I just recently finished Bayonetta 3 and really enjoyed it. At the same time, I noticed that I am increasingly organizing marathons for entire series, and this has had a very positive effect on the amount of emotions that games bring. Some of the last franchises I played this way were Mass Effect, Borderlands, and Bayonetta. Coincidentally, at the time of writing, each of these series has three numbered parts. I wondered what was so special about the trilogy format. Why their characters are remembered for a long time, you want to tell everyone around you about these games, even if they don’t play the games, and how playing through trilogies can give you a feeling of belonging to something significant.
I decided to look at this issue using the example of Mass Effect, Borderlands and Bayonetta. Each of these series greatly influenced my video game tastes, each is, in its own way, a standard, but not in terms of technical implementation or individual mechanics, but in what emotions a game of a particular genre should bring.
Carefully! The article contains hints and direct spoilers about the plot of all three franchises.
The first part of the series often goes awry. All of these franchises started back in the 2000s, so now the first parts of the games feel outdated in terms of game design. In addition, the beginning of a series is always an experiment and a test of the pen. The development team has no feedback from players yet. They have to test ideas mostly in their own heads, and then with a small group of testers and their own employees.
In the first ME, among the inconvenient and annoying mechanics, I immediately remember endless trips across almost empty planets on MAKO, confusing locations with not always convenient fast travel, backtracking and periodic jumps in difficulty in combat encounters.
In the Legendary Edition, the graphics of the first part of Mass Effect have improved greatly. But this is not enough to hide the sometimes outdated gameplay.
The start of the Bayonetta trilogy is also tough on newcomers. When I return to it after the second or third parts, every time I am surprised at how difficult it is. The timings of dodges, finishing moves and QTEs are ridiculously small. Tests generally had to be stormed periodically for several days. Notes suffer from graphomania, and I learned to use the user interface normally only towards the end of the game.
The first Borderlands does not play as responsively as the second and third. This is felt in everything: in shooting, a variety of weapons, in moving on foot and by car, battles with bosses, strange leveling of enemies, desert locations and a filler plot, of which I only remember the dlc about Claptrap.
However, the first parts of all three franchises serve a very important role. They introduce the player to the mechanics, immerse them in the world, and lay the foundation for the rules by which sequels and threequels will work. In addition, due to all the difficulties listed above, completing the first part significantly increases your tolerance for the roughness of subsequent games and creates a feeling of a kind of achievement. The thought “I overcame all difficulties together with the main characters” appears in your head. Making the player suffer due to the inconvenience of the game is, of course, bad from a game design point of view. However, as part of the entire trilogy, this works to the advantage of the developers.
When you start playing through the sequel, you feel like everything is in place. The world and mechanics are already familiar to you. They develop as expected, giving you a sense of progression.
The magic of trilogies begins to work at the moment when in the sequel and threequel you notice references to previous parts. These could be remixes of soundtracks and updated musical themes of characters, visual images.
The title theme of the first Mass Effect, which was then repeated several times in subsequent parts of the series in other arrangements
The first parts of franchises create a https://royal-fortune.uk/games/ knowledge base about lore in your head, teaching you a language that only you and the creators of the game understand. At this point, passing becomes a very personal process. The sequel develops the characters of the first parts, expands the universe, and further immerses the player in the events and laws of the game world.
In Bayonetta 2 you are trying to save Jeanne’s soul from the inferno. Moreover, throughout the first part, Zhanna was actually an antagonist. Bayonetta’s character and appearance change greatly. Her costume looks less provocative, while she herself becomes more emotionally open.
Bayonetta’s image from the first part
Bayonetta’s image from the sequel
In the first part, Cereza was alone against everyone: angels, demons, Jeanne, Luke. Among her allies we can only count Rodina, who, although he adheres to neutrality in the confrontation between Inferno, Paradiso and Bayonetta, always welcomes the main character with a cocktail in his bar. In the second part, Bayonetta constantly saves someone: Jeanne, Luca, and Loki. We learn more about her relationships with her mother and father, and overall we see how her affection for the people around her grows.
In Borderlands 2, the authors introduce us to new main characters. At the same time, the protagonists from the first game are not just mentioned in the plot, but become direct participants in the story: they hand out quests, share details of their life on Pandora in the interval between parts.
When playing as Mordecai in the first part, your active ability will be to summon a tame bird called Bloodwing
In the second part, Mordecai is a non-playable character. The main villain Handsome Jack kidnaps Bloodwing in order to conduct experiments on him. You have to go on a mission to rescue a pet
ME 2 begins with the death of Shepard and Normandy. This immediately causes a strong emotional resonance in the player. The feeling you get when they show you Shepard’s restoration and then present the Normandy SR-2 reinforces your attachment to them for the rest of the series.
You spend most of the game recruiting a team for a suicide mission, trying to resolve conflicts between the crew, prepare each character and the updated Normandy for the final battle. You become attached to team members, get to know their stories, personalities. As a result, they remain in your memory forever and are perceived as individuals. All of this gives you the foundation to get the most out of your final battle. You can no longer afford to lose at least one character, you worry about every choice during a suicide mission and are sincerely happy when you manage to calculate all the actions correctly and save the team.
In the sequels, the creators of the series begin to flirt with the player, adding fan service. These could be jokes and references to the events of the first parts, character cameos, various signature elements of the series, such as battle scenes during the final credits of Bayonetta.
In the third part, the authors allow themselves to go wild. In the series finale, the budget is usually not so limited. The amount of content, mechanics and scale of events peaks, as does the number of fan service elements.
The party at Shepard’s apartment in the Citadel immediately comes to mind. Here you as a team remember the events of the previous parts, get to know the characters from a new perspective. Some of them may even get romantic acquaintances (hello Ashley and Vega). Garrus jokes about how there is nothing to calibrate in these apartments and about the fact that Liara constantly repeats “By the Goddess”. Episodes like this help reveal characters better.
Also in the third part, conflicts that run like a red thread through the entire plot of the trilogy are resolved. We are talking about the confrontation between the quarians and the geth and the genophage. Shepard is directly involved in resolving these conflicts.
In Borderlands 3 you also meet characters from the first games and they play a direct role in the story. You will learn even more inside stories about the lives of the inhabitants of Pandora. All this is presented in the now characteristic sarcastic style of the series. The dramatic events of the game are remembered for a long time and evoke strong emotions precisely because you have already become attached to the characters during the passage of the previous parts.
I recently finished Bayonetta 3. She prompted me to write this article. This game has become for me the standard for completing trilogies. It has everything: new mechanics, an absurd level of madness happening on the screen, character development and, of course, fan service.
Bayonetta’s story gets more personal. The drama is getting stronger. Emotions such as those from completing the final game cannot be obtained in any other media. This is why I prefer video games to any other entertainment, be it movies, TV series or even books.
In the third part, Bayonetta appears before us in a new light, more deeply worried about the fate of her friends and not hiding her feelings. Her costume becomes less vulgar, referring to the offshoot of the series about little Cereza. More vocal elements appear in the soundtrack, and the music itself becomes livelier and more emotional, less pretentious and more personal. The maturing Bayonetta at the end of the game takes on the role of a mentor, just as her mother was a mentor to her, and in the finale we hear the word ‘Mummy’ already heard in relation to the main character.
Bayonetta’s theme from Bayonetta 3. It has a lot more live instruments compared to previous parts. The mood of the lyrics also changes to a much more sentimental one.
So what is the magic of trilogies?? One of the most important tasks of game creators is to invent a language that the player will understand. Giving yourself time to immerse yourself in the world of the game allows the developers to tell a much more personal story. Trilogies are great for this format because they give you and the authors more time to understand each other.
But what happens if these game series go beyond trilogies?? At the time of writing, the 4th part is not in any of the franchises. There are various spinoffs, but they feel optional and only slightly expand the game universes. Will the magic of the trilogy break with the release of the quadriquel?? At the moment there are only rumors about Borderlands 4, Bayonetta 4 and ME4. Players are wondering what might await us in the next part of the Shepard series, which ending is considered canonical, and which characters may appear in the quadriquel. In Bayonetta 3, Cereza’s story ends, so in the next game we will most likely see the adventures of a different witch. In Borderlands 4, the developers are faced with the task of taking all the best of their previous parts and, at the same time, surprising players with something new.
Despite all the ambiguities associated with the release of sequels to the series of famous trilogies, we are still waiting for them. We are waiting and hoping to find out what happened next to our favorite characters and worlds. After all, once you’ve gotten through the original trilogies, you won’t be able to just say goodbye and forget these characters. They will stay with you forever, become part of your cultural context.
From all of the above, the conclusion is quite banal, but no less valuable. The magic of trilogies is that they manage to unfold the story with the necessary emotional resonance. They introduce you to the world and characters and then make them part of your own experience. Trilogies create a rich emotional context that connects the player to the fictional universe on a deeper level. We follow the evolution of the heroes, understand their decisions and see how their worlds develop.
There is a sense of closure as we move into the finale of the trilogy, even if we know there may be more to come. Whether there is a fourth installment in any of these series or not, the main characters remain with us as an integral part of our cultural experience. Thus, trilogies give us not just complete stories, but also doors to entire worlds. This is their main magic.
