Silicon Knights, the developer of the long delayed action-RPG Too Human released the latest in a series of developer diaries today. Frankly I didn’t even know that they had developer diaries over at Silicon Nights, at least not the video kind.
I suppose releasing the real developer diaries (“The rain beats against the windowsill, my porn collection calls out from underneath the pile of energy drink cans, desperate for attention. I ignore its shameful pleas, for there are more assets to tweak stats on, for I am the solitary God of loot, cursed to an oanist existence by the Demon Lord Dyack”) would be too horrific to even consider, but these marketing videos that masquerade as real insight carry a little zing with them. Sometimes they carry a lot of zing.
This one has the tangy zip of Miracle Whip in the form of a mythology building short film that ties off the end of the diary. Or to be accurate its a segment of a mythology building short film about mythology that manges to end on an unfinished note without any kind of “To Be Continued” message.
The central conceit of the short film, that history is cyclical and that the world of the game is somehow real is a fun one. Hell I’m a Grant Morrison fan, so you know I’ve considered this kind of stuff a zillion times over. So on that level I dig.
Its the production choices they made that threw me out of it. The abrupt, anti climatic ending is bad enough (see below for more on this), but the attempts to digitally recreate old school titling styles falls flat right at the start, undercutting the mockumentary feel. For something that was supposed to be created in 1999 it didn’t need to go for an 80’s/70’s PBS vibe anyway.
Mor does it past the titles. From the color pallate to the framing choices everything screams “Halo 3 Ad Campaign”… which was great for Halo 3. Why fix what’s broken, right?
Um… maybe because its a different game? Differentiate the brands a bit? Sustain the illusion?
Don’t read me wrong… I was this close to digging it. Only it felt too clean. I was reminded the entire time of the mockumentary that aired on Sci-Fi (I think) around the time of The Blair Witch Project. They had that shit down pat. In many ways the build out they did for that show was way more elaborate… and probably cost more money… than the movie it was based on. While I’m glad to know that someone else finds this genre of film interesting enough to bankroll, I am disappointed to see it executed just this side of awesome.
Oh, and if you’re wondering about the sudden ending of the video… the website for the “Norwegian Film Committee” sets out that there are two more parts of the video to go. Something not explicitly set up in the developer diary. Which means we have to hold off final judgment… but damn if that isn’t the exact same marketing plan as Halo 3’s “Veterans of Galactic Wars” campaign.
[via Kotaku]
