10 ms·

Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for. Videogames are great at being interactive diversions, but their stories leave a l

• jerf 9y ago
  The video games that do have a decent plot often have a plot that just can't be squeezed into a movie. I've seen some decent anime conversions of some video games, which were arguably interactive anime anyhow (i.e., Persona 4), but at roughly 8 hours (call it 24 20 minute episodes by the time you're done with commercials, opening, and closing) and still feeling a bit squeezed at times, that's not going to be a movie any time soon. From a more western perspective, good luck getting Planescape: Torment into a movie format. I supposed if Hollywood had some confidence about making video game movies they might be very excited about getting a pre-made trilogy, but since their lack of confidence is well-founded in fact I don't see this happening any time soon.
  • the8472 9y ago
    Maybe they should make TV shows instead.
    • 794CD01 9y ago
      Random people all over the internet have already done that. It's called "let's play".
      • ionised 9y ago
        How is a Let's Play a TV show?
        • 794CD01 9y ago
          It's a sequence of videos.
  • jonhendry18 9y ago
    "From a more western perspective, good luck getting Planescape: Torment into a movie format." A Game of Thrones-style "Sigil: City of Doors" series might work. Don't reuse the Nameless One or the plot of the game. Maybe reuse some characters like Annah. Like the game developers did, use the setting and make up new characters and plots. Maybe before the show airs, put a series of entertaining shorts up on YouTube that introduce the city, the unusual beings resident there, the factions, and finally the main characters of the series.
• irrational 9y ago
  Hmm, I don't play video games, but I do play board games. People that play board games say the same thing - you don't play a board game for the theme, you play it for the gameplay or the game mechanics (though a fun theme doesn't hurt).
  • jkingsbery 9y ago
    "Settlers of Catan: the Movie"... Any takers?
    • InitialLastName 9y ago
      http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/12/the-settlers-of-catan-sony-developing-movie-adaptation-of-board-game http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/12/the-settlers-of-catan...
• xnaas 9y ago
  On the other side: I know a few games, like TLoU, have tried to go the "movie-esque" route, with mixed success. TLoU was quite successful, but I don't think there have been too many other video games that have done well with the "movie-like" approach. I think you're right that video games often sacrifice storytelling for gameplay, which I definitely don't mind.
• shwetank 9y ago
  I disagree. You have games like The Last of Us, The Uncharted Series, Yakuza 0, and even the latest Wolfenstein game having very well made and engaging stories which I think can translate well on film.
  • goostavos 9y ago
    I'd go back to GP's "why" question. I thought that The Last of Us was an absolutely fantastic game. Honestly, its one of the few games I've managed to stay engaged with all the way to the end. It works as a game. It's wonderful within its medium. A movie can't give you moral choices (did you guys kill the doctors at the end??), nor the time required to really get aquainted with the characters. The narrative works best in the medium it was designed around. As a movie, I Dunno, what would the medium bring to the table? I suspect it'd just be another throw away zombie movie
    • baby 9y ago
      That's what series are for! I could see The Last Of Us as a series.
      • matt_s 9y ago
        All of the repetitive missions in games would work well in a series. I mean most TV shows follow that formula, you know at a certain time in a cop show they will figure out whodunnit and proceed to the thematic close of events.
    • nightski 9y ago
      At the end of the day I think therein lies the difficulty. The entire point of a movie based on a video game in my opinion would be to allow fans to explore the world further in another medium. It's to enhance immersion, not replace it. A great video game movie probably wouldn't be very good for someone who hasn't played the game. I think a good example of this is the Warcraft movie. Pretty terrible reception overall. But as a Warcraft fan I really enjoyed it and would love another.
    • 9y ago
• RulingWalnut 9y ago
  There are ~~absolutely~~ fantastic stories in video games. There are plenty of games that you play for the story and the gameplay is just meh.
  • coldtea 9y ago
    Such as? Besides adventures games Infocom or Sierra style and their descendants...
    • baby 9y ago
      The Last Of Us.
    • Merad 9y ago
      The Witcher 3. Part of the problem is that often your story-heavy games are really telling dozens of different stories. In TW3 for example, the main story is good but not amazing, yet several of its "secondary" stories are fantastic.
      • peatmoss 9y ago
        Oof. Which ones? After the ten thousandth person recommended the game to me, I recently played through it and never found a plot that I didn't find pretty flat. Plus, I couldn't tell if the terrible dialog and gratuitous cringe-worthy softcore CGI porn sequences were supposed to be a self-aware in-joke.
        • vvillena 9y ago
          There are lots of great side quests in The Witcher 3. The wolfman one, the one with the ghost and the oven, the one that takes part in a tower in an island in a lake, the one where you finish tracking down some witches... Not to mention, part of the appeal of the game is not knowing if those quests are going to end well or not. Some quests don't have good endings, while others depend on your choices, making you responsible for what happens. And regarding "softcore porn", it's only simple bed scenes, like in any movie. It's totally normal, and given that there is a huge romance plot with 3 different endings, not counting the expansions, it would be silly to tell such a story without mention to sex. In any case, it tells a lot that people are so scandalized by sex, but not by the continous gore, violence, inequality and misery that The Witcher 3 portrays continously.
• LMYahooTFY 9y ago
  I disagree with the "mostly", without some quantified support. Unless you mean that most of the games selected are substandard stories, but I didn't see a list of the 35 mentioned. I would posit that perhaps the filtration system of making a wide audience film has more impact on how the screenplay is adapted and I haven't noticed that being discussed.
  • coldtea 9y ago
    >disagree with the "mostly", without some quantified support Yes, it's not merely "mostly", it's nearly all. Except if we talk about some old-style adventure games (and even those aren't any narrative masterpieces either, they barely make it into "adult fiction" level), video games are just some very basic plot skeleton -- as opposed to a plot. If they have nuance and atmosphere, that's in their visual, audio and interactive elements (as opposed to the plot and narration).
    • LMYahooTFY 9y ago
      So you're pointing out that Tetris, Asteroids, and Angry Birds don't have plot and narration? Taking a complete list of every interactive program that qualifies as a video game and saying 99% of them don't have a plot seems similar to saying 99% of books don't have a narrative or plot. Perhaps I should have been more specific, but I thought the parameter of -games that were intended to actually narrate a story- was heavily implied in this thread.
• baby 9y ago
  > Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for Same with movies, books, comics, ... but the top is good. The Last Of Us ffs...
  • throwaway080383 9y ago
    TLOU is basically a movie. I played a few hours and got bored because it felt like I was watching mainly cutscenes with gameplay interspersed. Interesting movie, just not a great game.
    • baby 9y ago
      Play in a higher level of difficulty then
  • watwut 9y ago
    I would argue that average mainstream comic, book or movie have much better plot, characters etc then mainstream game. They however completely sux if judged by standards we normally judge games. (By which I want to say that games are not inferior all things considered, just that plot is not their strong part.)
• CodeMage 9y ago
  I think that's close to the mark, but not quite there. To quote Sid Meier, "A game is a series of interesting choices." It's hard to make a good game with a great plot: the better the plot, the more you restrict the player's choices. It's not impossible, but it's hard. Plenty of games have great characters and excellent world-building. Quite a few pose interesting questions, make you face hard dilemmas and leave you pondering long after you're done playing. Several make you immerse yourself in the world and identify with the characters so much that a particular event in their plot will provoke very strong feelings. But none of those have a plot you can take and make a good movie out of it. Hollywood could very likely pick one of these games and make a great movie based on it, but not by focusing on the plot. For example, I would be thrilled to watch a movie based on Dragon Age or Fallout. I might like a movie based on Borderlands, perhaps. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy a movie based on The Last of Us or Uncharted or The Talos Principles. And all of those games are among my favorites precisely because I enjoyed their world, characters, themes and choices.
  • watwut 9y ago
    There are plenty of good games that dont give all that much choice to player. Which is why I dont like the "A game is a series of interesting choices." framing. It is true only if you limit definition of games to rpgs or strain definition of "choice" to pretty much anything. Whether games have great characters is of course subjective, but I have to say that I did not seen them. The best ones tend to be comparable with average book character. (Which is ok, I don't play games for writing, I play them for playing.)
    • CodeMage 9y ago
      I think that restricting the word "choice" to narrative choices is an overly narrow interpretation of Meier's definition. I see no strain in applying the word "choice" to gameplay choices.
  • classichasclass 9y ago
    I think BioShock Infinite probably proves your point, too. Compared to the other two entries it limits the player's choices even further and simplifies gameplay even more, but has a much more compelling story. Unfortunately, the story would probably not be as compelling were the player not led by the nose through it. FTR, I had the most fun playing BioShock 2, but I still like Infinite the most.
• wtetzner 9y ago
  > Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for. I would phrase this differently. The interesting parts of the game stories emerge from actions and choices made by the player, not the parts of the story that are actually written. I don't mean that the writers on games aren't doing a good job. Just the opposite, actually: they know how to write the right bits to keep the game interesting, and to help the player work with the game to create interesting stories.
• wolfgke 9y ago
  > Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for. As a friend of adventure games and visual novels I have to disagree. Here are some games that in my opinion have great stories: - The Longest Journey - Zero Escape: The Nonary Games (Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors; Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward) - the Blackwell series - To the Moon
• sametmax 9y ago
  Depends which game. FF7, Baldur's gate and portal have great plots. It's just that good plots take a lot of time and don't make as much money. So producers request them to be removed from games, movies, tv shows, etc. Why would you bother making a plot when you can make bank with Transformer ?
• ionised 9y ago
  > Mostly because videogame plot lines aren't as good as we give them credit for. I wouldn't agree with that. Sure, AAA-level blockbuster video games have simplistic, unoriginal and derivative stories and that's what most gamers play unfortunately, but there well-written games are definitely out there. Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 were both better written than any Star Wars movie by a long stretch. Planescape: Torment is probably the best written game I've ever played, and playing it almost feels like you're reading a novel at times because the world-building and especially the dialogue is so fleshed-out and thoughtful. This game takes a huge dump over the writing in most movies I've seen. I mean, that's just two examples. I'm a huge sucker for games with a great story regardless of the genre, but genre is a limiting factor in well-written stories. You generally don't get much of a story in an RTS for example. You are most certainly never going to get a good story from a beat-em up like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter.
  • FooHentai 9y ago
    Agree, and on top of that isn't it interesting that the more successful game movie adaptations are in those areas where the game plot was thin or non-existent. Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter both fit into that - Little to no plot for the games, then movies come along and are probably successful because they're not so constrained.