God Thi4f is an obscure pull but with my username I obviously feel the pain on that one.

The Hobbit at least had good moments and is almost salvageable with the fan edits (the last one is pretty rough though)

Turok - The reboot is so far from the original they could have renamed the character and just called it something else.

... isn't Turok already a title passed between multiple dudes?

Players assume the role of Native American space marine Joseph Turok

Well then. At least they narrowly avoided naming him John Gamename.

Star Wars was always my favorite sci fi universe for so long..

Now with what Filoni and Disney has done with it, i just dunno any more. I feel lost. I loved Andor and Rogue One though, but apparently they aren't the most popular?

For HoMM check out Songs of Conquest. Not a 100% match to the old HoMM but it's really good.

Thief. How the fuck did they mess up such a beautiful game.

Turok I love but it didn't have a super strong identity to start, so I can see how it went off the rails. Although re-playing 1 and 2, I was surprised that I actually prefer 1 after all these years.

You may be interested to know that there is an open source engine port of HoMM2 that released within the past year I think. I know many people are big on HoMM3 and lots of nodding work has been done on that game to keep it fresh and playable, but 2 was my entry to the franchise, so the FHeroes2 team deserves my endless thanks and admiration.

Lord of the Rings - Started with the Hobbit and has been downhill since then

Technically, the hobbit existed before lord of the rings. It was a story Tolkien wrote for his kids, that he later expanded and continued into lord of the rings. Initially, the ring wasn't a ring of power, just a novel trick. And Gandalf wasn't all powerful, he was an old friend caught up in bilbo's shenanigans.

Now if you're explicitly talking about the movie adaptations, yeah. The hobbit kind of lost its magic compared to the lord of the rings movies.

And as great a name as "Garden Warfare" is, the entire point of picking plants and zombies was to represent the mechanics. Plants don't move, zombies don't sprint. (Down in back, Snyder!) The game was all blank colored boxes until it felt good to play. Theming was applied on top of that, to humorously convey what those units could do. And couldn't do.

So of course the second sequel is a full-on CoD clone. A full-on rooty-tooty-run-and-shooty spunkgargleweewee affair. Because it's been at least twenty years since EA completely lost the plot.

Yes, this one was tragic.

Todd ruins everything he touches. The only exception being Morrowind. And I have my suspicions about his actual involvement in that.

OP can't spell canon?

That's probably what EA calls the process of destroying beloved franchises.