Chronicling Riddick - Making A Decent Movie-Licensed Game?

Thanks to Eurogamer for its two-part feature discussing developer Starbreeze's path to making a high-quality licensed videogame in Xbox FPS Chronicles Of Riddick, as the author asks of movie licenses: "Should they mimic the structure of the film and allow players to relive key events? Should they act as a supplement to the main picture, fleshing out secondary characters and back-stories whilst adhering to the tenets of genre?", before analyzing the development of the well-received title, which has drawn impressive scoring from GameSpot, who rated it "one of the most-impressive games on the Xbox and seems destined to be remembered as the most inspiring collaboration between Hollywood and the gaming industry yet." The Eurogamer article concurs with this, praising the "very cohesive first-person game blending elements of stealth, all-out action and storytelling." What did Starbreeze do right?

Comments

So...

[hookedup]

Are they just assuming that the movie will do well when they start creating a video game for it?

What if the movie flops a-la waterworld, then you're stuck with boxes and boxes of a game that is doomed to the 10 dollar bin at office depot..

Re:So...

[BigDork1001]

Well if the game is good enough it shouldn't matter how well the movie does? Sure it will affect sales some but if it's one of the best titles yet for X-box why wouldn't people go out to buy it?

The same can be said for movies that are based on video games. If Hollywood were to make a movie based on some terrible video game but it was one of the top movies in the past couple years I'm sure it'd do well. I think people, for the most part, are smart enough to look at the movie and video game as completely seperate things and make decisions as such.

Tivo Preview

[justanyone]

Tivo pushed a 2-minute 'preview of'/'making of' 'Chronicles of Riddick' out to my Tivo unit this last Sunday as per their normal marketing arrangements.

It claims (IIRC) that the movie starts where the quite good action sci-fi adventure 'Pitch Black' left off. The character played by Vin Diesel was apparently too intriquing to let go, and a numbered sequel (a la` Pitch Black II) was probably too ordinary.

I admit the universe presented in Pitch Black is interesting. They got a good bit of science right in that they used a planetary eclipse for the mating time, which is unusual enough to be a natural idea. I would have liked to see some vegetation to support this biological system, but on the whole it seemed pretty good.

The spacecraft, the concept of a prison ship, this is pretty normal stuff, but I like the concept of either electromechanichal or biologically enhanced eyesight as a mini-superpower, given present technology trends this seems reasonable given the rest of their technology structures.

If anyone has a further comment on the hard-sci-fi tech aspect of these movies, please post, I am interested if they conform to the almost-reasonable traditions of Niven and Asimov.

-- Kevin J. Rice
Justanyone.com

Re:Tivo Preview

[MrScience]

You're right, they got a lot of it correct. The thing that bugged me was the "and they seemed to move as one" increadibly-long eclipse. Did you see how fast the planet was coming up? I figure it should have lasted two hours, tops.

Re:Tivo Preview

[justanyone]

Did you see how fast the planet was coming up?

I agree that the planet approached the sun very quickly. Great observation. I might postulate that the eclipse duration could be explained by an eccentric orbit (sorry I don't remember the orbital mechanics graphic they put in the movie though).

Okay, here's PITCH BLACK MOVIE's presumption (I don't have the game, so no comment on that): A moon around a gas giant around a binary system, right? The binary suns are almost always separated enough in the sky to produce continuous daytime, or illuminating the gas giant's atmosphere enough to generate very bright reflected light.

Let's refine this. The GG (gas giant) orbits a binary system. All orbits are in the same plane otherwise the eclipses are too long betweentimes (hundreds or thousands of years not tens). The two stars orbit a common center of mass; the GG orbits that mass at a farther distance. QUESTION FOR ASTROPHYSICS PEOPLE:Is there any mechanism tending to circularize an orbit other than collision with objects? Would another planets' gravity circularize a highly eccentric orbit?

Anyway, The GG orbits, the Gas Giant's Moon (GGM) always has both stars in the sky or GG shine from both suns. EXCEPT when the GG aligns with both suns, and the GGM is in line as well. The duration of the eclipse would be determined by:

• eccentricity of GG
• eccentricity of GGM around GG
• apparent diameter of GG in GGM's sky;
• apparent diameter of each sun in GG's sky
• inclination of the orbital plane of GGM around GG
  
• orbital inclination of GG around StarA and StarB

Is there a way to make the eclipse last 10 hours in such a system?

We can presume main sequence stars.

Here's another ASTROPHYSICS QUESTIONIn a system with where two G2 stars like our Sol orbit each other at a typical binary star system distance (whatever that is? say something like Mercury-diameter), what is the orbital distance where the same solar energy as Earth receives?

I would guess very close to our current orbit. Let's see... Radiation decreases with the square of the distance, so I think it's 1.17 AU's (sqrt 30000 km; y=sqrt(x^2 / 2). Someone please check my math here...?

What is the average (emperically measured) sun-to-sun distance in a binary system? Has this been measured / averaged?

-- Kevin Rice
JustAnyone.com

Heres What They Did Right

[Slyght]

First off, let me say that I have never been a fan of Vin Diesel's work. Fast and the Furious was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, XXX was cheesy. I've never seen Pitch Black, and had no intention of seeing the new Riddick movie, but after playing Escape from Butcher Bay, I'm probably going to go see them. Here's why: 1) It tells a part of the story of Riddick not found in the movies. This game is a whole new part of the story of Riddick, and an intregal part, as it explains how Riddick got his night vision. Since this story is exclusive to the game, the developers had more freedom in what the player can do, and therefore the player isn't limited to the constraints of what happens on screen, a common problem with movie-licensed games.

2) It's visually impressive. This is one of the best-looking games I've seen on the Xbox, with lighting only rivalled by Splinter Cell.

3) First-person brawler. It's funny that it took ten years since the invention of the first-person shooter for developers to start making first person games that use one's fists in a more realistic manner than Goldeneye's karate chop. While Escape from Butcher Bay isn't the first to try this, it's probably so far the best implementation. Snapping somebody's neck in first-person is very satisfying, as well. 4) It's immersive. Escape from Butcher Bay really makes you feel like you're Riddick as you play this, and not just because you're playing through the eyes of him. The game has a very immersive, cinematic feel to it, similar to Half Life or Call of Duty. As you first get walked into Butcher Bay with the opening credits on the screen, you can look around, hearing fragments of prisoners' conversations as you walk by, hearing screams of prisoners getting beaten in the distance, you can see the dried blood and filth on the walls, the flies swarming around the trash...you feel like you're in Butcher Bay.

Although not the longest game in the world, it's incredibly enjoyable, and I suggest everybody with an Xbox at least go out and rent it. I think a lot of development companies can learn a lot from this game, especially those that develop movie-licensed games.

Re:Heres What They Did Right

[WarriorPoet42]

Vin Diesel plays one character in every movie he's ever been in: himself. That said, he plays himself very well, and involves himself in projects that are appropriate to his character.
No one ever accused John Wayne or Clint Eastwood for being great actors, but their performances were still enjoyable because they choose the right projects (Bridges of Madison County notwithstanding).

Re:Heres What They Did Right

[bigman2003]

I think that your first item "It tells a part of the story of Riddick not found in the movies." is the most important.

Halo (the game) 'inspired' 3 books. The first two I read were great- Fall of Reach and First Strike. They told stories from the Halo universe (I hate that term) and I thought they were interesting.

After going through those books very quickly, I started to read "The Flood" which is the book based on the events of the game.

Oh crap this is so damn boring. Yes, they did a great job detailing the game. I can read the book and know that when he opens a particular door there will be a shade on his left, and right- and one of them will be manned, the other will have a grunt sleeping next to it. Yes, I know this already from playing the game, I don't need to read a book about it!

For me at least, anytime two forms of media try to tell the exact same story, it gets very boring. Harry Potter had this problem for me. The books were great, and the first two movies were pretty much exactly what I had imagined while reading the book. But that made the movie boring. I don't really need the affirmation of my imagination up on the screen.

So...in conclusion...I'm glad they didn't base Chronicles of Riddick on the same story as the movie.

Star involvement?

[chromaphobic]

From what I've read/seen, Vin himself was involved in the game's design, to what extent I don't know, but was involved further than just recording some dialog and sitting still for a body scan.

He's said to be a pretty avid gamer, so maybe this made the difference in this case? Not saying he made the game better, but it could be assumed that he knows the difference between a good game and a bad game and wasn't going to let his image be used in a crap game.

So maybe the fact that he was able to pop his head in at various points in the game's development and put the kibosh on anything that sucked (and his ability to tell suck from not suck) kept the whole thing from turning into the usual fubar license.