The ancient Romans had a saying: Omne trium perfectum – everything in three is perfect. Three is a common theme in storytelling. There were three little pigs, three musketeers and three blind mice. Goldilocks had three of everything and each of her actions took three attempts to find the perfect balance. Snow White was visited three times by her stepmother. The number three lends natural cadence to a phrase too, making it more memorable so it’s often used for reinforcing concepts and titling: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Even modern storytelling has evolved into sets of three, with contemporary screenwriting more often than not taking on the three act structure in preference over the five act structure often favoured by, among others, William Shakespeare. Three really does seem to find favour in a special area of the human psyche that just seems perfect for telling stories.
Or perhaps three is all we can happily endure before we become intolerant of a conceit?
[drop]Casting a sideways glance to the world of filmmaking, and one of my favourite subjects, the three Star Wars films. The second improved on the first and the third started strongly but lost its way slightly before the end. They tried to make a fourth Star Wars movie and it was terrible (although that didn’t stop them from making two more after that). Pirates of the Caribbean is a similar story: the first one was good, the second one pretty solid too but the third was about an hour too long and lacked clear focus. Alien, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings. They all lost their way a little, at least in terms of delivering the story, in the third instalment.So what does this mean for gaming? Well, for story driven games like Uncharted, it means a certain amount of narrative re-hashing and some fine tuning of tried and tested mechanics. You’d be a fool to call Uncharted 3 a bad game but it’s difficult to miss the similarities between this third and the previous game in the series. Killzone 3, which I personally preferred over the second, was also criticised for not doing enough to progress the franchise. Fable III was a similar story and even God of War III is considered to be slightly less impressive than the second, relatively speaking.
Think back through gaming history too: Tomb Raider 3, Sonic 3, Driver 3, Call of Duty 3 Mortal Kombat 3 and Street Fighter 3. Maybe even Halo and Gears of War lost a beat in their third instalments.
Of course, there have been instances where the third game has been a greater achievement but there are often extraneous circumstances for that. Grand Theft Auto III was fantastic but was it a true sequel to GTAII? Similarly, was Fallout 3 a true sequel to previous Fallout games, mechanically or even in terms of necessary narrative?
It could be argued that the GTA series has been delivering sets of trilogies: GTA, GTA London and GTAII. GTAIII, Vice City and San Andreas. GTAIV, The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. It could even be posited that they had a spin off portable trilogy with Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories and Chinatown Wars all exploring the expanded worlds (and portable markets). In each instance, the third game loses a little bit of momentum. Perhaps the willingness to explore leads to a wider focus.
[drop2]So is it a new viewpoint, a new generation of hardware or a whole new set of ideas that are needed for the future? Where do our beloved trilogies go from here? Will publishers lean on spin offs and sub titles as the last few Halo games have (although a Halo 4 is on the way, on this generation of hardware)? At least two of the third-in-a-trilogy games I’ve played this year very definitely close the story arc off and make it very difficult to take another step – at least chronologically – in that story.It’s unimaginable that there won’t be another Uncharted but perhaps stretching the series to “Uncharted 4” is a psychological step too far? Maybe we’ll see a little sub-trilogy like the GTA series or Ezio’s trilogy in the Assassin’s Creed series? One thing is for sure, the third might have lost a little potency but it won’t be the last, for any of the games mentioned above. After all, the only numbers that dictate that decision will be the ones that come back from retailers and all the number threes that we’ve seen recently will be big sellers that almost require more to be made. Even Super Mario Bros. technically never had a fourth instalment, at least, not outside of Japan where Super Mario World on the SNES was subtitled as Super Mario Bros. 4.
Perhaps the psychological lure that the number three has is simple enough to break with a new naming convention and some fresh ideas? As rumours mount for new hardware on the horizon, let’s hope that new ideas come with it. After all, we can’t keep going with the same franchises forever, no matter how good they are now, can we?
moshi
Toy Story Trilogy, simply perfect.
Mike
Amen to that. That’s how to do a trilogy properly. They gave it a very fitting end.
Tuffcub
Apart from the 4th movie is being produced right now.
Roynaldo
and apart from they all totally suck!! What the hell! I dont know how anyone above 10 y/o could even remotely like that pile of turd.
rant over.
KeRaSh
You Sir, have no soul. :P
The Lone Steven
Some franchises need 3 or more games to tell an excellent story as one game could be too long or would be confusing. If MGS was only one game and told the entire story in that game, it would get confusing.
But there are some games that have been planned as a trilogy. For example Mass Effect 3 should be the last ME game as it should tie up the ME story. Think of ME1 as the begining, ME2 the middle and ME3 the ending.
I think GTA can go on forever as it’s episodic and can tell a story within one game. But games like The Elder Scrolls have a lot of potential to go on for 7-10 more games due to the amount of lore there is.
Excellent article Peter.
cam_manutd
When technology on the same platform cannot be maximised or any aspect cannot be maximised further is that the reason for lack of progression. Crash 3 and Spyro 3 are two very good examples of games that are at the height of their powers (and series-neither has been the same since).
Superb insightful article though with relevant referencing :D
Sweetums
Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 4….just saying!
Klart
“After all, we can’t keep going with the same franchises forever, no matter how good they are now, can we?”
Tell that to Nintendo.
Omac_brother
I think that a lot of IP’s fail to realise that after your 3rd installment in the franchise, most gamers and happily contented for the developers to try something a little different instead of pumping out more of the same.
Take Assasins Creed for example. I love the Ezio trilogy, but now im done with it. If Ubi wanted to take the franchise to a whole new time period, with new gameplay elements, say a World War setting with some FPS elements, I would be very happy indeed to hand over £45 to give it a try. Probability is that they will continue with a very similar formula because they know it works.