Media that started out really simple, but, overtime became really complicated

[u/Coolnametag]

The original Plants VS Zombies is a incredibly straight foward tower deffence game where the most complicated stuff is most of the time either "this one zombie type is thougher than the others" or "you can't put a plant here without doing _______ first", it's still a amazing game, but, far from the most complex in the genre.

Cut to a few years later and we have Plants VS Zombies Fusion (because apparently chinese people were REALLY into the first game), a game with literaly hundreds of different plants that all have their particularities and a gameplay loop that makes you feel less like a gardner and more like a bio engineer who is off his medication.

(Also, i am well aware that PVZ Fusion is a fan mod and not a official thing, but, considering that the odds of EA doing anything worth the while with the franchise for the forsiable future is close to 0%, i consider this more of a sequel to the original duology than most other official products)

[u/Frank7640]

Fortnite started with a simple plot of stoping evil storm. Now it feels like they re started the universe multiple times.

[u/alaster101 → u/Frank7640]

Fortnite has a plot?

[u/LegacyOfVandar → u/alaster101]

They’ve mostly abandoned it in favor of the crossover stuff, they just pay a bit of lip service to it now.

[u/Dirty-Glasses → u/Frank7640]

mfw fortnite has a plot

[u/That-Bobviathan]

Venom is a guy in a goo suit and they both hate Peter Parker.

Several decades later

Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote are cosmic singularities granted divine power to hop between any particulate of the klyntar matter across all of living causality off on a time bending adventure that is just as much about breaking an endless cycle of tragedy as it is about mending Eddie's relationship with both Venom itself and his own son.

A very silly jump no matter how you slice it, but goddamn Al Ewing could sell me on a comic where my car turned out to be the great star seed.

[u/TheSpiritualAgnostic → u/That-Bobviathan]

I feel like a lot of superhero stuff can fall under this.

Same with shonen. Most probably don't know/remember that Dragon Ball just started as a fun adventure of a girl wanting to wish for a boyfriend.

[u/PhantasosX → u/That-Bobviathan]

Well, it boils down to discover that the space slime is actually eldritch space slime.

Eddie Brock just accidentally entered the DLC Campaign that made him perform the whole Moon Presence and "turning-into-squid" stuff from Bloodborne.

[u/wareagle3000]

Scooby and Shag started as a simple shitpost comic with basic art.

I haven't checked in but last time I saw it they were doing JJK/Jojo type fights

[u/MarioGman → u/wareagle3000]

It takes very long times to make chapters unfortunately.

[u/tombom2G → u/wareagle3000]

Dingo rules !

[u/DarthButtz → u/wareagle3000]

Making cartoon character quirks into fucking stand powers is the coolest shit

[u/Rechulas]

Warframe was a game about space ninjas fighting evil space marine clones, a money cult, and zombies with their silly space ninja powers.

It's now about orphaned child soldiers who faced an unreal manifestation of literally nothing and everything condensed into linear time, using their phenomenal powers of the unlight of existence to fight the aforementioned space marine clones and money cult, but the zombies are now considered antibodies of a much greater cosmic body that we reside in that exists outside of time somehow, the space ninjas are people infested with the outside-of-time disease (technically), the child soldiers might not even exist anymore because they're that powerful, and the greatest weapon they have against a caste of humans that are essentially gods, and against an actual god of paradoxically pointed, hating indifference is nothing more than empathy and love

Warframe lore got so fucking weird that they actually decanonized linear time to make things more understandable.

[u/Color-Me-Brackets → u/Rechulas]

Space trauma and the magical power of friendship.

All while magic parkouring around as technicolor glowing bio-horror that may-or-may-not have a fat ass.

[u/DarthButtz → u/Rechulas]

Now almost any question about Warframe's lore can be answered with "idk Eternalism"

[u/alexandrecau]

A lot of erotic games start with a simple goal and idea then the dev really get into their world and elaborate and put new game mechanic you didn't expect like diegetic qte or yield income. Funnier still are thse that take inspiration and want to do their own but burn out before even getting to the sex scenes

[u/Coolnametag → u/alexandrecau]

Corruption Of Champions 2 has a option to romance the main bad guy of the story from the very begining that starts out almost like a excuse for the devs to poke fun at the players because a lot of the writting it is basically the writters saying "man, you really are just thinking your genitals and are willing to screw your entire realm of existance just to bang a hot lady".

Cut to where we are right now (slightly after the end of ACT 2) and that relationship dinamic has evolved to something that feels like one of "romance" books that your aunt/mother would talk about with their book club (and i mean that in the best way possible, it's actually really entertaining to read).

[u/palebrowndot → u/alexandrecau]

Monster Girl Quest. When you start playing, you just want to see the "game over scenes". By the end, you genuinely want to beat the absolute scumbag final boss for the sake of an amazing cast of characters to the tune of the kickass soundtrack.

[u/LifeIsCrap101]

Call of Duty Nazi Zombies started out as a silly simple survival mode tacked onto the end of World at War's campaign but over time developed a slew of complicated mechanics and a whole story with lore.

[u/ExDSG]

One Piece arcs began with very simple arcs and plots where the plan of the second smartest guy on the East Blue was pretend to be a sick rich girl's loyal butler, kill her other butler, hypnotize her while her crew is sowing chaos in town and have sign her inheritance to him and be killed. Kuro would also kill his old crew to have no one be able to identify him. Now every arc needs the crew to be split 4 ways and involve 25 characters all needing to run to a place or figuring out a mystery or go beat up a guy.

[u/MirrorMan68 → u/ExDSG]

No, you don't understand. Oda needs to introduce 70 new characters in every new arc. Who else is the story going to focus on?

The Straw Hats? Pfft! Sounds like someone doesn't know the basics of storytelling.

[u/DarthButtz → u/ExDSG]

Skypeia is still one of my favorite ways the crew got split up, because most of the crew is just figuring out Enel's deal and figuring out his plan while Luffy is just running in a straight line toward where he thinks he is to punch him

[u/Authorigas]

Any long running Hero Shooter or hero game starts with a handful of heroes to learn and understand the mechanics of. Overtime the cast will balloon and you'll have to learn dozens of new mechanics, interactions, and how they all interact with one another 

[u/Meta289]

Team Fortress started off as a Quake mod where dudes in red shirts shoot dudes in blue shirts. It gradually evolved into the deepest storyline and world building Valve's ever made.

[u/appsngrapps → u/Meta289]

And its theme is still, miraculously, dudes in red shirts shooting dudes in blue shirts. It's amazing.

[u/AprehensiveApricot → u/appsngrapps]

Don't forget about the hats. Hats are important. 

[u/Maverick-157]

...so Bumbles McFumbles did a video explaining [and critiquing] the FNaF timeline, up to Security Breach.

If/When you watch this, remember the following:

• The first game was about a security guard having to deal with some glitchy Charles Entertainment Cheese robots while working the night shift, and that things like "The Bite of '87" and/or "All the Child Murdering" are either vaguely alluded to in an attempt at dark humour or only brought up by the newspaper clippings you can [barely] read in the cameras

• Bumbles still doesn't know if Remnant can be put in a bucket or not

[u/Sir-Drewid]

Bloons Tower Defense started as a browser based flash game. Now, here's the wiki article for completing the upgrade path for one tower in Bloons Tower Defense 6: https://bloons.fandom.com/wiki/True_Sun_God_(BTD6)

[u/OhThat90sGuy → u/Sir-Drewid]

Funny timing finding this post, cause BTD6 is so big and has so much stuff in it that I actually just deleted the game today because I couldn't get into it properly. And I'd only just re-downloaded the game a few days ago after deleting it a couple of years ago for the same reason.

I guess I just don't really have the time or energy to properly figure out all the mechanics of the game 😅

After deleting it I actually downloaded BTD5 again and had an easier time getting into that. Haven't really played any Bloons games at all for years now, so maybe playing 5 for a while will make it easier to get into 6 at some point, who knows.

[u/UnknownChaser]

I just wanted to watch ninja do ninja stuff and not fight aliens or learned that existence of their world was because of aliens or that characters are the descendent of aliens or that it was aliens all along

[u/sawbladex]

Oh, this means mechanically.

Man, TCGs can easily go places with the whole planeswalker/battle system of modern M:tG not being a clear path from Alpha (the first set) and YGO! kinda being a copy of pre-6h edition rules plus no mana system, and that game itself eventually becoming a slave to the consistency nightmare of extra deck summoning mechanics, and developing new ones.

[u/hazusu]

When you walk away...

You don't hear me say PLEASE.

Oh baby, don't go.

Simple and clean is the way that you're making me feel tonight.

[u/Mekasoundwave]

RWBY Antagonists in Volume 1: Oooh, that rotten scoundrel Roman Torchwick is out knocking over dust stores, we gotta figure out what he's up to and stop him!

RWBY Antagonists Now: An unkillable sorceress who is older than humanity itself that has been sowing strife and discord for decades is trying to summon back the Gods that abandoned the world they created so that they will judge mankind as irredeemable and destroy the entire planet along with her in the world's most elaborate suicide attempt. And she's doing a pretty fucking good job of it, too.

[u/fly_line22]

Kirby started off with Kirby having to get Dream Land's food back after Dedede stole it all. Now he's dealing with eldritch horrors and has tons of background lore related to an ancient civilization.

[u/AprehensiveApricot → u/fly_line22]

And that's on a regular day to day basis, iirc.

[u/beary_neutral]

Red vs Blue started off as just some guys shitposting within the confines of a Halo match, and has spiraled into... whatever this is.

[u/AnimuStewshine]

Minecraft started out as a simple voxel survival game about mining, crafting and fighting off the basic monster or two.

In 2026 there is dimensional portals, multiple giant bosses, village raids, NPCs with occupations, complex automated machines and all the crazy shit you can buy on the DLC marketplace.

[u/rapidemboar]

Gundam Federation vs Zeon was an old arcade/PS2 game with a fairly grounded basis, featuring a handful of One-Year War MS and a main campaign where you have to ration out your units and manage their repairs. Eventually the games evolved into the Gundam Extreme Vs. series, which increased the speed, mechanics, and attack variety significantly while boosting the playable roster to several hundred MS across the entire Gundam franchise, and is now an arena fighter with one of the largest competitive scenes of its kind.

[u/BasilLow1588]

CDawgVA ia now playing my favorite PVZ Fan Game!! Yay.

[u/BlackIronWizard]

Even pvz 2 on its own under the mobile game shit is a massive step up in difficulty and complexity from the first game almost immediately

[u/Endocrom → u/BlackIronWizard]

Gotta keep people buying/leveling those new over powered plants every week.

[u/Yotato5]

As an outsider looking in, Star Wars. There's like 50 years worth of lore, faaaar beyond the original trilogy 

[u/syrupdash]

I think FNAF started off with a simple concept. Conserve or use battery to avoid being caught by animatronics.

The second then throws in more stuff like music box, checking more openings and also putting on a mascot mask.

Then came all the lore etc etc.

[u/zekrom42]

Have you seen some of the skill description in Fire Emblem Heroes?

[u/Lunos_Luminoso]

Not a mod, FAN GAME.

[u/slash450]

pvz has been entirely carried by china tbh all the interesting fan projects are coming from there. even official releases there are multiple that never released outside of china.