Video Games: the Next Generation?

I try not to make this a blog for solely my own personal opinions, I have another blog for that, but I read an article last week that kinda annoyed me. I deeply appreciate the artwork, the graphics, and even the storytelling of some games. The graphics of the upcoming Lara Croft game, or the storytelling of the Mass Effect trilogy, could go toe to toe with movies, and could certainly replace some actors.  I mean, seriously, look at the video below.

  

  

How long did it take you to see that this was NOT live action?



But for all that, there’s been an ongoing debate in the video game community that goes something like this – the last round of major video game consoles came out in 2005 (the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 4), and the technology has advanced soooo much since then, surely it is time to move on.



You might smell a bit of burning rubber at this point. That’s my brain hitting the brakes hard and going “huh?”



When the Xbox 360 came out, game companies needed to increase their hired programmers tenfold as games transitioned to HD. The PS3 came out at the same time, and it came out in Blu-ray, which was even higher definition, and made the costs of making games so prohibitive that it took years before the PS3 had a solid roster of games.



But now the game companies themselves insist that the next generations of consoles must come out, so they can use the latest and greatest technologies. Their logic is that they’re losing money because their games are not as shiny as they could be.



Really, everybody? First, I quite literally don’t know what I’m missing. So I can’t see how I can be biased against your games because there’s something better out there – because, as the companies themselves have noted, there isn’t anything better than the current generation. Is there really a problem with getting the most out of the technology we have?



Let’s take a look. To the right, this is the original Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved. Dinky by today’s standards, but I remember when I saw it and said, “Awesome.” It’s still a nice looking game.



Fast forward ten years. There was a rerelease of the original game with Xbox 360 technology, and it was called, to no one’s great surprise, Halo: Combat Evolved. Anniversary.  

You can see the difference. The position of the body isn’t as stiff, the graphics are more detailed, the colors are richer. It is visibly better.



And now, finally, we look at Halo 4, using the exact same Xbox 360 graphics. It already looks like they’ve gone through another generation already.









Here’s a side by side or two, just to make it even clearer.

I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could think that we’ve hit the limit of the current generation of gaming technology, since Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the same generation. Will the next round look even better? Of course. My question is – is there a rush?



Second, could there be another reason why companies are losing money? Let’s think about this a moment. Their video games are $60, or $70, brand new. They’re not cutting costs on the games, and with gaming seasons that have over a dozen new, top-shelf games coming out at the same time, do they seriously expect people to drop over $700 on their products? Does anyone have $700 just lying around anymore?



I think I would rather pay $14, or even $30, on a used game – games that the distributors like Gamestop make money on, but the original publishers don’t. There have been so many games played that way, there has been talk of making video games non-sellable my giving out a one-time code that make the game unusable to anyone else.  If you want to trash the video game industry, make it impossible to play used games.)



So, what is the problem with the current generation of consoles? Well, let's see -- coding has filtered down to street level. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a computer can probably start putting together their own game -- and anyone with a Kickstarter account can finance it. Low-rent competition is good for the soul.



Maybe I'm just a backwards Catholic, who acknowledges that progress is cumulative. You can't get to point Z while simultaneously jettisoning point A-Y -- Catholics throw out nothing. Don't believe me? Look at the Vatican archives sometime. But most atheists, so-called "progressives" (of all sides of the spectrum), and now the video games, try throwing out everything from the past, and hope really hard that no one else will remember it either -- be it how many atheist regimes disintegrate, or how truly dark the "Dark Ages" could have gotten without the Catholic church.



I prefer to get the most out of what's there than try to move on and pretend that last console (or, on the larger scale, the last few hundred years) didn't happen.

The week in review: Casting, Video Games, Romance, and Music.

This is the second week of the "new" blog for A Pius Man.  While the new posting schedule is not even a whole two weeks old, the blog has already had over six hundred views thus far.



Which means that these two weeks have seen more blog views than all but two months of the blog's entire 13-month run.



So, something's going right.

Check out Dies Irae. Seriously

The first blog entry was a suggestion that, given the technology and the writing of video games nowadays, maybe I should try pitching A Pius Man as one. Okay, maybe not.  In music that day, there was the heavy electric guitar of Dragonforce, with the game soundtrack for Halo, followed by.... Mozart?



Yes, Mozart.



Did I mention that my music posts were going to be a little schizophrenic? No? Sorry about that.



Tuesday's primary blog was a list of my cast, and who should probably play them if the book was ever a) published and b) ever made into a movie. 



I was especially interested the more I examined the prospect of Summer Glau as Maureen McGrail.  Dang, that woman can move. Why she hasn't been allowed to really dance since Serenity is beyond me.



That music blog was an introduction to the world of filk with Tom Smith, some more Halo, a bit more Dragonforce, and a heavily violin piece in Cruxshadow's Dragonfly.



And then I discussed more books I read .... Romance? Really? Yes.



But, since this is me, the romance novels I read involve automatic weapons, murder mysteries .... they boil down into novels that have romantic elements, but have been doomed into the romance sections because of lousy, flowery artwork and editors with an inability to give the novels halfway decent names.



Though I am reluctant to argue with a book title like No Mercy.



Wednesday's music blog was a little easier: Two Steps from Hell, a song about the world's first hyper beer, some more Halo and a touch more Dragonforce.



Thursday was almost a recap, musicwise. Tom Smith's Operation: Desert Storm, a new version of an old song, the theme from Doctor Who, and a movie someone made to a Two Steps from Hell piece.



All in all, it was a fun week.  I'll see what I can do about keeping it alive a little longer. The pace isn't too strenuous just yet.



However, I should mention a few things.



At Examiner.com, I did a "how to" article on escaping an arm grab, using attitude as self defense, and an article on my favorite fighting style.

A Pius Man: The Video Game?

I'm starting to think that if I ever wanted A Pius Man to come to a screen, it might be a computer screen.

A while back, I did a blog post on who might play who within a movie for A Pius Man ... a year later, the post needs updating. But that'll be tomorrow.

But, in the long run, it does become a matter of ... well ... why bother? Seriously, even if the novel were picked up tomorrow, and made into a bestselling novel,

Why? Well, I believe that Hollywood is in trouble.

Click the video for a few seconds. About a minute.



This is a video game.

At E3 this year, everyone got a sample of how Lara Croft, and the Tomb Raider franchise, have been revamped. While the games were fun, that's not what interests me right now. For almost 32 seconds, I wasn't entirely certain that I had gotten a commercial for a video game. I had honestly thought that they ditched the idea of Olivia Wilde as Lara Croft, and gone for a completely unknown actress.

Last week, I mentioned the epic writing in the Halo video game franchise. While "only" a video game, it has delivered books, movies, all of which were fairly good.

However, more and more I see that Halo is not a one-off. It's not alone on the video game merry-go-round of awesome story telling.  Most video games have been suitably epic for a while now, and getting more so all the time.

Let's look at a game called Mass Effect.  It is an even more sprawling video game, where personalities impact the story more and more as you play along. The basic premise is standard for a Doctor Who episode: one character has to stop the all life in the entire universe from being killed.

Aside from the fact that this, too, has spawned a few other novels, click on the trailer.



Now, tell me that this trailer isn't more epic than the last three Star Wars films. Which, granted, isn't hard, but you get the idea.

Sadly, even this trailer, for a Star Wars video game, is more epic than anything George Lucas has down lately.




It has gotten to the point where big name professional writers have been brought in to write the games ... sometimes, games based off of other novels.  For example, Peter David, writer of practically everything in the comic book universe, and more besides, wrote out a script for the video game Shadow Complex, and even the upcoming Spider-man: The Edge of Time.  Shadow Complex is actually based off of Orson Scott Card's novel Empire.

Consider, for a moment, the possibility of having the graphics of the Lara Croft trailer at the beginning, the epic scope of a Halo or a Mass Effect, and a professional writer like Peter David or Orson Scott Card.


And actors? Sure, actors are helpful ... they can supply the voice work. And many Hollywood actors are already there. Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, and Nathan Fillion had a veritable Firefly cast reunion in the Halo franchise -- not to mention Michelle Rodriguez, Keith David,  and General Zod himself, Terence Stamp.  With the Mass Effect Franchise, the list is even more comprehensive: Seth Green, Martin Sheen, Keith David (again), Lance Henriksen, Marina Sirtis  Dwight Schultz .....

I'm going to stop there

At the current rate of the technology, if Hollywood isn't careful, the only work for actors might be voice work.

At the end of the day, if someone wanted to make A Pius Man into a movie ... I might hold out for an option to make it into a video game.