Multiple Upcoming Games, Movies Based On Jordan's Wheel of Time 217
Today film studio Red Eagle Entertainment announced plans to establish Red Eagle Games, a studio that will produce games based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The games will be developed alongside movie adaptations of the series, which Red Eagle announced a few months ago. They'll be working with Universal on the films. "[Red Eagle producer Rick] Selvage said in an interview that the game company will make a series of games that will be co-launched with the movies. In addition, Red Eagle Games will make a massively multiplayer online game based on the Wheel of Time universe." Wheel of Time fan site 'Dragonmount' recently spoke with Selvage about the movie plans.
Realm: Moonrunner Char: Mithrilvar (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Eagle Games will make a massively multiplayer online game based on the Wheel of Time universe.
Because if there's anything the PC gaming market really needs, it's another MMO.
Loot The Copyright!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Jordan is barely even cold, the 13th book hasn't been published yet, and everyone is already clambering to get wrist deep into his creative work and exploit it."
Good thing we don't have life plus 70 years so the heirs could defend his "property".
Does anyone still even care (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously..? I started reading the Wheel of Time many years ago, and while the first book was pretty good, subsequent books became increasingly self indulgent, whiney, and so meandering that the story barely advanced. By about book 5, most of the characters were so un-likeable that I could not longer relate to/empathize with them. This has to be one of the most dissapointing series that I have ever read.
CAPTCH: bleeder, as in "you miserable..."
Re:How Many Movies?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How Many Movies?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're kidding right? Most of those later books can be compressed into about 14 paragraphs.
how? (Score:4, Insightful)
How on earth are they going to condense down as much material as is in one of those books (let alone the whole series) into a movie without leaving out half the story? The Lord of the Rings books are half the size of Jordan's and each of those movies were over three hours long and still left some good stuff out.
Red Eagle's Reliability.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But Can They Do It Justice? (Score:5, Insightful)
The single-player mode of the old WoT game was well-scripted and made good use of effects, but was not otherwise particularly memorable (except for Shadar Logoth, which was creepy as hell and scared me multiple times). The MULTI-player, though... incredible. There was an insane amount of depth to it, because everything (except balefire of course) had a counter. The "TING" sound of a Seeker or Decay locking on to me still makes me twitch. When you'd hear it, you'd start running like mad, trying to find the right shield to absorb it, or better yet, reflect it back at the caster, and all the while it was chasing you, moving faster and faster... then you found someone dropped a Legion right on top of the Unravel. GAH!
Good times.
Re:But Can They Do It Justice? (Score:4, Insightful)
I certainly hope they do better with The Wheel of Time MMOs & don't dish me another buggy clone like Lord of the Rings or Warhammer
You can hope all you like, but it's not going to happen. I'm firmly under the belief that all MMOs for the near future will be cookie cutter clones of each other. They will all attempt to drag out the game for as long as possible with needless time sinks, poor stories, even worse level curves, maps made for the quick jaunt in and out, porting all over the land, and prefab classes with prefab progression.
Hate to be a cynic... but it's what I've seen going through 20 (or more) different MMOs looking for one that's different. So far it's been a waste of time and money. I'd be very surprised to see one in the near future that actually tries to break the common mold.
Re:Loot The Corpse!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the kind of thinking that leads to a wisecracking CG animated Jamaican sidekick to a newly midichlorian fuelled Rand al'Thor.
Re:You can't finish the game (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy.
Jordan goes on and on about setting. Not a problem for film.
Jordan repeats himself over and over regarding character interactions. Easily condensed.
Jordan constantly writes about his characters pulling their braids, smoothing their skirts, etc. They can all do those things at the same time while the story is moving along.
Jordan has described the internal processes of wielding the One Power a million times. In film they'll just replace it with a fancy CGI or call it "metachlorians" (credit a poster above).
Jordan thinks any character ever seen in a book needs a name. They can save about 5 hours just by not naming all their extras.
The last four or so books in the series will probably fit on a single page of the script.
And finally, Jordan didn't finish. There's a good 30 minutes out of the film right there.
Re:But Can They Do It Justice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, if they try to turn the book's events into a game, it will probably tank, as per usual. RJ was painfully meticulous in his description of events in the book, and developing a game within such strict limitations will not succeed, at least not with the fans who've read the series on multiple occasions.
What they should really do is set a game earlier than what is described in detail in the books, say when one of the false dragons was around. That way there is plenty of conflict, but the game designers have much more leeway on the events and story in the game.
As long as they don't "Dragon of the Lance" it (Score:2, Insightful)
As long as they don't "animize" it like they did the new Dragon of the Lance animation movie. BLECH!
Re:How Many Movies?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Loot The Corpse!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please. By the fifth book, Jordan was already wrist deep in skullfucking his own creative property by recycling storylines and padding word counts with endless descriptions of wardrobe. They're doing nothing but carrying on a tradition Jordan started himself.
Re:How Many Movies?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's exactly how I felt. I always got the impression that Jordan was trying to write strong female characters, but didn't have the slightest clue how one would actually behave. Instead of coming across as strong or sympathetic, they were just fucking obnoxious. And all *exactly* the same. Cadsuane (had to look up the name on Wiki) was the last straw.
Oh, and the bizarre sexual fantasy feeling to it: women spanking each other, humiliating men, and happily coexisting in a polygamous relationship.
Re:A series for the ages... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes but LotR added a lot of that story in notes, appendices and additional books that weren't part of the main story.
I read all 11 books ... and I'll probably read the 12th but since I read the 11th I've read all of GRR Martin's 'A song of fire and ice' series which completely blows away any other fantasy series I've read before or since and WoT really suffers in comparison.
Re:A series for the ages... (Score:3, Insightful)
LotR doesn't give NEARLY as much a feel of the setting as WoT
well...I think that Tolkien was leaving it up to your imagination....because he could have told you several thousand more pages....but didn't want to.
Re:Loot The Copyright!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
no, and I quote:
"...The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time."
Re:Realm: Moonrunner Char: Mithrilvar (Score:3, Insightful)
>>we can look forward to a few Twin Peaks sequels!
Or a Twin Peaks MMORPG.
Hmm.
Couldn't be any more horrendous than the current crops of MMORPGs.
IMO, what made the old school MUDs better than MMORPGs is that players (when they hit a certain level) were oftentimes allowed to make new dungeons. So as your playerbase went up, so did the amount of content available. It's an idea that I'd love to see get transferred to one of the major MMOs.
Re:Loot The Copyright!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
According to Ryan Dancey (one of WOTC's ex-vice presidents) when I talked to him years ago, was that Robert Jordan actually pitched the series as a series that would never end. He could just keep churning out product, and people would keep buying it, indefinitely.
Or, I guess, until he died.
Re:How Many Movies?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
>>disastrously bad sequels and prequels by Herbert and Anderson.
You mean Sanderson?
Obviously AMoL isn't out yet, but every book he's written to date has been bloody brilliant.
He's not Jordan, sure. He might not use Jordan's attention to ridiculously unimportant detail, or Jordan's reuse of every plot thread multiple times, or Jordan's complete inability to handle plot and multiple viewpoints, but... oh wait, yeah. They'll probably actually be pretty good.
Re:But Can They Do It Justice? (Score:3, Insightful)
EQ was my first. I spent years in the world and it never got old. The classes all had purpose, the spells all didn't. (minor illusion was the best, right next to the mages ability to summon things for their pets and fireworks.) Night was actually dark, you could see what a mob was carrying, drive by buffs were the best present anyone could offer...
Not to mention, EQ had dungeons worth going into. They were not easy to get into, nor easy to get out of. As much as everyone hated trains, everyone knew to get out of the way when they were coming. (And there was a way out. Not all the dungeons were linear roller coaster rides with only one path.)
In the early days of EQ, Fine Steel was where it was at. You were lucky to get Combine stuff. There's just so much that I remember about EQ and so much I forget about all these other MMOs that keep popping up.
Oh, and Faction! Being able to align with the gnolls and visit their merchant. It was a minor victory to be sure, but it was an option.
So much of that game was memorable. You will probably say it was because it was my first MMO, but it was more than that though. It was more than any one single player RPG ever was.