Are We In A Golden Age of Video Game Adaptations?

[JD]

After decades of video games being almost universally bad, it seems like now we've really hit a winning streak for them. In the last few years we've gotten Detective Pikachu, Uncharted, the Sonic movies, and Super Mario Bros. (animated) Movie, on the movie front, and on the TV front we have Halo, The Last of Us, and now Fallout, which have all gotten decent to great reviews, and seem to have fairly positive responses from a lot of the fans. It feels like we've finally reached a point where the people making the adaptations are finally showing their source material respect, and in response they seem to turning out better than most of the earlier ones did.

 

[Tosk]

I dunno if I would personally use Uncharted as an example of a good movie.

 

[Starkers]

I think what's interesting for me, only having watched The Last of Us and some of Fallout (halfway through and loving it) is how well received they've been by both gamers and non gamers. Previously I think producers went too far one way or another and wound up alienating at least half their potential audience. Shows like these seem to have the balance just right.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I haven't seen all of these, but I'd be more inclined to think we're in the video game adaptation equivalent of what the 2000s were for superhero movies. Some fantastic ones and a marked improvement across the board over the extremely low bar of the past, but not so much a real golden age as just finally being just as good as any other genre.

 

[Anwar]

Well, it helps that the video games getting adapted now work better as story narratives.

 

[Oddish]

Sooner or later they had to learn from all their mistakes... they certainly did make some stinkers.

A big part of video game adaptation is that you need to understand the true nature of the game you're adapting. One reason why the Hitman movies were such garbage is that they were adapted by people who thought of the franchise as a "slaughter everything in sight in buckets of blood" FPS. The essence of the Hitman games is just the opposite: you slip in unnoticed, you eliminate only the target(s), and you're either gone before the body is discovered or everyone thinks it was an accident. Most of the action scenes in the movies would have gotten a "Mass Murderer" rating, which is the worst in the game.

As a writer of Fallout fanfiction, I can attest that the game is rife with potential for adaptation to movies or TV... if you get a writer who loves Fallout, and more important understands it.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I think it's a sign that some games have a strong premise to start off with, and i think that started when games started to become more cinematic in nature, thus becoming easier to adapt. Like in the 90's when they began making video game adaptations, most of them were terrible because none of them had much of a story to work with, only random elements that they tried to tie into a movie, hence the Super Mario Brothers that we got back then. Newer games and franchises have more material to work with, so they make better things to adapt.

 

[Anwar]

And Castlevania, no one complained about the changes that show made because the fans knew full well that the original games didn't have much to make a plot from.

 

[UssGlenn]

I haven't seen all of these, but I'd be more inclined to think we're in the video game adaptation equivalent of what the 2000s were for superhero movies. Some fantastic ones and a marked improvement across the board over the extremely low bar of the past, but not so much a real golden age as just finally being just as good as any other genre.

I agree, We're in the X-men/Spiderman era, but have yet to have our Iron Man equivalent Video Game movie, but there is no denying that Video Games are the next big thing replacing Superheros.

 

[fireproof78]

I think after the slog of really bad adaptations, from Resident Evil to Bloodrayne, Max Payne, to Hitman, etc. I would be hard pressed to call current adaptations getting closer to the mark a "golden age." Yes, we have seen an improvement, but I think that we are a long way from a full on golden age. Largely because the adaptation process is such a lengthy one trying to serve multiple masters.

Color me skeptical, if happy with Fallout and Halo.

 

[FPAlpha]

Well, it helps that the video games getting adapted now work better as story narratives.

I was about to say. It helps tremendously when you pick games that are already great to begin with and have more to offer than non stop action ( which made Halo so controversial amongst fans because some only wanted non stop action like the games).

It helps when the studio or the streaming service also understands to let the creative team be just that - creative. Nothing kills something faster than business people making creative choices, do the business side and step back when it's time to be creative.

 

[JD]

You guys bring up some good points, I guess maybe it just feels like a golden age compared to what we were getting 20 or 30 years ago.

 

[Oddish]

Well, as probably an 800-hour Fallout 3 player, plus a couple more in FNV, I can tell you that Fallout's imaginative universe (including some bizarre vaults), its diverse cast of characters, and its... interesting karma/morality system have lots of untapped potential.

 

[JD]

Have you watched the show yet?

 

[fireproof78]

Well, as probably an 800-hour Fallout 3 player, plus a couple more in FNV, I can tell you that Fallout's imaginative universe (including some bizarre vaults), its diverse cast of characters, and its... interesting karma/morality system have lots of untapped potential.

Especially considering that we've only really seen the extreme coasts of either side of the USA. Plenty more to explore, and personally wouldn't mind a bit more to unpack, especially in a series. The Fallout show is excellent, but I think there is so much more.

 

[Oddish]

Have you watched the show yet?

Don't have Amazon prime.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

*cries in Resident Evil*

I for one remain sceptical towards video game adaptations in general. Sometimes it's a great adaptation, sometimes it's horrendous. There doesn't seem to be much in between. Hit or miss.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I agree, We're in the X-men/Spiderman era, but have yet to have our Iron Man equivalent Video Game movie, but there is no denying that Video Games are the next big thing replacing Superheros.

I would say that very much remains to be seen. It's certainly possible, but just because we're in a 2000s era superhero movie like phase that doesn't at all guarantee that the video game movie equivalent of Iron Man/Avengers is just around the corner somewhere. It doesn't even guarantee there will ever actually be a video game movie equivalent with that level/type of influence.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I was about to say. It helps tremendously when you pick games that are already great to begin with and have more to offer than non stop action ( which made Halo so controversial amongst fans because some only wanted non stop action like the games).

Yeah, like say, The Last of Us, which has a great premise in itself, and which the show expands on. Ironically, Naughty Dog has two properties that have ended up on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of adaptations. I don't know where they went so wrong with Uncharted, but it could have been great if they had stayed truer to the source material and hired actors closer to their parts rather than trying to reinvent everything. Because as The Last of Us showed us, and Fallout too for that matter, adaptations can be great if you just trust in the material.

 

[Oddish]

It's worth noting that Fallout and The Last of Us are really two ends of a spectrum... in Fallout, you can be whoever you want, from hero to monster. And while some of its karma decisions seemed odd (you got good karma for [permanently] killing the inhabitants of Vault 112, helping a girl get a date rape drug for a boy she was interested in, and effectively destroying the only church in the capital wasteland), if you disagreed with an action, you often had an alternative. So, while I was usually fairly heroic, I played it multiple times.

Contrastingly, one reason I didn't finish "The Last of Us" is that I didn't like the decisions it was forcing on me.

But, they both adapted well into TV series, because they were handled by people who knew and loved the source material.