Keeping key game elements within game series for sentimental or marketing reasons is not the same as keeping the gameplay unchanged.
Obviously. Gameplay-wise Fallout 3 looks like a complete departure from Fallout, and yet many elements, particularly the setting, are kept on board for (spurious) marketing reasons.
And please stop using the term "core gameplay". If you use the term "core gameplay" in its strictest sense, then there are few games within any given genre that don't share their core gameplay elements with any other games of the genre. In fact, you will be speaking about the main characteristics of the genre in 99% of cases.
I respectfully disagree. Even in genres with very clearly defined parameters, such as "First Person Shooter" there's a lot of difference. Describing "core gameplay" in simple ambiguous terms serves no purpose, and it's not hard to dig deeper...
What the nature of the core gameplay in the Doom series? Running grimy maze-like levels, shooting innumerous enemies, and finding helpful items on the way toward the level exit? Running around and shooting stuff, even? How many games share those core gameplay mechanics? Hundreds? Thousands?
If you distill it down to that, then sure. You could also reduce RPG to "playing a role and killing stuff" which covers pretty much every game ever, but why would you want to do that? Anyone can see that Doom, Serious Sam, and Kiss Psycho Circus are built on entirely different gameplay fundamentals to SWAT 4, Hidden & Dangerous and Rainbow Six. It's pointless to try and equate either set to the other.
It doesn't really make any sense to look at core gameplay in this discussion, so we better stop before I'll start making comparisons between riding a horse in Oblivion and riding a car in GTA4, which would really be no worse than your mentioning of the scripted nature of the GTA games that can relate to a good majority of all mission-based games on the market.
If you wanted to make (unfavourable) comparisons between GTA's excellent driving and Oblivion's awful horse riding, you could. Just like you could make comparisons between the missions in GTA and the quests in Fable. Likewise, you could make comparisons between the rhythm game bits of GTA and Dance Dance Revolution. But why, unless they're both considered part of the core gameplay?
Anyway, let's take another look at the GTA series. It, among other things, went from a top-down to third-person view several years ago. While the change itself seems to refer to the game graphics, the fact is that such a radical switch always changes the game's gameplay as well. Just ask anyone around here.
"Radical" change? Hardly. Top down and chase cam are really not that dissimilar, but that's beside the point. The gameplay hasn't changed much at all with the addition of a z-axis - especially the console versions where you're auto-aiming most of the time as a pedestrian, and predominantly driving road vehicles that can essentially travel two dimensions.
It's still "action gameplay focused mainly on driving, and a free-roaming urban environment", but this blanket description only refers to the minor, if not minuscule portion of the actual gameplay. I'm not going to go into specific game-altering mechanics (for one thing, I'm not a GTA expert), so I'll point out the obvious. One such quite obvious example of the new gameplay elements in GTA4 would its mini-games
...which are peripheral to the core gameplay. You can pack all the minigames you like into GTA, but so long as the guts of the game is still the same and the main focus, then we're still talking about comparable games because the core gameplay is the same.
Mind it, we're talking about a largely sandbox game, where "watch television, listen to numerous different radio stations, check out some genuinely funny shows (including some big-name acts) at cabaret and comedy clubs, and use a computer to surf the in-game Internet" choices are also seen as valued elements of the game's gameplay.
They may be valued elements of the
game but they're not
gameplay elements, and they're certainly not core gameplay. Just like there's no gameplay associated with Fallout's 1950's pulp sci-fi setting, yet it's <s>a valued</s> an essential element of the game itself. Or like how Ron Perlman's narration is a valued element of Fallout games, yet has no impact on the gameplay itself, let alone the core gameplay.
And what about 15 different modes of multiplayer and entirely new combat and driving components? Might have some relationship to the gameplay variety, don't you think?
Yep, but even with all that, the core gameplay is still the same. Probably one of the main reasons why GTA has a loyal
series following from the first topdown game to the recent "fourth" iteration.
Anyway, it's a stupid conversation. You fail to admit gameplay differences in the GTA series yet you use Doom III's flashlight and its bad implementation of combat mechanics as the main argument for emphasizing its doubtful innovativeness and distinctiveness over its prequels...
I'm not casting doubt on its innovation. It does that very comfortably on its own. What I am saying is that it's a very different game that is no longer about lightning fast first person combat against hundreds of enemies and is instead more concerned with non-gameplay aspects like a narrative and (failing at) startling the player. The core gameplay is very weak and poorly defined, but I'd sum it up as "efficient use of limited ammo in poor visibility against a small number of tough enemies."
The main fact is that an average player will rarely notice or think of existing gameplay differences between the games in the series.
I don't know about "rarely notice", I think it's more about "rarely consider at length". But only if we're talking about peripheral gameplay. If GTA IV has bowling, darts and pool players will notice and probably register a response. If GTA IV got rid of the core driving gameplay and substituted it with bowling, darts and pool, they'd kick and scream.
In your case, you seem to notice them only when a major genre shift happens,
I'm not sure where you get this idea.
and, again, this is not what a successful game series should ever strive for. It is also not innovation, since most spin-offs seem to trade one standardized set of gameplay mechanics to another standardized set of gameplay mechanics while using the same game universe in order to get more profit from its established fanbase.
Well, we definitely agree here.
