became so apparent around season five that the show runners were losing interest in the biggest show on tele. Season five is the first bad one, big dip in quality. Season six is mostly propped up by the Battle of the Illegitimate Children, but is otherwise worse. Season seven is generally pretty bad and rushes a whole bunch of stuff. And then there's season eight... Oh boy, season eight...

Benioff and Weiss clearly had no passion for the show anymore, and were too preoccupied eyeing up a Star Wars job and that alternate history Civil War project, so they decided to just get it over with and fart out a final season that has ruined the show so much that it's legacy now is 'That **** fantasy show that wasted everyone's time'. Why didn't they hand it to someone else who actually cared? Why did HBO not just fire them and replace them? It's like they did it out of spite, and since the abysmal final season they've since had all of their publicly announced projects cancelled, for obvious and good reason.

343 Studios taking over Halo
Maybe things will improve in the future. They've not been doing a terrible job with the Master Chief Collection on PC. Not been doing the best job, either, but it's better than literally everything they've done before. Halo 4 is a complete retcon of the entire mythology of the franchise, has a dog**** story that could have been genuinely heartwrenchig and emotional, and changed the art direction to actual vomit on a screen that someone pissed on. It also introduced a whole host of new enemies and weapons that are so out of tune with Halo's gameplay that 343 themselves did a GDC talk about how bad they were. Halo 4 is dog****.

But then they went above and beyond with Halo ****ing 5. Everything that was wrong with Halo 4 was doubled down on in 5, and the few good things about 4 were removed entirely and replaced with the mucus dug out of a gangrenous wound. I can't say enough bad things about Halo 5, it really is ****ing abysmal. It's the Skyward Sword of Halo, the Other M, the Ringo.

In between these they signed off on a remaster of Halo 1 that butchered the art direction somuch the game genuinely looks better on the original graphics and has lost so much of its mystique and atmosphere. Then there was the calamitous release of the MCC on Xbox One when the game flat out didn't work for over a year.

It's been rough... But, like I said, MCC on PC has been going more or less fine and 343 seem to be pretty open to acknowledging that Halo 5 was a piece of ****. So who knows.

****ing fire Frank O'Connor, though. **** you, Frank. Ancient civilisations are only good when they stay mysterious. Stop putting Forerunners into things, for God's sake :mad:
 

Cfrock

Keep it strong
Joined
Mar 17, 2012
Location
Liverpool, England
@AncientPoe I think about that every time someone says they'd love the next Elder Scrolls to bring the Dwemer back. The whole reason they're interesting is because we don't know what happened to them. As soon as they explain it they'll just be another mundane part of the lore to catalogue and archive.
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
ZD Legend
Twili... you know what? No. I’ve talked trash about TP too much recently. I’m gonna complain about something different.


Growing up I adored adventure time. It was where Zelda is for me now. It was such an amazing show.... until the last two seasons.

Everything I loved about the show slowly went away. The mystery of humanity, Finns attitude, it was all gone. Instead was got two separate arcs that had nothing to do with the rest of the series, major characters that were introduced and rushed in a single season. The finale was the worst of all. The series’ main villain was never even mentioned, instead we got this big “war” that never even happened and a big switcharo monster that had never even been mentioned before.

Oh and don’t forget the forced lesbian relationship between two major characters. Under normal circumstances I’d be fine with it, however when you take two major characters who have been shown to be completely heterosexual throughout the shows 10 season run and then suddenly make them gay for the last episode it comes off as pandering and makes for a bad send off.



Sorry I just got in the mood for a rant.
 
Joined
Sep 21, 2014
Location
Michigan
Oh and don’t forget the forced lesbian relationship between two major characters. Under normal circumstances I’d be fine with it, however when you take two major characters who have been shown to be completely heterosexual throughout the shows 10 season run and then suddenly make them gay for the last episode it comes off as pandering and makes for a bad send off.
Actually this is abjectly wrong. The creators have gone on record as saying they wanted to be very out and obvious about Marceline and Bubblegum, but the producers at CN strictly forbid it because it would completely eliminate Russia as a market. But they always planned for them to be a thing.
 

CynicalSquid

Swag Master General
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Location
The End
Gender
Apache Helicopter
Resident Evil 5. You could argue that 6 ruined that series for a while but 5 was where the series became a testosterone filled action fest and lost its identity. In my opinion 5 is the worst game. 6 actually had some interesting aspects to it but 5 was just really boring to me. At least capcom redeemed themselves with 7.
 

Mido

Version 1
Joined
Apr 6, 2011
Location
The Turnabout
Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies' Follow-Up "Foul-Up" (2013)
Dual Destinies is not a bad game by any stretch from my perspective. It has its moments, with great characters and a decent story with some strong ideas; however, it also fumbles in some respects as a follow up to the previous entry of the series. As a result of mixed reception to the previous entry of the series, Capcom seemed to make efforts to implement damage control for the series. Character A gets more backstory. Character B reverts back to ways of old. Situation C is handled with some promise, but with much less nuance and with more of a black and white coat of paint. While once again not a bad game, it's just a shame that in some respects, it undercuts the value of some of the moves made by its predecessor that may have done the series some good.
 

Spiritual Mask Salesman

CHIMer Dragonborn
Staff member
Comm. Coordinator
Site Staff
I could rant on this in a lengthy blog. At the moment I don't have the time to go into this guns blazing, but I'd say the Sequel Trilogy for Star Wars. A New Hope was the first film I remember watching and I loved it. Growing up I was completely into Star Wars, the films inspired awe for me and made me dream. It saddens me that the newest Trilogy can't really be called a Trilogy, that it had no direction, and just became a mess. Star Wars isn't dead by any means but for me it kind of is, and it sucks. I expected more out of Disney.
 

mαrkαsscoρ

Mr. SidleInYourDMs
Joined
May 5, 2012
Location
American Wasteland
immediately certain cartoons sprang to mind but I already talked about them in the most hurtful downfall thread, so I'll think on something else

...Metal Gear Survive, let's be honest, how much do I need to talk about this? we ALL know why this was an absolute tragedy

I also want to mention paper mario sticker star, but I haven't played it so it'd be unfair for me to really judge it, but it does have a really nasty reputation and considering how masterful the first few Paper Marios were, knowing the reception of sticker star is extremely disappointing
 

Mellow Ezlo

Spoony Bard
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
Location
eh?
Gender
Slothkin
Gonna second what SMS said about Star Wars. The sequel trilogy just felt so disjointed and you could really tell they didn't have a plan. The Last Jedi made so many questionable decisions and then The Rise of Skywalker takes a complete 180 with a lot of things. Now while you can feel the sense of unplannedness with the original trilogy, it comes through a lot more here and made for a really disappointing trilogy through and through.

I'm also going to throw in the Fantastic Beasts series. I'm a huge Potterhead so, naturally, I was excited that they're doing a series of prequels depicting the fall of Grindelwald. But, if I'm being honest, the series just isn't good. The first movie was decent and good for a laugh or two, but the reveal of Grindelwald felt a little anticlimactic and the second movie as a whole was just a disappointment. The lack of source material is extremely obvious because there are retcons that don't make sense and events that should have been referenced in the Potter movies. Overall the series so far is incredible mediocre and overall disappointing.
 
Joined
Aug 31, 2019
Scrubs series 9.

Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies' Follow-Up "Foul-Up" (2013)
Thought it was a great revamp for the series & worked wonderfully from 2D to 3D. Liked the cases & the new characters.
Would've liked it more if Nick had taken more of a Mia role with Apollo & Athena. I get that he's "rusty" for various reasons but I definitely prefer what he did in SOJ to DD.
 

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