[Death Gurgle Contributions Series: Death Gurgle is not just my blog. Some other people write stuff for me sometimes. Like this!]
Seeing as how Hollywood has run out of stupid ideas of its own, and is starting to look seriously at games as a source for producing millions of dollars of nonsense, now is probably a good time to take a look at the origins of one of the most anticipated movies currently in development: Lost Planet.
Motiveless protagonists? Heroic and villainous figures with names like Basil, Shane and Joe? An entire species of enemy whose sole purpose is to be glorified gameplay speed bumps?
David Hayter you have my sympathies...
Lost Planet Script [deathgurgle edit]
[CUTSCENE: OPENING]
Fade in: lightning strikes threateningly in the background, snow blustered by ominously howling wind, a band of rugged and futurist mechs (VS) and soldiers edge their way through a treacherous barren ice world. All is silent until:
PLOT-IRRELEVANT NARRATOR:
Oh, hi there. I’ve been paid to shoehorn in some clumsy background. It’s easy!All I have to do is reference some ridiculous made-up epoch, the ‘Trial Century -80’, because it sounds a bit epic, then describe, well gloss over, how humans abandoned earth, choose the next best thing, an inhospitable ice hell, colonized it for a while, before suddenly noticing the expansive race of giant homicidal mutant glow-worms [AKRID] littering its every crevice.
Clear?
Cut to: some of the aforementioned giant homicidal mutant glow-worms in action and the introduction of our super heroic protagonist guy WAYNE, being ticked off by his Dad [GALE].
GALE:
WAYNE!
WAYNE:
DAAAD!
[GAMEPLAY: TUTORIAL]
Get told how to wander around, get told how to use your rubbish grappling hook, get told how to shoot things, get told how to get in a VS, get attacked by enormous, yet oddly nimble monster [GREEN EYE], get told to run away, until:
[CUTSCENE]
WAYNE gets cornered by GREEN EYE, GALE saves him, GALE, gets squished.
GALE:
WAYNE!
WAYNE:
DAAAD!
Cut to; BLACKSCREEN, V/O men discuss something in a vague (i.e. SINISTER) manner which only becomes relevant about 6 hours later.
Cut to; snow expanse, GALE has somehow protracted death, symbolically hands over a bracelet to WAYNE that only becomes relevant about 6 hours later, GALE dies.
30 years later... Oh fuck I've ruined it now! | Source: MyCheats
WAYNE gets woken up by YURI and is told something MYSTERIOUS about his bracelet, token HOTTY (LUCCA) and token TEDIOUS GEEK (RICK) pop in, say hi. WAYNE tells them he is suffering from amnesia, meaning he has no memories whatsoever about anything including who he is or where he came from, nothing remains that could remind him of his past or what his motives might have be; in fact not one single detail remains that might help anyone, anywhere, at all, EVER, in the hollow vacuous space that used WAYNE used to call his memory...
...
...
WAYNE:
Oh! Except that one big monster killed my Dad, and was called GREEN EYE, and I was planning revenge, and I can still pilot a VS! Hooray! Gosh, ain't that just so terribly convenient?
Everyone agrees it’s TERRIBLY convenient and the player is finally allowed to start killing things in earnest.
[MISSIONS 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5]
WAYNE shoots things including SNOW PIRATES, NEVEC troops and the AKRID for no apparent reason other than people keep leaving guns lying around in the snow, and he’s a bit psychotic. WAYNE meets BASIL, a former herb, children’s puppet and 70's BBC comedy icon trying to find Yuri so she can kill him. YURI himself has run off to NEVEC, to work on their FRONTIER PROJECT, although everyone seems to stop mentioning this immediately after it happens, so it must not be that important.
[MISSION 6]
After hours of sub-EDF 2017 slaughter, mayhem and destruction, WAYNE chances upon his father’s VS. It’s:
RICK:
Possibly the most advanced VS ever... EVAR!1!!
He poetically uses it to kill the suddenly present GREEN EYE, thus achieving revenge for his Father’s murder and satisfyingly closing the thematic cycle of the narrative.
THE END.
Oh wait...
WAYNE then bumps into someone new called SHANE BANDERO whose terrifying pony-tail things protruding from his forehead magically reminds WAYNE that GREEN EYE didn’t kill his Dad after all, and that actually some bloke from NEVEC called SOLOTOV... meaning the preceding story that has just occurred throughout this whole game has been to all intents and purposes, ENTIRELY POINTLESS.
Yes, fuck you too Capcom.
[MISSION 7 AKA: LOST PLANET 2]
PLOT-IRRELEVANT NARRATOR:
I’m back! Have you noticed yet I’m not actually a character in the story, so why am I here? Isn’t the narrator usually a character recollecting events after their conclusion? Otherwise aren’t I just Lost Planet’s universe equivalent of a History Channel presenter? Ah well, ahem:
ONE YEAR LATER!
Ah yes it’s one needlessly introduced fucking year later and via the slippery medium of FLASHBACK, WAYNE discovers his fathers dying wish was actually to destroy NEVEC to stop their FRONTIER PROJECT. Thrillingly this gives an actual, if not especially fleshed out reason to be killing huge swathes of people that doesn't just rely on WAYNE’s predilection for genocide.
[CUTSCENE]
Whilst on an epic voyage in search of a new trailer (?), WAYNE and LUKA find the previously lost RICK (?), who had been receiving help
from BASIL (?).
WAYNE:
BASIL! Didn’t she want YURI dead?
RICK:
No no! She confused YURI with his Dad! They have the same surname: SOLOTOV!
LUKA:
Ha ha, bet SHE felt like a fool!
WAYNE:
Ha ha... Wait, Solotov! That’s the name of the man who killed my father. Hmm, best not say out loud though, I might accidentally advance the plot or something, and then where would we be?
[MISSION 8]
Having entered a research facility to err, research it, WAYNE captures a NEVEC soldier named JOE who just so happens to have a disk limply explaining part of what the FRONTIER PROJECT is about: namely a wild west sounding project headed by old pal YURI to heat up the planet and destroy the Indians, sorry AKRID. Despite this all sounding much like QUITE A GOOD THING they all decide to destroy it anyway because... well, just because.
In fact its meandering yet hollow exposition overload as WAYNE is also suddenly forced to discover that: A: BASIL was saved once by his father, B: the bracelet he received has the power to halt the ageing process and C: he was buried unconscious under a mound of ice for over 30 years before being dug out by YURI.
Which would probably sound ridiculous if a large proportion of gamer goodwill hadn’t already been spent on the consistent appearance of bare naked cleavages, flaunting the very same sub-zero temperatures the entire premise of this game is centred on.
Adolescent Perversion 1 : Suspended Disbelief 0
Truly evil pig-tails | Source: MyCheats
At the advice of JOE the kidnapped enemy, WAYNE is led into a trap set by JOE the kidnapped enemy, and after being shot, saved (JOE again), and, worst of all, forced to look at SHANE BANDERO’s creepy pony-tail things all over again, is finally, FINALLY given the do or die reason for all his Herculean efforts to have mattered, and for this game to stake any claim of possessing somekind of storyline: The FRONTIER PROJECT will wipe out ALL life on the planet, not just the glow-worms.
[Although it might look, to the casual observer, that WAYNE has being doing a pretty good job already of wiping out all life on the planet, and that this sudden self-righteousness about someone else doing it in a more succinct way and humane manner is more than slightly hypocritical, IT IS STILL DIFFERENT. There is good genocide and bad genocide, OK?]
(Oh and don’t even begin to ask why they can’t just fly everyone up into little space ships and flip a switch to heat the planet. They don't have remote controls in the future. Alright?)
ANY-E-WAY.
[MISSION 10]
LUKA:
It’s hard to swallow, but I trust you. [1]
WAYNE:
... :-D
As the final battle looms at whatever a UNIVERSAL ELEVATOR is, the gang go in search of YURI. JOE the kidnapped enemy chimes in that YURI asked him to deliver a SPECIAL DEVICE to WAYNE, and then, in a completely unrelated matter, was also asked to get kidnapped by WAYNE. The gang ignore how abysmally Joe is managing to introduce his relevance to this whole debacle and ask him if he knows by any chance where YURI is.
JOE:
Conveniently enough, it’s on the way to the UNIVERSAL ELEVATOR! [2]
Everyone, *groans*, then splits up. WAYNE, in rapt joy no doubt, finally murders that fucking weirdo with the stupid, STUPID forehead pig-tails, before dutifully letting BASIL sacrifice herself to kill about 5 soldiers. Before an agonising and needless death however, she thoughtfully mentions that the SOLOTOV who betrayed her and WAYNE’s father, the one she thought was YURI, and then realised was his Dad, the SOLOTOV who never actually appears in the game other than to be implicated slanderously behind various relatives death - wasn’t actually a bad guy after all, so they never really needed to bother mentioning him in the first place...
It might be the world's first example of a reverse Deus Ex Machina, but you can still just basically fuck off Capcom.
LUKA and RICK meanwhile discover DEATHBED YURI, who has just enough breath left in him to mention how ace the SPECIAL DEVICE will make the last battle, before dieing to general indifference because he was only in about 6 cut-scenes, 6 hours ago anyway.
Less lame story more space shooty, please? | Source: Gamespot
WAYNE uses the SPECIAL DEVICE in his VS suit, which subsequently goes mental, transforming into a giant flying neon strip bar sign decked with laser swords, and rocket packs. He then zooms inside a surreal cylindrical disco ball, before racing up into the sky to meet his nemesis, backdropped by the kind of massive phallic, spotlight drenched neo-super skyscraper fascists might build if they listened to gothic French Electro and felt they didn’t look oppressive enough.
WAYNE flies around, waving big glowing sword things which are AMAZING, completely oblivious to fact he doesn’t really know who this guy he is fighting is, and not caring because he’s dodging strobes effects and throbbing luminous Frisbees and having FUN. He’s basically at war with the light show from a Daft Punk concert, and it’s brilliant and exhaustive and Capcom seriously need to turn this bit into a whole, proper game.
Anyway WAYNE wins, but the SPECIAL DEVICE is a little too special and WAYNE starts acting a bit wobbly. All’s well eventually however as he manages to shoot the boss, notching up what must be his millionth kill by now, and cementing his place among the pantheon of ‘heroes’ that has brought us such delights as Nicolas Caucasus and Pol Pot.
THE END
[ZOMG1!!1 AN ACTUALLY PLOT RELEVANT NARRATOR!] LUKA:
It’s been a year, and in that time not only have Capcom discovered an appropriate use of narration but I also found a way to do what a giant mega pan-universe corporate monstrosity took 150 years failing to do, a way to warm up the planet (pro tip: you put short rods in the ground!).
It’s actually my first direct impact on the story throughout this entire game, believe it or not. When WAYNE turns up he can’t even remember me, I’m that pointless otherwise. Oh well, there’s always the movie...
The game ends, the players places down his pad. He smiles thoughtfully to himself, before noiselessly wrapping a rope around his neck.
THE END
Footnotes: [1] and [2] are actual lines of dialouge taken from the game. Someone has dutifully transcribed the entire scrift, so you can go take a look for them there if you want.
You can also watch the entire game, cutscenes and gameplay, over at Next Gen Walkthroughs.
