Movies That Drain the Life of Games

Yes, Kain, your previous game killed me too...

In-game movies are always a great distraction from hours of game play and give the player a chance to absorb the story. It delivers the motive of the characters, twists and turns, something to hold the players attention enough to want to play more in order to see the final climax. Like any book or movie, the player has to care about the characters and their agenda somewhat to have any interest in the game. Now, games like Devil May Cry or God of War, have a good storyline, God of War having a more in depth one than DMC, but they both don’t bombard the player with movies but rather let them indulge in the action. But what happens when the movies get to be too much?

Games are meant to give us enjoyment in life. Much like movies, there is a plot, characters we love, hate and the ones we love to hate. It’s a nice pace of change from the action, kind of like half time during football. But too much of it can take away a little bit of the interest in the game. Final Fantasy has always had very good stories without over doing it with dialogue, giving the gamer just enough to digest and process all the information they’ve just received. Sure, some parts were lengthy but at least you got to control the character during most parts, giving the player something to do, which is always a plus, that way the player isn’t just sitting there.

There are two games, however, that come to mind when I think of lengthy movies; Metal Gear Solid 2 and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2. Both are great games, great series, but suffer from incredibly long and drawn out movies. I remember the anticipation of moving onto the next segment when first playing these games, but then it quickly turned into quiet yawns and having to shake myself awake when the time to play came again. Plus, when movies came on, they gave way too much information to digest at once, which left me sitting there for a minute after the movie ended and doing the proverbial WTF.

First, there was Metal Gear. This game was the sole reason I worked at Sears for a month to buy the PS2 with my discount. After the deed was done, I quit just a week before Black Friday. I remember reserving the game and taking the day off work the day it came up. I loaded up the disc and watched eagerly as Solid Snake went on his next mission and it was my duty to get him through it. Then came the disappointment of the total of 30 minutes game play with Snake and lengthy movies involving Ocelot and Liquid’s arm. Enter Raiden and his codec conversations with his girlfriend, Rose. It seemed apparant from this point forward that the game would deliver about 15-30 minutes incraments of game play, then hit you with long dialogue involving The Patriots. All along the game, hush secrets about The Patriots are revealed, their connection with the country and Solidus. I also remember the whiny, “who am I” dialogue of Raiden. Ten hours of game play on the first round (half of that movies) the secret was revealed that Raiden had been talking to an AI, not the colonel all along. This AI is a program of The Patriots itself and apparently set up the introduction of Rose and Raiden. Raiden also learns that Solidus killed his parents to take him in as his own, trying to recreate the relationship between Big Boss and his two other sons, Liquid and Solid. After defeating Solidus and watching the end movie and credits, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the whole AI/colonel thing and exactly who The Patriots were. I also couldn’t see as to why the people of New York were just walking about the city streets when Arsenal Gear crashed into Federal Hall like nothing happened.

With Legacy of Kain, you’d expect a very solid and complex story. I will say at least with MGS2, you could skip movies. With LoK, at least you could pause when it got too heavy for you. In the first installment, the movies weren’t so heavy or frequent. Traveling thrugh various periods of time, Raziel seeks out his destiny, which he believes is to kill Kain, but through all the movies and rich dialogue, Raziel finds out that Kain is not really the villain he believes him to be. Hours of movies go though betrayals, manipulations and personal gains that all revolve around the Pillars of Nosgoth. These Pillars as we learn are the life force of the land, which, when Kain chose to rule in Blood Omen 1, he damned the Pillars and the land to ruin. All this leads Raziel to his revelation that the vampires were not the plague of the land but he humans were. All this comes down to Raziel seeing his human self kill Janos Audran and ripping the black heart from his chest. I enjoyed the game, of what I played of it. I had thought about a second run through when Defiance came out, but then I thought, Nah.

I’ve come to appreciate the story of MGS2 more after playing Snake Eater and Guns of the Patriots, but I think the information and the story he was trying to convey were not broken up enough. Both its following sequels had lengthy movies, but gave small doses of info and kept it a little more simplistic to where you didn’t require a PhD to go into it after one serving and say, oh ok. Legacy of Kain has a great story, but again, too much information at once crammed into long movies. I think that games are great when they have real in depth story lines that reel me in and captivate me. But when I’m sitting there watching more than I am playing, there’s a problem. I’m all for interactive movies to where you have to press a button to view something or do something within the game. I hope more games move more towards this type of mentality, but until then, just keep in mind not to bombard us with info all at once and keep it simple. What game movie experiences do you have?

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Tagged as: Crsytal Dynamics, games, Konami, Legacy of Kain, Metal Gear Solid, movies, PS2, PS3