Introduction
Video games just keep changing, whether we like it or not. Some of the biggest video game franchises constantly reinvent themselves, and it isn't always for the better. Let’s take a look at some old game series that are wildly different from where they first started.
Pac-Man: The Unexpected Evolution
Starting off with number 10: Pac-Man. Yes, the most unexpected change in a long-running video game series has got to be Pac-Man. I mean, you know him even if you've never played it—he's the yellow circle that eats the smaller circles. If you've ever been to a metro arcade or looked at anything related to video games, you'll see Pac-Man iconography somewhere. The dude is on the Mount Rushmore of video games, one of the pillars that created the industry as we know it today.
But it’s about to change in a way nobody really could have predicted. Here’s where it started: this really weird, violent segment in *Secret Level*, an Amazon-produced CGI collection of shorts based on video games. One of the big ones was a reimagining of Pac-Man, with the little iconic pizza-slice guy following a robed mysterious alien figure.
The tiny Pac-Man spurs the main guy on, eventually helping him transform into this terrifying, shadowy version of himself. And this isn't just a weird reimagining; it’s essentially a trailer for a very real video game. At the time, *Shadow Labyrinth* hadn’t been released, but there was a trailer that proved it wasn’t a prank from the publisher, Bandai Namco.
Pac-Man has had a weird history as an adventure game, a cartoon show on American TV, and now, he’s a violent Dark Souls-like metroidvania sci-fi character. We don’t know why this new take on Pac-Man exists, but here it is. Who knows? Maybe it’ll actually be good.
Red Dead Revolver: From Pulp to Prestige
One of my favorite transformations is *Red Dead Revolver*. The original *Red Dead Revolver* barely made a splash when it hit store shelves back in 2004. While we loved the forgotten first game in the Red Dead series, we never imagined it would become a big tentpole franchise for one of the biggest publishers in video game history—or that a sequel would reportedly cost $400–500 million to develop.
Let’s start back at the beginning. *Red Dead Revolver* was a very pulpy, over-the-top Western shooter. You played as a range of old west stereotypes, with the Red Dead special ability giving your gunman an edge over bad guys and assorted thugs. It was corny and cartoony, in the same vein as old *GTA: San Andreas* or *Vice City*, but it fully embraced Western movie tropes, with gunfights, cheesy gunshot sound effects, and an Ennio Morricone-inspired score. It was a good, fast-paced arcade shooter, but it didn’t become the next big thing.
Then *Red Dead Redemption* released, and it changed the series forever. It turned a humble, level-based shooter into a cinematic open-world action game with a memorable story, subtle themes, and emotional impact. But one big change wasn’t enough. *Red Dead Redemption 2* took it further. This massive, immersive game introduced hardcore hunger systems, a lack of fast travel, and meticulous shooting mechanics, making Old West gunfights feel raw and gritty.
What was once a straightforward arcade shooter became a cowboy simulation game. *Red Dead Redemption 2’s* campaign might as well be the polar opposite of *Red Dead Revolver*, which had been originally developed by Capcom before Rockstar scooped it up.
Call of Duty: A Series Reinvented
Everyone knows it at this point: the *Call of Duty* series is completely inescapable. Even if you know nothing about *Call of Duty*, you’ll know something about it. But you might not realize just how different these games are from where they started.
The original *Call of Duty* was a humble, grounded military shooter. The series changed dramatically with *Call of Duty 2*, which introduced the regenerating health system, replacing health packs with an auto-heal mechanic. This shifted the pacing, making the games all about movement and positioning, giving them an energetic, propulsive feel.
Then came *Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare*, which reinvented the campaigns with cinematic storytelling. The multiplayer dominance emerged in *Modern Warfare 2*, alongside Zombies mode and battle royale innovations like *Blackout*. Today, the series offers cinematic campaigns, twitchy multiplayer, survival modes, and battle royales. While *Call of Duty* has become increasingly commercial, its journey from humble beginnings to its sprawling, multifaceted format is fascinating.
Rainbow Six: Tactical Realism to Multiplayer Chaos
*Rainbow Six* was never going to survive after *Call of Duty* got big. I mean, think about it: the hyper-realistic military original game was more about planning and executing a coordinated operation with multiple teams of special forces soldiers. That slow-paced gameplay really went out the window completely when the series pivoted for console content.
Even *Rainbow Six: Vegas* tried to match that gritty, quick-to-death atmosphere of the original game, even if the planning phase was removed completely. No, the biggest change to the series definitely came with *Rainbow Six: Siege*. Obviously, *Siege* is this faster-paced multiplayer shooter that tried to add more colorful characters to the extremely dry but cool original *Rainbow Six* series. In my opinion, though, it kind of misses the point. It feels totally different, but *Rainbow Six* had already jumped the shark with the soap opera antics at the end of *Rainbow Six: Vegas 2*, so any big changes were welcome.
The series needed a refresh. *Siege* is less of a tightly realistic military shooter like the first games in the series and more like a shooter with vague gestures toward the military theme. Accuracy is still very important, and I do appreciate that, but *Siege* does different things, adding named hero characters and friendly, goofy rivalries between anti-terrorist and terrorist organizations, making this feel a bit more like *Counter-Strike* at this point.
But still, despite all that, *Siege* at the end of the day is a great multiplayer shooter. The real weirdness is what came after this. This is only part of it. *Rainbow Six: Extraction* is the undeniable moment the series really changed beyond any recognition. Instead of military-themed soldiers versus terrorists, it became an alien invasion game about stealthing through these infested areas and fighting weird crystallized zombies.
The weirdest spin-off to the series is based on this limited-time event from *Siege*, but making a full game out of it says a lot about Ubisoft's priorities. *Rainbow Six* at this point really feels like it's been dumbed down. I'm not sliding on *Siege*—like I said, it is good, and the original games weren't high art—but they required patience and precision, and it really felt like a Tom Clancy thing. Yeah, remember the name Tom Clancy? *Siege* transformed *Rainbow Six* into a tense shooter that has a strong focus on scouting and breaching, but then *Extraction* really, really lost the plot. I don't know what Ubisoft was thinking here.
Driver: A Series Without a Compass
Can a series that never really had a solid identity lose it anyway? The *Driver* series started as a ridiculously hardcore PS1 driving game. It’s not a racing game or anything like that—it’s about completing different missions in a boxy city map. That kind of open-world sensibility might be the only thing that coherently links one *Driver* game to the next, because this series has gone on a really wild ride.
The first *Driver* locked you in the car. You might as well be the car in the game because you’d be viewing the world from the car's perspective the whole time. Driving in the first game was intense, with many players struggling through its infamous tutorial because the maneuvers were really difficult to pull off, and some of them seemed impossible. *Driver* is legendary for its tough difficulty, and we have to imagine that was accidental because all the future games were way easier to play and get into.
*Driver 2* stepped it up, embracing more of the open-world feel. You could get out of your car and run around as a janky-looking dude. Then *Driver 3* dragged us out of the car even more and turned the series into kind of a C-tier *Grand Theft Auto* ripoff. As hyped as we all were for this game, it’s pretty forgettable. The PS1 original, with no named characters and a plot no one remembers, somehow had a bigger impact than *Driver 3* (or "Dri3r").
It wasn’t really until *Driver: San Francisco* that the series finally found a new, completely different identity—and it was a super weird one too. In *Driver: San Francisco*, we completely dropped any stabs at realism or difficult, intense driving. Instead, you’re a ghost flying around the city from a bird’s-eye view, able to possess cars and do whatever you want with them. You can slam cars into each other head-on with no negative consequences, just jump out of the car and swap to a fresh one. It’s a bonkers premise, but believe it or not, it’s really fun. There’s nothing else like it.
It was a creative and different game, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen anything from the *Driver* series in a very long time. While there were a couple of cool spin-offs before *San Francisco*, that game’s boring name hides a gameplay feature that really brought the series back to life—for a little while. Unfortunately, it feels like *Driver* may be stuck in neutral for the foreseeable future.
Yakuza: From Crime Drama to Absurdity
The *Yakuza* series has changed significantly since its inception. It started as a heightened version of Japanese crime movies, with all the sex and violence that that implies, but the series couldn’t stay gritty for too long. By *Yakuza 3*, protagonist Kazuma Kiryu was running an orphanage and hanging out with kids, and the plots became more convoluted. The crime aspect kind of goes up and down, but the games only got sillier.
Technically, there are so many games in this series that we couldn’t talk about all of them, even if we wanted to. The latest two releases, however, are definitely the ones to point to. The series has officially lost its American name "Yakuza" and adopted "Like a Dragon," which was the original, less crime-centric title in Japan. The games reflect that. *Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth* is only partially a crime game set in Japan—most of it is about an evil cult that runs a radioactive island off the coast of Hawaii. You fight giant squids and immortal old men with gun-fu, and instead of using the original game's brawler mechanics, it’s a full-on JRPG with turn-based combat.
You have a party, they take turns attacking, you use items to heal, and you spend magic points on abilities. It’s a total reinvention of the series. But even the real-time action games in the series have changed too. Take *Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name*—it’s a completely gonzo game about modern-day pirates who still dress like cutthroats from *Pirates of the Caribbean*. Instead of fighting a real-life criminal organization, you’re battling silly pirates.
Even though these games are starting to feel very different, their commitment to storytelling, charm, levity, and melodrama remains. The *Yakuza* or *Like a Dragon* games continue to juggle chaos, seriousness, and goofiness like no other series can.
Dragon Age: Searching for an Identity
The *Dragon Age* series feels like it can’t decide what it wants to be. We’ve gone from the gray, bland, washed-out visuals of the really incredible first game to the oversaturated, over-the-top, maybe kind of cringe level of *Dragon Age: Valguard*. It feels like these games have never quite found a cohesive visual style, and the changes started as early as *Dragon Age II*.
The rushed-out sequel set most of its action in a single city, making the world feel far more confined. Characters look the same but slightly different in every game, with *Dragon Age II* leaning more cartoonish, *Dragon Age: Inquisition* going more realistic, and *Valguard* swinging back to a quirky, colorful approach.
Even the gameplay can’t seem to settle on a style, flip-flopping between systems. As a result, playing a supposedly interconnected epic story feels disjointed because the tone, visual design, and gameplay mechanics constantly change.
Despite these inconsistencies, the series does have one thing holding it together: the lore. Surprisingly, the lore has been consistent throughout the games, even as everything else has shifted. Individually, *Dragon Age* games are often good or great, but as a series, it feels messy and in need of a more unified identity.
Prince of Persia: The Art of Rebooting
The *Prince of Persia* series has had more reboots and reimaginings than we can count, and it’s been a bumpy road to reach the high-quality heights the series is really known for now. We’ve come a very, very long way from those old-school games about a guy in white pajamas just falling into spikes. The only thing this series has never lost track of, really—and it’s the most important thing—is the running and jumping.
But *Prince of Persia* started as a rotoscoped platformer with levels filled with instant death traps. The game was a maze, technically, and you had a limited time to reach the end. The only way to win was to memorize every step of the maze and then blaze through it. If you knew what to do, the game wouldn’t technically take that long. The tricky part was all the figuring out—it was like a platforming Rubik’s Cube.
Nobody knew what to do with these games in the very early 3D era. We got *Prince of Persia* in the style of the old *Tomb Raiders*, but it was worse in every conceivable way. Then *Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time* brought the series to 3D way more successfully. It added a cool time-travel mechanic that made the difficult platforming a little easier and a lot more interesting. If you fell to your death, the Prince could rewind time and try again.
This was a really great reboot, but it also set a weird precedent for the series—there might actually be more reboots than sequels. The *Sands of Time* trilogy showed how the identity of the series changed within even that framework. Then there was the reboot where the Prince kind of looked like he stepped out of the *Prince of Persia* movie, followed by the colorful, quirky one from the 2000s where the Prince literally couldn’t die no matter what.
Finally, the recent Metroidvania-style reboot stands out. It’s both completely different and familiar—you’re back to 2D exploration, running sideways, and climbing up ledges. It isn’t exactly the same, but spiritually, it feels like an evolution of the 1989 game. It’s just cool to see the series come full circle.
Fallout: From Isometric RPG to Open-World Icon
“*Fallout* never changes.” Except it does. A lot. The series started as an isometric RPG with retro-futuristic visuals and a black sense of humor that resonated with players. The strong voice acting, art direction, and creative storytelling in *Fallout* made a strong impression when it released in 1997, even though the graphics weren’t the greatest.
The series fully realized its identity with *Fallout 2*, which dialed up the humor and world-building. It was a beloved cult classic among RPG fans, but when Bethesda bought the IP, no one quite knew what to expect.
The original *Fallout* games were closer to something like *Baldur’s Gate* than *The Elder Scrolls*. When Bethesda released *Fallout 3*, the series shifted into an open-world, first-person exploration game, reminiscent of *Oblivion*. This was a seismic shift, and while some older fans missed the isometric RPG days, the new approach appealed to a much broader audience. *Fallout 3* gave players a massive, immersive apocalypse to explore, with endless freedom to shape their journey.
*Fallout: New Vegas* kept the same open-world structure but leaned heavily on storytelling, delivering some of the best writing and character development in the series. The lore remained consistent even as the gameplay changed drastically.
That said, the series experimented in strange ways before its modern transformation. *Fallout Tactics* replaced the open-world RPG structure with a mission-based format, focusing on combat mechanics. Then there was *Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel*, a top-down action game that received little love and even less attention. Thankfully, the series recovered under Bethesda’s vision, proving that even though the gameplay evolved, *Fallout* retained its distinct charm and identity.
Resident Evil: Reinventing Horror Again and Again
Few franchises have reinvented themselves as much—and as effectively—as *Resident Evil*. This series has gone through multiple distinct phases of transformation, with Capcom driving each gameplay style into the ground before completely pivoting to something different. The original games were slow-paced survival horror titles focused on shooting zombies, exploring eerie environments, and solving puzzles.
For players who grew up with the fixed camera angles and resource scarcity of the early *Resident Evil* titles, these games were terrifying. Whether it was being ambushed by zombie dogs leaping through windows or encountering grotesque creatures with iconic designs, the tension never let up. However, the formula began to feel stale by the time *Resident Evil Code: Veronica* was released, signaling that the classic style was reaching its limits.
Then came *Resident Evil 4*, a game that reinvented the series while maintaining some of its core DNA. While it began as a horror game during its development, the final result was more of an over-the-top action experience. *Resident Evil 4* leaned into 80s action movie tropes, offering bombastic set pieces, massive boss fights, and tongue-in-cheek one-liners. It delivered cinematic moments while retaining a hint of suspense, but the balance tipped further toward action in subsequent entries.
By the time *Resident Evil 6* arrived, the series had become a full-fledged action extravaganza. With explosions, large-scale battles, and relentless pacing, it lacked the tension and dread that defined earlier titles. At that point, the franchise was in need of yet another reinvention, and Capcom delivered with *Resident Evil 7*.
*Resident Evil 7* brought the series back to its roots, shifting the focus back to horror and survival elements. Featuring a first-person perspective for the first time, it created a more immersive experience, drawing clear inspiration from classic horror films. Instead of zombies, players faced twisted human foes and grotesque creatures, enhancing the fear factor. The game’s setting—a decrepit Southern plantation—added an unsettling layer of tension, reminiscent of *The Texas Chainsaw Massacre*.
Conclusion
Video game franchises evolve for many reasons—some driven by technological advancements, others by shifting player tastes or the need to stay competitive. As we’ve seen with these ten franchises, change is often a double-edged sword. While some transformations have breathed new life into beloved series, others have left fans longing for the games they once knew and loved.
What remains clear is that reinvention is a natural part of gaming history. These franchises represent the creative risks developers take, whether it’s turning a humble arcade classic into a sprawling sci-fi epic or reimagining a gritty RPG into an open-world sandbox. It’s fascinating to see how these changes reflect the times, and even more exciting to wonder where they’ll go next.
Now it’s your turn—what do you think about these transformations? Which gaming franchise’s evolution do you find most surprising, and what would you like to see return in future installments? Let’s celebrate the joy and unpredictability of gaming together!
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