Serkis: Games need a "unified concept"

Ninja Theory collaborator and Lord of the Rings alumni Andy Serkis has told Eurogamer TV that game developers should take a more "holistic" approach to improve their storytelling.

"What really needs to happen is the screenwriting, the scriptwriting, needs to be developed. Because clearly there's so much artistry involved and it's a very engaging medium, but where it sort of falls down, from watching my kids playing their games, is this lack of attention to story and screenwriting and performance," Serkis said in a Eurogamer TV Show that you can view lower down the page.

"Everyone said to me when we were doing Heavenly Sword, you've got to bear in mind nobody's going to watch the cut-scenes because they just want to play the game, and I think the only reason that that's true, or has been true, is that the cut-scenes have been perfunctory. They've just not been an integral part of the game," he continued.

Naturally, Serkis feels that Ninja Theory is on the right track with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, which was released on Friday and picked up 8/10 in its Eurogamer review. The game's cut-scenes were based on performance capture with Serkis and other professional actors, while much of the story and script was crafted by Alex Garland, who wrote films like 28 Days Later and The Beach.

"If you attack in a holistic way right at the beginning and as you develop the game you're developing the script, you're developing the characters and the artwork, and you're casting your actors and having them in mind and how they're going to work with each other... If all of those things are flowing at the same time then you're going to have a much more unified concept," Serkis explained.

"I think that's where Ninja Theory's strength is - they truly understand that."

Check out the full interview with Andy Serkis and Ninja Theory founder Tameem Antoniades below.