Memo to self:
May. 1st, 2008 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynTerry Pratchett said this about the first Tomb Raider movie:
"After watching this, in mounting aghastment, I've now realized why it's so bad. It's because it's good. Unfortunately, what it's good at is being a movie of a computer game. If you've played your way through the TR games you'll realize that. The atmosphere of the locations, the way Lara runs and fires, the traps ... someone sat through all the games, taking notes. It's truer to the feel of the games than most novel-based movies are to the original novel. Time and care was spent on that. Then, since the games have no characterization, or any plot much above the level of "get all the bits", they pasted together an inconsistent load of old garbage in twenty minutes and hoped the SFX would carry it. They don't."
If people with a movie studio budget cannot simultaneously tell an excellent, developing story and give the audience an immersive video game experience, neither can you. When writing gamefic- of whatever kind- you are doing a translation. Part of that translation is making it meet the expectations of the target genre. No matter how much fun you had playing the video game, even the parts where you sat there screaming about how the space aliens from another dimension had greater OSHA compliance in their factories than the humans did, what makes for good gameplay doesn't necessarily make for good story. Cut the gameplay, cut it hard- but make sure the story elements remain, and that they work.
Remember Tomb Raider. Don't be the Tomb Raider production crew.
thenk yew.
"After watching this, in mounting aghastment, I've now realized why it's so bad. It's because it's good. Unfortunately, what it's good at is being a movie of a computer game. If you've played your way through the TR games you'll realize that. The atmosphere of the locations, the way Lara runs and fires, the traps ... someone sat through all the games, taking notes. It's truer to the feel of the games than most novel-based movies are to the original novel. Time and care was spent on that. Then, since the games have no characterization, or any plot much above the level of "get all the bits", they pasted together an inconsistent load of old garbage in twenty minutes and hoped the SFX would carry it. They don't."
If people with a movie studio budget cannot simultaneously tell an excellent, developing story and give the audience an immersive video game experience, neither can you. When writing gamefic- of whatever kind- you are doing a translation. Part of that translation is making it meet the expectations of the target genre. No matter how much fun you had playing the video game, even the parts where you sat there screaming about how the space aliens from another dimension had greater OSHA compliance in their factories than the humans did, what makes for good gameplay doesn't necessarily make for good story. Cut the gameplay, cut it hard- but make sure the story elements remain, and that they work.
Remember Tomb Raider. Don't be the Tomb Raider production crew.
thenk yew.
