Quote #8 - All quotes
"Anything for entertainment." - Stanford
"Anything for entertainment." - Stanford
Part 1: Humble Beginnings
FOLLOW ALONG AT HOME!
Up until 1:53
We start on our journey through Modern Warfare 3!
Prologue
At first, I was surprised that the non-interactive opening cutscene was a distinct consolidated "mission" on its own. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been though. In the past, both Treyarch and Infinity Ward have tried desperately to make their games as cinematic as possible, often being criticised for going overboard. There are several examples (especially in BO) where the game takes over player control for a few seconds to do something SHOCKING. While theoretically an understandable measure, to ensure that the players see all the developers' hard work, it loses a lot of its effect though because it unintentionally breaks the fourth wall by taking over the player. It feels cheap, and puts a barrier between the story and the experience.
Anyway, I'm sure fear of more criticism of the cutscenes, as well as general courtesy from Infinity-hammer, separated the prologue from the first mission. With that, you don't have to sit through it if you want to play the first mission, but you can also watch it if you really want to (like a "Watch Intro" button from early PC games for example).
So when you start the game, you may be baffled that the non-interactive cutscene needs to load. At which point, it plays another non-interactive cutscene. The loading cutscene is (probably unintentionally) reminiscent of the poster of The Final Destination (2009). We zoom into a globe, which suddenly starts shattering like glass in slow motion.
Scenes from the final moments of Modern Warfare 2 are overlayed onto the flying glass shards. We hear the following line from Cpt. Price, who says it like he's a Batman villain.
Luckily, we all know that Price is in fact, not a Batman villain. Regardless, I can't help thinking that that line should have been used in the trailer. The only trailer I remember is the dialogue-less exploitation of the "3" gimmick, replacing the letter E in country names with a 3 (e.g. Am3rica, G3rmany, 3ngland). Apart from looking like a 12 year old's gamertag, those country names, and really the trailer in general, said very little about the game. However, this is one thing I actually won't criticise. Being an advocate for good storytelling, I've found trailers intriguing, in that they're forced to give away enough about whatever it's advertising to get people interested, but not too much so that it doesn't give away the whole experience. Christopher Nolan said it best (and I'm paraphrasing) when he said that stories are most powerful when you know nothing about them. You don't know what to expect, and the storytelling benefits as a result.
Activision has a franchise so successful that they don't actually have to advertise it (other than just announcing a release date) and people will still buy it based on earlier installments of the series, and the hype surrounding the new one. They don't actually have to give anything away before release. They can actually get away with throwing nondescript gameplay clips and countries with numbers in them into a trailer, and people will fill in the blanks with their previous memories. Therefore, the game's story from start to finish is a complete surprise and nothing is expected. If only films/games/etc. with no established background could do that.
My point is diminished somewhat, in that they did give away things like locations in the trailer, therefore giving away something. However, it still was definitely nothing about the story, and nothing about what happens following MW2, i.e. the most interesting parts. That's what I'm talking about when I say that very little is given away by the trailer. And that's a good thing.
Anyway, back to the cutscene, Price recaps more of MW2's ending while more clips are shown.
Finally, Infinity-hammer drops possibly the most quoted line from MW2.
I certainly hope they didn't re-record those lines. I guess it doesn't really matter, but I'm just looking out for the voice acting budget!
The globe then continues panning until we see parts of the globe that are identified as Afghanistan and Northern India. They then shatter too. These are the first parts of the globe that are actually identified places when they shatter. Symbolism?
Odd, I don't remember seeing 3nd3a or 3fgh3nist3n in the trailer. Well done, Activision, your trailer is even more vague then it initially seemed.
The cutscene ends, and we start from the POV of Soap, continuing directly from where MW2 left off. Price and Nikolai are pushing some sort of stretcher into presumably the aforementioned 'place' that Nikolai knew. Their pushing is broken up by frequent blurry shots from MW1 (again, specifically the ending). It's fairly reminiscent of the memories spliced in towards the end of Black Ops.
We arrive at a room containing someone who appears to be a butcher. Price instructs him that "[Soap] needs help now", at which point we fade to black as they butcher attends to us.
We hear someone getting ready to defibrillate. The butcher (I assume) counts down, and once he reaches zero, the letters WW3 appear on screen. The first W then flips to create MW3 and "Call of Duty" appears above it. I guess this serves as our title card then.
No "Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer Games Presents" or anything? That's disappointingly uncinematic of you Infinity-hammer.
STAY TUNED FOR "BLACK TUESDAY"
READ PREVIOUS PART READ NEXT PART
Posted by slimac55 on November 12th 2011 | 1 comment | Tweet
Up until 1:53
We start on our journey through Modern Warfare 3!
Prologue
At first, I was surprised that the non-interactive opening cutscene was a distinct consolidated "mission" on its own. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been though. In the past, both Treyarch and Infinity Ward have tried desperately to make their games as cinematic as possible, often being criticised for going overboard. There are several examples (especially in BO) where the game takes over player control for a few seconds to do something SHOCKING. While theoretically an understandable measure, to ensure that the players see all the developers' hard work, it loses a lot of its effect though because it unintentionally breaks the fourth wall by taking over the player. It feels cheap, and puts a barrier between the story and the experience.
Anyway, I'm sure fear of more criticism of the cutscenes, as well as general courtesy from Infinity-hammer, separated the prologue from the first mission. With that, you don't have to sit through it if you want to play the first mission, but you can also watch it if you really want to (like a "Watch Intro" button from early PC games for example).
So when you start the game, you may be baffled that the non-interactive cutscene needs to load. At which point, it plays another non-interactive cutscene. The loading cutscene is (probably unintentionally) reminiscent of the poster of The Final Destination (2009). We zoom into a globe, which suddenly starts shattering like glass in slow motion.
Scenes from the final moments of Modern Warfare 2 are overlayed onto the flying glass shards. We hear the following line from Cpt. Price, who says it like he's a Batman villain.
Luckily, we all know that Price is in fact, not a Batman villain. Regardless, I can't help thinking that that line should have been used in the trailer. The only trailer I remember is the dialogue-less exploitation of the "3" gimmick, replacing the letter E in country names with a 3 (e.g. Am3rica, G3rmany, 3ngland). Apart from looking like a 12 year old's gamertag, those country names, and really the trailer in general, said very little about the game. However, this is one thing I actually won't criticise. Being an advocate for good storytelling, I've found trailers intriguing, in that they're forced to give away enough about whatever it's advertising to get people interested, but not too much so that it doesn't give away the whole experience. Christopher Nolan said it best (and I'm paraphrasing) when he said that stories are most powerful when you know nothing about them. You don't know what to expect, and the storytelling benefits as a result.
Activision has a franchise so successful that they don't actually have to advertise it (other than just announcing a release date) and people will still buy it based on earlier installments of the series, and the hype surrounding the new one. They don't actually have to give anything away before release. They can actually get away with throwing nondescript gameplay clips and countries with numbers in them into a trailer, and people will fill in the blanks with their previous memories. Therefore, the game's story from start to finish is a complete surprise and nothing is expected. If only films/games/etc. with no established background could do that.
My point is diminished somewhat, in that they did give away things like locations in the trailer, therefore giving away something. However, it still was definitely nothing about the story, and nothing about what happens following MW2, i.e. the most interesting parts. That's what I'm talking about when I say that very little is given away by the trailer. And that's a good thing.
Anyway, back to the cutscene, Price recaps more of MW2's ending while more clips are shown.
Finally, Infinity-hammer drops possibly the most quoted line from MW2.
I certainly hope they didn't re-record those lines. I guess it doesn't really matter, but I'm just looking out for the voice acting budget!
The globe then continues panning until we see parts of the globe that are identified as Afghanistan and Northern India. They then shatter too. These are the first parts of the globe that are actually identified places when they shatter. Symbolism?
Odd, I don't remember seeing 3nd3a or 3fgh3nist3n in the trailer. Well done, Activision, your trailer is even more vague then it initially seemed.
The cutscene ends, and we start from the POV of Soap, continuing directly from where MW2 left off. Price and Nikolai are pushing some sort of stretcher into presumably the aforementioned 'place' that Nikolai knew. Their pushing is broken up by frequent blurry shots from MW1 (again, specifically the ending). It's fairly reminiscent of the memories spliced in towards the end of Black Ops.
We arrive at a room containing someone who appears to be a butcher. Price instructs him that "[Soap] needs help now", at which point we fade to black as they butcher attends to us.
We hear someone getting ready to defibrillate. The butcher (I assume) counts down, and once he reaches zero, the letters WW3 appear on screen. The first W then flips to create MW3 and "Call of Duty" appears above it. I guess this serves as our title card then.
No "Infinity Ward/Sledgehammer Games Presents" or anything? That's disappointingly uncinematic of you Infinity-hammer.
STAY TUNED FOR "BLACK TUESDAY"
READ PREVIOUS PART READ NEXT PART
Posted by slimac55 on November 12th 2011 | 1 comment | Tweet