The Star Fox series has had more trouble than success with its existence. It all began as a test for the Super FX chip, and besides 64's success, it's been shifted around a lot. The second game got cancelled (and only recently revived), it got handed to Rare and forced into Dinosaur Planet (mainly to keep that game away from MS, imo), then handed to Namco to become a lesser SF64, then became a Japanese soap opera with touch controls, then got remade with abysmal production values (especially the audio), and then finally got reimagined with Platinum Games with the worst controls conceived. It simply can't catch a break.
This is why, imo, they won't simply make a brand new entry in the series. Not now anyways. It's far too risky. They recently introduced Fox to the Mario audience with the Galaxy movie, regardless of how long Fox has been around and how "we've" known him for so long, so they want to make a good impression on those people. Hence why they went back to their best entry. While the levels are essentially 1:1, they are fleshing out the script from what the trailer showed. Perhaps, and again imo, their plans are to build off this game with a future entry, separate from any other game that initially followed the N64 one.
Would I have liked a completely new game? Yes, but given how their more recent titles in the series failed to impress, I had my doubts on the possible quality.
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