

J.J. Abrams, Valve in talks for game and Half-Life or Portal film - jjp9999
http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/6/3960102/half-life-portal-movies-jj-abrams-valve

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simonsarris
This is a really unpopular opinion[1], so I hope I don't get a lot of flak
here, but while Half-Life 1 had a lot of intrigue, Half-Life 2 felt plain
awful and I'm not really sure how they could turn any of #2 into movie
material unless they _really_ de-emphasized Gordon to the point where he's a
minor character.

You'll notice, after all, that most live-action stuff centered around the
Half-Life universe doesn't really contain any Gordon (at least the ones I've
seen)[2].

Half-Life 1 was the story of a scientist caught up in something much larger
than himself. You played this hapless guy who escaped and explored worlds,
with compelling confusion about who your enemies and friends were. It was
dream-like and scary and mysterious and great.

Half-life 2 felt like you were being lead through a metaphorical tunnel the
entire game. Literally some parts had NPCs reminding you to "go this way" for
hour-long stretches. Most of the game wasn't escaping terrifying situations,
instead it felt like you were merely "in transit". It's hard to have a
thrilling feeling of excitement and horror as you're being nagged to get to
the next plot device.

What's more, whereas in HL1 you were this scientist caught up in a mess, in
HL2 you play essentially the role of a hired brute. You do zero Gordon-
specific things. When you meet Barney at the start of the game, if you swapped
bodies with Barney at that moment, _nothing in the game would have changed at
all._ Congrats on that MIT degree the NPCs will remind you, now kindly plow
through 6,000 bugs/zombies/cycloptic humans as we tell you what to do.

I have a inkling that the sour direction HL2 took is at least part of the
reason they're having trouble with HL3 but who's to say. Most reviews say its
one of the greatest games ever, so maybe I'm way off kilter.

Anyway, I think a Half-Life movie, if it covered any of the events in Half-
Life 2 at all, would suffer severe problems if it tries to make a story of a
mute scientist who kills his way to the 90th floor of Castle X to save the
world. It's just not a very compelling story.

[1] I was lambasted for offering this opinion on Reddit. The game also has a
96 on Metacritic, with zero negative reviews:
<http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/half-life-2>

That makes it the #1 all-time highest scoring game on Metacritic (tied with
HL1!), which seems insane to me, and several (in my opinion) better games
within that genre come to mind.

[2] What I was thinking of specifically was "Escape from City 17":
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo>

~~~
anigbrowl
_Congrats on that MIT degree the NPCs will remind you, now kindly plow through
6,000 bugs/zombies/cycloptic humans as we tell you what to do._

That's a good point. I replayed it recently and it wasn't until close to the
end (when you've had your weapons taken away in exchange fora souped-up
gravity gun and you're basically dealing with puzzles and combat
simultaneously) that the science-fiction feel was properly re-established. I
was so sick of zombies by the time I got to the end.

I also agree about the glass-tunnel feel of the game, but that seems to be an
almost unavoidable problem with FPS games.

~~~
simonsarris
I don't think its unavoidable but I do think its a hard problem to solve.
Still I can think of a few games that did a very good job.

I haven't played these sorts of games in the past few years so most of these
won't be modern, but off the top of my head I think Deus Ex 1 and Human
Revolution (the new one), System Shock 2, Thief 1+2, BioShock all did well at
making me forget that I was playing essentially an on-rails shooter.

Gameplay can be linear and that's fine. Novels are linear and they surprise us
all of the time. When gameplay is linear you can still feel like _what's being
done to you_ isn't, and that's important and I think HL2 just plain skipped
it.

All the game above are more or less linear, but they _feel_ very different in
terms of intrigue, character development, consistent pacing, and expressive
emotions. Also, in every one of these examples who your character was mattered
a good deal to the game.

Instead of hand-held waypoints, all of them offered an interesting world and
we _knew_ that we knew little about it, but we could _feel_ that it was so
damn large and scary.

The Thief universe for example was just plain incredible. Medieval setting
with a small dash of newfangled machinery and magic, but unlike space robots
or typical games with mages, both were powerful forces that are _not well
understood._ You don't get to play badass wizard. You can't control these
forces. But they're there, lumbering and wheezing.

There appear to be gods, but they are not all-powerful and somewhat stay out
of the way of humans. For all we know there were once hundreds of gods, and
they have been beaten into submission by mankind and no longer show their
faces. You get the feeling you're not let in on everything. Moral ambiguity
abounds.

You creep around looking for entrances, secrets and information. Most of the
story development is gotten by way of eavesdropping. Nothing is just plopped
in front of you like I felt for the entirety of Half-life 2. There's so much
intrigue, and at times you really feel like you're in on something, part of
this crazy, wide world filled with wonders and horrors. You get to fear it,
but at least you have your shadows, so it still gets to fear you.

Half Life 2 was a joke in comparison. You're treated like a kid. You walk into
a shitty house and some clown colonel (Odessa Cubbage) hands you an RPG, and
lo' a gunship, go nuts kid, there's infinite ammo in the box over there. I'll
wait out back.

Can you imagine storyboarding that? I hope to god it was more interesting than
"well we got the car plot device out of the way. What's the next thing the
player needs to check off?"

But the end result wasn't.

(all this criticizing leaves a dirty taste in my mouth. I promise to only be
positive on HN for the next month.)

~~~
anigbrowl
Good recommendations, and a good good insight. I'll re/play a few of these for
comparison over the year.

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kemiller
Holy Christ, is there not a single beloved geek scifi franchise pie that this
man will have his finger in?

~~~
zanny
Dungeons and Dragons! But that might be because the only D&D forays into
cinematography have been less than spectacular.

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Xlythe
There have been a few good web comics[1] and short videos[2] based around D&D.
I can envision a D&D movie.

[1] <http://www.goblinscomic.com/06262005/> [2]
[http://www.urealms.com/content.php?150-Unforgotten-Realms-
Ep...](http://www.urealms.com/content.php?150-Unforgotten-Realms-Episode-1)

~~~
DuskStar
Hey! You forgot Order of the Stick! (Even if it is more a parody)

<http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html>

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ck2
I am not a gamer but I love the resident evil movie series, very entertaining
(have never even seen the game!)

Why the heck is JJ Abrams the only person Hollywood can go to though? That's
crazy and I am kinda exhausted from his style.

Now if they can make a mystery movie based on portal, I'd watch that.

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Benferhat
If it's anything like _Portal: No Escape (Live Action Short Film by Dan
Trachtenberg)_ [0], I think the Portal movie could be quite successful.

[0] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4drucg1A6Xk>

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error54
Awesome short film. I hadn't seen that before so thanks for the link!

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nathos
I also like "Outside Aperture": <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NorZUFfpvC0>

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overgard
Well, Half-Life might work as a silent film. (Zing!)

Sorry, couldn't resist the obvious joke.

To me, a good story generally involves good characters. Are there actually any
good characters in half-life? Gordon is literally a blank slate, and Alex is
an extremely generic attractive side-kick. And uh, theres a scientist and
barney. The only interesting character I can think of is the G-Man, but he's
more interesting in terms of what he suggests about the structure of the world
rather than as a character in his own right (at this point).

I just don't get where the story draws from. Half-Life was effective because
it presented a great experience rather than a great narrative.

~~~
dspeyer
Portal does better on the character front. Cave Johnson and GLaDOS are very
memorable. The two of them just bantering... has potential.

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javajosh
Love the games. But let's face it: Hollywood movies based on games are
basically professionally done fanfic. They use the world to tell a story,
which is really, really boring.

I mean, has there _ever_ been a successful movie based on a game?

It would be far, far better if Abrams and Valve collaborated on a new game.
Half-Life 3, perhaps? Or a massively multiplayer Portal? There's certainly no
shame in doing games anymore for big names. The money is, if anything, better
in games than in movies these days.

~~~
FreeKill
You could argue the Resident Evil movies are successful. They've made 5 of
them, and most of them have made a ton of money worldwide...

Honestly though, I think video game movies right now are like Comic Book
movies were 20 years ago. Back then, they all were terrible until someone came
along and made one (with an appropriate budget) that took the material
seriously, and now it's a massive profit engine.

I think there are many video game based stories worthy of movies, it just
takes someone to do it right.

~~~
javajosh
Yes, there have been some incredibly good movies based on comic books! Perhaps
more than have been based on novels, actually. Comic books and games do indeed
share the important quality of being highly visual. However, unlike a comic
book a game is also interactive, immersive, and involves you in a (generally)
non-linear story. Perhaps most important of all, a game gives you a chance to
_solve problems_ and have your answers evaluated; a movie (like a comic book)
treats you as a passive participant, taking away something that you may want.

Come to think of it, there is one game I think would make a good movie: Grim
Fandango!

~~~
FreeKill
True, they are definitely very different mediums. However, no one says a video
game to movie adaptation has to duplicate exactly the experience of playing
the game. Many games have incredibly deep mythology, stories, and characters
all of which lends itself great towards movies.

I think video game "worlds" could be a great source for movies but maybe not
necessarily any direct adaptation of a specific game to film. For example, I
think a movie based on the overall storyline of assassin's creed would be
good, but I don't think it would be successful to just copy one of the games
and create scenes that are shot for shot from the game.

~~~
javajosh
Sure. I mean, it's hard to argue that "The Matrix" wasn't inspired by computer
games (Syndicate comes to mind). But that's not what Valve is talking about
doing. Presumably they are going to make an action movie with a (talking?)
Gordon Freeman as the action hero. Bleh.

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nonamegiven
When you're sitting in a theater watching the Portal movie, will you be able
to see through the portals on the screen to see movies in the other theaters
in the multiplex?

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gruseom
I will never forgive Abrams for the eternal clusterfuck of plot betrayal that
was _Lost_ , and intend to express this by boycotting anything he has a hand
in forever.

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untog
After the first episode (and definitely after the first seasom) JJ Abrams had
no involvement in Lost. You can blame Lindelof and Cuse if you hated Lost.

~~~
gruseom
Oh yes. A pox on all of them!

"Hate" isn't the right word, though; I'll stick with "betrayal".

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maked00
I can save them a few hundred million bucks, mix in McGuffins every few
paragraphs, wrap things up with a shaggy dog ending. Include gratuitous
explosions, car/plane/train crashes, and rescue the chick,puppy,small children
between McGuffins.

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officemonkey
They're barking up the wrong IP.

Valve could make a PG-13 rated Team Fortress 2 game, and people would love it.
Make a "Magnificent 7" rip-off, or an "Oceans 11" rip-off. The thing is
tailor-made for any caper/heist/action flick.

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cheeseprocedure
Imagine a "Half-Life" film composed of one continuous shot from the first-
person perspective.

~~~
MartinCron
Two extremely difficult film techniques, there. One would be a lunatic to try
such a thing.

~~~
rangibaby
Enter the Void[1] was basically three hours of this. I enjoyed it, but it's
definitely not for everyone.

[1]<http://www.avclub.com/articles/enter-the-void,52931/>

Here's part of my favorite comment on that article:

"The whole thing plays out like a video game cut scene that never ends, or a
rail shooter in which the controller has stopped working; first person,
limited third, floaty bits-- it seems to borrow a lot of gaming grammar for
its visuals, intentional or no.

Old-timey comics used to throw around adjectives like "mindbending!" all the
time. I think Enter the Void truly is, though. It ate my brain and shat it
back out in my skull... and I think it gave me insomnia. It's either a weird,
pretentious mess, or a goddamn masterpiece, but it's definitely worth seeing."

~~~
MartinCron
This evening would have been better if I hadn't been reminded of that film. I
respect that some people enjoy it, but yeah, I am not a fan.

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B-Con
Would the movie be downloadable through Steam?

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DiabloD3
Site is down. I suspect this isn't true.

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Bud
Appears quite legit.

<http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118065765/>

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knodi
Gabe please Half-Life 2: EP3!!!

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matmann2001
So many lens flares...

