While not every game series can continue forever, there are plenty of spiritual successor games that carry their torches into future generations.
Of those titles, these are the seven spiritual successors that did right by their inspirations.
BioShock
BioShock is heralded as one of the greatest games of all time, but one of its greatest achievements may be the way it carried on the legacy of the System Shock franchise.
An ambitious and revolutionary horror series, System Shock blended a cyberpunk aesthetic with themes of isolation and life after death.
Its gameplay mixed the first-person, stealth and horror genres masterfully; its villain Shodan was an iconic and intimidating figure; and although it never achieved the popularity of other first-person shooters of its time, it held a fond place in many a PC gamer’s memories.
Unfortunately, it only made it to a second entry before its developer, Looking Glass Studios, closed down in 2000.
Enter BioShock in 2007. Taking many of the same ideas and concepts from System Shock and refining them into something even better, it made good on the ambition of the System Shock franchise in ways fans always hoped the series could have.
Its varied, customizable gameplay felt like the natural progression System Shock would have seen with more time, and Andrew Ryan’s fully realized Rand-ian ambitions under the sea matched the scope and dark wonder of Shodan’s ruthless extermination of biological life on a space station.
It was the pinnacle fans always wanted to see the series reach, and its success was enough to make System Shock fans feel like the series they loved had been carried on in the best way possible.
