As if video games weren't getting creepy enough with their too-close-to-real-life animation (see 30 Rock for a breakdown of animation creepiness), one particular game has decided to take it a step further and not only have such animation but recreate real live actors within the game, and then tout them as the stars. So instead of either a) just filming them in real life or b) just having them be voice actors, the creator of this game decided, hey, let's make this harder than we actually have to and recreate every minute detail of these actors' faces and mannerisms and have them actually star in the game.
I can just hear the pitch.
"Guys, so it's like it's a movie, but you can CONTROL it. I mean the line is totally blurred, you know? That's the GENIUS of it. What? No. No one will think it's creepy or unnecessary. It's the new frontier! Let's spend years of our lives making this happen so that we can make trailers for our video game and use the names of famous actors to get people to buy it."
It's just a new level of creepy, really. Why do we need an animated Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page in our lives? Why? If they voice acted you could still use their names. Why spend what I can only imagine was months upon months designing their faces just so the people themselves would actually be in the video games?
Do gamers care about this sort of thing? Is this an attempt to draw movie-goers in to gaming? I just don't know what the angle is here. Especially because it seems like the target audience is my age group (do teenagers even know who Willem Dafoe is?), and if we're not into video games by now, chances are we're not going to be.
The only other explanation is that they accidentally shrunk down Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe and inserted them into a video game and now they are trapped in this world and have to live the rest of their lives in whatever (apparently gritty) scenario they were dropped into.
Now that would be a movie I'd watch. Maybe.
I'm just saying who is next? This is a gateway to a new platform for celebrities. (Let's not even mention the poor video game voice-actors and avatars yet to be created that are now effectively out of a job.)
Ben Affleck? Scarlett Johanson? You KNOW James Franco is already on it. He's got like 6 minutes left in his day he needs to fill with something other than sleep, and this seems just weird enough that it'd be right up his alley.
I'm just not ready for this kind of nonsense. It's creepy and a lot of unnecessary extra steps in my opinion. But hey, I'm just a humble blogger offering unsolicited commentary on….everything. What do I know?
Do you think this is an added value to a video game or a total waste of time and energy? Who would you actually want to see shrunk down inside a video game? I actually think James Franco would feel at home there. Then maybe he'd stay there and leave us alone.