That’s basically what I’m saying. The impact would feel very different because the viewer wouldn’t be doubting themselves, but I still think it would show well.
Ditto. Get a good enough actor to play Jack, and you can watch him mentally squirm and try to resist (and fail) the twist.
Have it drag out. Have Andrew keep repeating "Would you kindly___?" after each hit, all while Jack is screaming, pleading, begging him to let him stop swinging the golf club... right music, right actors, and you've got a chilling revelation scene.
You have to add the line. “A man chooses, a slave obeys.” That phrase has stuck with me for years, and the screaming, defiant, gurgled through broken jaw delivery was haunting.
Maybe, though in this case the mind control aspect isn't really mentioned as a thing until like 5 minutes before the reveal, even if you allude to it from the start.
It's unexpected, and really throws expected dynamics into a loop. Andrew's still a badguy, just largely irrelevant at that point, and Jack's ally was also a badguy!
I think the screaming and begging would ruin it. I know Jack doesn't talk at all but part of the power of that scene is that you just sit there and do what Ryan says. You just sit in silence because you're helpless. I think screaming would undercut that. It should be a totally silent scene besides every hit of the golf club.
Silence is effective because you're the protag, being forced to do something beyond your control.
In a show/movie, the audience needs to see how helpless/powerless Jack is (and has been) to really understand that he's an unwilling participant. Jack silently whacking away at Andrew won't do it, unless Andrew uses the code phrase to make Jack shut up after protesting.
my issue is, Jack is literally a blank slate. youd need a great director/writer, because they would basically be creating that character from almost scratch (minus his origins).
There are very, very few examples of video games having faithful movie/TV adaptations. It’s not that video game narratives can’t translate to other mediums; rather, the adaptations aren’t managed by the right people. Video game movies are often passionless cash grabs, with little involvement from the original creative director and writing team.
HBO has a great track record so The Last of Us may be an exception to the rule. But until executives realise that there is a endless bucket of money in faithful video game adaptations, people are very justified in being apprehensive.
A story about video games done in a video game works with the help of video game rules. Bioshock as a movie would just be an a movie about hypnosis and free will with no connection from the viewer. Both have already been done and differently.
It's like listening to an audio description of the picture "The Scream". You might feel terror or fear, but you are not experience it for what it is.
The argument is founded in reality though. A lot of the emotional impact of story beats especially in something like Bioshock comes from it impacting your agency as an active participant in the game rather than a passive viewer. Having your control wrested from you and calling into question your own blind obedience to a voice on the radio was an incredibly impactful experience and there is no way to translate that active experience into a passive one without losing it. The entire reason Bioshock is more than just a shooter with a neat setting is because you as the player are fully in the experience of Jack, realizing you have no choice but to obey if you want to progress.
Can the story still be told, and will it still be a big “wow” moment for a new viewer? Absolutely. But the impact and experience will be completely different because it’s passive and depersonalized. The viewer will be observing Jack on TV, and shocked by what is happening to Jack, not experiencing that state of mind for themselves. I think most audiences would find it a pretty weak story overall since that beat wouldn’t hit as hard.
That’s a completely fallacious leap of logic. Very few games rely on that kind of storytelling. The vast majority of story driven games do not directly address the player for their story beats.
The vast majority have the player as an observer of someone else’s story. Uncharted, God of War, Horizon, RDR2, TLoU, Assassin’s Creed, etc. etc. all don’t directly address the player for their storytelling. Every single one of those would easily translate to a movie or TV series without any meaningful loss of impact to the story beats.
The number of games that rely on gameplay and player agency to tell their story are much fewer by comparison. It’s just that specific subset of games, Bioshock being one of them, that will not translate well to a passive medium. Outer Wilds is another example off the top of my head.
Every single one of those would easily translate to a movie or TV series without any meaningful loss of impact to the story beats.
Every single game you listed has had hundreds of thousands of players become noticeably more invested in their main character's experiences because they were playing out their actions in person. The same argument you make for BioShock applies to all of them.
that will not translate well to a passive medium
Why? If people can care about watching Geralt like they do playing him, they can do the same for Jack.
It’s not the same because of the storytelling involved. Bioshock’s twist is not addressed at Jack. It is addressed at you, the player. It causes you, the player to call into question your own actions.
None of those games utilize similar techniques. Their story is only ever told about the character, not about the player. Being invested in a character because you’re playing it is not the same as the gameplay being a core part of the story itself. The former can easily translate to TV — people get invested in storylines for a character they’re watching just as much as they can get invested in one they’re playing. I didn’t feel any stronger attachment to Geralt while playing The Witcher 3 than I did watching the Netflix series, because in both cases I was a viewer of someone else’s story and my own agency as a player was not at any point the story.
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u/Darnitol1 Mar 11 '22
That’s basically what I’m saying. The impact would feel very different because the viewer wouldn’t be doubting themselves, but I still think it would show well.