I did not know if I would have time to write this Saturday Note either, but I thought I’d give it a try, so here we go. I had the idea of talking about what a fantasy setting based off of the Italian Renaissance would look like, because I just read the novelization of Assassin’s Creed II, but I think we’ll save that until after I try reading City of Masks (which I got on hold from the library!).
This has been in the news lately so I thought I’d give my two cents.
Adapting Video Games to Screen
Several headlines have been made about various big-name video game serieses being picked up to be adapted by studios, often into high-profile television serieses on streaming platforms. God of War notably got a full series order this week from Amazon, but there are versions of Fallout, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Ghost of Tsushima are also supposed to get screen adaptations, while HBO is promoting their The Last of Us show right now. And earlier this year, we got a big screen film version of Uncharted.
I’ve got to ask though: why?
The God of War headlines made me think about this the most, but I’m seriously wondering what it is that we would get out of a television version of God of War that one doesn’t get out of the game itself. If you wanted to experience the story of the game as a watching experience, welp, just pull up a YouTube version of the entire main storyline. The main difference seems to be that it would be in live-action rather than entirely computer animated. Given some of the impossible things you see in the game, I don’t see how switching to live-action would help.
Furthermore, it wouldn’t be interactive. I realize that these examples I’ve listed are modern “prestige” games which in many ways try to mimic Hollywood in their presentation, but the huge difference is that they’re interactive instead of something you watch. That’s a huge difference. Part of the fun of these games are not just that you’re the one performing the actions, it’s deciding how you want to do that, as well as exploring the world the game takes place in for yourself.
People who really love God of War don’t just love the storyline, and playing through it. They also love exploring the game world, collecting all the random treasures, doing all the side quests, fighting all those optional bosses. A screen adaptation isn’t going to be able to include all of that, and certainly not the experience of playing through those things. Not only is a movie or television series going to cut a lot of the story to be able to fit within the time constraints, it’s also going to cut the factors of exploration and little bonus bits of story and worldbuilding that goes with it.
Basically, everything that made the story enjoyable for what it is–that’s being removed. Why? Because there’s this weird thing in our society that a piece of fiction hasn’t made it big until it’s been done in live-action. Which is stupid–they’re fine as it is. There’s absolutely no reason to adapt these games into a screen medium.
I realize that’s a broad generalization, and I think some video game adaptations can work. The reason I think I don’t have many problems with the idea of Castlevania as an animated series is A) it’s animated, and B), it’s adapting a series that wasn’t particularly cinematic to begin with. The Castlevania games are side-scrollers–the experience is vastly different and the story is told in a way that you can’t look up on YouTube to watch as a movie, and it’s less accessible to average audiences. In short, watching it as a screen piece of fiction is different enough that it makes sense to stick into a different medium. I have other issues with the Castlevania series on Netflix, but it’s not that it’s a bad idea in theory.
You also have games that are wide open enough that the adaptations don’t try to re-do the same story. I like the Assassin’s Creed movie (even though it doesn’t make much sense, lore-wise) because it’s not a direct adaptation of any of the games, but decides to tell its own story. It’s also why I didn’t mind the adaptation of Uncharted that much (though it’s meant to be an origin story, and in that way it doesn’t really fit in canon all that well).
I heard Halo took a similar route on Paramount+, and it felt very weird because from what I heard there were a lot of weird changes that made it feel like a completely different story than what Halo really was. Master Chief has a love interest (that’s not Cortana) and she gets frigde'd for Plot. That’s very different from what the character and the story is really like, so one wonders why they would adapt it that way. It IS an alternate continuity, but the universe is wide enough that you don’t need to do that.
Many years ago, to coincide with Halo 4, there was a miniseries titled Forward Unto Dawn which was set in the Halo universe, but concerned a group of side characters from the game in their backstory. Master Chief does appear, but very shortly and as an important supporting character rather than the protagonist.
An adaptation of any sort needs to justify itself by not just being the same story with a similar presentation. If it can tell the story in a completely different way, or if it can tell a different story within the world of the game, I think it can work. But right now it looks as if they’re just planning on retelling the stories of games in live-action, and there’s not much point to that.
Being in live-action doesn’t automatically make the story better.
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