gaming Reusing assets in games?

[Troblems 5,616]

I've been playing Tales of Xillia 2, and in one of the reviews I read, the reviewer was complaining about the reuse of assets. So I was wondering what others thought?

 

Personally, it doesn't bother me. I'd rather have more things to in a sequel than look at new monsters. This is also how music becomes so iconic in games (chocobo music, anyone?) 

 

One thing that does bother me is recycling puzzles. I've now had to do the same puzzle twice in two separate games. Now granted it's not a difficult puzzle so it didn't take very long, but even if it's in the same room, that just seems lazy.

 

What are your thoughts?

[DwhitetheGamer 867]

Iconic game sequels reuse assets of old games because it's what makes the series so popular.  Like in, say, Super Mario Bros., the iconic power-up system is always reused because that's how it was so successful.  Hell, Call of Duty and Halo are always the same Shoot-'em-ups they've always been, and that's what makes them so popular in the media.

 

What I'm saying is that the same assets in one game series makes it recognizable.  Power-ups, speed, racing, hell, even shooting has been the same for every game series out there.

[Nuke87654 1,849]

It depends as there have been many great games like Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Classic Doom that reused assets from Ocarina of Time and Doom 1 respectively. It really depends on simply if the game itself is still good as resuing assets is not bad itself. Using it incorrectly or badly will just be counted as among the things the developer did wrong in a game.

[King 5,625]

Reusing assets is a little more common than people think, you just don't notice it often because sequels usually change the location enough that it seems entirely new. Personally Im completely fine with it so long as you aren't recycling plot elements, puzzles (or the equivalents of) and audio.

[Megas 27,508]

There's really nothing wrong with reusing assets, as it's common to see in many sequels, primarily ones that come out shortly after(every CoD, Bioshock 2, Majora's Mask)

 

Only time I ever see it as a bad thing is when it's used to lazily copy and paste for a quick buck(see several last gen sports games, notably the Wii/3DS/Vita version of FIFA 13)

Edited February 21, 2016 by ChicksDigGiantRobots

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,231]

Reussing assets is fine to me unless it is done in certain ways. For example, Activision, they love to reuse assets. They have the developers constantly reuse stuff in the COD games all the time. You can still see death animations from 7 years ago in Black Ops 3. Then of course there is Destiny which reuses animations, bosses, enemy types, and all sorts of things over and over again, it gets irritating, especially since these games have massive budgets that most games could only dream of having. That is why it doesn't bother me if many other games have to reuse assets, it might be out of their budget not to do so, but Activision, they just want to make as much money as possible while doing as little as possible. 

[cmarston1 5,958]

As long as there is enough new content in the next installment or it is not too noticeable, reusing assets in games doesn't bother me too much.