Double Agent
Cinema verite - January 18, 2001 - Chris Jones

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I don't want to have to pay for an extra dimension we're never going to use. Don't say we didn't warn you.

After many moons, I finally finished FF9 the other night. I know you guys already had this discussion, but I'll make this quick: great ending, some solid, FF-worthy story moments, the occasional flash of character brilliance... but not anything that measures up to FF7, let alone FF8.

Let the flames begin.

Onward.

The time is right; the time is NOW!
Hey Chris!

I think the time is right to finally make game-to-film conversions viable. The problem with most of these films was that they had the perceived stereotypical gamesplayer for a target audience : the teen male. Therefore, every one of these films was insulting to the viewers' intelligence.

However, lately there has been a shift in the way the media at large see games. Sure, it's still not a viable alternative to true art forms such as films and literature from their point of view, but gamesplayers are taken a lot more seriously now. The same goes for comics, which resulted in the relatively intelligent interpretation of X-men, and more recently, Unbreakable.

And of course, The Spirits Within is the first such project that has the actual director of the games involved... which tells me that it'll at least take the subject matter, and therefore me, seriously.

Sir Farren, leaving his hand-eye coordination at home.

You've got a point that Final Fantasy may be the first game-related movie to ever take its subject matter seriously, which is good. Alternatively, however, we have the possibility that the material will be taken too seriously. It's one thing to have several standard metaphysical rants in the course of an RPG, because we've learned to expect it... but that might kill the momentum of any regular movie.

And never the twain shall meet
Hi, Double Agent.

The game to movie/movie to game history is quite disturbing. We all know movies to games have often failed (Blade, Fifth Element, The Grinch, to name a few), and lately, people are trying to take games to the realm of movies. More often than not, this is a mistake.

Games were meant to be games, and movies were meant to be movies. More often than not a game simply does not translate to the big screen due to the basic plot of the game. Most games such as RPGs and adventure games are meant to be beaten in over 20 hours, in most cases. You can take a lot of that time away for experience gathering, NPC interaction, and navigation, but you would still have at least 5 hours in most games where the plot is a big concern. You simply cannot scale down an epic game and translate it on the big screen.

In order to deal with the time factor, most games to movies become and hour and a half. In an epic RPG game, it does not work. Technically, you cannot consider the Final Fantasy Movie a game movie because they created a whole new plot to work with. I plan to see the movie, and I think it might do well, but it is certainly not going to be the video game movie. It is an animated movie (and a damn good one at that) written for the movies, and for that reason alone it may do well. If they were to try and take the plot of Final Fantasy IV and translate it, it would most likely fail.

Most movies listed in yesterday's column were fighting games with little substance, and needed a "plot" created for them. In the case of Mario, that game came way after its time. About the only REALLY successful movie about games I can think of was The Wizard, starring that kid from "The Wonder Years." That movie was a giant preview of Super Mario Bros. 3, and that movie did pretty well.

On the other hand, some games can be done for the big screen quite well. Resident Evil can be beaten in 3 hours...easily adaptable for the big screen.

Only time will tell if games are translated for the big screen. Frankly, the Hollywood producers need to be a little more careful on what they pick and choose.

Charlie

While it's true that most RPGs have plots that are too long to be fit comfortably into around two hours, I think you have to question how much in an RPG plot is merely filler, or could be cut without compromising the rest of the story. Many RPGs have supporting characters and associated backstory that don't really add to the main theme of the game in any significant way - for example, fully half of the player characters in FF6 could be left out of a movie version without any serious problems... unless you consider Gau an integral part of the story, that is.

Final Fantasy Tactics, for real
Wie Gehts, Chris

I just read that article about FFX's battle system, and while I was getting all pissy about the character designs before, I'm somehow getting a good (better, anyway) feeling about FFX now. A strategic battle system sch as suggested by the choice for battle director will undoubtedly piss off hordes of self-proclaimed champions of old-school games, but it seems fine to me. I happened to love FM3, and FFT, and wil do so for a long time. I think it suits the new directions we already know the series is taking, and I think we should at least keep a [more] open mind to the foray into double digits now.

Oh, and as for movies, I think they should just be avoided altogether unless:
a) The game (meaning its story, characters, etc.) is stuck to religiously (which would never work, too long, but I stick to that anyway) or
b) They start over (which is what FF is doing) with new stories or possibly characters. I think we'd all like to know what happens after the end of VS, for just one example. Hell, Square's been doing this for 10+ years, why fix what isn't broken?

~TH Cole Just realized how much harder the choice between getting a Dreamcast or a PS2 got. DAMN YOU SQUARE, DAMN YOU!!!

I'm actually more excited about FFX than I've been about any FF for years - between the return of the FF8 team, the move to a powerful new platform, and an innovative new combat system, this could be one of the best RPGs ever. I've got no problems with Square trampling over tradition, with this kind of potential - but you might remember I said that, just in case it sucks, so you can throw my words back in my face.

Pure coincidence, sorta
There is no link to the elements in the names of the main characters in Final Fantasy. The only reason for Cloud, Squall, and Tidus is because Tetsuya Nomura likes to use names that relate to nature for the main characters. Its his decisions, not Square's. That's why all the games that Yoshitaka Amano designed characters for do not carry those names. Terra doesn't count, as you pointed out yesterday, because her real name is Tina.

~Fear Factory
"aka Beer Boy"

p.s. I miss the message boards...

You are correct, sir... which still leaves the possibility that the next Nomura-designed character will be named after something earth-related.

And we're working on a message board, but I've got no idea what the progress is.

In the beginning, BP (before plots)
dear chris <werer you insulted at the drewtwo thing, i would have been>

first off its final FANTASY. so reallity is out and fighting in obis, with huge long tounges and 20 foot long masemunes are in.

but that is not todays topic, movies made from videogames are. I remeber when i was a young lass living in the moors of scotland, or was the the suburbs of north carolina.... anyhoo, back then we played zelda and mario and because the games did not have a lot of spoken story line, just the crap in the manual <yes the bricks mario breaks are the citizens of mushroom land, its in the manual*> or on the title screen. other than that, they left the rest to the imagination. i used to think that mario and luigi <where did he go anyway?> were pizza makers who found strange mushrooms and a pipe in thier pizza parlor ,<shut up stoners> and was suprized that in the cartoon they were plumbers. so as crappy as they may be, the old games-turned-movies were written because the game isself never expaned on the stories. but now all games have a complex and detailed story. who needs a final fantasy move <still gonna see it anyway> when 4 thru 6 were great stories them selves. mortal kombat was great because they had great writters interpreting the events from the game and with the little information was given with the game <read the original pre movie novel it was better>. but a agrat story movie would not work because we played it already and to shorten it to a movie would be blasphimy. final fantasy: the spirits within <ff:tsw> will undoutedly be the greatest game-to-movie ever, but it won't be as good as final fantasys 4 thru 9. but enevidably, the games-to-movies will die and become a fading memory.

p.s. get the damned gba, the rpg potential is astonishing
*some one back me up on this*

Not a lot to say here, except that I felt somebody should stand up for lame, nonsensical NES-era plots, just because they're a part of our common cultural heritage, or something.

And it's a real pain to have to type &lt; over and over again, by the way.

Now with 50% less filler!
About a year after I got back into gaming (circa FFXI), the resultant afterglow wore off and something began to gnaw at me; namely, why is length such a staple? I mean, (at this point) I might not mind at all if the next FF or Chrono game took me a few years, but the genre is still fraught with filler, such as excessive menial battles. Now, Metal Gear Solid 2 has been tagged at 15 hours, and that's not raising any battle flags; it's quite alright. Near as I can tell, Orphen takes about 10 hours, and that's NOT alright... but only because the game happens to also be crap. However, the latter DID implement some things I've really been wanting to see: a paucity of useless battles, which have no randomness to them, thus leaving more room for exploration and immersion. I know battles and HP management are at the roots of the genre, but even back then, there were games like Zork wherein you never knew WHEN you'd get attacked. Even playing that text adventure today, I find myself generally more drawn in than by graphics-heavy titles where some swirly graphic and blaring music disrupt my adventuring every 5 seconds...

Humbly mumbly,
Machka Drek

Tying this in to what people have been saying so far about RPG plots, let me advance this crazy idea: for a game that happens over a few days, or weeks, 20 hours is plenty of time, if you're not going to add any extraneous plot or pointless random gameplay. If we're gonna keep playing 40+ hour games, maybe we should be looking at longer, more epic plots, that happen over years or even decades, and only touch on a few key, difficult battles. As it is, we've often got games that focus on too many details without enough of a big picture to make things interesting.

Nevermind
My God! What have I done!

See it's a Talking Heads ref.. nevermind. Here's an idea for video game - movie conversions... "Don't make them suck". I really believe that the FF movie will succed because it's the first that doesn't seem to be patronizing and condescending to the gamers, while being designed specifically to irritate anyone over the age of 8 years old (With the exception being the first Mortal Kombat movie, but that doesn't count because it wasn't that great of a game or idea to begin with). The FF movie seems to be the first that's actually a "movie" instead of an piece of merchandising, this is made even more so with its being completely original and not being connected to any specific game in particular. I mean if Square renamed "Cid" to "Dr. Dave" and renamed the movie something totally original they'd still have a movie that could make money. If you took "Super Mario Bros." out of the movie "Super Mario Bros." it'd still suck but nobody would watch it. Hey here's what I'd like to see made into a movie... "Parrapa the Rapper". As animation it'd be awesome with all the original voices and writers and stuff, but I was also thinking about how awesome something like that would be as live action, featuring settings like you'd find in an Outkast video and perhaps Ving Rhames as DJ Berri, now how cool would that be? The movie to game I'd like to see is "Unbreakable" or more specifically, I'd like to see M. Night Shyamalan as a game director, and according to "Vagrant Story" it's actually possible to do something like that with a game.

Gilbert, the man with the golden pipe, he'll smoke anything for a million dollars (See it's a James Bond ref... nevermind).

Sounds about right... the only problem I can see is that Shyamalan might end the movie with a twist ending where Ashley Riot exclaims "They used to call me Mister 'hey-I-can-see-your-ass'!" But that's the potential of the FF movie - if this thing goes over right, we could see some major writing and directing talent finally taking games with the seriousness we all know they deserve, at their best. And the good news is, regardless of if FF makes it or not, if games of the caliber we've seen this past year continue to come out, sooner or later I think we're guaranteed a good quality game movie. I'm just worried that we might have to wait out the rest of the decade before it happens.

Closing Comments:

Today is Thursday, tomorrow is Friday, which means you get to send in whatever you like. Which is good, if you're into that kind of thing, I guess. Meantime, I'm out of here. Until later.

-Chris Jones, debating if he should wait in line for FF movie tickets

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