Summary
If you want to make a media franchise, you have to make it recognizable. There are many ways to do that, but the easiest is usually to make a logo that is instantly identifiable, a design that has a life all of its own independent of but also in support of the game it represents. A difficult balancing act.
Which is why as time goes on, plenty of video game logos have gotten redesigned. Some change to fit more with the times, other get a drastic redesign to fit how the series it comes from is now. Regardless, changing a logo is a big deal, and these are some of the most notable games to do so.
Ratchet and Clank very quickly became one of Sony’s major mascots after the launch of the original game back in 2002. They took the more traditional platformers of the period and added some extra combat twists to the mix, with a focus on the absurdity of its weapons.
Its original logo remained mostly untouched until Rift Apart. It was playful, pulling colour of its deuteragonists and aspects of their characters, such as Ratchet’s wrench and CLank’s bolts. Rift Apart kept the colours, but overall simplified the design, removing the more playful elements.
Kingdom Hearts has always been personified by its obscenity. It has always been an over-the-top series, and that has never slowed down. If anything, it has become even more prevalent as the series has progressed. Its logo has remained stalwart throughout all of that as well.
That is, until the latest entry. While the original logo feels very contemporary to when it was made, extended letters and sharp flourishes like graffiti, Kingdom Hearts 4 is considerably toned down. The sharpness remains, but is more clean. The over-exaggeration is gone in favour of something more legible, if somewhat less stylish.
When God of War began, it was a series made torival other character action gamesof the time, from Devil May Cry to Ninja Gaiden. It filled a niche all of its own with its bloody rendition of Greek myth, though the logo has taken a dramatic shift in Kratos' efforts to mellow out.
In many regards, the logo remains similar. Starting with the 2018 entry though, it became comprised of more hard lines and Nordic inscriptions. It feels more harshly carved and colder. Compare this to the original logo and its burning orange and more sharp edges. They both represent Kratos, but at very different points of life.
First-person shooters were not the first video games by any means, but they were pioneers in terms of how 3D spaces were represented in gaming. Halo was a massive push forward for this, making a highly stylized world and for the time brand new methods of controlling a character in a 3D environment of this scale.
The logo had an alien nature to it initially. It felt old and abrasive, yet technologically advanced in an often contrasting way. There was an appeal to it. Beginning with Halo Reach, the logo became more streamlined, smoothing down the rough edges into something more approachable.
Grand Theft Auto, despite new games being few and far between, is one of the biggest series in all of gaming. Every entry is a guaranteed success no matter the quality. And while the style is it known for all stems from Grand Theft Auto 3, it was a drastically different beast in the period before that.
Grand theft auto, the logo all in lowercase and accentuated by the strong outlining all around it had a completely different look in its earlier days. It had a strong orange-yellow gradient, all in uppercase, and with a font that feels more akin to that of a comic book. Flamboyant, compared to the more neutral modern logo that can pair with any of its more stylish subheadings.
Final Fantasy is a fun series because you may hop in at any point that you want. The series has a few shared elements to keep the games bound together, but they overall are entirely independent. This extends to the logo for each and every game as well.
As it stands, the primary font used for ‘Final Fantasy’ itself has undergone few changes since being standardised. Every single game in the series gets unique art to accompany each game though, making the logocustom for each and every entryin the vast series.
Realistically speaking, the Resident Evil series has undergone a few different logo stylings, though the most well-known of them is that from Resident Evil 4. It was thin and sharp, like the logo itself was liable to mutate. A similar style was used for Resident Evil 0.
This became the predominant logo until Resident Evil 7. Now, the series stepped away from the sharp edges to impactful, hard-edged letters, crumbling away. In 7 and 8, the numbers were built into the logo itself, while for the remake series the ‘R’ and ‘E’ letters became highlighted to symbolise their status.
Following on from the original Deus Ex games, the series went on hiatus until 2011 with the release of Deus Ex Human Revolution. The Deus Ex games featurea cyberpunk futurewhere technology is as inseparable from life as breathing, built into every part of us, and the logos represent that.
As times moves in reality, however, so too does our idea of how the future will look. The original Deus Ex uses an almost alien font, obscure forms for letters to signal how different the future will be, a blue-purple tint to showcase the digital world. Human Revolution, a prequel to the original, instead uses sharp edges, a sleek design like mobile UI at the time. A future more personified by the tech already at hand, than that which is still to come.
Devil May Cry is a series with as interesting an origin as it does a growth. Beginning as the original concept for Resident Evil 4, it took on a life all of its own,pioneering the character-action genre. And then Devil May Cry 2 happened, which was a far cry from either Resident Evil or the original Devil May Cry.
Devil May Cry 3 came not long after, more in line with the original game though with a much stronger emphasis on stylish combat. These changes came to define what the series was, and each logo highlighted that. Devil May Cry felt like a gritty noir neon sign, while Devil May Cry 5 has an edgier logo with sharp points and a beautiful metallic sheen.
The Witcher is one of the biggest success stories in AAA gaming. Starting from the humble origins of beautiful ‘Eurojank’ as international audiences like to call it, it blossomed into one of the most celebrated RPG series' in gaming history. The logo for the series has always been great, though changed when the series hit the spotlight.
The original game had a logo with a much more early Cyrillic styling to it. Letters had a degree of curviness to them, though still ended in sharp points. It felt like it pulled from a period where the Witch Trials themselves would be present. The logo beginning with the Witcher 2 is much thicker in comparison, offering clarity and making it feel both more modern and fantastical simultaneously.
