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Grant Morrison On Battlestar Galactica Game
Thanks to GameSpot for their interview with Grant Morrison regarding his writing on the new Battlestar Galactica game. Morrison is the noted British comic-book writer known for titles such as The Invisibles, and says of the Galactica re-imagining: "There seemed to be endless dramatic possibilities in the big biblical sweep of the Galactica concept, so I went with warrior-monks, high-tech cloisters, and the doom-laden struggle of man against pitiless machine." He also suggests that, in writing for videogames, "...the script format is quite different from a comic book script or a movie script... more 'fractal,' for want of a better word."
.. they'd release a "Story DVD" with games like this so you don't have to beat the game to find out what happens.
Wing Commander II drove me nuts with that when I reached a level I couldn't beat.
"Derp de derp."
A good story line is a must for a good computer game (see Final Fantasy)
A good story line does not always mean a good game (see Enter The Matrix)
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Grant Morrison is an amazing writer. His talent lies in his ability to tie many, disparate story lines together with a psychedelic, post-modern bent that incorporates the outer fringes of knowledge and dadaist imaginings. His work in the Doom Patrol was particularly striking to me.
In that comic book, he had a character that I was believe called Johnny on the Street. He was the street, one that talked through the existance of what shops were at one time there, and the street roamed from cosmic location to location, a temporary autonomous zone of sorts.
I've been wondering what he has been up to, and it's good to know he's working on a video game. I'd be very interested to see how this turns out.
I was always hoping he'd start writing a TV show like Twin Peaks, or even more so in the current cultural climate of Six Feet Under and what have you; he could get away with making something very interesting.
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That's Buck Rodgers, you ignorant clod!
I haven't read much of Morrison's stuff, but his run on New X-Men was pretty good. It's going to be interesting to see what he can do with writing a game. But I wonder if even he can actually make something worthwhile out of Battlestar Galactica. I mean, that show actually causes me physical pain, if I ever accidentally watch it. Sure, he revitalized the X-Men, but they always had the potential to be good. Writing a good script for Battlestar Galactica would kind of be like trying to write Ultimate Ghost Rider.
Not only is it the wrong show, but he doesn't even know the character's name!
Remember that the Matrix videogame was heavilly hyped as being "written and directed by the Waschowski borthers" we all know how that turned out.
Writing a game is very very differnt than writing more traditional mediums. Each has their own language and style. I am always leary when I hear that "so and so" name writer has been brought in to "write" a videogame. It's also kind of sad that the videgame industry feels that they need to hire this outside talent rather than trust that people who make games for a living actually know how to make games.
Now all this being said, I was a big galactica fan and am looking forward to reading reviews of the game.
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How odd. It sounds from the interview like the Exodus will have been happening when Adama was young.
:(
However, in the TV Show/Movie, the Exodus starts with the Cylon betrayal at Caprica, when the Galactica gathers the survivors and high-tails it out of there. Morrison surely can't be unaware of this, so I wonder how he's going to put the search for Earth that far back?
Hmmm. Well, at least this might go some distance to explaining Adama's almost fanatical faith that Earth exists and the the fleet will be able to find it one day. Too bad Galactica 1980 was waiting at the end of the journey.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
On the one hand, it's a remake of a classic. On the other, tt's a licensed game. Both will suck by definition. Why work yourselves into a lather over it now? You'll only be more disappointed when it actually starts sucking later.
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You're understanding the game's premise much as I did from that interview... which seriously alters the whole saga. I know it's popular with the IP owning syndicates to "re-envision" or whatever their stuff for a new generation but it was totally unecessary for BSG to be changed in this way. The colonies had 6000 years of (presumably) space-faring history. Any civilization goes through periods of expansion, inward turns, imperialism, anarchy and conflict innumerable times during such a lengthy timespan.
I think it's great idea to have the player involved in Adama's early career but there's plenty of opportunity for Adama to make discoveries whilst defending a confederation of star systems and their likely hundreds or thousands of outer territories. His son Apollo, in the opening of the series, wants to get back to deep space exploration. So chances are he and his dad have both seen periods in their lives when total war wasn't the order of the day.
Two things I did love about the "new vision" is (1) that the battlestars will be damaged and repaired during an arduous service life - the kind of thing saddly missing from the Voyage TV series. (2) and warrior monks... I'd never considered the colonials might have such a class/caste. (besides the Borellian isolationist faction) Sounds cool.
One question though, is it just a space-flight sim or is there any RPG to it? Is it just a version of Freespace/XWing only using the BSG mechanical designs?
As someone stated earlier (let me fix the statement so that it is true) all games that have good stores are great games. Ultima is another RPG series without the Avatar and the symbolism he embodies. C&C is just another RTS game if it didn't have the competing philosophies of Communism and Capitalism. The Final Fantasy games often incorporate Shinto ideas and philosophy. When done correctly, having a mythos enriches the gameplay by unifying the game design and giving a deep background for the player to immerse himself in.
The BSG television show has a equally rich if not more so than the games listed above. I know some of you inwardly groan at the cheese some episodes contain. Blame the television execs for pushing the series and writers too much. Out of all the shows Glen Larson created, this IMHO is the best one of the lot. (He did unleash Knight Rider and David Hasselhoff upon us though.) BSG really is a biblical story with a dash of Mormonism involved. You don't have to be a Mormon to enjoy it, any more than you have to be a liberal socialist to enjoy the Star Trek Universe or espouse the views of Joseph Campbell to enjoy Star Wars. Equally, when playing games I'm not being converted to being a Shinto Monk playing Final Fantasy or becoming a druid when I cast spells in Ultima. The mythos just adds to the atmosphere and ties all the elements of the game together.
I'm curious to see Grant's take on things. Hopefully it's better than what the Sci-Fi channel is doing. I'm pretty sure I read that some of the original cast is doing voice work for the game so that's a good sign. In the end, it all boils down to gameplay though, something that a good story can't salvage. Best of luck to the entire team and here's hoping that the BSG mythos stays as intact as possible.
According to this link above:
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
my site has a neat featured section all about grant morrison, specifically doom patrol but we do have a lot of his other work on there. it is a work in progress, but more feature-filled than most other sites on him (aside from bullough's)... take a look. :)
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