Posted by Gremlin [172.165.117.31 - ACA5751F.ipt.aol.com] on 29 March 2002 at 10.32.56 ZuluTime:
In Reply to: Heh, careful what you wish for. posted by Jurassosaurus on 29 March 2002 at 05.48.23 ZuluTime:
I usually disregard any attempts to revolutionise horror films. Not because it never works, but becase it usually works. Scream revolutionised the genre into Clue with blood and shadows; Hellraiser revolutionised it into inexplicable plotlines; A Nightmare on Elm Street revolutionised it into wisecracking editorialist monsters. Not that the latter was an entirely bad idea, of course.
On which note, granting that Elm Street was NewLine's first real film [not to mention Johnny Depp's first picture]: if they're releasing Silent Hill, then it might have more potential than otherwise. Not that we can really predict that yet. Mtv was cool when they began too; now they're competing against AOHell for the largest collection of useless networks on cable.
I hadn't really thought about the fog factor in a film adaptation. I assume they'd add that optically in postproduction. I also assume that it would ultimately wreck the film. I've seen too many horror films which try to employ inadequate lighting to make themselves scary; instead, it makes them frustrating.
As for the future of horrorgames: I've got a certain interest in that right now; I've been looking into modern videogame production [the last game I bothered to write ran on a Commodore64] lately; I'm working out the levels for the Subheroes game here.
This should probably have its own post, of course; but I don't really care anymore.
The working plans for Subheroes turn it into a sort of infrasequel to LK0. While LK0 ultimately moves into LK1, the penultimate chapter hinted at a few things which sound a lot like the plotline for Subheroes anyway. So Subheroes is turning into a sort of LK0.1 and LK0.11. There's the game, and there's also the cartoon.
The game will look a lot like HalfLife mixed with Res and Silent Hill. The cartoon, while largely scripted, is still in preproduction--meaning that I'm not sure what the format will be. I know it's a cartoon of some kind; now I'm just trying to decide whether it's a cartoon like South Park, The Simpsons, or ReBoot. Each has advantages and disadvantages--both in production and in viewability.
Something like South Park is easy in most regards--you just move levels in Flash6 in syncronicity to the soundtrack. Something like ReBoot involves building objects and rendering them to QuickTime, which only becomes easy after everything is constructed; it also, unfortunately, results in immense numbers of bytes per second.
The only thing I've completely ruled out with the cartoon is the polygonal look of the game. To me, the first Sonic the Hedgehog looked more realistic than FinalFantasyX, simply because object-oriented 2D skins on 3D polygons never works very well.
Whatever we go with, in the end, I'm subscribing to the Ed Wood philosophy: it's all about the storyline. Subheroes is, according to the script, a sort of comedic horror. Kinda like the Simpsons' Hallowe'en specials, but moreso.
--Gremlin