I’m not talking about Tetris here. I’m talking about story driven games that tell a great story but wouldn’t be good movies. For instance:
Call of Duty Modern Warfare. This game is great, has great cinematics, and is action packed but would be a terrible movie. The reason is because every concept in the games has been a movie cliche for decades. The games are fun because you get to control the cliche in grand fashion. It would just be another mindless straight to VHS action movie though.
Splinter Cell. For the same reasons as CoD.
Any Zelda. The stories all amount to generic fantasy trash. The games are great because of the dungeon puzzles. That doesn’t translate to movies well.
Contra. Same as CoD.
Elder Scrolls. Would be very dull.
Basically any game that revolves around movie tropes that are lame to watch but fun to play through.
*Thief *(or any stealth game, really) would make for a pretty crappy movie. I know it makes for pretty crappy Let’s Plays - so here I am, in the shadows, waiting and timing the guards’ patrols so I can move through here without incidents. Yay ? I guess the *Tenchu *series could at least be turned into a gorefest, but then I like to slash as few throats as possible when playing them… The *Hitman *and Assassin’s Creed series might be more Hollywood-friendly because they at least involve some measure of choreographed carnage once or twice a mission (I even liked the *Hitman *movie. If only because 47’s instinctive reaction when a smoking hot Russian girl who doesn’t wear underwear throws herself at him is to dose her with a syringe of anaesthetic).
Diablo-likes would get old fast. Slash monster, open door, use spell, drink potion, drop a corny line… See the Dungeons & Dragons movie. If you’d scrubbed that abomination from your memory, ha HA!
As much as I love Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, they’d make shitty movies. The central plot lines are (as noted with several war games upthread) heavily cliched with the entertainment coming from steering the cliches. The side quests are vastly entertaining but almost all of them are actually digressions from the main plot rather than additions to it. Some of the stuff that I obsess over in game, like getting some unique_but not world saving weapon_would really drag the pace of a movie down.
I think that’s true, although quite possibly some of the storylines could make a decent movie. Garrett is such a compelling character that, if you edit much of the sneaking, it could be good. (Thief 2 would probably not be good, but Deadly Shadows might).
Bioshock is one that, as good as the story is, it’s only interesting as a game. The choices made, the subversion of the idea of playing a game, etc. would fail in a film presentation. Likewise, Portal.
I swear that someone on the writing staff was a fan. It’s subtle, but there.
Vampire: the Masquerade was a TV show already. Technically, it’s based off of the PnP, but whatever. It was short and a little bit soap opera, but it was pretty good at times. The main vampire character was pretty well done. C. Thomas Howell’s main human character sucked though.
