The Specialists

I’ve been forwarded two different videos intended to promote games over the last couple of weeks. I consider them both failures, but for entirely different reasons.

The first is for Shadowrun, the popular tabletop roleplaying game that blends cyberpunk with traditional fantasy tropes. So, you can play an elf with a cybernetic arm and work for a corporate executive who happens to be a dragon, for instance. (If that sounds like a criticism, it’s not.) Anyway, this video was produced in 1990, when the game was published by Fasa. Al and I actually saw this video at GenCon, a giant gaming convention, when we were in college. I’d completely forgotten about it until I received a link to it the other day. Take a look, and meet me back here when you’re done.

Obviously, this video suffers from a minuscule budget and its proximity to the 80s. The production values are laughable, the acting is nonexistent,  and the hairstyles are just embarrassing. But there’s plenty to laugh at aside from that. First, notice the “stealthy” sideways shuffle of the muscle dude (in Shadowrun parlance, he’d be known as a “Street Samurai”). I’m really not sure what he thinks he’s accomplishing. Also, why is the access panel for the security fence on the outside? And did that guard really just say “Halt, who goes there?” Please.

Assuming the point of the video was to give prospective players a taste of the game’s unique setting, then it failed miserably. The strange mixture of magic and technology would require quite a budget to represent well. They probably could have made a more evocative video by making a slide show out of some of the better artwork from the game books and adding the Blade Runner soundtrack. Ironically, I love Shadowrun, and have played it off and on for years. But I like it despite this promo, not because of it.

The following video also fails to make me want to play the game it is promoting, but not because it is bad. If anything, it’s too good. It’s for the upcoming video game, Dead Island. Check it out, but only if you can handle zombie movie gore.

First of all, this is obviously not in-game footage, so it doesn’t show me what it’s like to play the game. It tells me that it is a zombie game, and that it takes place on a resort island, but so what? Zombie games are nothing new. But while it might not work that well as an advertisement, it is an amazing short film.

I think what I am most impressed with in this video is how the chronology tricks give it a really unique and effective narrative structure. At first, all you know is that a girl has died. Then it starts inter-cutting with the girl running from zombies, and because of the first image, we know that that chase won’t end well. Then the first image starts running in reverse, and the two threads play out to meet each other in the middle. They finally converge with the father rescuing his daughter from the zombies in the hallway, but we already know how it’s all going to play out, and it’s heartbreaking. (There’s also something about how in reverse, it looks like he is setting her outside for the zombies that I find very disturbing, but I don’t know if that was intentional.) When the final images appear of the family, pre-apocalypse, starting their vacation, it’s a punch in the gut.

The sad music is also key. If this video was played out in the proper order, with standard action/horror music, it would probably be kind of boring. But edited this way, and with this music, it somehow manages to be simultaneously terrible and beautiful. The fact that it’s about zombies barely registers, having been obscured by the heartbreaking tragedy of this young family. So, while I love the video, the fact that it’s promoting a video game is completely incidental.