Top of mind for me after reading this article is that Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet should just be called The Heretic Prophet, and Horizon: Zero Dawn should have just been called Zero Dawn.

  • ampersandrew@lemmy.worldOP
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    14 days ago

    Look, it wouldn’t have been a huge improvement to just call it Zero Dawn, but at least you get past the gore of the unnecessary colon they talk about in the article. All three of the words in Horizon: Zero Dawn probably have a high hit rate if you’re searching for titles on Steam, but getting rid of the colon would still have made it a more interesting title.

    I did pull those as examples of bad title trends called out in the article, but the likes of Sony can muscle past problems with a bad title by throwing money at it, and if you’re just one of a few dozen indies in the middle of a Keighley showcase, you don’t have that luxury.

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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      14 days ago

      I don’t think it would be an improvement for the name to call it Zero Dawn. Just like all Zelda games are Legend of Zelda. It wouldn’t have changed anything about the success of the game or being memorable. If anything, it was a good idea, so they can name a future game in the series as Horizon (like Legend of Zelda) with a subtitle as the main title for the game.

      Or do you want games be named as Zero Dawn 1, Zero Dawn 2, Zero Dawn 3? Is that more memorable?

      • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net
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        14 days ago

        Which wouldn’t even make sense considering “Zero Dawn” in context of the Horizon series is that it is a specific canonical event that is only discussed in the second game. The first game didn’t have any notion of the Zero Dawn event afaik.

        Ignore everything I’m an idiot who forgot which title came first.