Release Date: 18/04/2017
Played On: PC
Available On: ATV / Droid / iOS / NS / PS4 / XBO / Win
Time Played: 4h 5m
Progress: Completed / All Endings
Developer: CtrlMovie Ltd
Publisher: CtrlMovie Ltd / Wales Interactive
Of all the crazes and gimmicks that have had their time in video game history, full-motion-video (FMV) has never been one that I expected to make a comeback. There was a time when it seemed like the greatest invention of all, as the implementation of FMV in games meant that we could finally witness the combination of a digital world with our own. After all, what's more realistic than actual footage of real people?
I actually fell in love with FMV thanks to the Tex Murphy games; most notably Under A Killing Moon. This was a series set in the future that used three dimensional worlds populated with FMV characters. At the time it was a believable mix between games and the real world, so it felt like I was playing the future and witnessing how it would someday be possible to walk around in a virtual world. Suffice to say, I've always had a love for FMV in games, as it creates a certain level of realism that's rarely possible with animated characters.
Unfortunately, all this realistic footage meant that the Tex Murphy series were some of the largest games around when it came to file size. If I recall correctly, The Pandora Directive took up a staggering eight CD ROMs to fit all of its content. Under A Killing Moon also required a lot of disc swapping as you played, but that was kind of par for the course back in the day, even though the FMV was compressed to the point of intense artefacts and distortion. The hard fact of the matter is that FMV takes up a lot of file space compared to the typical animations and sprites that usually make up a game's visuals.
Fast forward a couple of decades to today and distribution has changed a whole lot over time. Game size has become something of a moot point, as digital distribution has opened the gates for larger and larger amounts of data. Instead of being limited to a 700MB CD ROM, we now have terabytes of space waiting to be filled with ever increasing game downloads. It's not uncommon for big games to exceed the 50GB threshold, with some even reaching 100GB or more. The point being that we're downloading some large chunks of data these days, which has removed some barriers to decent FMV that once existed.
To begin with, the need to compress video files to the point of being barely recognisable is a thing of the past. Not only are there better compression techniques these days, but including a high definition 1080p video in a game is no longer going to break the bank. In fact, more and more games are using high definition videos for incidental elements like cut-scenes, and even for those business logos that we see when we launch a game.
We've even seen games stream high definition video straight from the internet (with varying levels of success), but no matter how it's delivered, we live in a time when the old limitations on FMV are no longer a factor. Most gamers have enough hard drive space to download high definition video files; most even have a good enough internet connection to stream video directly. Hence, it's time to bring on the games made entirely of high definition FMV - we're in the future after all.
Late Shift might not have been the first game to consist entirely of FMV, but it's one of the first ones I've ever played. What's more, it manages to be more than just an interactive movie, as it steps outside of a passive experience and leans heavily on the player to drive the story. At the same time though, this isn't the dream world of complete FMV freedom, as it's relatively on-rails and ultimately simplistic in its execution.
The funny thing about Late Shift is that we've already seen many games like this already. At its core, this is a choose your own adventure story with branching paths and a number of different endings. I suppose this is one of the oldest game genres as it started in books and quickly made its way to text-based adventures. These days you often see this genre in visual novels, but now it's become a part of FMV games and even TV shows (Black Mirror did a special episode where you can make choices along the way for different outcomes).
In fact, Late Shift has more in common with that Black Mirror episode than it does with its predecessors. If we're being reductive, then the game is nothing more than watching a story unfold in the same way as a television episode, only that every now and then you have to make a choice of how the characters in the story will proceed. It's a simple formula, but after playing Late Shift, it's exactly what I wanted out of a completely FMV based game.
Most of all, it's thanks to the consistency of hitting a single mechanic through the entire experience. Quantum Break's FMV episodes always felt out of place and like they were getting in the way of the action, but Late Shift keeps you focused on the story from start to finish. I almost feel like this game would have been worse off if they had attempted something more complex, as it would have made the disconnect between the game and the narrative even more pronounced.
As it is, Late Shift presents us with a straight forward story that's interspersed with simple game mechanics to give the player a little bit of agency. However, there's no doubt that this is essentially a fancy choose your own adventure, so if you've never been a fan of visual novels or narrative game experiences, this isn't going to be for you.
The story is a fairly basic heist plot with a few twists and turns along the way. We play as a guy who gets caught up in a criminal enterprise thanks to some unfortunate circumstances, but we have the ability to change the course of events as the story unfolds and new opportunities present themselves. I don't want to spoil the story, but there's also nothing special going on from a purely narrative perspective. The best thing I can say about the plot itself, is that it's competently written and does its job as a vehicle to keep things moving and for choices to keep appearing.
At worst, the story is a little on the nose as it attempts to spell things out to the player a little too much at times. Our hero is a student of probability and chaos theory, so he takes every moment he can to explain how things can change based on a single decision. It's just a tiny bit short of the character turning to the camera and literally explaining everything to us point blank. Thankfully though, these little insights into the butterfly effect are few and far between, so they stay on the edges of being annoying.
Instead, the game focuses squarely on making frequent choices as they appear on screen. Sometimes it's as simple as picking what to say next, but other times you need to make a snap decision that could get someone killed. We've all seen these systems in other games and in choose your own adventures in general, but Late Shift manages to present enough choices to make it actually feel like you're changing the game as you go.
We're all used to those binary choice systems where your path through the game leaves you on one side or the other of a good vs bad scale. We've also no doubt played through plenty of games that claim to have exciting narratives that branch and change dramatically as you play, but the differences are negligible at best. Late Shift's branching narrative manages to sit in a bit of a sweet spot just above "not enough choice" and a bit below "complete autonomy".
After finishing the game once, I went back and made a bunch of different choices along the way, only to be surprised at how much I had missed by taking my original path. There are entire scenes that can be missed, along with some entire plot points that will only trigger with a certain sequence of events. It was only after playing through the story three or four times, that I started seeing where the branches on the tree sprouted and where the missing chunks could be found.
Late Shift is far from being an exercise in narrative complexity that offers staggering choice, but it goes that extra step to keep things interesting from start to finish. The choices and branches that are in the game create enough of a web to obfuscate its simplicity, which is enough to make things interesting. Although it falls short of being mind-blowing, simply thanks to the limitations of its production. It's clear that this wasn't made with the largest budget, but everything in the game is well put together.
The cast do a good job in their roles and avoid being annoying, which is more of a compliment than it might sound. Often these kinds of low-budget projects end up hiring terrible actors, or succumb to poor editing and direction that does nothing to elevate the end product above their limited resources. Sure, this isn't going to stand up to a production like Game of Thrones, but everything in Late Shift makes sense and the production has been executed to a competent level. Basically, I didn't cringe at any point during the game, which is high praise in itself.
Kudos to everyone involved in the FMV aspect of the game, as it's clearly made the most of the limited resources they had available to them. At the same time, all the "game" aspects have been well implemented to tie everything together. The only issue I encountered was something to do with a video codec problem that I ended up fixing after a quick search through the game's forums on Steam.
On a personal level, I love that there are more FMV games being made in a choose your own adventure format, as it's the kind of thing I used to dream up on my own while playing games as a kid. Now we have a whole range of FMV adventures to choose from thanks to the evolution of digital distribution, internet speeds, and hard drive space. There's really no limit to what can be done with high definition video these days and I'm super excited to see what the next step in this evolution will be.
For now though, I think I'm going to go pick up some other FMV games to really soak in everything that's on offer. Late Shift might not have been the first in its space, but it did its job and got me all excited again. Maybe it's worth stepping away from top-tier computer graphics every now and then to be reminded of how realistic FMV is by comparison. Now all I want is a super-big-budget game with crazy effects and epic production values. Thankfully though, these lower budget versions are already scratching the itch.