What's the game with the most potential for a good movie?

[Headdrivehardscrew]

And for the authentic dark souls experience, every five minutes the film will start again from the beginning, and the ushers will take all the money from your wallet.

I keep hearing that and I'm pretty sick of/with it, as it's plain just not true.

Dark Souls has some difficulty spikes later in the game and the beginning really is an uphill struggle against not only enemies, but mostly yourself and your expectations. It's been a while since I've played a game that was so tight-lipped about any background information on what the ferret is going on, yet was so inspiring. I was genuinely afraid to check out the catacombs or new londo ruins, yet when I finally felt ready, I was still scared and got jumped and jump-scared - that was some quality entertainment I'd be willing to pay a premium for. To be honest, I think I didn't pay enough for the 300+ hours of gaming bliss I've gotten out of Dark Souls so far. Yes, at some point people will seek help and consolation in forums and on the wiki, but that's pretty much part of that specific gaming experience.

I know that Demon's Souls and Dark Souls inspired me on many a level, well beyond just keeping me entertained while I was sitting around fiddling with a wireless remote, eyes transfixed on a screen at the other end of a mostly empty room, surround sound triggering some hitherto unknown penchant for paranoia. I forgot all about crap games and crap movies, I was entertained and so was everyone that dared enter the world of Boletaria or... that other place. Does it matter I don't remember a lot of the names of places and things? Not at all. A movie is not an interactive experience, it needs to be planned and laid out and produced and presented differently. If we got smart people who get the idea of D* Souls right, it could blow some of the latest efforts deserving some honourable mention well out of the water. There's so much content it could challenge the Lord of the Rings - the movies, not the books.

As for DA2 - yeah, no, not really. There's plenty of story and annoyingly accented batshit insane domina or beardless dwarf action, but the game itself is an abomination. I know for certain that Bioware and Ubisoft won't get a single cent from me for their lame-ass, twisted gold-plated shiny turds.

But, hey, we're all different. Ain't that grand?

 

[ToastiestZombie]

To The Moon! As long as they don't make it into an anime and actually make it live action with realistic characters, all they have to do is copy and paste the story over and cut down the actual gameplay parts. To me that game had a better story than many films I've watched, and with a good actor I reckon it would be Oscar worthy.

 

[CAMDAWG]

And for the authentic dark souls experience, every five minutes the film will start again from the beginning, and the ushers will take all the money from your wallet.

I keep hearing that and I'm pretty sick of/with it, as it's plain just not true.

I know, but that's the perception of the game to people who haven't played it, and I felt like making a joke everyone will get. Just to clarify, I meant taking money in a you-died-and-lost-all-your-souls way, not a hurr-durr-i-died-game's-a-waste-of-money way. Like you, I've clocked in 300+ hours, and it's the only game since shadow of the colossus that I've bought full price when it was first released (which was a good $100+ in australia), and not thought afterwards that I should've waited and got it for cheaper.

I'm with you 100%, dark souls is nowhere near as difficult as its reputation would have people believe, and MOST of the time, when someone describes it as brutally difficult, they haven't played it. Sure, a non-experienced gamer would probably have a hell of a time with it, but anyone who's played some even slightly similar games will pick up on enemy patterns pretty quickly, and then all it takes is a little bit of patience.

But the best moments in the game (at least for me) come from stumbling upon great things almost by accident, like going back to the asylum and then the painted world, or figuring out that Solaire is (maybe) a deposed god from item descriptions, or ash fucking lake. Most of that is lost in a movie because you're not free to discover things. Sure, they can obfuscate certain facts so you have to think hard to figure stuff out, but a movie is ultimately still a linear story (linear in the sense that you have to follow it, not in a temporal sense, because we know movies can play with time in a storyline). That's why I think more linear games will make better movie adaptations.

Plus, I would really, really, really hate to see a bad dark souls movie adaptation. Which, given the history of game-movie adaptations, would probably be on the cards.

And with DA2, no, i agree it was a turd compared to origins. Map recycling was a terrible, terrible idea. Especially if you're not even going to re-skin areas so that you MIGHT fool some people, and the whole "press button, something awesome happens!" crap, but I thought the mage-templar tension story was a much more interesting premise than the stock standard "unsuspecting protagonist, drawn into major events, generic evil enemies, guy pretending to be good but isn't, with big evil at the end". Origins did a common premise really well, and 2 did (i think) a really good premise spectacularly poorly.

 

[BENZOOKA]

Borderlands would make for a good action-comedy film

Actually, they could make an awesome movie from any game. It only depends on how properly they do it, and what kind of a movie you want.

 

[roushutsu]

Personally I would like to see a game movie try to enhance a story that is already there rather than simply retelling the game itself. Take for example, Bioshock. While the idea of Rapture, Big Daddies, Little Sisters, and all that jazz on the big screen would be cool, you know what else could make for an interesting movie? Watching Andrew Ryan go through his struggles with the various governments before he's prompted to build Rapture. For the fans, they're getting a prequel. For those unfamiliar, it's a story of a man who strives to go above and beyond, is constantly held back, and ends with achieving the impossible--building his own city and government in the ocean.

And if that sells well and people are generally happy with it, then the sequel to that would be Frank Fontaine coming into the picture, so now we get to see first-hand Andrew's struggle with maintaining Rapture while putting up with Frank's opposition.

But alas, it will never be.

 

[barbzilla]

Depends how close the movie is to the game.

Any movie that just tries to retell the same story as a game is inevitably going to end up as utter garbage or, at best, a forgettable popcorn flick.

I think you could decent movies out of Bioshock and Deus Ex, provided that they were allowed to deviate a lot from the source material.

But isn't this where most video game movies fail today? They deviate from the source material so much that it isn't even recognizable as a movie about the game other than perhaps some character or the name of the place. So I have to disagree with you. I think if you are going to make a video game movie that doesn't piss off the fans of the video game (presumably your target audience) you need to stick as close to the source material as you can.

This is where its best to tell stories about games that are open and not a strict story. Though it can be done with strict story based games by telling a side story.

 

[Kotaro]

Silent Hill deserves a better movie. The Silent Hill movie wasn't awful, but it completely failed to capture the feel of the game, and it could have been done far better.

 

[Zhukov]

Depends how close the movie is to the game.

Any movie that just tries to retell the same story as a game is inevitably going to end up as utter garbage or, at best, a forgettable popcorn flick.

I think you could decent movies out of Bioshock and Deus Ex, provided that they were allowed to deviate a lot from the source material.

But isn't this where most video game movies fail today? They deviate from the source material so much that it isn't even recognizable as a movie about the game other than perhaps some character or the name of the place. So I have to disagree with you. I think if you are going to make a video game movie that doesn't piss off the fans of the video game (presumably your target audience) you need to stick as close to the source material as you can.

I'd rather a good movie that differs from the game than a shitty movie that is faithful.

99.999% of game stories suck. Hard. Very, very, very hard. Putting them in a movie without any changes will make the movie suck just as hard. Actually, it will make the movie suck significantly harder than the game since there won't be gameplay or exploration or customization or any of that other stuff that games can have to make up for the severe shittiness of their stories.

 

[aivalera]

As much as I hate saying this, I don't think Mass Effect would be a good movie because is was on choice as in Shepard is a jerk or a saint. I have actually thought of a movie in the Mass Effect universe where the protagonist is the captain of a Shadow Broker wet work squad, but only referring to Shepard's 'permanent' achivements such as the foretelling of the Reapers. So yeah, Mass Effect wouldn't work if shepard is in it but a movie in the universe is fine.

Gears of War might be a good movie if it is based on the novels.
Prototype could work.
Red Dead Redemption could be awesome.
Left 4 Dead would be my wild card.

 

[barbzilla]

Depends how close the movie is to the game.

Any movie that just tries to retell the same story as a game is inevitably going to end up as utter garbage or, at best, a forgettable popcorn flick.

I think you could decent movies out of Bioshock and Deus Ex, provided that they were allowed to deviate a lot from the source material.

But isn't this where most video game movies fail today? They deviate from the source material so much that it isn't even recognizable as a movie about the game other than perhaps some character or the name of the place. So I have to disagree with you. I think if you are going to make a video game movie that doesn't piss off the fans of the video game (presumably your target audience) you need to stick as close to the source material as you can.

I'd rather a good movie that differs from the game than a shitty movie that is faithful.

99.999% of game stories suck. Hard. Very, very, very hard. Putting them in a movie without any changes will make the movie suck just as hard. Actually, it will make the movie suck significantly harder than the game since there won't be gameplay or exploration or customization or any of that other stuff that games can have to make up for the severe shittiness of their stories.

I think you missed the point of my post. I am not saying have the movie follow the plot line of the game at all. I am saying that they need to keep true to the source material and not change everything about the world, characters involved, ecology, or whatever just to give us some random shit story with the name of a video game on it. We are looking for a video game movie, not something else with a title on it.

If you don't like the stories in the games that is fine as well, we aren't asking you to love the idea. Some of us do enjoy the world our games are based in, and we would like to see them represented well on the big screen. Out of curiosity can you name one video game movie that does this? I doubt it, I haven't seen it. I have seen plenty of video game movies done your way, and they were mostly crap with a few deviating to generally watchable movies.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

I think Silent Hill 2 could be a good movie, if done right. Which is pretty hard...

 

[Theminimanx]

I don't think a good movie could be made based on a game's plot. There's simply too many hours of gameplay, so it would be damn near impossible to make a 2-hour movie out of it.
A movie based on a game's setting, that would be a different story. Since you only need to keep the lore in mind, you can just create your own plot, while still staying within the canon. There are many games in which the setting is more interesting than the actual plot anyway, such as the abovementioned Fallout, Mass Effect and Deus Ex.

 

[floppylobster]

What about one of those Star Wars game thingys? Have they been made into a movie yet?

But seriously, Panzer Dragoon Saga. I mean Nausicaa worked. So Panzer Dragoon Saga should.

 

[Grivahri]

The Witcher 2 could be a really good movie

 

[wolf thing]

I thought The Witcher had alot of potential for a good movie.

That, or maybe Alan Wake. I know it sounds crazy, but Alan Wake was (in my personal opinion) an insanely well designed game, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully written, game. I would love to see a movie adaptation made.

And then they could make American Nightmare as the sequel

There has been a witcher movie and a tv show. They came out a while back based off the books, there in polish and were under the name "the hexer" in english and they were not very good, they took to many liberty's with the source material, and had a really cheap feel and look.

 

[wolf thing]

I really liked unreal 2 the awakenings characters and setting, take out the whole ancent alien technology and focus more on the corporations and human-alien relation it could make a really cool tv show. It would have a chracter focus like firefly but with the scale and concepts of babylon 5.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I don't think a good movie could be made based on a game's plot.
A movie based on a game's setting, that would be a different story. Since you only need to keep the lore in mind, you can just create your own plot.

This.

The story of how the ship from the first Dead Space game got in that state before Isaac ever goes near it could be an interesting (read: fucking terrifying) one. The best horror films are the ones that point out the worst aspects of human nature as well as the terrifying unknown; imagine the potential for people to turn paranoid or let out their more psychopathic tendencies in that kind of claustrophobic environment. Hmm.

A game set during rapture's downfall could work just as well.

The TES setting (Tamriel) has potential for plenty of great stories to be told

Shadow Of The Collosus or Ico could make great films. SotC would work well as a look at human isolation, as well as working as a monster movie with a tonne of spectacle.

Hmm...

 

[Skeggers]

I've always thought that seeing as Dead Space draws so much from Aliens and Event Horizon that it would make a good "proper" film if handled right. They like using a lot of different protagonists in the games, comics, books and animated movies and I know it was planned at some point or another, so I'd be willing to give that a watch.

 

[TrollFase]

I thought The Witcher had alot of potential for a good movie.

That, or maybe Alan Wake. I know it sounds crazy, but Alan Wake was (in my personal opinion) an insanely well designed game, beautifully rendered, and wonderfully written, game. I would love to see a movie adaptation made.

And then they could make American Nightmare as the sequel

Why does that sound crazy? I absolutely adore Alan Wake. I've only played the first DLC, but I want to play the other one and American Nightmare too. I love the light mechanics, the atmosphere, how Bright Falls almost feels like Silent Hill at night, yet in the day-time it's simply small-town America at its best. And the music, oh the music! The radios everywhere, the segment where you're on stage at the concert, it's just great. And of course, it's designed like a movie/tv-series, so there's that to help potential producers along. But I do think, given its episodic design, that it would do better as a miniseries.

I agree completely.

With everything you said, lol.