A Different Kind of Movie

This week I wanted to do something a little different on this blog, mostly in preparation for my first theme month…but ill clue you all in on that when we get there. Today I want to talk about interactive cinema.

I understand that interactive cinema may be an ill used general term which could mean all sorts of things, but the kind of interactive cinema I will talk about here are perhaps better defined as video games with very strong cinematic elements. To narrow it down further, as that category is still incredibly broad, videogames which were specifically designed to deliver a narrative experience that is nearly identical to that of a movie. For this I will compare 2 such games which are my 2 favorite examples of the best and worst of interactive cinema: Wing Commander III: The Heart of the Tiger, and Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy

My favorite of the two is far and away Wing Commander III. Its claim to being an interactive film is mostly that it uses live action cut scenes to tell its story (with major Hollywood talent I might add), and that these cut scenes are a central part of the experience. Wing Comander III is the story of the end of the human/Kilrathi war which has been going on for decades. As Col. Christopher Blair (Mark Hamill (yes Luke Skywalker)) it is your job to fly increasingly dangerous missions in a variety of space fighters. Furthermore on these missions you will command another pilot on your “wing” (thus the title). The interactive movie also features such actors as Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen from Back to the Future), Malcom McDowell (Alex from A Clockwork Orange), and John Rhys-Davies (Gimli from The Lord of the Rings and Sallah from Indiana Jones). I won’t go too far in the details of the plot, but suffice to say you will end up doing unethical things, pilots you care about will be killed, and friends will betray you. This is all pretty serious stuff for a space combat sim from 1993.

The other and far worse of the two Fahrenheit wears its movieness far more on its sleeve. The entire game was built from the ground up to “play” like a movie. Most of the action gameplay is spent in quicktime events and the rest of the game plays out like a point and click adventure game, which would be all fine and good if it was a good point and click adventure. It has a distinct lack of any real difficult or interesting puzzles engagement of the game comes primarily from the story…which isn’t very good. It starts out fine with an intriguing plot where you play both the cops and an average Joe who was hypnotized into murdering an innocent. The mystery plot winds and weaves to an unsatisfying conclusion that plays fast and loose with logical story structure. An example of this is about 15-30 minutes from the end of the game: it just randomly introduces a group of characters with little to no explanation for their existence (They've just kinda always been there is the best you get).

So aside from the obvious difference in story quality why did Wing Commander work and Fahrenheit not? Here’s a little theory of mine: the developers of Fahrenheit focused on creating a game that tries to recreate the experience of watching a movie, and then tried to apply a movie story to it. On the other hand the brilliant devs of Wing Commander came up gameplay that made you feel like you were the main character of the movie story and not merely watching a movie of it. When my favorite wingman died in Wing Commander I felt a real emotional blow. When any of the characters in Fahrenheit died (there weren't that many and most were avoidable) I wasn't invested cause I was twice abstracted from the experience I was watching a movie that was a game whereas in Wing Commander I was playing a movie.

TLDR; an interactive movie relies on strong interaction not looking like a movie.