Kotaku has posted a fascinating article with a comprehensive look into why movies based on videogames will always fail.
Basically, the main reason is that stories in videogames, while important, aren’t exactly considered a “high priority,” but rather a “bonus” if the story is really engaging. In other words, “story” in a videogame is merely meant to satisfy the “why am I doing this” question, nothing more, nothing less.
This is mainly due to the fact that making a videogame is more of a balancing act. Not only does the story have to be at least partially engaging, but it also has to have a solid gameplay experience, which involves artwork, controls, mechanics and physics.
Movies, on the other hand, need to balance the story, acting, and maybe the effects.
What we have here is basically a constant clashing of interests, like trying to make an apple out of oranges, and oranges out of apples. You’re just never going to strike the right taste, simply because there are tastes that are MISSING from either fruit.
Playing F.E.A.R. 2 gave me the closest experience to a cheesy television action series/movie, however. I suspect that this may be due to Warner Bros. involvement with the game’s publishing.
The game had cheesy dialogue, but it was surprisingly witty enough to not take itself too seriously. Some classic lines involved an anonymous radio tipster who calls himself “Snake Fist” and to which a teammate replies, “are you fucking kidding me?”
Another memorable line was, of course, “You’re like free pizza at an anime convention.” Classic.
The scenes involing the player manning a turret, however, truly felt the closest to a cinematic experience.
The first one sets you inside a subway tunnel, enemy forces swarming in on the other side of the tracks. Suddenly, something comes over one of your teammates and he starts to stray into the crossfire chasing after a visage of Alma (the spooky girl gimmick of the game). From a purely gameplay perspective, it just involves haphazardly pounding the enemy soldiers into pieces with your turret, but the main focus of the scene is drawn upon the strange behavior of your teammate. I found myself panning my first person view over to the teammate, as if the camera was “supposed” to be focusing on him.
I also had an extremely positive experience with the last turret scene, where your latino teammate cheers you on as you make enemy bodies fly left and right while cheesy heavy metal music blares in the background. It really felt like being in a campy action flick with quick cuts to explosions and stuntmen throwing their bodies in an exhaggerated fashion.
On top of these movie-like sequences, the pacing of the story really kept me interested till the end, and there was never a moment of feeling bogged down, stuck, or just plain dumb. It was the closest I ever felt to actually being in a movie (even if it’s still far from perfect).
So, my theory is that if we’re ever going to equivocate videogames and movies up to the same level, it will have to be videogames that encorporate movies first, simply because story/atmosphere/art is only just some of the essential elements that make a fantastic game as a whole, whereas it would be everything for a movie.
