User blog:General Khor/Most Wanted, Hero and Woody's Roundup Part 2: What Went Wrong

Hello and welcome to part 2 of my discussion blog about... well, cancelled series. As the title suggests I'll just be discussing Most Wanted and Hero in this blog, and as for Ride or Die, that one will be included in my mid year review blog.

Overview
So as we know, MW and Hero ended on big cliffhangers, and MW especially wasn't financially successful. According to the statistics, MW got just over 5 million views, far less than TC&TF's 15 million and The Freshman's 43 million views. Needless to say, I was perplexed when I first saw that. As for Hero, that one also didn't perform as well as the high grossing romance titles at that time, such as The Royal Romance, High School Story and even The Sophomore. While many players weren't surprised MW was a lost cause, everyone expected Hero Book 2 to be released eventually, only to have this bombshell dropped on the fandom, so for many, the cancellation of Hero dealt a heavier blow.

"Two words: Spot Nick. Once the astronauts went up, children only wanted to play with space toys."

- Stinky Pete, Toy Story 2 So for those who have watched Toy Story 2, you know why Woody's Roundup was cancelled, and because of the big cliffhangers, as much as I wanted to avoid having a heartache, I had to find out why MW and Hero got the Woody's Roundup treatment, so I went through these two series over the past week, and after finishing these series, I wasn't surprised anymore. So why did these two series fail? Let's get into it.

Most Wanted
The first mistake I can identify in this book is that the writers let players choose who to play as, only to kill off the character later. Sure, this is to tell us whoever we choose at the start isn't the real MC, but if you're going to kill off someone this early, it's best not to choose the character we're playing as. I mean, we get to choose between playing as a man or a woman, and both appear in the first chapter, but if someone's going to get killed off that same chapter, why not the other one? They should have let whoever we chose escape alive, but no, whoever we play as is the one who gets killed off.

Also, by killing off someone this early, they've revealed who the Big Bad of the book is, and as you know, having the main villain revealed early on is not a good idea, especially for a mystery book. At that time, John "I'm gonna blow your guts in" Tull walks in, blows two people's guts in (including "ours"), and fans instantly know he's here to wreak havoc in the city. I mean, it's not much of a mystery at all if you already know who the Big Bad is in the first chapter, right? But then again, since this is one of PB's very first projects, I don't blame them for that.

The main problem with this book however, is that it lacks a romance aspect, unlike the other two OG books. Even TC&TF had a romance aspect in all 3 books. According to a recent poll, most wiki players spend the majority of their diamonds on romantic scenes, and I'm sure the same goes for the silent majority out there. Don't get me wrong, I do play Choices stories for the romance, it's just not my top priority. I just spend the majority of my diamonds on collectibles and completing objectives. Like I said in part 1, there are far more romance fans out there, far more than we see on any social media platform (including the wiki). So, where is the romance in this book? The most we get are Dave and Sam having flings with various characters; they're not exactly the protagonists' love interests. And to think most fans are expecting D and S to develop feelings for each other, but sadly we never saw this moment.

One last thing: sure, the writers realised MW is a lost cause, but they can at least get rid of the cliffhanger by rewriting the ending. I mean, just when we thought everything was over, Hayley Rose, aka Tull, gets murdered in custody. If this isn't a cliffhanger, I don't know what is. The best solution I can think of is Sam telling Dave there's another murder in Texas and that he's coming with her. Sure, this still leaves room for a sequel, but it creates more of an open ending like those in ACoR and PtR. I mean, Book 2 could have D working with S's comrades, after all Book 1 has S working with D's comrades, right? Just like how the devs planned to have PtR2 involve a trip around Asia, before they scrapped those plans at the last minute due to PtR's unpopularity.

And before I forget, I'll now announce my rating for this series, and that is...

ELECTRIFYING!!!

That's right, no wonder many fans were furious when PB decided to do away with the series.

Hero
When I first saw this book, it definitely made my eyes pop out. I mean, who doesn't like a DC/Marvel style superhero story? I've never really watched any DC movies, and I don't remember much about the few Marvel movies I've watched (all I remembered was that there were too many explosions, so I didn't watch a lot of those, in fact every time I watch those, I kept covering my eyes), but I'm sure the writers tried to present the story in the style of those movies.

If there's any fault I can identify, it's that while this story has some sort of romance aspect, it isn't developed well enough. I mean, we spend more time with Poppy and Dax than any of the LIs. Sure, there's Grayson, but he often gets sidelined, while Kenji isn't properly introduced until the 2nd third of the story, and it's not until the last third that Eva is properly introduced. Besides, since Grayson is just a normal guy, I bet he isn't very popular, at least not as popular as Kenji.

But other then that, this book is EPIC! The action, the moves, and especially the graphics! In fact, the graphics really remind me of Endless Summer, which as you know was great too. But what really hit me the most is that at the end of the book, we get trapped in some alternate dimension, and the ending still says "Never fear... The Hero will return in Hero, Book 2!" And to think they kept promising to revisit the series up until last year, and the reason they kept giving is lack of resources. Too bad Hero 2 will never see the light of day.

Long story short, my rating for this series is:

ELECTRIFYING!!!

So yeah, this is why fans are more devastated by the cancellation of this series, and to be honest, seeing the ending to this book gave me a real heartache. How could you do this, PB, HOW COULD YOU?!

Conclusion
In conclusion, the cancellation of these two series has left many fans brokenhearted, and nothing has ever hit me harder than this. Nothing is more painful than seeing the big red letters over the "coming soon" picture. Because of this, I think I'll never play these two books again. In fact, I'm gonna go cry after this.

So what do you think of MW and Hero? Let me know in the comments. That's all for today, until then, this is General Khor. The end, and thank you for reading.