Celeste, Rocket League, and other story-light games should be adapted before games like God of War and TLOU that are essentially TV shows already
We seem to be in a golden age of video game adaptations, at least from a profitability point of view. From a quality point of view, they're better than ever, but when you're competing with the John Leguizamo Mario movie, the Michael Fassbender Assassin's Creed movie, and the why-would-I-remember-any-of-the-actors Tekken movie, that's a low bar. The problem is games have been trying to shake their inferiority complex by competing with movies, but they're all telling the same stories. Narratives have improved in gaming significantly over the past decade, but they're still not at the range of nuance of film, which only gets woefully exposed when they're adapted to the medium. That's why the best choice for a TV adaptation is a game that doesn't fit.
The Last of Us and God of War already play out like television shows, and now both are getting them. We'll tune in, and maybe they'll even be solid entertainment for fans of the games, but do they really need to exist? I know you could say that about any television show, but it just feels like these adaptations are going to add nothing new to the story, the themes, or any of what the games are trying to say. If we take games seriously as art, then when they're transposed into new mediums, we have to ask what artistic merit is being added. BioShock is also in-line for an adaptation, and since that game relies almost entirely on player involvement and a twist that we all now know about, the adaptation can't really be BioShock in order to work.
Games are art, but they're also toys, and the adaptations need to embrace that idea. Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog are nothing like their games, because their games aren't trying to be movies. When your video game is already a playable TV show, all you need to do is remove the playability and you've got yourself a TV show. Sonic takes the character himself, some basic lore, and a few well known pieces of iconography and builds something completely new. I'm sure The Last of Us TV show will have more prestige, and will feature more layered performances, but right now it's difficult to imagine it will have more artistic merit than Sonic the Hedgehog.
The Last of Us isn't out yet, and I don't want to tear it to shreds before it has been given a chance, but it's just Joel and Ellie retracing footsteps I've already played through. There may be some new story beats, but I can't imagine very many, especially as Neil Druckmann is heavily involved again. Being too loyal to the game leaves the whole thing feeling pointless, but then ignoring the game's conventions too much alienates fans and, again, leaves the whole thing feeling pointless. That's why the solution is to go the Sonic route, where there is no real story to ignore. Just a character, a few important icons, and a feeling.
Give me a Celeste TV show. Give me a Rocket League movie. Give me Forza miniseries. These experiments don't always work – the Need For Speed movie didn't tear up trees, and the reception to Cuphead has been hit and miss. But they seem a lot more creative than just doing God of War beat for beat but it's Dwayne Johnson now. Games keep trying to be TV shows or movies, then they keep getting turned into them, and I'm not sure where it all ends. Uncharted wanted to be Indiana Jones: The Game, then got turned into an Indiana Jones movie anyway where the best elements of it are new characters and fresh reimaginings, not stale copies of what we already know.
Games can be movies and TV shows, and with books being successfully adapted for decades, there's no reason why they shouldn't. But when the games try to look like TV shows and the TV shows try to be as loyal as possible to the games, there doesn't seem to be much point to any of it.
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Stacey Henley is the Editor-in-Chief at TheGamer, and can often be found journeying to the edge of the Earth, but only in video games. Find her on Twitter @FiveTacey
