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LIVE-ACTION GAMES
murdered his parents to get the inheritance. So
like, it wasn’t a huge mystery, but I was like, ‘Oh, it
was really neat that I discovered this subtext through
this word search mechanic,’ [...] and there was
something exciting about leaping back and forth
through these different answers he’d given.”
Barlow and his team are gearing up for a new
project, and it sounds like it will continue what has
now become his style of live-action gameplay. “It’s
hard to not do it. It feels like... it’s not a cheat, but
there are some aspects to it that are so great
compared to how I used to have to work where I get
to spend a lot of time thinking about the story and
the characters and how that works. When we shoot
this thing, you get to work with actors in a way,”
says Barlow. “There’s just something really neat
about being in the space of moving things around
and figuring things out with the actors. And yeah,
that ability to reach people that are not traditional
gamers is really neat.”TRUE CRIME
On the other hand, D’Avekki Studios’ games don’t
get more traditional. The team – headed up by
husband/wife duo Tim and Lynda Cowles –
originally got their start making tabletop murder
mystery games. “Designing physical games has
definitely helped shape our videogames. Our physical
Murder Mystery Flexi Party games already contained
branching dialogue and random murderers, so it was
easy for us to implement
that in our FMV games,”
Tim Cowles tells us.
“There’s definitely two
core factors that power
our design philosophy
in both: is it fun? Is
it interesting?”
D’Avekki’s games are
more traditional FMV
where you do things like
solve mysteries or supernatural events, though its
more recent work incorporates point-and-click
elements as well as dialogue branching. The
live-action actors help with creating that player
connection to the plots and characters. “When those
characters address you directly it becomes even more
immersive,” says Cowles. “The quickest and easiest
thing to do with live action is animate a character!
Walking, running, punching, picking up things,
talking and so on,” he says. “While it can still be
quite expensive depending on the location, the
environment itself is potentially far easier and
quicker to set dress than to rebuild using 3D tools.”
Live action has to serve a purpose, and naturally
it can’t be used for every genre of game. “I think
the games we’ve released so far are largely character-
driven, and involve you having many intimate
conversations with people, and that just works
amazingly well as FMV,” says Cowles. “They’re not
as complex as traditional point-and-click adventure
games, and they definitely don’t require fast reflexes
or controller wizardry, so that does make them more
approachable. They’re also great to play with friends
in a couch co-op mode.”
But what if you could use live-action to make a
game with massive amounts of fast-paced action?The first thing that jumps to mind is Max Payne’s
smug, smirking mug, his (at the time) photorealistic
face bearing the likeness of Remedy Entertainment’s
co-founder, writer, and creative director Sam
Lake. Over the years, Remedy has been devoted to
incorporating live-action video as part of its games
The culmination of this is Control, where some
live-action cutscenes add to the game’s otherworldly
tone, and superimposing live-action shots on CGI
ones creates an eerie quality. “We’ve always had an
open-minded approach to different ways of telling
stories. So it’s not about using live action just for
the sake of it, but because we want a compelling
experience using the best techniques available,”
explains Mikael Kasurinen, the game’s director.
“With Control, a huge part of the tone comes from
an unconventional combination of elements. You see
the mundane clash with the strange, secrets and
truth breaking apart, and things rolling forward in
a way that you don’t expect.”MY DEAR DARLING
In Control Jesse Faden explores a shifting
supernatural building that’s the headquarters of the
Federal Bureau Of Control. Taking over from its
previous director, Trench, she is guided at times by
his echo, and an unexplained psychic being, Polaris.
“With the Trench presences, we were looking at
double-exposure photography quite a lot and
researching on how we could bring that sort of
feel to the game with
live-action,” says
Mikko Riikonen,
the game’s principal
cinematographer. “For
the Polaris blended
videos, there were
different video art and
live-action effect shots
researched and tested
before we found the
ones that were used in the final version.
“Having them as live-action would add a layer to
the game that would be very hard to achieve with
using only 3D. And I think using different mediums
inside the game makes the whole world of the game
feel richer, and in some weird way a bit more real,”
says Riikonen. You follow in the footsteps of Dr
Darling, who forever seems just out of reach, and
is the only character portrayed solely through
live-action videotapes. “The reception for these
videos has been great, and that reinforces the fact
that using these different mediums in a game can
be a very powerful experience for the players.”
Thanks to modern technology, live-action film in
videogames has far outgrown its FMV roots, and
there’s no set way you can expect to see it used. It
can gamify a cinematic experience; have you search
through a voyeuristic database; create a murder
mystery with plenty of credible suspects and
witnesses; or add extra flair to a Triple-A action
game. Just like the films and television live action is
so closely associated with, there’s great breadth in
the ways live action can be used in games, and it
provides real creative advantages for developers.
What will we see them using it for next? We’ll have
to hit Play, and watch for ourselves...“USING DIFFERENT
MEDIUMS MAKES THE
WORLD OF THE GAME
FEEL RICHER.”