So I was putting this off for many reasons. Why? Well... The Legend of Korra.... I'm not joking. Okay let me just back up a bit. So, you have this thing, Avatar the Last Airbender, and it's amazing. Great storytelling, characters many people can relate to in way or another, villains you can either love to hate or sympathize with, so on and so forth. And then they come out with this equally amazing story but the fans are just " This is Garbage and I'll tell you why in 1 hour or less" even though it's established as " This is just a continuation of the previous story." The Legend of Korra is just one sequel series that get this treatment and is done so unjustly.
Now there are series that just fell off somewhere.. new Star Wars trilogy, due to writing or some other reason. Now I'm going to be talking about sequels and the types of sequels( and then explain those types of sequels) but also try to explain how they do and don't work in some cases. Let's begin.
Now there are a few different types of sequels that will get their own chapter: continuations, next gen-type, the prequeal-sequel, side-sequel( takes place along side the main story, most likely from a different pov), and more, but I'll mostly focus on the ones I've named.
Prequel- Sequels are just that, sequels such that predates established lore, but acts as sort of an establishment of the lore. The best example I can think of is Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. They established how the main trio of Sora, Riki and Kairi got their abilities, different plot points that would later come up again, and some pretty intense information that was used to fill in the blanks later.
Continuations normally pick up right when the story left off. The Ezio Trilogy from the Assassin's Creed Series fits this as it stills follow Ezio for the longest: him starting out, reestablishing the Brotherhood in Rome, and finally the his final years( and some more Altair story points) as an assassin before he settled down.
Side-Sequels take places along side the main story, sort of during the main story but off to the side somewhere. Using Assassin's Creed, again, Liberation and Unity comes to mind, because while they are their own stories following people not in the main cast( aka Desmond's story)it's a really cool perspective shift, with a lot of the stuff in the past taking place at the same time as Connor's story in Assassin's Creed III.
Now, and this is a personal opinion, sequels are a great tool to expand upon the world you are trying to create. Some fall flat, and some exceed the expectations we had. And this is just an in general thing, so there's more to come. So when you're thinking about your game's or comic's story, how long do you want it to go on? Many video game franchises could release tie in comics that explains some plot details in other games that are just glanced at or bridge the gap between games. Some books have tie in series that serve as side sequels to the main plot. One example of this, and I can't remember the name of the series to save my life, is a book series surrounding high school girls that are like descendants of a goddess and have to pick a mortal life but forget everything that happened or become goddesses themselves, meanwhile there's this group of guys who are servants of their enemy( If you know the name of these series can you let me know?) but they're all sort friends and I think two of them dated.
And I know this chapter is short, I know. But I just wanted to get this out there.