As a video gamer, I have a habit of watching movies adapted from playing games before playing the game itself. Especially when the quality of the adapted film is still good, re-entering the game is like finishing a squeaky skewer and then smouldering a beer that can be iced to the heart.
The advantage of this approach is that you can get a "viewer" and "player" experience, feeling like you are playing a movie you just finished, such as the recent "Uncharted Seas".
When the intersection of these two groups is more and more, two different ways of interaction, development history, emotional carriers are more and more linked, games can be used to watch, movies can be used to play has become a new trend in the future of entertainment, throughout the history of game evolution, the attempt to make games cinematic has never stopped.
Watching the game?
No one has a super-precise definition of "game cinematization", so the concept of "Cinematic Game" has been replaced by a description of this "heart-to-heart" state. Its advantage is straightforward, simple, almost literal, more convenient for us to understand at the same time, evoking players' long memories of video games.
Unfortunately, the originator of cinematic games is currently untestable, because cinematic techniques have been used in a large number of games in the era of red and white machines, so that it is difficult to trace who is the first. "Ninja Dragon Sword", "Ninja Dragon", and "Soccer Boy" have been regarded as the forerunners of cinematization in the FC era.
FC's "Soccer Boy" is clearly storyboarded
However, the function of FC is still too limited, and the film elements of the game are like the green onions sprinkled in the scrambled eggs of tomatoes, and it is a pity that they are tasteless and discarded. In contrast, the PS era of "Resident Evil", "Final Fantasy", "Parasite Eve", "Silent Hill" are the real main dishes of cinematic games, especially the "Dancing" CG of "Final Fantasy 8" (then called "Space Warrior 8" in China, referred to as "Tai 8"), which has become the benchmark of cinematic games.
The once-amazing Final Fantasy VIII
I think you've discovered that the cinematic game of the PS era is not just a short film in the process of the game! The process of many players overcoming all difficulties in the game seems to be the process of solving several exquisite CG cutscenes. This actually hints at the shortcomings of game cinematization in the PS era: the filmized CG and the game body are isolated, especially under the constraint of weak function, the characters in the CG and the body in the game simply have the difference between the seller show and the buyer show.
The person who flattened this distinction was none other than hideo Kojima, who was famous. In 1998, his new Series of Metal Gear Solid launched on the PS platform was dubbed the originator of "cinematic games", although this statement is somewhat controversial, but it can also show the series's profound interpretation and strong annotation of "game movies".
The filmization of "Metal Gear Solid" is "the opposite": it is not that I think that CG and the actual game are too different, so I simply use the game itself as material, and do not use CG to add icing on the cake.
The second approach of Metal Gear Solid is "excellence": isn't it worried that the interpretation of the game itself is a bit contrary? Then I use all the movie-grade mirrors.
Metal Gear Solid, aka Hidden Dragon Spy
So the PS version of "Metal Gear Solid" presents such a state: the game uses a cinematic mirror throughout, whether it is a CG cutscene or the process of the game. In the end, with a strong number of mirrors, a variety of mirrors, and a tight seam between CG and game scenes, the work became a textbook work of "cinematic games" in the industry at that time.
The advent of Metal Gear Solid points to a new path toward cinematization of games: in the course of the game, movie-level mirrors can be used extensively to strengthen the tension of the game in terms of plot. At the same time, "Metal Gear Solid" also hints in a direction: as long as the console function is stronger, the game is just around the corner, and the subsequent history proves this.
In 1999, Shenmue, launched on the DC platform, creatively invented the QTE system, which combines film mirror operation and operation. Although the series is not well received, its highly cinematic game experience is enough to write into the history of video games.
Open-world game pioneer Shenmue series
Shenmue's failures were mainly untimely, but later games were much luckier. The 2007 Far Cry series redefined the concept of "reality" in the video game world, and the new generation of Tomb Raider and the hit Uncharted series gradually erased the original dichotomy between film and gaming. There is no mention of naughty dogs' "The Last survivor" series here.
"The Last of Us" tells the story of the United States after the end of the world, and joel, played by the player, is tasked with escorting the mysterious girl Ellie through the United States to survive in extreme circumstances.
Compared with the previous survival games, "The Last Survivor" ensures a sophisticated game system and inherits the essence of the above cinematic games, while a lot of ink is placed on rendering the relationship between the two protagonists in the context of the end times, and it can even be said that most of the linear flow in the game is to serve the story plot.
A classic scene from The Last of Us
Creative director and screenwriter Neil Druckerman became one of the game's core production members, in contrast to two actors, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, who actually played both roles through voice acting and motion capture. After what happened, we all know that "The Last of Us" has received widespread praise in terms of gameplay, plot, story depth, character shaping, and visual creation, and the latter items are often used to praise movies, and it is logical that HBO decided to shoot it as a film and television drama.
In The Last of Us 2, the narrative ambitions are even bolder.
The theme of the story is "revenge", and the player participates in the perspective of the positive and negative characters, the perspective of the conflict is combined with the parallel narrative method, and the process of "revenge" is dismantled in many ways, thus prompting the player to experience the game characters through the positive and negative sides, thus further throwing the question to the player - what is the meaning of revenge?
This narrative method of "multi-perspective narration of the same time and space, the same event" is very similar to the expression of the "multiple internal focus perspectives" of the film industry, which is the practice of Bakhtin's "polyphonic theory" in the film industry, and Rashomon, Pulp Fiction and even "Crazy Stone" are representatives of such films.
The Last of Us 2
In the video game world, such narrative techniques are not uncommon, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Assassin's Creed 3 are prominent examples. However, compared with the above game works, the content depth of "The Last Survivor 2" is aligned with the film and television works, plus it is better in scene scheduling, mirror operation level, performance level, and there are previous works in front, and the final realization power and the controversy brought about by it have increased geometrically.
Although the plot subsequently caused controversy, it also proved that the player even cared more about the plot of the game than the interaction method, which just showed that the charm of "The Last Survivor 2" broke through the boundaries between the game and film and television - the game is not only experienced through interaction, but also can be watched and analyzed.
Playing movies?
However, as the most important artistic presentation style of the 20th century, the attempt to gamify the film was much earlier than the attempt of the game industry.
In 1967, the Czech film "lověk a jehod m" ("Automatic Film") can be called the originator of cinema gamification, it pressed the red and blue buttons on the cinema seat, the audience can decide the different directions of the plot by choosing different color buttons, but after all, it is only an attempt, and the interactive choices provided are relatively simple.
Automatic Movie, the first interactive film in history
So compared to this, the attempt at "Lola Run" is more substantive. The movie is controlled to decide where Lola runs, and the plot differences are more interesting. Chinese cinema has also made such an attempt, with 2000's "Angel's Wings" (starring Guo Keyu and Li Chen) being the earliest attempt at gamification. By sending different scripts to the Internet, netizens can choose different ways to modify their opinions, so as to see different endings.
The most concerned thing is that Netflix's "Black Mirror: Pandasnake" uses the characteristics of streaming media itself to promote the audience to get infinitely close to the identity of the player and make choices about the actions of the protagonist, resulting in a variety of different endings.
Black Mirror
So the movie also has the characteristics of the game - choice. If you are more precise, this kind of movie is more similar to the first-person decipherment + AVG game type of cinematic interpretation. This type of film is being labeled "interactive film" and is increasingly accepted by audiences. The game industry was inspired to feed this model back into game creation, and interactive movie games were born.
This kind of game is actually subtraction at the interactive level, not addition: reduce the operation, focus only on the choice, roughly speaking, is the "broadcast game" in the broad sense.
Quantic Dream's "Rainstorm", "The Extraordinary Twins", "Detroit: Change", Telltale's "Walking Dead Game Version", "Wolf among Men", and domestic players are most familiar with the popular "Invisible Guardian" in previous years, which has become a new trend in the combination of games and movies.
Detroit: Becoming Human
Excluding the debate of "whether the plot is exquisite or not", the greater focus is on "whether these works are movies or games", and players and experts with different opinions have quarreled, so in such a debate, the boundaries between movies and games have also changed from the early clear distinctions to today's canine teeth.
No chance of winning?
A more radical example of this recently is that the game Quarry Horror will have a cinematic mode in which the game progresses without a single button so that the player can concentrate on enjoying the game's story. Will the boundaries between games and movies one day be completely erased?
Death Stranding
In terms of games, cinematization has long been a conventional weapon, but more producers intend to constantly enrich the grammar of cinematic games, rather than simply simulating the sense of cinema. Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding no longer uses the film camera in a showy way, but uses precise scene scheduling and a suitable soundtrack to give birth to its unique audiovisual language. Such a column is innumerable in today's game industry, and it is no wonder that the director of "Ghost in the Shell", Oshii Mori, when facing "Death Stranding", once exclaimed: Movies, there is no chance of winning.
But please note that when movies became popular in the times, novels, paintings, sculptures, and other art disciplines also had such a low tide, and now these art categories are not only still there, but still make great progress, just as everyone felt that radio had no chance, but podcasts have become the new popular content carriers.
The seemingly thin, but difficult to completely replace each other, between games and movies, remains. In the eyes of players and audiences, whether it is a good game or a good movie, the feeling brought to us is convergent - the moment when the mind is ignited by what is seen, heard, and experienced.