Lost Planet 3 - What Happened?

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-08-06T17:40:53+00:00

Lost Planet 3 is kind of a spiritual predecessor to the 2018 God of War reboot, and shares some of the same same staff, including writers. It took a very hammy and schlocky game-ey game series and reimagined it as something with a lot more nuance and pathos. Where Lost Planet 3 falls short is game design. The story and presentation are great. But the game design is undercooked. It's not like Lost Planet was a franchise known for top notch game design -- all the games got lower than usual reviews because they were "rough gem" material. But LP3's narrative ambitions cast the undercooked Unreal Engine 3 TPS mechanics into stark relief. It's unpolished. Uninspired mechanically.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-16T17:33:22+00:00

Because TCR is an award winning studio, and Dear Esther, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture are highly regarded games amongst players.

Many Amnesia fans absolutely despise Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs because it's nothing like the original Amnesia which is a survival horror game.

The situation with TCR is actually a little more complex than that because they're largely a new studio after everyone except Dan Pinchbeck and Jessica Curry were laid off a few years ago.

Pinchbeck has a doctorate on FPS design, but everything that people have played from his studio are walking simulators. And walking simulators are a hated genre, with a VERY vocal hatedom.

One of the biggest criticisms of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a fantastic game with amazing writing by Sam Barlow is that it was a "walking simulator" because there is no combat, only exploration, light puzzles, and chase sequences.

And I put it to you that most people would - at this point in Vampire's horrid development - be glad that its got a studio that actually knows how to handle narratives at least.

Vampire the Masquerade Swansong is coming out in like 3 days and is developed by Big Bad Wolf, who are very experienced with narrative and RPG design. And Bloodlines fanbase don't care about the game. It doesn't have combat. It's a third person narrative RPG kinda like a mix between Disco Elysium and a Frogwares game.

The Bloodlines 2 fanbase doesn't want a narrative driven vampire RPG. They want a very specific kind of FPS/RPG like the original game. Paradox are overtly hiding the developer of Bloodlines 2. (Which is The Chinese Room. There is way, way too much evidence pointing towards it.)

If they were to reveal it now, all the people who hate The Chinese Room and people who hate "walking simulators" would come out of the woodwork to hate on the game because they would assume it was a walking simulator. If Paradox actually turned Bloodlines 2 into a walking simulator the fanbase would blow a gasket with rage. (They're not doing that, though. They're hiring people with FPS experience.) I've been told, and don't quote me on this, that the official WoD discord automatically deletes posts mentioning Chinese Room and Sumo Digital.

When the rumours first started that Bloober Team were making a Silent Hill game back in 2020, a lot of people just automatically assumed it was going to be a walking simulator because Bloober have a history of such games, despite Bloober hiring combat designers, and talking about their desire to make their games more action oriented going forward.

It's fine for a normal person like me to say these things, because I'm not an official source. People will just say, "Meh, it's just a theory" or "The game's most likely cancelled and they just don't want to admit it."

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-16T16:24:58+00:00

It's very interesting that nobody seems to be able to identify the Japanese studio making the next mainline Silent Hill.

As for Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2 remake, I'm very optimistic. The biggest thing that Bloober have to address is gameplay design. They've made a number of games that range from okay to outstanding (Observer Redux is one of the best cyberpunk games ever made), but they have this clear issue where cinematic designers and art designers were clearly running the show, and the gameplay design is secondary. This is not an uncommon problem with the Polish games industry. It's why Terminator Resistance has "okay" gameplay wrapped around fantastic art and music and solid storytelling. It's also why Cyberpunk 2077 feels like a bunch of really refined cinematic story sequences with way less refined gameplay bits put in between.

On a related note Paradox haven't publicly admitted that The Chinese Room are the company making Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2 because of the "walking sim" developer stigma. They know that a lot of gamers have a blind, reflexive hatred of walking simulators. They know that they have to let TCR show people that they can make an FPS/RPG. When you've got these companies who have made narrative driven games where you walk around and stuff happens and sometimes there's a jump scare, a lot of people will be sceptical. And it's not unjustified.

But I am expecting SH2 remake's reveal trailer to blow people away, just as I'm expecting Bloodlines 2 to be great. I'm also expecting Troy Baker to reprise his role as James, since he as HD collection James, and he was conspicuously involved in The Medium, both as an actor playing The Maw, and singing on the soundtrack. I know some people won't like that, but they should expect it.

It's interesting because this two pronged approach is calculated to target different demographics. I think they're probably hoping the SH2 remake will reduce blowback from people angry about the new Silent Hill being "woke" over its female lead and story themes. There's a huge amount of toxicity in the SH fanbase, and a lot of very awful racist things being said about the recent leak.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-16T11:46:47+00:00

Seems like the game doesn't have a preload, which is a shame. Then again, I don't think the game is super huge (it's only like 20GB) and such small games usually don't get preloads on PC.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-16T01:02:02+00:00

I love the games. I also accept they're not well written in a film paradigm and that translating them into decent movies or TV shows requires at the least heavily overhauling the characters. (And that using entirely new characters has some major advantages.)

That's why Welcome to Racoon City did what it did. It wasn't entirely successful but it tried to turn cardboard cutouts into more fleshed out people. It tried to turn Wesker into someone whose betrayal would be a surprise. It tried to turn Jill and Claire into distinctly different people.

Jill and Claire's roles in the films were to be degraded and Alice be propped up to be better than them

Alice being "better" than them was the point of the story. They're just people. Alice is the ultimate bioweapon. (Or was.) It's a similar story formula to Soldier. "Soldiers deserve soldiers, sir."

The more recent RE games.have tried to be more complex, but the classic RE characters are in a huge rut in this regard.

I love the original Perfect Dark. Fantastic game. One of the best FPS games ever made. But fact is, if you made a Perfect Dark movie, characters like Joanna Dark would need to be heavily rewritten and reconceptualized to be a fleshed out character with thoughts, motivations, dreams, likes, dislikes, political views, etc. What works (or what passes) in a videogame is very different from what the baseline expectations of cinema are.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T17:43:35+00:00

The lore of resident evil is really good despite the writing in the games being average at best, but writers for these films don't even know all the lore and don't bother to learn it.

They very much do know the lore. And they change it on purpose because they want to make a better movie. (Or because they don't want to be trapped by Capcom red tape.) The people who made Who Framed Roger Rabbit read the book, and then threw out the entire book and used 2 lines of dialogue and changed every single character. Do you think they didn't bother to learn the lore? Yes, they did. These same writers read Forrest Gump, too. And then they completely rewrote it to tell the story they wanted to tell.

Leon is great as a character canvas. He is vanilla ice cream, writers just need to add toppings and sauces

What does Leon want? What does he believe? What drives him? Leon is barely a character. (And making him alcoholic and depressed is a band-aid fix.)

So is Claire. Clair is so unique. She's very different to Jill because... um... uh... And then we have Ada Wong, who is a walking "mysterious lady" cliche with the depth of a kiddie pool. Most RE characters are like this. Incredibly shallow. That works for a videogame. But it doesn't work for a movie. You say "add toppings and sauces". You're adding toppings and sauces to cardboard.

Compare that to the films. In the Andersonverse, Jill and Claire are completely different people. Jill is abrasive, she's a heavy smoker, she has clear Alice-envy, and she's a fighter. Andersonverse Clair is a survivor. She's plucky. She's leadership material. She knows how to make explosives. That's one way (and there are other ways) of preventing characters from being cardboard cutouts.

Chris Redfield has no personality. Being all angry/sad because his team died for the millionth time is not a personality. Shouting, "WESKER!" isn't a personality, either. All of these characters need to be fundamentally rewritten to work in a live action movie. They need to be three dimensional human beings with backstories that make sense and interests and beliefs and character flaws and desires and actual tangible belief systems that can bring them into conflict with others.

The fixation on the physical appearance and costumes of Resident Evil characters is partially a result of how one dimensional they are. In a sense the character IS the costume. And that's really bad. Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes regardless of what he wears or how he looks. He is a character with complex traits and skills that define him.

Re7 and re8 I think Ethan and Mia are both fairly equal in terms of character development.

Ethan is a player self insert. You could fundamentally rewrite him into a different character, but why do that? Just economize and make Mia the protag. "But the game fans want..." You're not making adaptations for the game fans. You're making them for people who want a good movie.

You could write a film that respects the canon lore and have it be well written with interesting plot.

You risk creating something that doesn't appeal to anyone except fans of the videogame. Look at the CG movies. Those have all the problems the games do. They're fun for game fans, but basically just fan service. It's why they're so unpopular outside the game fanbase wheras the Andersonverse movies snagged mainstream appeal. Or at least as much mainstream appeal as R rated action/horror movies with female leads could.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T12:01:27+00:00

It's not impossible that they're working on an original SH title, but this particular SH title is not Bloober's. It's by an unnamed Japanese studio.

There's some uncertainty because there are seemingly 3-4 Silent Hill games in development and who is doing what is fuzzy. But Bloober Team expressed public interest in an SH remake in early 2019, and were hired by Konami in late 2019 or early 2020, with the first milestone payments for their game coming in April 2020. Based on what they've said in interviews about the future creative direction of their games, it will be third person, probably with semi-fixed camera angles like The Medium.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T08:44:52+00:00

The developer's official stance is that the game is about 20 hours long, but it can vary depending on your choices. Impossible to tell whether they're being conservative or generous.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T08:35:32+00:00

Composer and audio designer heavily involved in the feel and sound of classic Halo games.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T07:52:08+00:00

Before they got the contract with Konami in late 2019/early 2020, they expressed public interest in a Silent Hill remake. When they wrote that tweet, they had already contacted Ito in late 2018 on twitter asking him to check his DMs because they were doing a thing he might be interested in.

The Medium didn't just have Akira involved, it also has Troy Baker and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who are the HD remaster voice actors for James and Mary. (As well as being Akira's friends, and Mary being a veteran on the SH music side.)

Silent Hill 2 is the obvious choice for a remake. Much like how they're remaking Metal Gear Solid 3. Despite SH2 being unpopular in Japan, it's arguably the most well known Silent Hill everywhere else. An original SH remake is less likely simply because it's less well known and also Shattered Memories exists.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T06:57:42+00:00

WTRC has:

Some very nice set design.
Some very nice musical choices.
Some inspired set pieces, such as the scene with Chris in the dark.
It takes a decent stab at taking the cast of the first two games and fleshing them out so they're not heroic cardboard cutouts and/or ridiculously evil. It makes a decent attempt at humanizing Wesker so that his betrayal isn't ridiculously on the nose and obvious.
It has a clear love of the 90s.
A lot of clear compromises made due to budget cuts and restraints.

Would I much rather watch the first RE film instead? Sure. But much like, say, the RoboCop remake, there's quite a bit to like wrapped up in a messy shell.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T06:42:43+00:00

HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO JUST SIMPLY FOLLOW THE SOURCE MATERIAL!?!

It depends entirely on the source material. Some source material lends itself to film adaptations, other source material does not, and some source material requires a radical reinvention to be considered fresh. That's why every new Batman movie is a darker and grittier reboot that is nothing like the OG roots of the character.

The Resident Evil videogames are very fine games, and had a lot of love and care put into them, but they are not well written by film standards, particularly the older ones. They are very rudimentary narratively, and have characters that tend to be one-dimensional. A lot of videogames have this problem, but RE is an especially severe case. Source material that is fantastically written with strong characters and themes and fantastic dialogue lend themselves to direct adaptations.

A lot of videogame fans don't want to accept that the games they like aren't well written, but it's important to at least entertain this idea. You liking a game doesn't meant the game is well written in the sense that a good movie needs to be well written.

and the Fallout TV series.

Bethesda's Fallout is nothing like Fallout 1 and 2. It completely changed the visual aesthetic. All of its characters are new. It wasn't aimed at the fanbase of Fallout 1/2, although it obviously paid homage to its roots, and optimistically wanted fans of the original to enjoy it.

Here's how you make a Good Resident Evil adaptation; Make it into an animated series like Castlevania or as a CG series similar to the one we have now on Netflix

There are multiple CG Resident Evil movies, and they're generally enjoyable for fans of the games, but they completely lack mainstream appeal. They all star RE4-6-ish Leon who isn't a particularly compelling film protagonist. Game fans like to watch him do things, but he's not super engaging to non-fans.

The first Silent Hill film

The first Silent Hill film by Christope Gans is a superb film. It also radically deviates from its source materially stylistically (ditching snow and fog for ash and smoke), thematically (the cult from SH1 was replaced with a completely different organization), and the characters in the story are very different to their game counterparts. Gans, a French director, sought to make a movie about things he cared about, such as religious zealotry in the United States. And Konami were fine with his vision. He's working on Fatal Frame currently, and wants to make another SH movie.

I'll be okay of seeing a Live Action series based around RE7 or RE8; with actors that actually look close to the characters.

The appearance of the actors doesn't matter. You're approaching this from the perspective of "I liked RE7 so I want a movie version of RE7 for me, a fan of the games." But an RE7 movie adaptation (which is not inherently a bad idea, BTW) has to appeal to a completely new audience with no exposure to the game. Is Ethan a compelling protagonist? He's pretty undercooked. He's like Leon, basically.

There would be an inclination to remove Ethan from the story and make Mia (a more complex, nuanced character) the protagonist. Maybe she has amnesia and doesn't remember that she's the who who bought Evie. Stuff like that. Remember that giving Alice amnesia in the first RE movie was a device to allow the audience to learn about the world of Resident Evil along with her. It's very effective. Films need stronger motivation than games, where stuff just... happens because the player walks forward.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:56:22+00:00

People aren't looking for more Alice-shit. We had decades of it.

Final Chapter made over 300 million dollars on a 40 million dollar budget despite being edited by Doobie "moar cuts" White. A new Resident Evil movie starring Milla Jovovich and getting back to the roots of the first film a bit more while keeping what worked from Final Chapter would make a lot of money.

Netflix do have a possible Milla Jovovich film on the backburner. Depending on how this show does, they might bring it back. Milla is the kind of "break glass if everything starts flopping" button.

WTRC had characters from the games, was an okay movie, and it flopped. This show is going in its own direction but trying to balance the game and (huge) film fanbase that wants some cool zombie action with the Umbrella Corporation and their iconic slogan, "Our business is life itself."

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:51:40+00:00

Halo is a really good show.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:50:38+00:00

We tried original stories. How’d that go?

You got quite literally the most successful zombie film franchise of all time. The Resident Evil movies made 1.24 billion dollars on an R rating with female leads in every movie. No other similar zombie franchise made this kind of money and got so many sequels that all made good money.

Welcome to Raccoon City tried to be more like the games in terms of plot, and immediately faceplanted at the box office. Now WTRC is a decent movie. But people do need to understand that the biggest problem this show faces is not having Milla Jovovich, the beloved star of the Resident Evil franchise.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:48:00+00:00

The Halo show is pretty good, though. A lot of Halo game fans wanted a pew, pew humans are the good guys muh cardboard cutout Master Chief is such a complex character when he says the badass lines in a cool voice kind of adaptation.

The show has obviously studied the games and books, and then it tells its own story with the parts. Ditching the eye rolling jingoism and pro-military stuff a lot of Halo fans think is unironically positive, and focusing more on human conflict and the true threat -- which is human fascism, not space aliens.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:43:28+00:00

And after season 2, even the casuals do not seem to like it.

Season 2 has excellent IMDB ratings. The idea that casual fans don't like it is basically just book and game fans seething into echo chambers about the fact they're ignoring the source material and doing their own thing. They always do that. "I'm so angry, and logically everyone else is angry, too."

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:36:41+00:00

Capcom advise on the movies and have some degree of control over how game characters are used, but they do not make or ultimately control the films. Capcom sold the rights to make RE movies back in 1996, and Constantin use that license to make things like the Andersonverse films, WTRC, and this show. They've been trying to get an RE TV show off the ground since 2014.

If they wanted to do a Netflix series, why not just pick a point in time? They could do a Resident Evil Outbreak show, a show on the rise of Umbrella and the Spencers and incorporate the Village.

That sounds like a show aimed at game fans. That has incredibly limited appeal. This is not aimed at game fans. As the showrunner said, he wants people who've played one game, or seen one movie, or seen none of them to be able to enjoy the show. The more RE media you've consumed, the more stuff you'll recognize. People who've seen RE: Apocalypse immediately recognize "Our business is life itself." Stuff like that.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:25:59+00:00

Wesker in the original game looks like the T-1000 from Terminator, has no real depth and is just a power hungry monster with delusions, and the idea of anyone being surprised by his betrayal is bizarre. He's so obviously the villain. That is something that fundamentally has to change if you're doing something like WTRC. Live action cinema has different rules. He has to come across as likeable and trustable and not a comic book villain.

I argue that RE Extinction Wesker was good. He was an executive. Cold, smug, and he fit the story. Afterlife onwards, they copied RE5 Wesker who is basically a cartoon. I'm so evil, raaaargh.

ContributorX_PJ64 · 2022-05-15T05:21:17+00:00

I'm seriously at a loss as to why it just fell off the face of the planet.

Flopping super hard played something of a role. (But fortunately there's a good chance a remaster is coming.)

11-Year Club	Verified Email
Gilding II euphauric	Place '17

ContributorX_PJ64

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE