Sequel: a literary work, movie, etc., that is complete in itself but continues the narrative of a preceding work.
That's all it is. The best sequels do just that: the Two Towers, The Empire Strikes Back, The Matrix Reloaded, Godfather Part 2, Aliens, and some of the better Marvel comics movies. Others just tack a number on the end and give you more of the same: Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street come to mind. Still others just take the same characters and put them through a whole new story: Die Hard, Rambo, Indiana Jones, Iron Man, and Spider-Man.
Video games are really no different. You can get a a totally new story with the same characters (Just Cause, LittleBigPlanet, Games based on comic book characters). You could get, to a certain extent, more of the same (Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, most fighting games). Finally you could get an actual continuation of a story began in the first game (Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Infamous).
I'm going to warn you again: SPOILERS!
A lot of you have probably already finished Infamous 2, at least once. some of you haven't. Some of you probably haven't even bought the game yet. The game was released June 7, and I'm already seeing articles about how Infamous 3 would play out two weeks later. I actually gave the idea of a sequel to Infamous 2 some thought, and in the time it took me to smoke a cigarette, I came up with something I think is pretty good. We can close the circle.
One game would be a prequel. The opening cutscene would have Kessler facing the beast, getting his ass handed to him, and running off. The first two thirds of the proper game will have Kessler building up his powers until he can eventually make that one-way jump back in time. The final third of the game will be Kessler taking over the First Sons and beginning development of the Ray Sphere. the Epiloge will finish with its detonation in Empire City, where Infamous begins.
Now… (SPOILERS) … prepare to have your mind bent, if not blown completely.
Infamous 4 will be a direct continuation of the EVIL ending of Infamous 2. All the normal humans on Earth are dead, all that's left are the Conduits, the people with the crazy powers. The player will have the ability to create his or her character, hair color and length, eye color (And just for funsies, let's make heterochromia an option), clothes, and of course powers. This will be a nice little innovation on the part of Sucker Punch. How many games give you the option of creating a character for use in the main story? Leave out fighting games and Guitar Hero. This story will have the player teaming up with other conduits to take down the Cole Beast, or taking over for him, whichever, depending on your karma. Cole, however, will not be killed. He'll have a crisis of conscience, and decide, not to repair the damage that's been done, but to UNDO the damage altogether. The only way to accomplish this would be a one-way trip back in time…. to kill his past self before he can get powerful enough to do all that he's done. He makes the trip and meets Kessler. Which starts everything rolling.
Like I said, close the circle.
If either one of these games is to have a Multiplayer, it should be Infamous 4. That's where it would work best. The player would have the ability to use the character he created for the single player in the various multiplayer games. It could include the usual suspects: death match, team death match, capture the flag, etc. as well as the option to play user created and developer created missions as cooperative, or even competitive: one group of players is trying to complete the mission while the other group is trying to stop them.
This could be fun. Let me know what you think.