What Makes A True Gaming Trilogy?

A trilogy of video games means three of them, right? Trilogy comes from the Greek treis or Latin tres for ‘three’, and the Sanskrit ‘logy’ for ‘video games’. But is that right? Not the etymology, which I assure you is cast iron, but the very idea. A recent discussion at TheGamer has spurred me into thinking of what actually makes a trilogy, and whether a series like Baldur’s Gate counts. Just three games under the same banner doesn’t seem to be it, but how exactly do you define it?

I took issue with the Baldur’s Gate suggestion. Sure, there are three of them, and each one is very good, but do they truly represent a trilogy? The first two are so different from the third – different era, different developer, different audience, different gameplay, different characters. Baldur’s Gate 3 is, at best, a legasequel, and even then it has so little connection to the duology that came before it I’m not sure it counts.

Why Is Mass Effect A Trilogy If Dragon Age Isn’t?

Consider Star Wars. It has nine mainline movies, but these are branched into three distinct trilogies. Each trio of movies shares a core narrative that is built, grappled with, and resolved over the course of the trilogy, each three were made in the same era of filmmaking with the same general presentational style (even allowing for the wildly different visions of JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson in the latest trilogy), and feature the same cast throughout – a cast that generally only makes fleeting appearances in the other trilogies. Baldur’s Gate feels more like saying The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens are a trilogy.

But just being produced together is not enough. I would posit that Mass Effect, which follows Shepard and their crew through the emergence, imminent arrival, and war with the Reapers, is a clear trilogy. The weaker ending (I like it more than most) makes it fight for its place as number one, but it is undoubtedly a great trilogy. One cohesive, if sprawling, story told over three entries. But Mass Effect’s cousin, Dragon Age, is not a trilogy. There are three games, they each follow chronologically, but feel too much like standalone experiences to be a true trilogy in my eyes.

The arrival of The Veilguard has nothing to do with this. In fact, despite Inquisition and The Veilguard suffering in terms of closeness due to the decade-long gap and BioWare clearout, the fact that both are concerned with Solas’ plan makes The Veilguard appear to be the first true Dragon Age sequel. A third game focused either on Solas or some direct outcome of his unleashing the gods might count as a trilogy, but there’s a lot of maybes in that equation.

Narrative And Vibes Make A Trilogy

Halo is the best example of this contrast. There are many Halo games, and yet the first three games are, in my eyes, a true trilogy. We meet our heroic Master Chief and guide him through a storyline that, despite exciting endings to each saga, feels like one narrative that spans the trio of games. The fact Halo and Master Chief continued afterwards is largely irrelevant because those first three feel like a complete experience.

However, closure does matter. Assassin’s Creed, for all its games, has just one true trilogy, despite clusters of pretenders – 2, Brotherhood, and Revelations, which all deal with the best character the series has ever created (dare I say, the best character Ubisoft has ever created): Ezio Auditore. Narrative and closure can even overcome differences in gameplay approaches. Batman: Arkham Asylum is a very different game to City and Knight (more different than many remember) yet is clearly a trilogy because of how it carries us through the story.

Likewise, it feels difficult to judge games like The Last of Us. Right now, the two entries are clearly linked – in TLOU, we play as Joel alongside Ellie, then in TLOU2, we play as Ellie and Joel’s killer, Abby. For TLOU3 to be a true trilogy, it would need to continue Abby’s story (a good idea) or continue Ellie’s story (a… less good idea). If it were to build around Lev (a great idea), it might make for a stronger game, but I think it would be less of a trilogy by nature of the fact the story would lose its continued focus. What does Joel transporting Ellie across the country have to do with Lev?

But narrative is not everything. For a question so inconsequential, it often comes down to vibes. I would say Crash Bandicoot’s first three games comprise a trilogy. They were made close together by the same core team, and offer similar yet evolving level design styles through the experience. No subsequent Crash games can be grouped in this way, and I would even be reluctant to count Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, designed to skip over all the other games and continue the series in the same tone, in a quadrilogy with the originals.

Spyro, immensely similar to Crash, also with a neat three games before the series made some less wise moves, feels a little less like a trilogy. Maybe it’s because Spyro goes to different realms and so the cast gets broader, maybe it’s because his levels are more specifically thematic than Crash’s and therefore it’s harder to see the link between games, maybe it’s because Spyro has different goals in each game unlike Crash’s linear focus. Maybe it’s all of these things, or none. Whatever it is, I still count the first three Spyro games as an experience to be enjoyed together, and prefer that experience by a marsupial’s hair to Crash, but I feel Crash is more of a true trilogy.

As ever with these sorts of opinions, it matters as much as you want it to matter. But it seems to me like in order for three games to be a trilogy, they need to be more than just three games in the same series. As for what else that ‘more’ is, clearly, I couldn’t tell you.