Dalan Musson, who did the writing for the video game based on The Golden Compass, sat down with Gamasutra to discuss the challenges of writing for movie-based games, and what’s different between writing for film and writing for games. It’s a short and illuminating interview — considering the plethora of bad adaptations out there (book to film, film to game, game to film …), it’s interesting to get perspective on what goes into writing for both mediums:
In a sort-of-aside to a gush about The Golden Compass movie and novel, Warren Spector mentions that he wanted to make the game based on the novels “long before the film came out.”
It’s just an aside, but it raises some interesting issues, ones I’m not totally prepared to go on and on about, so I’ll make this short. I requested a copy of the game because I’m hoping to play through it to see how the game makers dealt with the touchy subject of religion that is very much central to the entire His Dark Matters trilogy. In fact I read the trilogy over the first week of my vacation in Australia, just for that reason. But things were crazy in December and I haven’t had a chance to crack the game open. Hopefully, I’ll be doing that soonish.
What intrigues me is how exactly Warren Spector would have worked with the subject matter. Judging by his enthusiasm for the trilogy and his obvious knowledge of it, I suspect it could have resulted in a deeply evocative game, the sort of title that may have touched on the issues brought up in the series and, much more importantly, made gamers think about something that makes them quite uneasy. It’s really a shame he didn’t follow through on his desire… or wasn’t allowed to.
The Man Who Hates the World, Part 2 [Warren Spector's Blog]
