feedback for "5-Minute Time Out: Andy Serkis"

1. First of all, I love both movies and video games for what they are. I love to watch a movie and I also most definitely love to play a video game. I'm sure when the movie first came out, people looked at it and absolutely scoffed, when they felt they were better off just reading a depth-filled book. Each medium -- the book, the movie, and the game -- all have their own strengths and weaknesses. It's just that the real masters of each medium (which are far, few, and between) know how to show off the strengths of each medium and utilize them better than anyone else.
   
   Video games are not usually a ONE HOUR to THREE and a half movie that is told to the viewer straight-up, where the viewer is just a witness. In video games, you are often an actual participant (to some degree or many degrees). In many video games, it feels like what you are dealing with what would feel like the length of a TV mini-series -- or in many RPG's (role-playing games) cases, God knows how many seasons of say one extremely long TV series; as some as these games are anywhere from EIGHT hours long to say the 40 hour-plus format RPG's usually take on.
   
   Video games have a level of interactivity, which movies just do not have -- b/c we gamers often dictate the course of action in the game, in some shape or form, depending on what tools and options the developers have given to us. We gamers take action, whether it's how we decide to take action in a shooter game to decide how to tackle combat on how to win - i.e. Quake, Unreal, Doom, or any other FPS (first person shooter) - AND/OR we make a decision that will totally change some cause of action in the actual entire gameworld and its storyline itself - which is usually an RPG trait, usually found in games like Elder Scrolls series, Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark (expansion), most Bioware games (for that matter), The Witcher, etc etc. Sometimes and even more so often lately than every before, some games try to mix the two a little bit and blend them together - see STALKER series, Far Cry 2, Deus Ex, and Grand Theft Auto series.
   
   I think these below games that have excellent storyline/plots, storytelling depth, character-depth, and voice-acting in them and I think Mr. Andy Serkis should invest his time in playing some of these games to see what some of the masters (I think) have actually made:
   --> Planescape: Torment
   --> Neverwinter Nights: The Mask of the Betrayer (expansion)
   --> The Witcher / The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
   --> Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
   --> Bioshock
   --> The Longest Journey
   --> Dreamfall (AKA The Longest Journey 2)
   --> Deus Ex
   --> Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
   --> Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magica Obscura
   --> Prince of Persia (2008)
   
   Those are just some I can think of myself, right off the top of my head. I'm sure there's plenty more I could come up with, if I decided to think even more so on this matter.

   posted by : MysterD on 2/9/2009 at 10:04 PM Flag For Abuse

2. I respect him as an actor, Gollum was fun to watch, but how much does he actually know about videogames?
   
   These people have to stop pretending that videogames didn't exist until they discovered them. There's always been gripping narratives, there's always been deep characters, there's always been complex moral choices and all that.
   
   Mario has to go rescue the princess
   Megaman has to fight the robot masters.
   Ryu travels the world down the path of the warrior.
   Cecil the Dark Knight has doubts about his kingdoms using their military might to seize resources from weaker kingdoms under the pretext of peacekeeping.
   
   The only difference now is there's more marketing and more of a mainstream audience. Just because it's new to you doesn't mean it's never been done, yeah?

   posted by : AndyLC on 2/10/2009 at 9:39 AM Flag For Abuse

3. Rockman has to stop the robot masters.
   Ryu wants to become the greatest warrior in the world
   Mario has to go save the princess.
   
   How many of you, when you were little after playing Sonic, Contra, Street Fighter, anything, just start drawing that character all over the place, in the margins of your homework?
   Did these games grip you because they had shallow characters and poor narrative? There was something that made these characters stick in your mind, right? They were right in their setting. Maybe it's nostalgia, but so what? There's still a reason you liked and enjoyed what you did.
   
   People also have to stop pretending that videogames didn't exist until they discovered them. There's always been gripping narratives, there's always been deep characters, there's always been complex moral choices and all that.
   Unless the only criteria of storytelling is more dialog, more cutscenes, more that resembles a movie. I guess if I was an actor, I would think that too.
   
   The only difference now is there's more marketing and more of a mainstream audience. Video games are new to many people, their first game being Halo instead of Contra. Because many now don't have first hand experience with these past games, it seems wrong to just throw out the past like that.

   posted by : AndyLC on 2/10/2009 at 9:54 AM Flag For Abuse