Spiritual successor

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A spiritual successor, sometimes called a spiritual sequel, is a successor to a work of fiction that, instead of being a standard sequel, only shares genres, themes, styles, and (often) creators with the previous work, without directly continuing a story within the same fictional universe. While this term can apply to almost any media, it has most commonly been used with video games.

[edit] Reasons for creating a spiritual successor

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Creative teams, due to the current nature of the publisher/developer system inherent in almost all computer games, as well as the continual purchase and takeovers (which sell the entire developer including its copyrights and trademarks) by conglomerate corporations, often fail to retain the copyright and trademark rights of their creations. This often makes attempts to create sequels for a product impossible for various reasons, such as the "core" of the studio being fired or replaced after completing a project while the parent company retains control of the copyrights and trademarks. A good example of this strategy is Electronic Arts, which has fired many studios while keeping their copyrights and trademarks, such as Bullfrog Productions, Origin Systems and Westwood Studios.

To get around this, creative teams will make a product that resembles the original game in some way, without copying or mentioning the original directly.

Other times, a spiritual successor is created when the original products were either poor commercial sellers and/or forgotten by the people that would purchase the product. By abandoning the original content's name (and perhaps its baggage as a forgotten product), the spiritual sequel can be appreciated by fresh eyes.

[edit] Examples of spiritual successors

Ikaruga is the spiritual successor to Treasure's Radiant Silvergun. ^[1]
Fallout was originally designed as a sequel to Wasteland, but it became a stand-alone game after the developers failed to acquire the Wasteland copyright and trademarks from Electronic Arts.^[2] Fallout itself nearly received a spiritual successor in the form an untitled game by Troika, dubbed "Mystary!" by fans.^[3]
BioShock has been referred to by its developers as the spiritual successor to System Shock 2.^[4]
Supreme Commander is considered the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation.^[5]^[6]^[7]
Shadow of the Colossus was mentioned by Executive Producer Fumito Ueda as a spiritual successor to his company's sleeper hit Ico ^[8] and later explained also as a prequel, taking place in the same world an unspecified time before Ico^[9].
Hellgate: London has been referred to by its developers the spiritual successor to Diablo II.^[10]
Perfect Dark and TimeSplitters are often considered to be the spiritual successors to GoldenEye 007.^[11]^[12]^[13]
Valve's Portal was developed by the creators of the DigiPen project Narbacular Drop and has been officially stated as its spiritual successor.^{[citation needed]}
The film Pan's Labyrinth is considered by director Guillermo del Toro a spiritual sequel to The Devil's Backbone, an idea he voiced in the DVD commentary for the film using the terms "sister story" and "companion piece" (del Toro never uses the term "spiritual sequel" in the commentary, instead opting for more generic and commonly used synonyms).
Assassin's Creed, is referred to by some critics to be a spiritual sequel to the Prince of Persia series.
Fierce Creatures is a follow up to the comedy film A Fish Called Wanda featuring the same cast and creative team, but entirely different characters.^[14]
The film Mirrormask was conceived by the Jim Henson Company and director Dave McKean as spiritual successor to the company's previous fantasy films Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.^[15]
The Monolith videogame series Xenosaga is the spiritual successor^[16] to the Square game Xenogears; each is the product of the same creative minds. Xenogears was initially projected as the fifth episode in the Xenosaga series, but plans for this were effectively cut short when the series ended prematurely at episode III. As things presently stand, there exists no direct relation between Xenogears and the Xenosaga series.