Player to Spectator: The Limits of Video Game Adaptations

This month, we got our first look at Amazon Prime’s new adaptation of the God of War games, and first impressions aside (it looks pretty bad), it seems like the slew of video game adaptations to television and movies is here to stay. With the Western drifting away like a tumbleweed, and the superhero genre not quite as bulletproof as it used to be, studios have latched onto video games as their new cash cow. God of War, Last of Us, Far Cry, Tomb Raider, Elden Ring–it all just makes you wonder what the point of it all is? On paper, the appeal is clear for the producer looking for an easy reward. Video games have become the largest entertainment industry, boasting massive built-in audiences and stories that could rival blockbuster films. But if the prevailing model is the kind of slavishly faithful recreation that treats the original game as a screenplay instead of something to build upon, then it seems like there might be no point at all. 

What makes video game adaptations so different from, say, adapting a book like The Silence of the Lambs, now one of the most acclaimed movies of the 20th century? The difference lies in the language of these media. The language of a book is exactly that–language and prose–using vivid descriptions to render ink on the page into living scenes. When adapting a book, a movie translates the text into cinema’s strengths, like camerawork and set design, transforming the book into a visual experience. The problem is that video games already are a visual medium. After spending so long looking for artistic respect, they’ve taken the language of cinema and used it for their own storytelling. Consider God of War (2018), a game that boasted of being more “immersive” by featuring a third-person camera that stayed primarily on Kratos and that for cutscenes, seamlessly transitioned from gameplay to imitate a one-take. From motion-captured performances to lengthy, uninterrupted cutscenes, video games are a medium already heavily reliant on film techniques to tell their stories. What distinguishes AAA games from movies is their capacity for interactivity. 

In The Last of Us’s (2014) opening segment, players control Joel as he navigates a rapidly crumbling world succumbing to a sudden viral outbreak. The player feels the gravity of the situation through that interactivity, moving the camera, desperately looking for ways to escape a life-or-death situation. They are forced to react to danger, their eyes darting around for safe routes, ducking and weaving through the chaos. Yet despite everything the player does to survive, the outcome cannot be changed, making Sarah’s death all the more devastating. The weight of the moment lies in that tight-rope balance between control and powerlessness. The Last of Us (2014) has been the standard-bearer for twelve years of games that want to be movies, for better or for worse, but what distinguishes it from just being another zombie story is that interactivity. When the show adapted that same sequence, it took great measures to replicate camera movements, the dialogue, and the emotional beats. On the surface, it’s a translation that maintains fidelity to the original, but without player agency, the impact is mute. What once was an active experience becomes passive, with the same artistic worth as an “all cutscenes” compilation you could find on YouTube. Without gameplay, the adaptation is often left recreating the same narrative moments while stripping away the element that made them powerful in the first place.

That’s not to say that video game adaptations should never be made. Adaptations like Fallout show that there can be artistic worth to be mined from video games. Rather than reproducing the exact same plot beats or narratives of the original role-playing games, the show recognizes that it is impossible to recreate that same interactive experience when you can’t choose the direction of the narrative. Instead, it situated itself within the world crafted by the original games to create a new story consistent with the themes and dark humor that defined the post-apocalyptic franchise. Above all else, it is something that you couldn’t get by just playing the game.

What differentiates the worthwhile adaptations from the lesser ones is transformation: reinterpreting the original work rather than reproducing it. In that sense, the future of video game adaptations depends on whether creators treat games as narratives to be copied or worlds to be explored. The former risks turning some of the most interactive works in modern entertainment into nothing more than expensive cutscene compilations. The latter respects the unique nature of video games as a medium and expands on their limitless possibilities by creating something new.