I was listening to the latest Postcards from the Dungeon episode about Film Noir. I was surprised they did not mention Max Payne, the video game, because I absolutely adore that game. I made a comment on their forum about it, we shall see how they respond. But that triggered me thinking about that game and then I put on my instrumental playlist for some music and lo-and-beyond; Man on Fire came up in the queue.
Listen to the below, focus on the end of the song (after 2:30) and listen to how they change up the tempo to make it sound like it is occuring in slow motion. I cannot listen to this song without thinking about some dude on rampage with a shotgun and every time the music slows and then accelerates he is shooting it. It amazes me how a piece of music can become so attached in the mind to a particular image/scene.
So these two factors got me thinking about slow motion. It is a fairly standard practice on film. Max Payne was the first video game to implement bullet time, kind of like the Matrix in terms of film. Lots of video games use it now. I love the VATs system in Fallout 3 & New Vegas.
I love slow motion, bullet-time, and similar concepts.
I used a very slow-motion-esque model for combat in Synapse. Looking back now it is clumsily written, but I am going to revise that soon. However, do you think there is a home for slow-motion combat in the the medieval fantasy genre? What about other genres?
What about some kind of VATs model where people have to give their commands from a paused state, then let the game resolve the action all at once in a faster real time, then go back into a pause state? Seems more realistic that combat rounds to me.
Just a thought. What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment