Resident Evil 5 looks great. Jaw-dropping. Eye-popping, even. Ken Lally, who did motion capture work for RE character Albert Wesker, is very impressed with how the look of the game has turned out. Lally even thinks that the game looks better than big budget, CG flicks:
By John Gaudiosi
Long before Hollywood screenwriter (Pulp Fiction, Silent Hill) and director (Rules of Attraction) Roger Avary was writing movies, he was writing code. Avary, who co-wrote Robert Zemeckis’ 3D computer-generated Beowulf with Neil Gaiman, never published a game, but he shared many with his friends.
“When I was a kid, Star Raiders on the Atari 800 was the be-all, end-all game,” said Avary. “It was Star Trek and Star Wars rolled into one. You had a map and you could refuel at star bases and defend them. I’ll never forget what it was like to warp from one location to another and try to keep centred or else I’d fall off course. I bought an Atari 800 computer because of that game and learned how to program on that computer using 6502 Assembly.
Avary regrets never submitting his biggest game, Shuttle Crash, to the Atari Program Exchange, which published games created by users. The game was an interpretation of Lunar Lander, but gamers had to perform a forced landing while doing as little damage as possible to the ship and keeping the crew alive. More »
The film adaptation of Return to Castle Wolfenstein marks the first time Roger Avary has returned to the director’s chair since the critically lauded 2002 film, The Rules of Attraction. In that intern, he’s penned the Silent Hill film and Beowulf. Avary tells MTV:
I’m doing an adaptation of the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I just love the World War II guys-on-a-mission movies; to me, “Castle Wolfenstein” is all of that, plus monsters and horror and all that craziness jammed together. It’s my dream film.
Avary is tightlipped about whom he hopes to cast in the film, but previously stated the answer was in the game’s box art. Shooting could start early next year. That means that Avary could get his men-on-a-mission WWII film in the can before director Quentin Tarantino does. Tarantino has been working on a WWII script called Inglorious Bastards since the late 1990′s! Avary Talks Wolfenstein [MTV Movies via Multiplayer] More »
Perhaps Ubisoft wants the Beowulf game to have that authenticate touch of Hollywood. Maybe the publisher has a thing for Sir Anthony Hopkins.
Or – and this is a long shot – Sir Anthony actually plays a character in Beowulf, and it’d be a bit silly if the game based on the film had someone else doing the voice.
Whatever the motivation, Sir Anthony Hopkins (Alexander, Red Dragon) will provide the vocals for King Hrothgar, while Ray Winstone (The Departed, King Arthur) will dispense the grunty, yet effervescent, tones of Beowulf.
Oh, did anyone else noticed that one of the plot keywords for Beowulf on IMDB is “Stabbed in the arm”? Just goes to show you can make a movie about anything. More »
Nothing like a little classic literature with your graphic bloodhsed, eh? Here’s some new screens for Beowulf, the game based on the upcoming Hollywood movie and most definitely not the 1999 film starring Christopher “Highlander 4, Please?” Lambert.
I first saw Beowulf months before E3, in a backroom at an Ubi event. At the time my first, my only concern, was whether the game would be true to the epic poem or just a game that borrowed the tale’s veneer. I was surprised to find that the team was as jazzed about Beowulf as I happen to be. In fact, they spent some of the time bemoaning the fact that no other journalists seemed to want to hear about the authenticity. I think this video might open a few eyes to why authenticity is important. Man, I can’t wait for this game. More »
newVideoPlayer("BWLF_teaser_trailer_gawker.flv", 475, 376); Talk about your teaser trailers. This one for Ubisoft’s Beowulf, based on the upcoming movie, intersperses scenes of a slow-motion sword dropping in water, a sword being forged, and a naked woman with gameplay clips. The end result is far too choppy for my tastes, with clips switching too fast for me to be left with any real lasting opinion of it, other than wondering why digitally enhanced Angelina Jolie tummies with water running down them aren’t a standard feature in all video games yet. Check out the official movie site to see how they’ve managed to delve into uncanny valley while using actual actors. Spooky. More »
