Topic: Ignore the Leaks: How Would You Like To See Star Fox Revived?

Star Fox: Assault 2, end of.
I'll take some co-op to go with it, some sweet online and local multiplayer (it's practically Battle Field-lite or Battle Front 2 already), throw in some of the Command critters, done. Just make sure to bring back the Jetpack and Fireburst Pod!

Assault truly felt like the way forward for the franchise. I liked Command's ridiculous stories, and the ROB mission from Zero was decent fun, but it always goes back to Assault for me. Brisk campaign, fantastic multiplayer suite, and the right balance between gravitas and silliness in the story. More Assault, please and thank you!

I loved Starfox on Super Nintendo and N64 and liked Star Fox Assault on Gamecube but don't remember enjoying the wii u games. I generally love 3D space shooters though so just hoping for a really great game using the power of the Switch 2. I like a first person viewpoint or a very close to ship viewpoint that just scrapes into being third person so I hope those viewpoints are an option.

Random story idea: no, don't bring Andross back. He's dead for real, not just in body but also in plans- none of the new villains in the game are people created by him or acting on his objectives. However, acknowledge the importance of Andross to the series, by having his tech be a macguffin. Basically, whoever the villains are, they are trying to find or gather up surviving tech or research notes or the like that survived from Andross' work, as a means to achieve power and fulfill their own goals. Which, in addition to serving story purposes, would also give you an excuse for some fan service boss fights, by having "salvaged/rebuilt" enemies based on ones from earlier games.

… somehow Andross returned…

More seriously:

• full anime style. Make it look like it’s a 2d, super stylised, 80’s anime in action.
• the first Command ending is cannon (Krystal leaves Fox and he now lives in a depressing motel on Corneria).
• new game + is an alternate scenario where you play from the perspective of Star Wolf.
• rouge-like runner mode. Any level you unlock in the campaign can be turned endless with random “events” (like sometimes Star Wolf turn up, sometimes you get a random team mate to help, sometimes an enemy spaceship attacks from orbit etc.). Basically it would work like a randomiser.

That would make it viable for streaming and repeated replays. They could even routinely add extra events for it (like all these rouge lites do).

Like I said on a news story, let Bandai Namco expand the concept of Star Fox: Assault, make it as open-ended between planets like 64 or Command. If possible, bring back the Pacific Philharmonia Tokyo (Tokyo New City Orchestra at time of the game's release) for the music.

Graphically, I'm not sure how I'd like to see it, though.

Classic Star Fox already got a "new" game for the Switch generation in the form of Star Fox 2 for SNES NSO so it would be neat to have a new game in the Adventures or Assault style next.

How similar is the general gameplay of Star Fox to the Star Dream fight from Kirby: Planet Robobot? From what I can glean, they both seem to be on-rails aerial shooters. I really liked the Star Dream fight, and if Star Fox is close to that, I may be interested in a new game.

@Grumblevolcano this line of logic I don't agree with. To me it's like saying that we don't need a new F-Zero because we have Zero Racers

If I had to guess, it's because they think the traditional on-rails gameplay is fairly narrow and they don't know HOW to expand on it (and especially in a way they think will sell). Retrofitting Dinosaur Planet into Star Fox Adventures probably didn't help much either, that may be why they started with more land-based gameplay.

I mean I get why some people are sick of open world, but there's a reason you see so many open world games now. It just plain sells because there's an inherent appeal to open 3D exploration. If you have a fantasy world with exotic locations and a perceived sense of a large world, there's a natural desire to explore it at your leisure, especially on a home console where you're liable to spend hours engaging with said world.

There are some genres where open world won't really work (Prime 4 is a good example, it's extremely difficult if not completely impossible to have an open world Metroidvania), but there's also a lot of genres that can benefit from having large open overworlds. Space flight sims are one of them, and the traditional on-rails shooting can still exist in the open world in the form of a contained mission that you can access through the open world. So I don't really see the harm in Star Fox going open world and I think it is just the thing for Star Fox to see more success (and Nintendo is definitely concerned about that, since no Star Fox game with the exception of the revived Star Fox 2 has cracked 1 million). I really don't see a better chance of success here outside of going open world, the on-rails shooter genre is just too niche and I suspect further classic style on-rails shooters will probably only do marginally better than the sub-1 million sellers of previous entries.

I mean, they did know how to expand. There is a beloved Star Fox follow up after the 90s, that actually knew how to make a rail shooter an exciting experience and could add other elements that are also good, including a fondly remembered online multiplayer mode. It's arguably the most requested Nintendo game for Nintendo to bring back from that system.

The problem is it became a Kid Icarus game instead :V

@Bolt_Strike What a soulless mindset towards video games and the saddest part is it isn't even true. Players don't actually want scroll breaks between core gameplay.

@gamering They sure want to wander around exploring open worlds more than they want to mindlessly autoscroll through a linear path shooting stuff. There are open world games that have sold more than the entire Star Fox series combined.

Honestly, I just don't think Nintendo would put the budget or quality for that to be a winning formula, especially since Ubisoft basically already did this and no one really cared.

And if Nintendo wants to pander to newer audiences with Star Fox, I kinda wonder if there's not a rogue-like answer to this. Which I think would just be a better fit to what people like about Star Fox in the first place, y'know a focus on replayability.

Starlink was held back by a few things like the dying TTL format (and the higher price that came with it) and generic gameplay and environment outside of the TTL. And the vast majority of people that did buy it bought the Switch version, implying that there is an audience for a Star Fox game in this style. So I think it's worth another shot, except this time developed by a Nintendo studio of some kind instead of Ubisoft (although they can probably poach a few Starlink devs but in general it should probably be developed either by EPD or a "second party" partner), marketed as being the Star Fox IP instead of just a new third party IP starring some randos with a Star Fox crossover DLC stapled on, and sold at a standard $70 price instead of having to pay extra to use toys no one wanted to have to operate the game. I think it's worth taking the risk on this, it should be a guaranteed million seller with a legit chance to dethrone 64 as the best selling game in the series, whereas if they do another traditional game it'll probably be another niche seller that probably only hits around the 500,000-2 mil range.

I just don't trust that direction for it. If Starlink had succeeded or if Star Fox had a more consistent quality in the past 25 years or if they didn't just blow it for Metroid Prime in that direction or if I just in general trusted Nintendo to do this idea correctly, sure. But none of those things are true so...

Also the Mario movie thing is so random that I'm convinced this series will live as long as Shigeru Miyamoto is alive, so they can just do it later anyway. If Star Fox Zero didn't kill the series, nothing will.

You're being very harsh on Nintendo here and weighing factors that have nothing to do with this prospective game's success. Prime 4 especially has nothing to do with this, as it's a different genre that outright contradicts open world game design and wasn't even a full open world game. I also see no reason not to trust Nintendo on this, as the games that have gone full open world have generally done well critically and/or financially.

I mean, regardless, Nintendo is probably not just gonna decide to do that just because the trends point that way. They have regularly avoided trends when they can, often to a fault. Like right now outside of Pokemon, Nintendo has been seemingly, quietly leaving the mobile space, probably because they only entered it out of necessity. I just don't see that direction being something people in the company want. I think Starlink's failure would be a massive red flag for it, and it kinda doesn't matter if there's justifications why it would be different. They don't want to spend dramatically more money than usual for Star Fox when the last example of a game with Star Fox did exactly that, from the company that makes open world games, and it still failed.

I also just feel like the series needs actual momentum. I look at stuff like Monster Hunter and From Soft games and that feels like the right direction for how to get your niche gaming series to open world. Like you build an actual audience by actually being reliably good at a thing other major gaming companies aren't doing, and then make more of them that fit that niche really well until you're popular enough that it makes sense to make an open world game. Just deciding "Star Fox is a big franchise now" doesn't generally work. It's also why I think they should be making budget titles, because 40 dollars is an infinitely easier ask for a Star Fox game. (which is basically what Zero could've been had they not attached Guard to it in the retail release for some dumb reason)

@kkslider5552000 Nintendo neither follows nor avoids trends, they just go with what's fun and profitable. The reason Nintendo left the mobile space was because the mobile market made it impossible to make a game like that, the only way to succeed in mobile is with predatory microtransactions. Open world is not the same, open world can make the game more fun and it's far easier to succeed with an open world game without being scummy, hence they've been making a lot more open world games recently.

Given Star Fox's reputation, sales, and spotty development history, I'm not sure there's enough of an audience to wait for this niche to grow. I'm not sure it ever will if they stick to their niche. The modern console market has sort of a "go big or go home" dynamic to it and I don't think an on-rails shooter has as much of an audience now as it did in 1997. If they make another one, it may not make enough to justify a sequel. The series needs the ambition now, not some unknown point in the future. I trust an ambitious open world Star Fox to succeed a lot more than I trust a traditional on-rails Star Fox at this point.

Once again, while Starlink was a failure for Ubisoft, I can't see Nintendo not noting that the game sold by far the best on the Switch. That's not enough in its own right to sell Nintendo on "space sandbox", but I suspect its good enough to assuage their fears if other factors incline them towards it. And since Nintendo has had much more success incorporating sandbox elements in their games than not. . .

I mean, honestly for any arguments to be had, I think the basic issue is that they're gonna try to convince people to pay 70 dollars for a series with at best, one kinda sorta maybe great game after the 90s. This is what I'd call "a choice".

I hope regardless of the direction, we get a Pokopia level surprise critical darling. I mean, making the cute Nintendo series a comfy, Minecraft-y game is not any less "eyerollingly obvious" than making Star Fox an open world game, outside of the obvious fact that Pokemon is a much easier sell for more than 1/30 of Nintendo fans.

But if somehow they do make a non-open world Star Fox that's both great and successful, I will probably cheer like Sean Gunn at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Regardless of anything, Star Fox 64 is one of my all time favorite games, and I loved the Rogue Squadron series and I mostly love Crimson Skies, so I'd kill for a high quality game in roughly this sort of style. A new Star Fox game, in the style of these, at a consistent high quality, deserves endless success the same way Metroid Dread and Kirby Air Riders does.