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Old 02-06-2013, 05:58 PM   #1
Talon87
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J.J. Abrams and Gabe Newell team up

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/e...-towards-porta

Looks like J.J. Abrams, director of the rebooted Star Trek films and recently-appointed director of the seventh installment in the Star Wars saga, is teaming up with Gabe "the Gaben" Newell of Valve fame. And there's talk of the two making either a Portal or a Half-Life film into a reality. Writes one commenter, "Jesus Christ, Abrams, what are you trying to do, become King Nerd of the movie-world? BECAUSE IT'S WORKING." Indeed, it seems that Abrams, not content to have his hand in both Star Trek and Star Wars, decided that he'd like a piece of that sweet, sweet Valve pie as well. One can only imagine what is next for J.J. Perhaps a reboot of Dune? Or maybe he'll ask Disney-Marvel if he can helm the third Avengers film. Who knows, who knows.
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Old 02-06-2013, 06:44 PM   #2
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A HALF LIFE FILM!??!?!?!?!?!?

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Old 02-06-2013, 06:48 PM   #3
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Old 02-06-2013, 06:54 PM   #4
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Eh...

There's always talk of games becoming movies, but they never happen. HALO film, Gears of War film, Mass Effect film.

And the ones that do become films end up as major disappointments. Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat, Prince of Persia, Silent Hill, Super Mario Brothers (Oh god that was terrible).

The big problem is that turning a game into a film takes away from the experience. The Covenant is a lot less scary when they're not shooting at YOU, but rather some on-screen Master Chef. It doesn't feel as amazing when you aren't the one who killed General RAAM but the actors playing Marcus and Dom. And the choices Commander Shepard makes aren't choices when it a scripted movie.

Yeah, there will always be talk of turning games into films. It's not that common. And it's never very successful.
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Old 02-06-2013, 07:07 PM   #5
Talon87
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I think your point, Loki, is very true for Portal but is arguably less important for Half-Life 1. That game honestly plays like a clumsily-scripted science-fiction horror adventure film: and only clumsily because it's in the hands of a first-time player who is trying to figure out what to do next, gets lost, etc. If you imagine somebody who is a Half-Life expert speeding through HL1 at a jolly clip, I would say it already plays a lot like a film. I've never bought into the whole "OMFG BECAUSE IT'S 1ST PERSON I FEEL LIKE I AM GORDON FREEMAN! " thing that a lot of fans swear by. To me, I'm very obviously playing a video game and it just happens to be an FPS rather than a 3PS. If anything, Half-Life being done as a movie would probably help me to appreciate that story better, not worse. But for Portal? Absolutely I would agree with you. Portal you very much feel like you *are* Chell / you *are* the lab rat going through that rat maze, and everything about that game save the infamous plot twist(s) would be lost in adapting it to film, I feel.
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Old 02-06-2013, 07:55 PM   #6
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Completely disagree with Talon on HL1, having only played it a year (or a couple?) years ago for the first time, I do think the atmosphere and appeal of Hl1 would be lost if it became a movie. Too much of the unique experience comes from 1) who Gordon Freeman is, 2) his on-spot, haphazard development into a capable hero. That kind of dimension isn't communicated to the viewer/player outside of hands-on experience, and it makes up for what is otherwise an ordinary sci-fi plot. Aside from the G-Man, whose presence isn't really a factor until the end of the film, there isn't a whole lot about HL1 that differentiates it from the movie Aliens in my mind. Fundamentally, the stories are similar but Aliens is going to be the better flick because of personality, cast and fast-paced action, all movie traits that HL1 lacks by design.

Muv-Luv Alternative plays very similar, except it has all those movie elements and a better fleshed out environment than HL1. But in the same vein, passive viewers are only going to partially understand the concepts/themes if they're not experiencing those ideas in the shoes of the main character.

This said, I think Abrams-Newell teamup is a bit premature. Like the Niners fans celebrating "6-0!" before last Sunday happened. Let Abrams show us what he's made of with the new films...right now everything is just speculative hype.
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Old 02-06-2013, 08:14 PM   #7
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I agree with what you wrote, which is that HL1 is essentially a "been there, done that" science fiction horror survival film. I never said it would not be. You argue that it being a video game helps to distract from that elephant in the room, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you that it doesn't. But you also seem to argue, in saying you "completely disagree" with me, that Half-Life would not be the same story unless you were actually playing it. And that, I think, is totally false. Portal would be that way, yes, but not HL1. I stress "HL1" since I think HL2 does enough of making the player feel like he/she is "Gordon Freeman". But when I played HL1, I very much felt like I was playing Metroid Prime: you're in 1st person viewer mode, and people approach you and treat you like you're Gordon/Samus ... but you still don't feel immersed enough to feel like you are Gordon/Samus. You still feel like you are a puppetmaster controlling this third party named Gordon/Samus and that you are learning more about him/her and the world around him/her by way of diary entries, conversations with survivors, and so on. Nothing about the boss battle or map exploration of Half-Life 1 is surgically irremovable from its narrative; but the same cannot be said for Portal. With Portal, the very act of figuring out the puzzles set before you by this possibly-broken-down madwoman of a computer is in and of itself both the force which drives the narrative and the core aspect of the gameplay. And when you look up at the walls yourself and see graffiti about how "THE CAKE IS A LIE" and other such things, that is a hell of a lot more eerie when you don't know how big of a deal what you're looking at is (b/c it's a video game and it artfully doesn't emphasize the discovery too much) vs. how it would be in a film (where you know the camera would specially zoom in on it and then cut to Chell's face with furrowed brows as the music changes to a new ominous track that all but TELLS the stupid theater-going audience "OHHHHHHH SHIT! THIS IS SOMETHING! THIS IS SOOOOOOOOOOMETHIIIIIIIIING!"). With Half-Life 1, that isn't really the case. The way Half-Life 1 reveals the G Man to the player could be 100% faithfully reproduced in a film and the player would lose nothing for the transition. The way Gordon learns things from people he talks with, likewise, would be no different in a film than it is in the game. Figuring out how to beat a boss is not something which drives the narrative in HL1 -- it's an entertainment puzzle for the player, and in its transition to film it would be painlessly none too painfully lost as we saw a 3rd party Gordon scrunching his brows and trying to solve the problem ... and then doing so in a matter of 30-120 seconds and defeating the tentacle monster or whatever boss it is that he's fighting at that particular moment.
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Old 02-06-2013, 10:11 PM   #8
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Sorry, I'm going to agree with Dopple that Half Life one is a bit dry for a movie. Meanwhile, Half Life 2 could easily have some semblance of a movie thanks to the introduction of CHARACTERS, A SETTING WHICH ISN'T A CRAPPY UNDERGROUND LAB, AND AN ACTUAL ANTAGONIST!

Not that HL1 wasn't great in it's own way, but it's not movie material.
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Old 02-06-2013, 10:13 PM   #9
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I'd argue the qualities you ascribe to Portal are no different than HL1, except that Portal's events are more mundane. That is the only reason why Portal is less separable from its presentation than HL1. Yes, I can believe HL1 can be successfully made into a movie, but like Loki suggests I wouldn't feel it was "Half-Life" because the immersion isn't there. I did not feel like I was controlling Duke Nukem in an action flick when I played as Gordon, the immersion was pretty similar to how I played as Chell. Only the nature of the puzzles and the atmosphere were different.

The "puzzles" in HL1 are more along the lines of reactivating things, escaping military ambushes or defeating large boss monsters. These are the kind of plot developments more common to movies than moving blocks/pushing buttons/opening doors. Portal was better able to slowly reveal its secrets because it was an inherently more tacit setting. For Black Mesa, it was chaos, chaos, and more chaos everywhere. The story wasn't so much about discovery or Black Mesa back-story as it was getting out of Black Mesa alive.

Basically, I don't think it's the presentation that's why HL1 would make a better movie than Portal. HL1's subject matter is just better movie material than Portal, since it is closer in story to older FPS than later Valve ones, and both games if adapted would lose the fingerprint that really made them unique as games.
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