Monday, November 06, 2006

A First-Person Shooter I'd like to see in another format

After reading about the shelving of the Halo movie and seeing the dreadful movie version of Doom over the weekend, I got to thinking about a certain FPS series that perhaps deserves a little bit more media exposure, though I don't think film is the ideal medium for its stories to be revealed.

I am, of course, talking about the TimeSplitters, a series of games based on the premise that aliens from outside of our time/dimension are attempting to destroy the human race at various periods of our modern history and it is up to a few heroes who are in the right place at the right time(literally of course), to stop them.

Why Timesplitters?
With the Timesplitters universe have a potentially interesting set of characters from various time periods, their adversaries and a larger evil to fight. I mean, I would love to see some more stories about the the swashbuckling explorer/archeologist Captain Ash in the early part of the 20th century, the hip 1970's groove of superspy Harry Tipper and the gunslinging prowess of Elijah Jones in the Wild West amongst others, not to mention seeing more about Sergeant Cortez and Corporal Hart trying to save our entire species from annihilation at the hands of the twisted and evil Timesplitters from the 2400's and other points in our future as well. There is a lot of ground to cover, a lot of places to explore and a lot of stories worth telling. Of course, I am not looking for a movie here, because frankly, that would be a waste of the breadth of available material. But I do think that an animated series could do the whole concept justice. I mean, you have aliens, robots, spies, zombies, serial killers, gunslingers, mutants... the whole gambit of science fiction and horror characters in one packages. Of course, you have to remember that of all the plot devices out there, time travel is my favorite, so I may be biased as well.

timesplitters

Why am I advocating this be presented in animated form?
The TimeSplitters story is sort of cartoonish to begin with, so it makes sense to continue in that style, and it would seem to be easier to maintain the overall look and style of the gaming experience and environments in an animated form. And since you can do a lot with a talented crew of voice actors, a few quality choices could fill the character rosters nicely. It would also permit those involved to take storylines in the directions they need to go without having to worry about the costs of special effects and the hassles of location shooting.

Now, I was never a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise, but I was impressed by the idea behind the Clone Wars cartoon series, and that is really the impetus behind this Timesplitters idea. I wouldn't want it to be like the action cartoons that were on when I was child, where the storylines don't all lead up to an ending (I'm looking right at you, G.I. Joe with that one).

How likely is this to happen. I really am not holding my breath, but I think this could really work.

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