Adaptations of Games
Contributed by DJMMT
As I write this, multiple early reviews for the new The Last of Us TV series from HBO. It’s important to note that these are media reviews, as the show hasn’t been released to the public yet. By the time you read this, the show will have aired the first episode, meaning many members of the public, more specifically the actual gaming community, will have gotten to watch the first episode. While the reviews have been very positive, what I actually find more interesting is the fact that pretty much all the reviews I’ve seen so far, as well as multiple interviews with members of the production team, have confirmed that the show has blatantly deviated from or sometimes flat out altered/ignored the canon. For me, that’s actually a more interesting and important discussion than this particular show itself.
We seem to be in a renaissance period of video game adaptations. Games of all types are rapidly being adapted into TV shows, movies, and even animated series. We’re seeing games of various genres and styles being adapted by lots of different studios and streaming services in many different ways. But we’ve yet to really nail down the template for how to do it well. Some adaptations are great. Some are terrible. Some are successful and yet hated by the gamers that made the IPs successful enough to adapt. Meanwhile other adaptations are loved by the gamers and then hated or ignored by the rest of the public. Making a movie or TV show is hard. History shows us that adapting a game into a TV show or movie successfully is even harder. I think a major reason for that is the fact that there is no general consensus on what the intent of a game adaptation is. As such, there’s no blueprint for how to go about making them consistently well.
What is the point/purpose of an adaptation from a video game? Is it to tell the story of the game as a standalone piece of media so that viewers have no real reason to go play the video game? Is it to intrigue people enough to get them to want to go play the game on their own? Is it to allow producers, writers, and directors the freedom to do whatever they want with a guarantee of viewership by leveraging an established IP? I can name examples of adaptations that sit in each of these categories. Sadly, very few sit in the first category. Most adaptations end up deviating from the original game they’re based on heavily. In fact, two of the most source accurate video game movies are probably Street Fighter (1994) and Mortal Kombat (1995). Mid-90’s for the win? Ironically, these are two games that absolutely no one played for the story back when they were made, because the plots were so sparse or even non-existent in the games.
We usually see adaptations done in two main ways. I’ll call one the Uncharted Method and the other the Assassin’s Creed Method. Note that neither actually adhere to the canon. In either case, many liberties are taken. The difference is in how they approach the canon as part of their storytelling. The Uncharted Method, which I’ve of course named after the Uncharted movie from 2022, respects the canon enough to try not to run directly into it, but is willing to alter it to try to make a better standalone movie experience. That’s why the movie unofficially acts as prequel to the games. It deviates from the original canon but isn’t focused on anything that specifically happened in the games, so those deviations are much less noticeable and/or problematic to viewers that have played the games.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Assassin’s Creed Method, which I’ve named after the Assassin’s Creed movie from 2016, basically does whatever it wants with barely even the vaguest hint of adherence to the source material, with the belief that simply using the name of the IP is enough to be successful. And while it wasn’t a great movie, it did make $240M in box office receipts against its $125M budget. Note that Uncharted made considerably more money, as it was a considerably better film, but it cost almost the same amount to make with a budget of $120M. And let’s not pretend like Uncharted isn’t the much easier story to tell between the two franchises. But should we as consumers even be discussing the money aspect of adaptations?
Do I, as both a viewer and a serious gamer that often plays the games these adaptations are based on, need to care about which method makes more money? I don’t stand to make a profit either way. So, as consumers, what do we think the best, or correct, way to do adaptations is? Personally, I think that the ones trying to tell the story of the characters in the game should strictly adhere to the canon as much as possible. Meaning that an adaptation of God of War, which is currently and constantly being rumored, should actually try to tell Kratos’ story with a 1:1 level of accuracy to the games. Ideally, starting with the original game from 2005. And it should change as little as possible. Adding things that weren’t originally in the game, but also don’t change anything established in the game(s), is fine. Side-quests in adaptations can be fun. But ideally nothing that has been established in the canon of the games would be changed.
Skipping over certain things is fine. Like we don’t necessarily need to see Kratos’ prequel adventures as shown in God of War: Ascension in an adaptation. But they also shouldn’t change anything established in that game. As in, a God of War adaptation shouldn’t have the Furies show up sometime after the death of Aries to fight Kratos. In a proper adaptation, Kratos has already killed them, whether that part of the story was included in the adaptation or not. Adaptations that want to leverage game stories should stay true to those stories. But that’s not to imply that adaptations need to retell stories that have already been told by the games they’re based on.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an adaptation of Cyberpunk 2077, but it has nothing to do with the specific plot of that game. While the two stories are set in the same universe, the characters are different, with little to no real overlap. The problem/plot is different, again with little to no overlap other than in the themes. The show can do just about whatever it wants, because it’s not doing anything to conflict with the canon of the game. It’s the best of both worlds, because you don’t have to watch the show in order to appreciate the game, and you don’t have to play the game in order to appreciate the show. But if you do watch the show and play the game, you won’t have any reason to directly try to compare the two, because they’re only loosely related. I won’t say I prefer these types of adaptations, but they’re definitely the ones least likely to offend me.
Even though I didn’t like The Last of Us, the prospect of watching a show based on the game that wildly deviates from the game’s canon does not appeal to me. But again, what exactly is the intention of this show? What are they actually trying to do? And regardless of the production’s answer to that question, what is the “correct” answer to that question? Is there one? What happens when the game being adapted has a bad story? Should the production still try to stay as true to the source material as possible? Or is taking blatant liberties acceptable in service to adapting the plot of a mediocre game into a hopefully better movie or TV show?
These are important questions that I don’t have the authority to provide a definitive answer for. What I will say is that as we continue to see more game adaptations, these conversations are going to keep happening. And as most of the producers and directors in Hollywood aren’t avid gamers, deviations from the canon will continue to happen in bigger and bigger ways. Funny enough, I’m confident that The Last of Us show will be a great show, because HBO usually does a good job. But does that automatically make it a good adaptation if it deviates heavily from the source material?
