Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

2023 set an incredibly high bar for video game sequels

It’s not an overstatements to say that 2023 was one of the best years for video game sequels ever.

Simply looking at The Game Awards 2023’s Game of the Year nominations, all of which are titles from preexisting series, proves that. It’s not just that we received a lot of new video game sequels in 2023; that happens every year. No, what makes the game sequels of 2023 stand out is how many of them impressively build upon what came before. From Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 to Baldur’s Gate 3, these follow-ups all looked at their predecessor, identified the weaker aspects, and directly addressed those issues.

Recommended Videos

As new IP struggled more than usual in the AAA space this year — with the success of Hi-Fi Rush and Starfield being counteracted by underperforming titles like Immortals of Aveum and Forspoken — it’s a good thing that some of the greatest games of 2023 reestablished the standard of what makes a fantastic sequel.

Respecting what came before

Marvel’s Spider-Man, Alan Wake, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Baldur’s Gate 2, Street Fighter V, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Diablo 3, Dead Island, Pikmin 3, Forza Motorsport 7, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. All those games are great, some even outstanding, in their own right, but their sequels that dropped this year were even better.

For some, that came from refining what came before. For example, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor expanded the number of abilities Cal Kestis had at his disposal, increased the size of the planets players explored, and continued the story commendably. Dead Island 2 and Forza Motorsport were similarly pleasing iterative sequels that fully realized older ideas on new tech.

A screenshot from The Story So Far in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
Sony Interactive Entertainment

Others, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, almost directly addressed every pain point of entries that came before. Its 2018 predecessor had weak sidequests, frustrating sequences where players weren’t controlling Spider-Man, and a controversial relationship to law enforcement. Even its web-swinging, as great as it was, had limits. With Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, it felt like Insomniac Games went down a checklist, solving all those issues one by one. The sequel’s sidequests are more engaging, non-Spider-Man sequences play better, it’s story is unequivocally pro-criminal reformation, and even web-swinging has been refined with the loop-the-loop, corner-turning, and Web Wing abilities that make traversal even more satisfying.

Other sequels made even bolder changes. Diablo 4 returned to the darker themes from earlier in the series while embracing live service elements. Street Fighter 6 added modern control modes and a lengthy single-player story mode, ensuring it had a more acceptable amount of content and approachable appeal than Street Fighter V. Pikmin 4 reworked its strategy gameplay to make everything a bit less chaotic.

Link crafts an airship in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Nintendo

Then there’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo recognized how players were breaking Breath of the Wild by using its systems to create weird shortcuts and crazy contraptions — and made that the central gameplay conceit of the sequel. on top of the best-in-class open-world design, the Ultrahand and Fuse systems encourage creativity, open up even more possibilities for exploration and puzzle-solving, and even solve the weapon degradation problem from Breath of the Wild. These are the titles I want to inspire the next generation of video game sequels.

What comes next

Sometimes sequels can be more than incremental follow-ups; they can redefine their respective series. Although not a direct sequel, I’ll argue that Super Mario Bros. Wonder built upon the best elements of the 2D Mario titles that came before it. And while Digital Trends was cooler on Final Fantasy XVI than most, I commend Square Enix for changing things up by having a darker story and more action-focused gameplay. More relevant to the conversation is Baldur’s Gate 3, a legacy sequel in a niche genre made by a studio that did not work on the prior games in the franchise. Despite all those pieces being stacked against it, it ended up being our Game of the Year.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is the kind of sequel that modernizes a classic formula for the modern era. It retained the core magic of its predecessors and didn’t even stray that far in terms of gameplay. But it made tweaks to many of those niche RPG elements, making them more understandable for general audiences. It was the rare game that could account for almost any emergent action the player takes. The result was a Dungeon & Dragons RPG that went mainstream; it even got referenced in South Park.

A character launches an attack at an enemy over a pit in Baldur's Gate 3.
Larian Studios

By doing that, Baldur’s Gate 3 and all the other sequels we mentioned have set a high bar for future sequels. Games that aren’t meeting that level of quality, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, are being derided for it. Especially in an era where development is getting increasingly expensive and taking longer than before, game developers can’t afford to have their sequels not be notable improvements upon their predecessors in some explicit way.

The formula for the perfect video game sequel might have been perfected in 2023, and we will continue to get new entries in popular series. Some of 2024’s most anticipated games — Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Senua’s Saga: Hellbalde II — are all sequels. After 2023, those titles must meet much higher standards.

Tomas Franzese
As a Gaming Staff Writer at Digital Trends, Tomas Franzese reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…
Play this underrated Marvel game for free with Prime Gaming this month
Gamora, Groot, Starlord, Rocket Raccoon, and Drax standing ready to fight. Groot is holding a blue llama.

Amazon Prime Gaming has 24 games up for grabs for members during November, and many are worth your time. But you'll want to check out the first game on the list, which is now available for free.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, developed by Eidos-Montreal, was vastly underrated when it came out in 2021. While it was critically acclaimed, with one of the best superhero narratives we've seen outside of the PlayStation Spider-Man games and an excellent 1980s-inspired soundtrack, then parent company Square Enix said it "undershot" expectations. Whether it was due to poor marketing, comparisons to the poorly received live-service game Marvel's Avengers (also published by Square Enix) from the previous year, or something else entirely, it flew under the radar.

Read more
How to transmog equipment in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon Age The Veilguard Rook standing between Bellara and Neve.

With the wide assortment of equipment and clothing your character can wear in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it's not easy choosing what you want your Rook to wear while venturing on quests and slaying enemies. Sometimes fashion comes before function, but luckily The Veilguard allows you to prioritize both with the transmog system.

Read more
New Atari 50 DLC shows the Intellivision acquisition is already paying off
An Atari 2600+ sits on a table.

Digital Eclipse's Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration is an excellent and comprehensive look back at the company's now classic video game lineup, with games to play and extra content to interact with. So far, it's gotten one DLC: The Wider World of Atari, that added even more titles. Now, it's about to get its second, thanks to an acquisition it made earlier this year.

Atari announced The First Console War on Friday, and it's about, as you can guess, the company's first console war with the Intellivision, although it'll touch on a specific element of it. In the 1980s, Mattel was publishing games on the Intellivision. At some point, it decided to release versions of these console exclusives for its main competitor, the Atari 2600, under the M Network label. There are 19 of these games coming to Atari 50 with The First Console War, which is set to launch on November 8 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4 Atari 50 owners.

Read more