E3 2018: Elijah Wood Talks About Video Game Sequels And The Importance Of Taking Risks
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2018-elijah-wood-talks-about-video-game-sequels/1100-6459792/
Actor Elijah Wood is at E3 2018 this week in Los Angeles to talk about the psychological thriller Transference that he and his film company SpectreVision are working on with Ubisoft. The game is immensely creepy, featuring some of the most unsettling and haunting scenes you will see all year in games. The structure is also very unique. A game meant to be played in VR but also coming to traditional systems, Transference puts you into an experiment gone wrong from a troubled scientist. In short, he tries to upload his consciousness and that of his wife and son to the cloud. But it all goes wrong, and the data gets corrupted. You play as each of the three family members, experiencing the horror of the experiment from the different perspectives. You might think you understand the motivation of one of the family members, but when you switch to another, everything changes and you see the world through a new light.
Needless to say, Transference is unique. In a video game industry so focused on sequels and extensions of existing ideas as highlighted at E3 2018 this week, its novelty is refreshing. We caught up with Wood at E3 and asked him about a number of things, one of which was the importance in gaming--and film--of taking risks. Wood, a veteran in Hollywood, is well aware of the business reasons that explain why sequels are so ubiquitous. But he's still wary of sequel-itis because "expectations ultimately breed safety," and that kind of thinking won't push the industry forward.