Rampancy

Joe Keiser at Next Generation has written an article statying why he agrees with Roger Ebert with regards to computer games being an inferior mode of storytelling. Ebert, in response to a letter from a reader, expounded on his comment, saying that:

Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

Keiser rightly refutes one of Ebert's central points by saying that authorial control in most cases is never really relinquished at all, because the portions of the game in which the player has control does not normally impact the story. Think about Halo 2's story: how you play it has no impact whatsoever. If you survive, you advance to the next level, see another cutscene, and keep playing. If you die, you respawn and try again. Halo 2's story, for the most part, can be experienced in its entirety by watching the cutscenes that bookend each level, with only a few quotes from key characters missing here or there. The major difference between such a sequence of cutscenes and a computer-generated feature such as Toy Story is the quality of the graphics, as well as the quality of the performances by voice actors. But these are specifics relating to individual works, not an inferiority inherent to a medium.

However, this refutation does not go far enough. Keiser asserts that games can preserve their ability to tell a story well by creating the illusion of choice: "A storytelling game should give the illusion of control, the idea that you can do anything, while at the same time putting the idea in the player’s mind that they want to do a specific thing."

I think this is a cop-out. This is, in fact, what most current games do. It creates the illusion that you're participating in a story while in reality you're just along for the ride, and the only choice you really have is to proceed as expected, stop playing, or die. When you play the game as the developers expected, you unfold the story as the developers wrote it. Hurray for us.

[image:9922 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Just recently, Rampancy.net had an opportunity to acquire a copy of a document, in PDF format, that purports to be a version of the script for the Halo film, written by Alex Garland and dated February 6, 2005.

While there is no way to be absolutely certain, prior to the release of the film, whether or not this is real, it bears a close enough resemblance in its opening portions to the Halo script reviewed by El Mayimbe at LatinoReview and that we posted a link to back on November 8. El Mayimbe rated the script five stars.

While the two scripts might not be exactly the same, and either version might not be the one that ends up being shot, the review and the script itself have convinced me, solely by their content, that at the very least they are working versions of the script for the Halo film.

The script itself has actually quite impressed me as an adaptation of the first game, the plot of which it closely follows. Before anyone asks, it is not my intention to distribute the file widely, nor to "spoil" the film-- although I hardly think that is possible for this audience.

However, recent discussions about casting, about whether or not we'll see the Master Chief's face in the film, and whether the game's original voice cast will be used have proven interesting. So what I propose to do is periodically post small details from the scripts as discussion-starters; points of comparison where the film diverges (even if only slightly) from the games and the novels, to see how the community feels about them. Who knows-- if this script is, in fact, legitimate, and anyone involved in actually making the film sees these discussions, it might serve as food for thought.

[image:9923 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] The first such point I'll post is a short part of an exchange that takes place during the Pillar of Autumn cutscene, as it has been rewritten in this version of the film script. In the game, Cortana points out to Keyes that the ship would be better off with her piloting it down to the surface of Halo. Keyes replies that since the Cole Protocol prohibits the capture or destruction of the onboard AI to protect sensitive information such as the location of Earth, that is not an option.

In the script version, Cortana is more insistent on this point, and Keyes' response seems to indicate that at times it has been necessary to use an "override command" on an advanced AI in order to get it to obey. This isn't necessarily a big change from the way AIs behave in the novels, but it is a change in the way Cortana is presented in the first game, where her trustworthiness isn't really called into question until she comes into contact with Halo's systems in the Control Room.

What do you think? Is the film version of Cortana going to be less reliable, perhaps more rampant, than the one in the original game? If so, what payoff can there be for doing this within the context of the first film? Is this setting up something that happens later-- in other words, are there already plans for sequels to the Halo film? Would those cover the sequence of events in the games, or in the novels?

What do you think? Add a comment below!