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Does Enter The Matrix represent an upgrade for all film-game tie-ins. Or is it just a glitch in the system? Ceri Thomas logs on to investigate
Motion pictures and video games have a long and convoluted history together. Almost since the moment that computer gaming evolved beyond simple bleep- bleep, monochrome tennis matches, the industry has been drawing on cinema for inspiration for the location, structure and tone of its output.
The next logical step, was of course, direct tie-tins. Instead of creating heroes of their own, video game developers slowly began to enter into partnerships with film studios, coming up with games using the specific charac- ters and settings from the movies.
The results have been patchy. For every GoldenEye - the much- loved Nintendo 64 tie-in to the 1994 James Bond film - there have been dozens of less well thought out games, ones that smacked of “afterthought” or “rushed market- ing opportunity.”
Much of that has changed in the last few years, with the sheer competition in the games market forcing up the quality of all games, not just the movie tie-ins.
But this year, the marketplace changed again with the launch in cinemas of Matrix Reloaded, the first of this year’s two sequels to 1999’s The Matrix.
It was always going to be a huge moviegoing event, but it seems that the film’s makers the Wachowski brothers had a much wider agenda than all that.
First, came the news of a DVD tie-in, The Animatrix, a selection of animated shorts that helped - in various ways - to fill-in parts of the backstory to Matrix Reloaded. That in itself was inno- vative. But then came news of the game tie-in, Enter The Matrix.
The film basically follows the adventures of Neo, Morpheus and Trinity (Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie Anne moss) as they battle their way through The Matrix - and the real world - in search of a way to save mankind from extinction by the machines.
However, early on in the movie, we’re introduced to a second hovership captain, Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and her crew. They crop up again at vari- ous points in the film to aid and abet the main trio, but most of the time simply seem to vanish from the main action. The reason why? Their characters are taking part in the plot of the game...
“The Wachowskis have designed the plot of Enter the Matrix in a unique way - the story of the game lies parallel to the
story of the film, intersecting at key moments,” explained Dave Perry of Shiny Entertainment (now part of Atari), developers of the game. “You’ll walk out of one scene in the game and right into a scene in the film.
“The game is experienced as a movie. The arc of the story passes with the characters transi- tioning from scene-to-scene, just like characters in a movie. The Wachowskis really don’t look at the game and the film as being two separate stories – it’s really one massive story, told through different media.”
The Wachowski brothers came up with the idea for Enter the Matrix, wrote the script and even shot an hour of additional footage using Pinkett Smith and other actors from the film specifi- cally for the game.
“The Wachowskis are living and breathing this project,” said Perry. Playing the game is an odd Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead sensation. At some points, you’re controlling characters just offscreen in the movie, at others you’re arriving at locations a few minutes after the main action has moved on, at yet more you’re off on separate missions that help ensure that Neo et al can suc- ceed in their goals.
Perry’s right: it really is “one massive story.”
And it’s been a hugely suc- cessful one so far. Launched in May, the game sold one million copies in its first week, pushing that number up to 2.5 million by the end of its first month on sale.
But just how influential is Enter The Matrix going to be? In inter- views before its release Perry talked about it “turning Hollywood on its head.”
The idea that it would revolu- tionise film tie-ins was bandied about. Is it going to have that big an effect? Will all the big video game tie-ins now HAVE to work so closely with the filmmakers, inter- linking movie and game plots in this way?
“I think this kind of thing will be kept to a minimum because mutu- al coordination during creative development at multiple studios working in different mediums is a very difficult thing to do,” is the opinion of Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software developers of James Bond tie-ins Nightfire and Agent Under Fire.
Asked about the degree of input MGM (the studio behind the Bond films) has into their games, he describes a close working relation- ship but nothing near so detailed as that for Enter The Matrix.
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