There’s something aboutQuentin Tarantino’s visual style and frequent subjects that suggests his movies would lend themselves well to video game adaptation. A lot of Tarantino’s work deals with violence in all its forms: the violence of crime, of war, of revenge are frequently front and center. Violence is also a mainstay of video games as a medium, like it or not, and many of the most popular games deal with the same subjects.Games likeGrand Theft Autoportray crime,Call of Dutyportrays war, and revenge is a common trope across the industry in any genre.
So really, you’d think it’d be easy to make a Tarantino movie into a video game. In reality,every effort to adapt one of Quentin Tarantino’s movies into a video game has been an abject failure - even when they made it to store shelves. This is the story of the 2006Reservoir Dogsvideo game, developed by Volatile Games and published by Eidos Interactive.
A Reservoir Dogs Video Game Debuted In 2006
What Went Wrong?
It may not be surprising thatReservoir Dogsgot an attempt at a video game adaptation; what is surprising, though, is thatit took almost 15 years for the adaptation to materialize.Reservoir Dogs(the movie) was released in 1992 to a fair bit of critical fanfare. It wasTarantino’s debut film, and largely launched his career by drumming up interest in his unique style. Audiences praised its unnerving depiction of violence and pervasive tension, aspects of the film that made it an instant and enduring classic.
When the PlayStation 2 was released in 2000, it represented a massive leap forwards in terms of graphical fidelity. Games could look as good as movies, with the right budget, and so,for a good few years, it seemed like every major movie release got its own video game adaptation. Many of these were mediocre cash grabs, basic gameplay slapped on top of unoriginal stories in the hopes of garnering a profit based on brand recognition alone.
This sudden wave of adaptations apparently extended to older movies, too.GTAwas a moneymaker, andmany film studios attempted to adapt their classic crime films into video gameswith varying degrees of success. 2006 gave us games based onScarface,The Godfather, and, indeed,Reservoir Dogs.
Reservoir Dogsgot a second video game adaptation in 2017: the top-down shooterReservoir Dogs: Bloody Days. It was no better received.
For what it’s worth,the game takes full advantage of the graphical capabilities of the PS2- looking back on it today, its visuals have aged well. It’s not exactly photorealistic, but the character models and environments are rendered with a surprising amount of detail, almost comparable to the visuals ofGTA 4. The same can be said of the music, if only because it’s taken directly from the movie.
The story follows the plot ofReservoir Dogsalmost beat for beat, with a couple of additions. Uniquely,theReservoir Dogsvideo game features three different endings. you may effectively complete the entire game without killing a single person, or you can shoot everyone in sight. Your approach throughout the various missions that make upReservoir Dogsaffects which ending you see. These endings attempt to address some of the questions the movie leaves unanswered,revealing Mr. Blue’s otherwise ambiguous fate.
The Reservoir Dogs Video Game Was Not Received Well
The Gameplay Was The Problem
The gameplay and story made some bold decisions, but ultimately didn’t do enough to save this ill-fated adaptation. The gameplay was the main issue:Reservoir Dogsis divided up into multiple missions, each of which is almost identical to the last. Its stealth and shooting mechanics are nothing new, making the whole thing feel like a poorly executedGTAclone. This gets boring quickly, and, with an incredibly short runtime, the game never really has the chance to redeem itself.
For any video game to live up toReservoir Dogswas a tall order.
Now, an incredible number ofGTAclones came out in the early 2000s, most of which faded into obscurity. TheReservoir Dogstitle actually does this one a disservice, though:by its association with a critically acclaimed and fan-beloved movie, theReservoir Dogsvideo game invites negative comparison. For any video game to live up toReservoir Dogswas a tall order, one this particular adaptation tried to fulfill with its unique narrative mechanics and story additions. But unfortunately, it didn’t quite cut the mustard, and has since fallen into obscurity.
Tarantino Movies Could Make Good Games, With The Right Effort
1:1 Is Never The Way
I don’t think the attempt to make a Tarantino-based video game was entirely misguided.Reservoir Dogsnever would’ve been my first choice, though. It’s easy enough to envision, for example, aKill Billhack and slash; in fact, at least one studio tried, but it never made it to production. The movie is already structured like a video game, with huge action setpieces against hordes of enemies and one-on-one “boss fights” against the Deadly Vipers.
The imagery and concepts are there;the pacing isn’t. Yes, Tarantino’s output as a whole is brutal, but his movies are anything but a constant onslaught - moments of violence are largely short and curated. They take time to set up, which is why they have an impact. One of Tarantino’s great strengths as a director is his ability to create long, tense dialogue scenes to precede explosive outbursts of violence. These don’t play out nearly as well in an interactive form. Therefore,a one-to-one adaptation of any Tarantino movie is unlikely to work.
This is true of video game movie adaptations as a whole.The two media are paced differently by necessity: most movies are roughly two hours long, while even the shortest triple-A games today are in the double digits. A direct story adaptation simply won’t take up enough space without a lot of filler, which is why games likeReservoir Dogswind up both repetitive and short.
Rather than attempt the impossible task of living up to a specific, beloved movie, they merely have to capture the “spirit” of a character or setting.
The best movie-based video games -things likeIndiana Jones and the Great Circle,Mad Max,Knights of the Old Republic- work precisely because of their original stories. Their plots and gameplay are crafted from the ground up to fit into the much longer 30-plus-hour framework of a triple-A game. Rather than attempt the impossible task of living up to a specific, beloved movie, they merely have to capture the “spirit” of a character or setting, which is much more feasible and gives the development team much more freedom to create something interesting.
The video game industry has come a long way sinceReservoir Dogs, and this is a lesson it seems to have learned. Most movie adaptation games that come out today aren’t based directly on specific movies: they’re original stories set in popular movie universes, and they’re so much better for it. I doubt we’ll ever see anotherQuentin Tarantinovideo game, but if we do, it’ll almost certainly come in the form of a prequel or homage - not a direct adaptation.
