Weekender: The Crossover

There has long been a tradition of swapping success stories. Lara Croft, Mario and Max Payne are just three iconic characters that started life out life as either pixels or polygons, but went on to be depicted in major motion pictures.

Mario (and Luigi), Lara and Max. Three icons that made it to Hollywood.

Traffic going the other way is even more dense, with countless movie makers collaborating with video game developers to produce a disparate selection of games based on major Hollywood films. Some are better than others. Some are crimes against humanity. Most fall squarely in the "deeply average" bracket.

Either way, the crossover game/movie is rarely warmly received. Though there are, of course, exceptions.

Bond prepares to dive off the Arkhangelsk Dam in GoldenEye.

{Goldeneye 007} is the obvious example of a great crossover, but there has been other decent titles released over the years: Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, Bladerunner and Die Hard Trilogy are all decent games that herald from popular IPs, each showing what a talented team can do with a solid premise and a bit of creative freedom.

The Riddick games are possibly even better than the films.

But now the industry is seeing a definite shift, one where games themselves are becoming increasingly cinematic. This is exemplified best when looking at the stellar cast of Quantic Dream's next title, the eagerly anticipated {Beyond: Two Souls}. Companies like Quantic and Naughty Dog are leading the charge towards a place where films and games coexist. To say that these companies are the future of interactive entertainment might be a overly strong statement, but the reality is that it's not far off the truth.

For another example of how the industry has grown up (at least in the eyes of the wider entertainment industry), you need look no further than the rise of the video game actor. Once a backwater where niche performers would ply their trade, it is becoming increasingly common to see top quality actors lend their talents to games, through both voiceover work and via motion capture technology. The stigma once attached to the industry has lifted, and if you find yourself saying: "fucking hell, that sounds like Stephen Fry's voice," that's because it probably is.

Reaver from Fable II, as performed by Stephen Fry.

The link between gaming and cinema is something that I have always been keen to explore. Frankly, I think it's one of the more interesting facets of this multidimensional industry. What I find most interesting is the amount of times that games fail where cinema succeeds, despite games having a more varied toolset to communicate themes and ideas. It's only recently, with titles like {Heavy Rain} and {Mass Effect}, that we're seeing games rivaling films in terms of writing and cinematography. I sincerely hope it's a trend that continues.

Games that put narrative and story first are not new. Since the very earliest text-based games, the industry has a long and rich tradition of quality writing and inspired storytelling. The creativity that drives these titles exploded with the development of adventure games, and since the early days of Sierra Interactive and LucasArts, when graphics first started to accompany the storytelling in a meaningful way, we have seen a constant refinement that has led us to the motion-capture technology and near-realistic graphics of {L.A. Noire}, and the beautifully stylised cartoon imagery of the recently announced {Broken Sword: The Serpent's Curse}.

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Anyone who's read my latest blog, Bad Movie Night, will know that I recently had the pleasure of watching Double Dragon the movie. To call it awful would be to do the word "awful" a disservice. It's a terrible film in every sense of the word, and in the world of the video game/movie crossover, it's not alone.

The film really is as bad as the costumes suggest.

Just wracking the old memory banks unearths a variety of similarly bad films. Anyone else remember the Super Mario Bros. movie? And has anyone else had the pleasure of catching the movie version of Wing Commander? And I haven't even mentioned Uwe Boll, a director and producer who's had a hand in some pretty terrible movies, including adaptations of Postal and Alone in the Dark (probably worth avoiding, unless you want to start your own Bad Movie Night).

In a nutshell, films based on games are, on the whole, bad. Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat and Hitman are all irredeemably crappy. The recent Prince of Persia movie, and the Resident Evil films, flirt with mediocrity, but nothing more. Equally, most games based on films are bad too, although there tends to be more exceptions to this rule. But when the two mediums are fused, and we see games that employ cinematic techniques, feature improved script writing and dynamic performances from respected actors, that's when things start to get exciting.

Hitman. Kill me now.

What I'm hoping to see is more games embracing cinematic techniques, whilst remembering that they're not movies. Games are not films, and vice versa, and what works in one medium doesn't necessarily work in another. But there is common ground, and when exploited, the results are often engaging and entertaining.

I'm imagining a time where the Skyrims and Mass Effects of this world are fully motion captured, each character fully fleshed out by an accomplished actor. I want games to be able to convey the subtleties of emotion, not just in the quality of the writing, but in the facial expressions of the characters. With that sort detail, games will become even more engrossing, and more affecting than they already are. Photorealistic graphics will help this, obviously, and we're not far away from that future, but incredible graphics are an inevitable destination that we've long been traveling towards. For me, it's the fusion of ideas that makes this new frontier so exciting, where game developers employ the best techniques from both mediums to make deep and involving experiences for us to enjoy.

As someone who loves films and games, a future where to the two mediums inform each other's progress (beyond the act of merely swapping IPs), where new experiences are created using the best ideas from both industries, is a truly exciting one. It's going to be a slow evolution, but it's already well underway. And with pioneering companies, such as those mentioned earlier, continuing to create new and diverse experiences for us to explore, it makes the bitter pill of current movie/game crossovers much, much easier to swallow.

Despite not measuring up to the games, Resident Evil films keep getting made.