Back in 2018, Santa Monica Studios released God of War, the second God of War game to be called God of War. In 2016, Insomniac launched Ratchet & Clank, a tie-in to a movie called Ratchet & Clank that was a cinematic retelling of an older game that was also called Ratchet & Clank. And this month, Bloober Team is set to release Layers of Fear, which is the fastest I can recall a studio resetting to the original title. When Layers of Fear releases, two thirds of all Layers of Fear games will be called Layers of Fear.
I don’t know if the reason behind that name makes it better or worse. Layers of Fear (2023) was originally titled Layers of Fears, a bad title that wouldn’t be out of place in that old Pete Holmes bit. “Pierce! Get beers, Pierce! And games! Layers of Fears, Pierce!” That title (rightly) got made fun of so Bloober turned to the old reliable Layers of Fear. Given how strange a release this game is, though — it includes all the content from the previous Layers of Fear games and their DLC, remade in Unreal Engine 5, but with new mechanics and new story material all tied together in one playable package — a new title could have helped players understand what it actually is. But, if we've learned anything from this trend, it's that giving new games titles that indicate that they're new games is scary and should be avoided at all costs.
As we’ve recently been reminded with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, developers and publishers love to present new games in long running series as if they're perfectly approachable for newcomers, even if no fan in the world would recommend jumping in with that entry. It's true that, sometimes, games are more approachable than they seem. Despite having a 16 in the title, the next Final Fantasy will be a perfectly fine entry point even if you’ve never met a Moogle or a Chocobo in your life.
But developers tend to say this regardless of how much sense it makes for the particular game they're doing press for. In this Game Informer interview with former BioWare developer Casey Hudson ahead of the launch of Mass Effect 3, Hudson calls the third game “a great place to start.” It's hard to imagine a game for which that sentiment applies less than the final entry in a trilogy where each entry builds on the choices you made in the one before. But that's the dance developers have to do. Games are extremely expensive products to make, and a number may signal to a significant portion of the audience that they should stay away until they play the previous entries, whether that's true or not.
But simply reverting to the original title is a frustrating fix. In part because it puts the onus on fans and the media to provide the clarity the developers won't. We call the God of War game that came out in 2018, God of War (2018). We call the Doom game that came out in 2016, Doom (2016). Hitman (2016) gets the same treatment and the 2019 version of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening gets "Remake" or "Switch" added to its title in most discussions.
You can see greater meaning in this naming convention if you look for it. The games industry is notoriously bad at preservation, and publishers only tend to care about their developers' back catalogs if there's an opportunity to resell the games to audiences again. God of War (2018) doesn't erase God of War (2005) from existence, but it does indicate that the first game isn't worth thinking about anymore. The new one isn't a sequel, it's a replacement.
Even if you're not conspiratorially minded, it's an annoying trend. Doom and Doom are different games. Prey and Prey aren't even in the same series. They should have different names. That's just how language works. If you want to indicate that a game is a good starting point for new players, we have words like "Origins" and "Beginnings”. That may not be as punchy or profound as dropping numbers or subtitles altogether, but it's much more truthful. And besides we're going to add a number to the title anyway. It might just be the year.