Video Game Adaptations Need to Mind Their Manners | Semi-Ramblomatic

How about an analogy? Broadway likes to make stage musicals based on films all the time. Now imagine if they treated the stage show as the definitive version of the movie, as if it's finally being realized in the proper way. That'd be kinda insulting, wouldn't you think?

I feel that it's not even just treating the source material with contempt that's the problem with video game movies, but letting said contempt apparently get so frothingly intense they completely forget how to make a remotely tolerable movie in the process. Taking liberties with adaptations is one thing, Hollywood's done that with books forever, but at least they sometimes actually make them good and even arguably better than the source material. That has not happened with video game adaptations. Anime is a similar case where a mix of contempt and ignorance of the source material makes the absolute garbage to mediocrity of the adaptations all the more galling. Like the Cowboy Bebop live action show. Figures that apparently western showbiz can't be trusted with adaptations of Japanese IP without a brand commissar in the room presumably holding a producer at gunpoint.

Gonna disagree hard with this video. Movies and video games are two different versions of media, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. And yes, adapting one to the other is much harder than it sounds. Most companies just add characters from one into the other and call it a day, with terrible results; see also all the horrible video games shoveled out based on movies. It's not just movies being terrible to games, it works both ways.

It's interesting after watching The last of us tv show, because it added a dramatic depth to the narration, but I would say a big chunk of enjoying the show was simply seeing artistically rendered versions of a well storied game. Fallout, however, told a unique story which couldn't have been played in the game. Instead it was set in the "universe". To me, that's a huge treasure trove that's yet to be explored - telling stories from the universe of the game. Imagine a movie set in the universe of Bloodborne, or Disco Elysium. It would be glorious.

I think Yahtzee's correct about video games not needing the respectability bump movie adaptations used to provide, but I think he's wrong about the dismissiveness of people like Moore to the source material. Trying to faithfully capture video games only leads to things like the climax of the Doom movie, where the last ten minutes are in first person and terrible. I'd much rather a person skilled at building interesting serial television focus on that skillset than trying to figure out which episode should show off Kratos' sweet chain blades.

The movie industry still has this attitude that video games are trying to imitate what movies do (but with button mashing between cutscenes), and that as the Wizened Elder they are forever the one in charge. But as pointed out, the relative size of the two industries isn’t even close any more, and that includes their audiences.

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I can't imagine Darren is going to be too pleased to see this lol Speaking as someone who's worked on set a couple of times before and has a little bit of insight as to the complexities of film production, I've found more enjoyment to be had in marveling at the production of certain films and the performances of their cast than, say, their writing. Not to say that writing is unimportant but showing up to a movie to watch it for the writing *alone* sort of sells short the amount of work the rest of the crew puts into the production. The set and costume design, the cinematography, and the fight choreography (in certain movies) all lend to the actual appeal to filmmaking provided you're at least a little invested in them as more than just mediums for writing. I adored the Flintstones movie because almost everything was practical effects. The animals were all puppets, the costumes and sets were physical objects, and it was incredibly enjoyable as a visual spectacle where the script fell flat. To turn the analogy back around, video games can simultaneously prove to be too bloated for their own good. Yahtzee brought up the cat and the fox in his bucket analogy but, arguably, video games are *forced * to have those things rather than *allowed* to in order to keep the player's attention for as long as they need them. The Last of Us was a video game that had so much violence because it needed to in order to stay engaging for 20+ hours but the TV show adaptation proved that such a level of violence isn't needed to tell an interesting story. You could even argue that said violence in the gameplay drags the story down because it desensitizes the player to that level of violence and makes the subsequent encounters less impactful on a humanities level. Of course, not every video game needs to have violence in order to be interesting. Papers Please, for instance, has no need for violent gameplay and is one of Yahtzee's favorites as a result. But that doesn't mean that such stories can't be told in film either, and film has the opportunity to outright separate the audience from the decisions made during the story. That disconnect from the audience, the lack of agency on the viewer's part, can make for incredibly interesting character arcs. Do you think Uncut Gems would've been nearly as interesting if the player was allowed to make the decisions and *not* screw the whole thing up at every turn? Would Burn After Reading be nearly as engaging if the player was allowed to treat the characters as level headed people instead of self absorbed narcissists? No, of course not. Of course films are becoming less and less engaging as time has gone on and making money has become the most important part of film as opposed to making good art but video games are suffering from that as well and you could argue that they're suffering even moreso. Battle passes, live service bullshit, AAAA game development, if a film snob looked into the movie box and saw the surface level of Fortnite and Call of Duty they'd probably dismiss the industry outright too. They'd completely miss the rich market of interesting AA-to-indie games that cost half as much to develop and are twice as fun to play. Lots of lower budget films are being produced and succeeding. It's harder to find them since movie theaters don't usually show stuff like The Presence or the Roald Dahl short films from Wes Anderson but even stuff like Dog Man or Mickey 17 are still good films that deserve peoples' time and money. It's just hard to see that now and it's hard to see games like what Yahtzee holds up as the pinnacle of video games if you aren't invested in the industry