Le Muet et le Pied-de-Biche
It seems the video games as art debate has settled on the consensus that they have greater potential than any other medium, but are at a developmental stage about equal to an infant reaching helplessly for the spinning objects on a mobile.
This was never more apparent to me than while watching Le Scaphandre et le Papillon. The first part of the film is almost entirely shot in the first person, from the point of view of a man who has just suffered a stroke and is almost completely paralyzed. I've been playing first person games for over 15 years now and none of them have even approached the sophistication and emotion of the beginning of this film. Why is that? I can guarantee you more video games have been created in the first person perspective than films. The first person perspective is one of the few things game designers should have mastered by now, right?
Perhaps designers are simply used to immersing players into the game world rather than the character. This creates contradictions, especially in the FPS genre. Why does Gordon Freeman have a name and identity, but no voice? Well, the answer according to Valve is to better immerse the player in the world of Black Mesa or City 17. But in practice this almost has the opposite effect. I want to be immersed in the character of Gordon Freeman. I don't care if his words are chosen by me or everything is carefully scripted, I just want him to say something - anything - to flesh out the character into something real. How can I understand why Alyx loves him when I don't even know the guy myself? When I start thinking about the ways Valve makes the NPCs interact with a mute I'm drawn out of the world. It's unbelievable and distracting.
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon was such an incredibly intense and absorbing first person experience because I was in Jean-Do's head. I shared his vision and internal monologue. It wasn't about allowing the audience to experience paralysis for themselves, it was about showing what it might have been like for him. The contradiction in Half-Life is that Valve is trying to tell a story about Gordon Freeman while doing their best to pretend he doesn't actually exist. Bioshock, on the other hand, used the first person perspective to create a single interesting moment which reaffirmed my belief in the potential of the medium. But the character I played was a mute in 99% of the game. He literally had no identity. However, during that brief scene, it felt like the medium had the strength and will to actually grasp one of those objects on the dangling mobile.
This was never more apparent to me than while watching Le Scaphandre et le Papillon. The first part of the film is almost entirely shot in the first person, from the point of view of a man who has just suffered a stroke and is almost completely paralyzed. I've been playing first person games for over 15 years now and none of them have even approached the sophistication and emotion of the beginning of this film. Why is that? I can guarantee you more video games have been created in the first person perspective than films. The first person perspective is one of the few things game designers should have mastered by now, right?
Perhaps designers are simply used to immersing players into the game world rather than the character. This creates contradictions, especially in the FPS genre. Why does Gordon Freeman have a name and identity, but no voice? Well, the answer according to Valve is to better immerse the player in the world of Black Mesa or City 17. But in practice this almost has the opposite effect. I want to be immersed in the character of Gordon Freeman. I don't care if his words are chosen by me or everything is carefully scripted, I just want him to say something - anything - to flesh out the character into something real. How can I understand why Alyx loves him when I don't even know the guy myself? When I start thinking about the ways Valve makes the NPCs interact with a mute I'm drawn out of the world. It's unbelievable and distracting.
Le Scaphandre et le Papillon was such an incredibly intense and absorbing first person experience because I was in Jean-Do's head. I shared his vision and internal monologue. It wasn't about allowing the audience to experience paralysis for themselves, it was about showing what it might have been like for him. The contradiction in Half-Life is that Valve is trying to tell a story about Gordon Freeman while doing their best to pretend he doesn't actually exist. Bioshock, on the other hand, used the first person perspective to create a single interesting moment which reaffirmed my belief in the potential of the medium. But the character I played was a mute in 99% of the game. He literally had no identity. However, during that brief scene, it felt like the medium had the strength and will to actually grasp one of those objects on the dangling mobile.
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