Anyways, this is an idea originally expanded on by a previous post on a future Shadow Of The Colossus video. Since I have graduated from college, I wanted to edit something fresh that I haven't done before. A SOTC video came to mind, but then again I had so much confidence in it that I wanted to submit it to Anime North 2013 for a laugh. However, if you wanted to submit a video to them in the contests, you'll need to have it premier at a certain time (usually around October/November of the previous year). Not sure why so picky (especially since some people don't edit often), but no matter. This was my second idea, which follows something similar...
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| This game... |
Title: Voice Of The Journey
Song: "The Voice" by Celtic Women
Footage: Journey gameplay + Journey Trailer
Gameplay by Raggedstar
Focus: The...er...journey?
Progress: Just over 1/3 finished...in one day. SCORE!
Beta: Clickie
I love Journey. Do you love Journey? Well you should, and you should give thatgamecompany all your money. For those under a rock and/or without a PS3, TGC is an independant developer who had a contract years ago with Sony to make 3 PSN exclusive games. The development team, especially Jenova Chen, want to further games as an art form. Their first game is flOw, that I don't know too much about but it was very well recieved. Their second game was Flower in 2009, where you played as a dreaming flower (...just roll with it) and control flower petals blowing in the wind using the sixaxis in the only time it has ever actually ADDED to gameplay. It was well recieved too, but their third game, Journey, exploded. It was released March 2012, and became the best selling PSN game ever. Hell, even the OST (which is only 5 bucks on iTunes by the way *nudge*) was one of the best selling game OSTs.
Talking more about Journey, the game is about a cloaked wanderer (no, not Wander. THIS IS A DIFFERENT GAME!) walking through empty desert ruins. At the beginning, all you have is a destination: A glowing mountain in the distance. No other characters (yet), dialogue, or any real context. As you go through the game, you start to get more clues as to who you are, what happened, and where you're going through meeting a being in white as well as picking up clues from the landscape. Even though this is the most "game-like" out of all of TGC's games, most of what you do is walking around. You only use 2 buttons (X for a limited jump/fly, O for "chirping"), the platforming is very easy and straight forward, impossible to die (plus the amount of enemies in the game can be counted on one hand), and is pretty linear despite appearing so vast. I can't even tell you the plot and lore since it's so vague and left to interpretation. But like the game's title suggests, what makes it so magical is the journey itself. The beauty of the stylized environments, the creatures that play with you along the way, the various set-pieces, the uncovering of history, the progression and pacing, the whole bloody experience.
About the video...right. A lot of the details about the game are actually important with the creation of this video. First off, the editing is EXTREMELY simplistic. You can create a near identical copy of this with Windows Movie Maker. This was done for a similar reason why my SOTC vids won't be fancy (well, they'll be fancier than this). The games are minimalistic and focused. If a million things fly around at once with sources like that, it seems kinda...wrong. I haven't seen many other Journey videos around, and I wouldn't blame them since you would need the right song and aim to give it justice. There's this one, which is on the right track, and then this, which was made for lulz. The first one was simple, though I'm looking for more direction and smoothness. The second one is complex but...dude...look at it lol. I can't imagine many ways where you can make a really flashy video with a game like Journey and still have it taken seriously. There aren't enough set pieces, cutscenes, or length anyways.
Second, the plot of the video is about "the journey", though not exlusively to the plot. In choosing "The Voice" by Celtic Women, the song (in my interpretation) can be seen as the personification of instinct. That little voice in your head to move forward by looking to the past (damn it I make no sense). With this video, "the voice" is the "being in white" you see on your meditations at the altars. It's your call to the mountain and keeps you moving forward. Actually, Journey reminds me a lot of Wolf's Rain, especially with it's ending. My (summed-up) interpretation of Wolf's Rain's ending is that Kiba is part of a ritual with the death and rebirth of the world. The instinct, forged from the past repeated cycles of the planet, drives him to Paradise. The way I see the ending is that Kiba dies after unlocking Paradise, and the world begins again. That final scene is the new world, reaching a similar point that it did at the beginning of the show. Kiba runs to the scent of lunar flowers (much like he did at the start of the show, searching for Cheza), and his journey begins once again. Journey seems much like the same thing, except taken more literally (you actually get tossed back to the same place you started to begin a new game). I can't explain it indepth due to the lack of concrete story to help me, but I get a similar vibe. Actually, this almost turned out to be a Wolf's Rain video, but the song has been done to Wolf's Rain (plus various wolf slideshows) too many times.
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| "I am the voice of your history" |
Very confident in this project, and things are going smoothly. Stay tuned for more! Odds are I'll finish it in about another week *stifles laughter*.
PS: Oh, and Austin Wintory made things too easy for me. That first bit where the star flies across the sky to our character (in my AMV, the lyrics are "I hear your voice on the wind. And I hear you call out my name"), the song is called "The Call". Swish.
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