January 11, 2018 6:46 PM EST
To me, the important thing is not keping the creator(s) themselves in charge, it's maintaining the spirit of their creation in subsequent followups. The (semi) recent release of Sonic Mania is an excellent example of this. The team behind it had nothing to do with the development of the original Genesis titles, yet despite that they made a game that, at worst, is a worthy followup to the classic Sonic games and at best surpasses them. Why? Because it was made by fans of the original games that knew what made them great and maintained that in Mania. By contrast Sonic Team itself has produced far more misses than hits since the Genesis days, in part because they have a tendency of adding stuff that is antithetical to a Sonic game. Now granted, the easiest way to maintain the spirit of the original creation in sequels is to keep the original creator(s) involved (usually anyway) but as games like Sonic Mania showed, it's by no means required.
And even then, there are occasionally new entries in certain IPs that I enjoy despite doing little to nothing to maintain the spirit of the originals. For example, I love KOTOR II's deconstruction of the tropes and plot elements we take for granted in Star Wars, despite the fact that in doing so it couldn't be farther apart from the original films.
This post was edited by Albino at January 11, 2018 6:46 PM EST