Author’s Note: This mini-editorial was published January 26, 2009 and originally appeared on Kombo.com. Clicking on this link will take you to its original location.
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I’ve been a fan of Lost going on two seasons now (including this one), struggling to play catch-up while embracing its awesomeness as one of the best shows on television. I got into Lost sometime after the Writers’ Strike took all of my other favorite shows on television (Chuck and Terminator: TSCC, namely, which you should be watching because they’re great, too). I was immediately sucked into the world of the island, Flight 815, The Dharma Initiative, Desmond’s psychic powers and Sayid’s undisputed badass Bourne-style activities.
So, naturally, as a Lost fan and a gamer, when I found out about Lost: Via Domus, I was happy. Lost + video game = awesome, right? My friends — also Lost fans and gamers — who bought Lost: Via Domus before I got a chance to, though, weren’t so happy and their reactions convinced me not to buy it.
Just because the first attempt to turn Lost into a video game didn’t work out doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be future attempts to make one. We (as gamers) are always talking about how video games are so powerfully creative and their capabilities in terms of immersion, writing, direction and presentation — areas that Lost excels in as a television show. If the video game industry was able to put together a Lost video game that was as high a caliber as the show deserves, that would help add some credibility to our claims about the capabilities of video games as a medium.
But who could handle such an undertaking? There’s one developer I can think of right away capable of creating a great Lost video game: Quantic Dream, the developers of Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain.
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