15 Video Game Franchises That Lost Their Identity

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Ignacio Weil

Gaming - November 24th 2025, 21:00 GMT+1

Cropped Call of Duty black ops 7 — Call of Duty

It’s wild to look back at how the series went from tense, boots-on-the-ground World War II missions to a genre shapeshifter that can’t sit still for more than a year. After *Modern Warfare* redefined military shooters with tight campaigns and grounded storytelling, the franchise sprinted into sci-fi jetpacks, wall-running, battle royale, extraction modes, and seasonal content that practically turned it into a live-service machine. Even its modern reboots contradicted each other: *Modern Warfare 2019* focused on realism, while *Vanguard* leapt back to WWII with a superhero-like squad, and *Cold War* mixed arcade gunplay with espionage nostalgia. With constant tonal pivots and an annual schedule that forces reinvention for reinvention’s sake, the brand’s original identity – cinematic, coherent, militaristic campaigns – has been drowned under its own output. | © Activision

Cropped Assassins Creed Origins — Assassin’s Creed

Thinking about how sharply this series shifted, you could draw a clean line between *Syndicate* and *Origins*. Overnight, stealth-focused city sandboxes – built around dense rooftops, social blending, and carefully planned assassinations – gave way to gigantic RPG worlds where levels, loot rarity, crafting, and hit-point-soaked enemies dominated the experience. *Origins*, *Odyssey*, and *Valhalla* were practically a new trilogy in disguise, borrowing more from open-world RPGs than from the franchise’s own roots. The Animus narrative faded into the background, the Brotherhood mythos was stretched thin, and the trademark hidden-blade approach almost vanished. While the new formula attracted a different audience, it left longtime fans wondering where the actual “assassins” had gone. | © Ubisoft

Saints Row

Tracing this franchise’s identity is like watching a pendulum swing until the chain snaps. The early entries leaned into urban crime drama with a mischievous streak, but *Saints Row The Third* blew the doors off with pro-wrestler villains, dildo bats, and tanks driving down neon-lit streets. Then *Saints Row IV* launched the Boss into a superpowered simulation, complete with alien invasions and Matrix-like sprinting up skyscrapers. By the time the 2022 reboot arrived, the series seemed unsure whether to lean into absurdity or return to its gang-war roots, landing somewhere oddly flavorless. With the extremes of its past overshadowing its attempts at reinvention, the game no longer felt like it knew which version of itself it wanted to keep. | © Deep Silver Volition

Halo Infinite — Halo

It’s almost surreal to compare *Halo: Combat Evolved* with its mysterious Forerunners, tight enemy AI, and clean arena combat to the sprawling, uneven direction the franchise took after Bungie stepped away. *Halo 4* shifted toward emotional introspection and Promethean enemies, *Halo 5* doubled down on convoluted lore and sidelined Master Chief, and *Infinite* tried to reboot the formula with an open-world structure that left the campaign feeling fragmented. Multiplayer identity also wavered: classic loadouts and map control gave way to unlock-driven customization, shifting progression systems, and live-service experiments. The series still has iconic pieces – Chief, the ringworlds, the Covenant aesthetic – but the cohesive vision that once defined it has slowly slipped through its fingers. | © 343 Industries

Shadow of the Tomb Raider — Tomb Raider

It’s almost shocking how dramatically the tone changed between the PS1-era Lara – confident, quippy, acrobatic raider of absurdly elaborate ruins – and the gritty, grounded survivor introduced in the 2013 reboot. The classic games reveled in puzzle-box tombs and improbable platforming geometry, but the reboot trilogy focused on origin-story trauma, stealth takedowns, crafting bows out of driftwood, and cinematic set pieces straight out of prestige action films. *Rise* and *Shadow* expanded into semi-open hubs, trimming down the larger-than-life personality that once defined Lara. The shift gave the franchise modern credibility, but it also scrubbed away the campy adventure-serial identity that originally made it stand out. | © Crystal Dynamics

Rainbow Six Siege — Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six

It’s almost jarring to compare the tactical, no-nonsense precision of the early *Rainbow Six* titles with the festival of skins, celebrity cameos, and seasonal gadgets that *Siege* eventually embraced. What started as slow, methodical room-clearing with permadeath and strict planning maps has turned into a high-speed esports arena where operators wield heart sensors, laser crossbows, holograms, and enough sci-fi tech to make the original cast raise an eyebrow. The shift wasn’t subtle: realism gave way to hero-shooter structure, destructible playgrounds, and a meta that changes every few months. The old identity – elite counter-terrorism grounded in Tom Clancy’s tone – morphed into competitive chaos wrapped in neon. Successful? Absolutely. Recognizable compared to its roots? Not even close. | © Ubisoft

Far Cry 6 — Far Cry

Thinking back to how the franchise began, it’s wild to remember that the first *Far Cry* was a semi-realistic tropical shooter focused on open-ended encounters, not a template for quirky villains and map-spam collectibles. Once *Far Cry 3* struck gold with its charismatic antagonist formula, every new entry doubled down on bombastic personalities, crafting systems, skill trees, and copy-paste outpost loops. The worlds grew larger, but they also became predictable – iconic villains front-loaded the marketing while the moment-to-moment identity drifted into comfortable repetition. The series slowly abandoned its experimental side, trading its original tone for a brand rhythm so familiar it became hard to tell new entries apart. The DNA changed so gradually that the transformation felt inevitable, yet unmistakable. | © Ubisoft

Resident Evil Village — Resident Evil

The way this franchise reinvented itself – twice – makes it one of gaming’s most dramatic identity evolutions. The fixed-camera survival horror of the ’90s gave way to *Resident Evil 4’s* revolutionary over-the-shoulder action, which then spiraled into the bombastic, globe-trotting, co-op spectacle of *RE5* and the chaotic excess of *RE6*. Just when the identity seemed buried, *Resident Evil 7* flipped everything by shifting to first-person psychological horror, ditching the series’ long-established structure. Between these pivots, the franchise has been a chameleon: sometimes terrifying, sometimes action-heavy, sometimes unrecognizable. Its ability to reinvent itself is impressive, but each reinvention left behind pieces of what “Resident Evil” once meant. | © Capcom

Cropped Dragon Age The Veilguard — Dragon Age

Story momentum was the backbone of the original trilogy, which is why many longtime fans felt blindsided when *The Veilguard* pivoted away from the threads the series had been weaving for years. Instead of building directly on the myth arc involving Solas and the world’s unraveling, the game poured most of its weight into a cast whose writing often came across as grating or overly meta, pulling attention away from the larger stakes. Dialogue leaned heavily on banter and interpersonal friction, sometimes undercutting the tension that once defined Thedas. The balance shifted so strongly toward gender dynamics that the narrative’s epic scale felt diluted in comparison to earlier entries. | © BioWare

Dying Light MSN — Dying Light

When *Dying Light* first burst onto the scene, it stood out with its gritty parkour, terrifying night mechanics, and survival horror vibe. The sequel, *Dying Light 2*, tried to raise the stakes: the city became more colorful, superhuman movement felt grander, and the infected threat seemed less scary in comparison to the original’s deadly nights. On top of that, the narrative shifted to emphasize player choice, factions, and consequence, somewhat diluting the raw, desperate survival tone of the first game. Though *Dying Light 2* is ambitious and creative, its identity feels pulled in several directions, leaving longtime fans nostalgic for the tense, desperate feel that originally defined the franchise. | © Techland

Castlevania Lords of Shadow — Castlevania

Once a gothic action-platformer defined by whip-cracking Belmonts and monster-filled castles, *Castlevania* veered far off course when Konami rebooted it with *Lords of Shadow*. That entry transformed the franchise into a cinematic action-adventure, ditching its tight 2D roots and labyrinthine Metroidvania sensibilities. Rather than evolving, it morphed into something so grandiose that longtime fans say it barely feels like *Castlevania* anymore – more like a generic fantasy epic. Meanwhile, Konami has let the series mostly sit idle on “collection” releases and crossovers instead of delivering a true new installment, as if the brand identity is more valuable in legacy pieces than actual games. Some core fans quietly blame the company’s shift toward mobile and pachinko over creativity, a decision that left the franchise hollow and nostalgic for its classic soul. | © Konami

Cropped Watch Dogs 2 — Watch Dogs

If there’s one franchise that keeps asking “What do *you* even want me to be?”, it’s *Watch Dogs*. The first open-world game was moody, grounded, and built around one hacker driven by revenge, but *Watch Dogs 2* stomped that vibe with a brightly colored, carefree San Francisco and a collection of meme-ready hackers. Then *Watch Dogs: Legion* fully leaned into chaos: instead of one hero, you recruit practically everyone in London, turning DedSec from a tight-knit hacker cabal into a laughably generic “play-as-anyone” meat grinder. Fans and critics alike complain that with each entry, the only thing consistent is the hacking mechanic, while the tone, story, and characters keep drifting. Rather than refining its identity, the series feels like an idea lab where nothing ever really sticks. | © Ubisoft

Batman: Arkhamverse

Things were on solid ground after *Arkham Knight*, but the moment *Gotham Knights* stepped into the picture, the entire identity of the Arkham legacy wobbled. Instead of the tight, atmospheric detective work the series was known for, players got a loot-driven action RPG with enemies spongier than a car-wash mitt and a combat system that felt like a distant cousin of the real thing. The rich, brooding tone of the Arkham games was replaced by a strangely flat open world and a progression system that made basic brawling feel like homework. Even the four-hero structure struggled to capture what made Batman’s world compelling: the mystery, the dread, the precision. Fans walked in expecting Arkham’s heir and instead found a game wearing the suit but not the spirit. | © Rocksteady / Warner Bros. Games

Tom Clancys Ghost Recon Breakpoint — Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon

Longtime fans of *Ghost Recon* swear it hasn’t been the same since it tried to be everything at once. The tactical, third-person precision of early titles like *Advanced Warfighter* morphed into the open-world RPG sheen of *Wildlands*, and then *Breakpoint* piled on survival mechanics, classes, and loot – to a degree that many argue the game stopped feeling like a true *Ghost Recon*. Community voices lament that the squad-based stealth and planning – the things that made *Ghost Recon* tactical – have been replaced by gear scores, character builds, and “open-world busy work.” Now, reports suggest the next *Ghost Recon* is leaning into first-person mayhem, risking the loss of its strategic, cover-based roots entirely. For a series once defined by careful execution, the name increasingly feels like a shell for whatever Ubisoft is experimenting with next. | © Ubisoft

Cropped Wolfenstein The New Order — Wolfenstein

The once-proud legacy of *Wolfenstein* – all gritty resistance, alternate history, and brutal anti-Nazi justicemaking – hit a rough patch with *Youngblood*. Rather than telling a tight, high-stakes story of rebellion, this spin-off became a cooperative arcade shooter starring BJ Blazkowicz’s daughters. Critics argue it lacks the political punch and emotional weight of previous entries, reducing Nazi-slaying to repetitive, uninspired missions. On top of that, some fans criticize the newer games for injecting RPG-like systems and tonal inconsistency, suggesting that MachineGames may be more focused on gameplay experiments than preserving what made the rebooted *Wolfenstein* so cathartic in the first place. | © MachineGames / Bethesda

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There’s a special kind of heartbreak that comes from watching a beloved video game series drift away from everything that once made it iconic. One day you’re happily mashing buttons, and the next you’re wondering why your favorite franchise suddenly feels like it’s going through an awkward identity crisis. We’ve all had that moment of staring at the screen thinking, “Wait… what happened to you?”

In this article, we take a light-hearted (and slightly exasperated) tour through 15 franchises that somehow wandered off the path. Some chased trends, others reinvented themselves a little too hard, and a few simply forgot who they were entirely. Grab your controller, your nostalgia goggles, and maybe a snack – things are about to get emotionally pixelated.