How Rayman Lost His Legs
Despite some excellent recent games, Rayman isn’t quite what he used to be
The Rayman series is very special to me. Not for any particularly interesting reason, mind you. It’s just a game series that I really loved as a kid and one that I’ve constantly gone back to. The original trilogy in particular comprises three of my favorite games ever made, and each one shaped who I am as a person today.
Make no mistake — it’s totally nostalgia talking. I’m not here to make the case that Rayman 2: The Great Escape is the most perfect experience of all time or anything, although I do believe all three games hold up fantastically. It’s just a personal inclination that all stemmed from Rayman being one of the first video games I ever played. I love the characters, the universe, the music, and pretty much everything except for those damn puzzles in The Longest Shortcut. I want the Funkyboard theme to play at my wedding.
With all that said, the series is an absolute shell of its former self.
I feel like everyone has talked to death about the poor fortune of other series like Banjo-Kazooie, F-Zero, Conker, and Metroid, but when it comes to Rayman, no one is truly aware of how bad things have gotten. It’s not that the brand is dead, per se, but it’s gone in a direction that I feel is possibly worse than mere neglect. This classic platforming series which once reached the same heights as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, if not in popularity then certainly in quality, is now a mobile game franchise.
It’s interesting to look at the overall trajectory of the series; this is not the first time it’s been in a dark place. Rayman Raving Rabbids was a trilogy of games on the Wii that completely overtook the brand for a while, replacing Rayman’s colorful and diverse cast of characters with proto-Minions. It was a sad time, but in hindsight, we really shouldn’t have been too worried — after all, these games clearly had no impact on the development of a real new Rayman, being developed by Ubisoft Paris rather than the usual folks at Ubisoft Montpellier. In the end, we got some pretty fun animated cutscenes out of the deal, so ultimately it wasn’t too bad of a hit. Sure, the brand was stuck being associated with those damn Rabbids for a while, but that all changed in 2010 with…
…the announcement of Rayman Origins, which was to be a return to form! Finally, a new platforming quest set in the fantasy world I used to love. While I had some misgivings about the direction, I was just happy to see Globox and the Teensies again. I’d long assumed they were lost to the annals of gaming obscurity.
My problem with Rayman Origins is with what it could have been. Much like the original Rabbids game, this one was originally meant to be a story-driven adventure with tons of characters and references to the previous games, as if to reward long-time fans for sticking around through the uncertain times. Luckily, unlike Raving Rabbids, this game was not hastily transformed into a Wiimote-waggle fest at the zero hour. It stuck to its guns as a platformer, but with a lot of the promised character and depth stripped away at some point during development. Early promotional material and datamined files suggest a gripping story involving the villain of the original game Mister Dark (yeah, yeah, it’s stupid, but it was important to me dammit) and lots of returning series staples like piranhas, plums, Zombie Chickens, and even the extremely deep cut Eig, a swamp monster from a single level in Rayman 2. It would have been an absolute treat for the lore-obsessed kid I was.
The final product — and I cannot stress this enough — is a fantastic game. It has breezy controls, delightful music, a wonderful art style, and some genuinely atmospheric moments. The game is packed with content and never really gets boring, especially in multiplayer. As a game, it is nothing short of a success and a marvel, and to this day we can see that it’s inspired other games like Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair.
But I just can’t help myself from imagining what it could have been!
Debatably, the best things about Rayman 2 and Rayman 3 are their stories and characters. They are not games with complicated stories at all, and that’s what I love about them. They both have plots that might not give Xenoblade Chronicles a run for its money, but do give the player a sense of urgency and familiarity with the world they’re inhabiting. Rayman 2 probably has one of the most basic plots imaginable — main character has to free his friends from space invaders — but through the combination of worldbuilding and characterization, you end up caring about what happens anyway. You want to see the experience through not just because the game is fun, but because you want to put a stop to Admiral Razorbeard’s tyranny. In Rayman 3, when you’re not slamming Hoodlums in the face and collecting sparkly objects to rack up your level score, you’re trying to get Globox to a doctor or trying to stop André from getting to the Heart of the World. There’s always a premise behind what you’re doing at that moment in time, and no level exists just to be a video game level.
Rayman Origins, for all intents and purposes, is a Mario game. There’s barely any plot to speak of, and what little story it presents is completely brushed aside as soon as it gets slightly interesting. There’s no dialogue, and the ending is just a gag about how lazy the main characters are (pretty spot-on to the original series, to be fair). It left me wanting so much more — what was up with The Magician? Who is Voodoo Mama? Where are Globox’s children — are they all grown up now? The game felt like a ten-year high school reunion where only the former Student Council showed up, and they had all become alcoholics. While it was great to see them again, it just left me missing the old days.
While Origins itself was mostly harmless if personally disappointing, a nasty habit for the series began with it. From here on out, the Rayman series would have no story, focus purely on linear 2D platforming, and feature mostly silent protagonists. While the very first game definitely fit into this box as well, the transition to 3D brought with it a lot of charming depth that I had always assumed was permanent. Never did I expect the future of Rayman to purely consist of sidescrolling time-wasters, but here we are today.
During this period, another game came out — the first Rayman mobile game according to the official Facebook page, though that’s wrong. Rayman Jungle Run was basically a simplified, autorunning version of Origins for smartphones, and it was pretty darn good as far as mobile games go. Since we had just gotten a real Rayman game on consoles, this just felt like a victory lap. However, much like its big brother on consoles, this game set the groundwork for Rayman to fully emigrate to mobile devices, a fate arguably worse than death.
Rayman Legends was the sequel to Origins. It was pretty much better in every way — graphics, music, controls, amount of content, everything — except for the one thing I was worried about: the worldbuilding. This game had even less in the way of story and relied far too much on the plot of the previous game: it’s the same Excuse Plot with the same villain, only copy+pasted four times and given a different name. The characters still lack any semblance of personality, save for the Bubble Dreamer, the only character to speak fully voice-acted English lines in the entire modern era of the series. The problem with the characters of Rayman Legends is that everyone is the exact same, both personality and gameplay-wise. Rayman is a dumb guy who sleeps a lot. Globox is a dumb guy who sleeps a lot. Grand Minimus is a dumb guy who sleeps a lot and allegedly guards the Heart of the World, but we never see him doing anything that Rayman and Globox don’t do. Even the new character, Barbara, seems to be there only to fill in as a token female protagonist — I never really cared for her human design and crooked, smug smile when we have such lovable weirdoes as Rayman and Globox to choose from. Incidentally, Barbara is also a dumb girl who sleeps a lot. Murfy has a playable role in this game, but gone are his quips from Rayman 3 and his adorable whispers from Rayman 2. He’s just another silly doofus like the others.
Legends is fantastic. I’m poured hundreds of hours into it across multiple consoles, and it’s probably in my top three platformers of the decade. But much like Origins, it left me wanting more, and after this game Rayman began its transition into full residence on smartphones.
Rayman Fiesta Run, Rayman Adventures, and Rayman Mini are the only games in the series that have released since 2013. All are shallow 2D platformers with automated running, and all are on mobile devices. The thing is, Rayman Origins’s simple gameplay lent itself perfectly well to this platform — perhaps too well. Why release a big-budget 2D sidescroller on consoles when you can just reuse the assets from Rayman Legends again and slap a game onto the iPhone? Why bother counting on someone to shell out $60 for a single game when you can just pump it full of microtransactions and hope for a whale to come along? I’m surprised they haven’t developed a gacha game where you pay $15 for a chance to win a JPEG of Betilla the Fairy dressed as a cat. The sense of purpose and context I’d felt Origins lacked enough of is now gone completely, replaced with something more comparable to Temple Run than Super Mario Odyssey. There’s just not any investment on Ubisoft’s part anymore; they want the series to continue, but they refuse to give it half the budget of an Assassin’s Creed or even Just Dance game. It’s mind-blowing to think this was once their flagship series.
For those unfamiliar with the series, I would suggest a comparison with Paper Mario. A trilogy of games with exciting stories and lovable characters, replaced with a shallow, stripped-down imitation of what we once had (Rayman 1 doesn’t really fit into this comparison, forgive me). Paper Mario: Color Splash and Rayman Mini are both attempts to keep their respective series alive that have absolutely no idea what made people fall in love with those old games to begin with. The biggest difference is that with Paper Mario, you can tell someone at least tried.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always just wanted another big 3D platformer like the second and third games in the series. When Origins was first revealed, I moaned and complained that it was 2D and eventually realized I was being shortsighted — but now I feel like I was a little hard on myself. Sure, I griped a little excessively, but there’s nothing wrong with having a preference. To this day we still don’t have a true successor to Rayman 3, and the creator of the series — pretty much the only employee at Ubisoft we can count on to put any passion into it — is hard at work on other projects. It’s not looking good right now, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s never truly the end. Remember when Crash and Spyro were relics of gaming’s obsolete past? Remember when they literally took a Sly Cooper fan project and turned it into an actual game? Remember when Banjo-Kazooie was…well, okay, that series is still dead, but at least it’s in Smash I guess. Rayman’s in Smash too, as a spirit. All right, now I’m depressed again.
I hope someday we get a true successor to those now-ancient games. Even the series creator himself doesn’t consider Origins and Legends to be proper sequels, which is surprising since he made them. I’ve always felt like my desires were too specific. When I was thirteen I wanted a 3D platformer with every character from the second and third games, an epic story involving time travel and magic and events from past games, every ability from the original trilogy, David Gasman reprising his role as Rayman, and a team-up with every prior villain that would end in an ultimate showdown at the Heart of the World.
Now I just want to go on an adventure again.
And also get rid of Barbara please. Tily would do her job better.
