It’s a mad, scary world
Gears of War, the upcoming Xbox 360 flagship game has a few new trailers out and I was truly amazed. First of all, this is a huge game project, possibly costing more than 10 million dollars to produce, and sure do it look neat. The graphics are at the very frontier (technically) and animations and sound effects seems to be good.
But there are problems here. Huge ones! Just see for yourself. Let’s start with the first one. And concentrate on the dialog:
Trailer with opening cinematic
Wow! I can’t believe that a huge project like Gears of War seems to have spent less than $10 on the script. The dialog is reeking of clichés, the direction is bad – the whole thing is just painful to watch. Cynics might say that this does not matter – most gamers won’t notice anyways. Perhaps they are right (the comments on the Gametrailers site certainly indicates so), but it beats me that there seems to be no effort spent with the writing quality – no effort at all.
I won’t dig anymore into that first trailer since it makes me depressed. So let’s move over to trailer number 2:
Trailer with Tears for Fears cover
Jeeeeeeziz! Here they cross every single line of decency. In a few seconds, the trailer tips over from “just tasteless” to “sickenly hilarious”… And it tips bigtime… Titanic-style!
So, the first trailer made me weep and the second made me laugh.
Status Quo. Thanks Epic!
October 28th, 2006 at 19:10
Wow, keeping the petrol can a little close to the open flame, don’t ya think? Be interesting to see what happens if a big site points to your post
Plus, isn’t GOW supposed to be BIG, DUMB, and OBVIOUS anyway? I mean, it’s the ultimate Joe Sixpack event game.
October 29th, 2006 at 13:03
Well, perhaps. You may be right that the tone and cliché ridden dialog is intentional. It might be that the game as a whole comes of as a clever satire in the end. We’ll have to wait for the release to know. But I don’t see any traces of that in these trailers.
As far as “Joe Sixpack” games go, one can look at movies that are aimed at the same kind of audience. There are many examples of “big, dumb and obvious” movies that still manages to add dimension and character with good writing and direction. “Predator” comes to mind.