The Big Picture: Off the Charts

[fundude365]

A 'good' western game story being roughly on par with the script of a late era Steven Segal movie? Are you fucking kidding me?! You have, in one fell swoop, belittled the achievements of Black Isle, Bioware, Double Fine (Psychonauts was fucking awesome) and Lucasarts (you know, Monkey Island, the kick-ass Indiana Jones games, and the only good thing associated with Jedi Knights in the new millenium (other than KOTOR but I count that under Bioware) Jedi Knight II, Jedi Outcast)!

Not only this but in the same sentence you have implicitly held Eastern (read Japanese) games in higher regard, despite the fact that they have released the exact same Pokemon story for the past fourteen years, Square, whilst producing competent games, have lost all passion in the Final Fantasy games; producing such bullshit for us to deal with as Tidas in Final Fantasy X; Final Fantasy X-2 in its entirety; and the cast of Final Fantasy XIII, the only likeable one being Sazh, the one who contemplates suicide every two minutes!

Granted I've been largely unable to play Dragon Quest so I'll leave that out of my assessment but I'd be willing to say that the standards of game stories are roughly on par across the developing community. Suffice to say that Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 are still in my top ten game stories of all time list whilst Japanese games barely feature.

 

[Wolf Devastator]

Those were some good points as always, I love this show.

 

[Uszi]

Woawoawoa.

Folks, folks. You've all missed the really thing that MUST be pointed out.

The escapist should start selling the "just my opinion hat."

That is all.

 

[Macrobstar]

ARGH, FFS Bob stop making me hate you, uncharteds story was good i agree, but when you put in "for a western developer" seriously? WHAT PLAnET ARE YOU ON, Bioshock, Dragon age, mass effect, Red dead redemption

three games do NOT make up for 99% bad and you know it , stop being defensive and be honest.

But since when are non western developers better?

 

[themerrygambit]

Quick question about Van Hellsing. Does he have a generations-long feud with Dracula or fight a large array of monsters (mummies, Frakenstein's monster, werewolves etc)

Actually yes to most of the list you mentioned. The opening scene he fights frankenstein, werewolves, vampires and other assorted baddies throughout the movie. And yes he and drackula have a very long history... it's eluded that Van Helsing is also immortal. Also the new Belmont in the latest Castelvania looks like he was modelled off of Hughe Jackman.

The entire "Castelvania" series was modeled after the legend of Van Helsing. The only thing that they don't really have in the movie is a big whip lol. So The Castlevania movie has been done already. Not only that but it had Kate beckensale and Hugh Jackman in it and it still barely made money. So based upon that I doubt you'll see a castelvania movie any time soon.

The story itself is founded on stereotypical characters, but the setting is interesting enough to potentially make up for it. Maybe that's what Bob meant with the "for a Western game" comment. A western gaming with a less-than-great story doesn't often have the setting to back it up.

Actually the problem is the exact opposite. You can have the most amazing setting in the world for your story but if your characters are 2 dimensional and boring then your movie is going to suck. No one is going to care about your characters or worse yet they are just going to come off as hoaky stereotypes. Story/Plot & character are the most important aspects of any kind of movie. You have to look no further than youtube to see this in action. Nearly all of the most successful videos on youtube are shot in crappy settings often inside or around someone's house, the supermarket etc. Yet people tune in day after day to check them out? why? because they love the main character of that particular channel. People don't watch "epic mealtime" for the recipies They watch it to see what the main character is going to say next, how balsey he's going to be.

The problem with these classic nintendo games is that the majority of them are fairly mute 2 dimensional characters. Why? because we are supposed to impart ourselves onto said characters as we are the player. Could Zelda or Metal Gear or Mario become good movies? Possibly. Mario would only work in an animated format because let's face it that's a kids movie and the characters are too cartoonish to make sense in live action. But in all three movies they would have to spend a tremendous amount of time fleshing out the characters in order to make the real people that the audience could relate to and want to watch.


This guy Kinda sums it up best:

Honestly, as far as Uncharted is concerned, I don't care about the film one bit. I played the games when they were called Tomb Raider and Drake had a much larger chest, and I watched the movies already when they were called Indiana Jones.

Most of these ideas have been done before with more interesting storylines and characters. Zelda could be equated to any fantasy epic where some kid finds out he's the hero of the land. (King Arthur and the sword in the stone, Eragon, Chronicles of Narnia etc.) Metal gear can be equated to the Bourne Identity movies or any big action hero movie. Mario... well that can't be equated to really anything because it simply has no real characterization... even the smurfs had more characterization than most of the cast of the Mario franchise. And Castlevania I've already talked about.

The point is without good, fully realized characters no one is going to care about your movie. Mass Effect on the other hand has much more going for it. While you could say it's a star wars/star Trek knock off, (lets face it the setting is nearly identical) the part that makes it worthwhile to become a movie is that it has great characters with a great epic story and those are the aspects that make it unique and different.

Commander Shepard clearly has a strong personality (one of my personal favorites is youtubing the "commander shepard is a jerk" videos). And so do all of the other cast members because they are voiced by real actors and there are literally hours of dialog fleshing out the personality of each one. In fact some of the missions actually lead you to learn more about each of the characters and their history. Not a whole lot of additional script writing/characterization would be needed to bring those characters to the big screen.

People don't care about setting nearly as much as they care about characters. Often times people will not even care about story. They just want to see how one of their favorite characters reacts to any given situation... that's why reality TV is so popular.

Anyway I hope you guys can get the point I'm trying to make here. The old "great" franchise games will probably never be made into movies because the main characters were never fleshed out fully... they were merely vessels for us to project our own personalities on for the most part and let is "live" as the character for a few hrs while we play the game. And like any good book Hollywood will never be able to match the power of our own imagination.

 

[Rabidkitten]

So true, so so so true.

Video game movies are bad because the stories and mythologies they from are actually pretty bad. I can count the number of actually good video game stories on a single hand, and they shy in comparison to that of a descent book, not even a great one. There isn't a game that something the likes of McCarthy, Dickens, Twain, Herbert, or any famous author has churned out.

The main issue is time for the most part, games are just too new, and the written word is ages old so there is a lot more time for great stuff to get made. Plenty of schlock has been made in the last 8000 years, and the number of actually quality pieces of writing is probably in only the thousands.

Even games that have "great" stories are basically bad genre novels. Mass Effect is a marginal sci fi novel, Dragon Age is hack work fantasy, Most JPRGs are just digital versions of mediocre fantasy manga, Metal Gear solid is at best a high concept action film and convoluted low budget action film that tried to give it self a failing story, and the rest follow suit.

The best story examples aren't even that truly remarkable.

Planescape Torment is a pretty solid fantasy novel with some pretty good writing and a interesting fantasy concept. I'd say its about China Melville good.

Final Fantasy Tactics has a pretty engaging tragic story that is on par with a good anime.

FF6 has a pretty muddy convoluted plot, but the characters themselves, how they deal with the struggles at hand, and how each one reaches a believable turning point gives FF6 a strong position. But its still gather the gang and save the world by the numbers stuff at it's core.

Portal is pretty slick, but its a great short film at best. There isn't much "story" there but what is there is complex and interesting.

Monkey Island 1 gets a nod for being something interesting Imho. It's like what if Monty Python made a pirate movie? And for that it's wonderful.

I didn't play Gabriel Knight, The Longest Journey, and Silent Hill 2... so anyone want to comment?

A lot of the old Lucas Arts point and click adventure games are some of gaming's best story examples actually. But their point and click adventure games... waa wa wa...

So yeah not much to pull from in reality.

Kitten

 

[Sir-Bearus]

Recently I bought the orange box. I had never played any of it's games, and was trying to find something to keep my mind off SC2 when I saw the unassuming box just sitting there on the shelf. So I bought it thinking, hey I've heard good things about this games, they're supposed to be classics yada, yada.
Half life 2 and portal are easily some of my favorite games now. They would be amazing as movies if only with the competent directors to translate their subtleties

 

[Count_ZeroOR]

Well, I've already been semi-scooped on this post, but as the earlier posters took a more terse approach, I feel I can get away with being more verbose.

The Uncharted movie, as described by David O. Russell, is a Lovejoy-style (as in the novels by Johnathan Gash*) crime/suspense thriller set in the world of art and artifact dealing. While the film might end up in some scenic locales, they'll be considerably more urban then the environments of the games - Venice, Florence, Zurich, that sort of thing.

I have no problem with a movie in that vein - Johnathan Gash's Lovejoy novels are wonderful and are one of my favorite mystery/suspense series. However, that doesn't fit in with the concept of the Uncharted game series.

The Uncharted game series is, basically, a series of modern-day pulp adventures with a two-fisted hero (Nathan Drake) searching the world for various lost treasures (Shangri-La, the treasure of Sir Francis Drake, etc.) while having to contend with heavily armed force of bad guys out to get the treasure first (Mercenaries, rival treasure hunters with more resources then ethics, etc.). At some point in the story, the occult comes in, with it being revealed that the treasure in question has some dark power that would make it dangerous to the outside world if used by the bad guys (raising zombies, turning people into super-strong berserker warriors, whatever). This changes the heroes' objective from an attempt to find the treasure first and get it out (because "It Belongs In A Museum") to preventing the bad guys from removing the treasure, and destroying it if necessary.

Throughout all of this story, the player is generally in remote exotic locations, usually jungles, ruins, mountain passes, etc. Occasionally towns in remote portions of the world - but never spending any notable period of time in any more metropolitan locations (though Uncharted 3 will change that, with levels in London, apparently).

To make a equivalence - this would be more like an adaptation of Stephen King's "It" that dumped all the elements of horror (and the bits where the main characters were children), and instead focused the plot on a bunch of childhood friends, now adults, coping with aging and mortality. You can get a good movie with that premise, and there is a good movie [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Chill_(film)] with that premise. However, it's not It, and it's definitely not a Stephen King story.

EDIT: Somehow my first sentence wasn't actually a complete sentence. That has been rectified.

EDIT^2: One other point I should clarify - we currently get plenty of tense suspense thrillers. They're, frankly, only slightly more expensive to make than romantic comedies, dramadies, and general dramas, in terms of production values. Pulpy adventure films, particularly ones that spend more time in exotic locales instead of our own backyard? Much more uncommon. We have the Pirates of the Caribbean series (which is more of Swashbuckly adventure film, though there are some pulp elements - and some of the classic pirate swashbucklers were written in the pulp era), and that's currently it. The National Treasure series generally stays in the Continental US (unless National Treasure 3 involves returning the long lost crown jewels of the Hawaiian royal family to Hawaii), the Mummy series bombed in is last outing (and that was a while back), as did the last theatrical outing of Clive Cussler's two-fisted adventurer, Dirk Pitt (which is a pulp name if I ever heard one), bombed so spectacularly that it's basically killed any chances of getting future Pitt films.

So, I'd say we could do with one more pulp film in the world.

 

[Danpascooch]

Whoo boy.

You just had to throw in that "for a western developed video game" line didn't you?

I'm not even gonna touch that. Because if I did it would just consist of me yelling, "Bioshock!" over and over.

And now I've started touching that.

...

I'm outa here.

Don't forget Mass Effect.

Seriously, why did he say "for a western developed game? Is it because JRPGs are always so fresh and innovative? Lol, I know it's an opinion, but this is about as close to factually incorrect an opinion will ever be.

Mass Effect had a bad story. If you wanted to include a modern game with a good story you could have went with Winter Voices.
Anyway, he said it because he is starving for attention. If you haven't noticed Moviebob is the online equivalent of Fox News, go through all his videos on "The Big Picture" and you will realize that everything he says is for sensationalism and that he tries to spur some controversy, mostly because this is the only way he can lure viewers. As someone said it earlier:

He's Bob and He's a pretentious biased Nintendo/Japan loving douche that dresses up opinion as fact.

Currently, I'm just watching him for the ego-boost.

I'm not even going to argue with your fact-like statement that it was "bad", or bother to talk about Winter Voices (which I've never even heard of), but I'll present another amazing Bioware game. Knights of The Old Republic 1. If you think that has a bad story you meet legal criteria to be committed.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Actually yes to most of the list you mentioned. The opening scene he fights frankenstein, werewolves, vampires and other assorted baddies throughout the movie. And yes he and drackula have a very long history... it's eluded that Van Helsing is also immortal. Also the new Belmont in the latest Castelvania looks like he was modelled off of Hughe Jackman.

I did not know this...sounds pretty awesome. I'll have to find this Van Helsing movie

Actually the problem is the exact opposite. You can have the most amazing setting in the world for your story but if your characters are 2 dimensional and boring then your movie is going to suck. No one is going to care about your characters or worse yet they are just going to come off as hoaky stereotypes.

Sorry, I should have elaborated more on that. What I meant was the setting would be a good foundation for a good movie script. Whoever's writting the script for a film adaptation of a game would...or should, anyway...be encouraged to expand any main characters who are flat and/or two dimmensional in the source material. Link's characterization (he's courage incarnate. Besides that, he's literally a "link" between the player and the game world) works fine in the context of the game, but he'd be boring to watch in a Zelda movie, so I'd expect the writer to expand on him (hopefully someone who's never even heard of the cartoon). I wasn't suggesting that neat backgrounds and visuals can save boring characters, but that those settings combined with a writer expanding on the characters would potentially make a good/great.

Anyway I hope you guys can get the point I'm trying to make here. The old "great" franchise games will probably never be made into movies because the main characters were never fleshed out fully... they were merely vessels for us to project our own personalities on for the most part and let is "live" as the character for a few hrs while we play the game. And like any good book Hollywood will never be able to match the power of our own imagination.

Yeah, probably, but I still think a good enough writer could pull it off.
Thanks for the well-thought-out reply...I usually just get ignored or, occasionally, called a fanboy of whatever I'm discussing (especially if it's Nintendo).

And, yes, "Commander Shepard is a Jerk" is fantastic

 

[Mirrored Jigsaw]

(words)

(Name five generally agreed upon great stories from eastern games.)

I'll give you 7 because I'm feeling generous:

Silent Hill, Legacy of Kain, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Okami, The first Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Actually, I give here. Challenging you to name good stories was a useless exercise that doesn't make my point, but the point still exists that people name the same games because the same games come to mind. A society may not have a consensus on what's good and bad, but it has an idea, and people tend to pull from a list of a few examples that the majority can understand and agree upon.

If I want to convince people that western games have great story, I'm going to use Bioshock, Portal, Prince of Persia, Heavy Rain etc as an example because they are games most of us have played and most of us enjoyed the story of.

As for the 5 examples given, are you purposely limiting yourself to games that appear on the 360? If so, for what reason?

What five examples? I don't know what you're referring to here.

Also, generally agreed upon by who? The gnome that exists where you are pulling these names out of?

Again, I don't know what names you are referring to, but I'd say that I'm referring to games generally agreed upon by people. Is Shadow of the Colossus not generally understood to have a great story, and is Final Fantasy not conflicted?

 

[Traun]

I'm not even going to argue with your fact-like statement that it was "bad", or bother to talk about Winter Voices (which I've never even heard of), but I'll present another amazing Bioware game. Knights of The Old Republic 1. If you think that has a bad story you meet legal criteria to be committed.

Yes, because a game needs 50 million USD in advertisement to be good. I won't argue about KOTOR though, it had a good story.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

I agree with Bob on the fact that most movies just take the "look" of a game and then turn it into... well a movie.
Which is why I never understood why Uncharted was ever a target.
I can't see how any movie that takes that look wouldn't just be another Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider or National Treasure-esque movie... because in essence that's what style Uncharted is in the first place.

Surely there are more original themes/games you could pursue?
All slightly rhetorical seeing as I realise Uncharted was probably chosen for it's popularity over any other aspect.

PS forcing long-time members to use Captcha is still lame as hell. Chances of us turning into a spam bot after years of frequenting the site without incidents are slim to none.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

So according to Movie Bob: Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, Bioshock and Dragon Age don't exist. I'd hate to live in his world

To be perfectly fair, and this goes out to ALL the people mentioning these games, NONE of those titles has a particularly groung breaking, innovative, or great story. Their stories are by the numbers generic stuff, or easily summarizable. What makes the stories in those games good is the way in which they are presented- each done with a brilliantly realized setting, and delivery. Viewed on a level of strictly writing, however, they are merely generic-good.

 

[shotgunbob]

So Baz Luhrmann is making a movie based on The Great Gatsby


thats bad how?

It's in 3D
That's never a good sign

I can't imagine what exactly in Great Gatsby you would want in 3D

The girl being hit by the car in 3D wouldn't exaclty be tasteful.

 

[Macar]

Bob, you say gamers should be happy that some good talent is going to be making a VG into a movie instead of complaining that they arent doing it right. You dont once seem to adress that some of these people may be complaining because they dont think it should be done at all.