Assassin's Creed II producer on working with
Speaking to Develop for our third feature looking at the creation of Assassin's Creed II, for which Ubisoft has assembled a huge team at it's Montreal Studio, producer Sébastien Puel has suggested games makers have a great deal to learn about storytelling from cinematic luminaries.
"The movie industry is now over a century old, the games industry is around 30 years old," said Puel, speaking about his experience of creating Assassin's Creed II in parallel with a series of live action mini-movies produced to accompany the game.
"If there’s one area where we have some steps to make, it’s in the way we are telling our stories," added Puel. "The likes of Spielberg, Cameron and Jackson have a lot to teach us in that field, because our industry isn’t at the point it should be when comes the time to tell a good story, or to transmit emotions."
In the same feature, which concludes a three-part focus on Assassin's Creed II, Puel also explained that in working with Ubisoft's sister company Hybride, which created the mini-movies, there were direct ramifications on the game’s development.
"The beauty of mixing two different universes such as cinema and video game is that by sharing expertise both spheres grow and improve one another," he revealed.
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i don't disagree with your man here but i would question his choice of directors. i appreciate they are examples but i'd like to see them draw from a broader range of global directors, but more so writers/script writers and voice actors.
i'm pretty much all about the narative when it comes to big games, otherwise i'll go for a quick shmup or puzzle what-not.
the topic is something Hideo Kojima has been wrestling with for years.
i'm a big fan of MGS and GOW, the problem being that the script and voice acting are at times dire. part of the issue here is that facial expressions and body language are still very difficult to achieve for most games, so much so that they seem to have to be rather theatrical/over emphasised to get the point across, and so pretty hammy. no subtlety.
dunno if anybody has seen the more recent Incredible Hulk movie, but if you get the chance to watch the extras and how they did the facial expression capture then it's looking good for this kinda thing in the future. obviously games don't have the same budget as big movies but once the tech becomes affordable we should see some pretty sweet things. we'll see how U2, Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2 fare.
my only reservation is that we draw on the right inspiration from movies and not generic (although admittedly successful) hollywood "blockbuster" directors.
for referrence see Park Chan Wook, Tikeshi Kitano, Guilmero Del Torro and Tim Burton.
sod that other three.
