The director of the Hellboy films considers the games from Team Ico “masterpieces.”
Before the release of his first game collaboration, Hellboy: The Science of Evil, famed movie director Guillermo Del Toro spoke to Edge about his history with videogames.
A kid when the Atari came along, Del Toro says his game interests resemble “every cliché you see in 80s movies,” with his personal favorites being Asteroids and Galaga.
Although Del Toro has been impressed by the engines behind BioShock and Grand Theft Auto IV he sees just two games as “masterpieces”: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, both developed by Sony’s Team Ico.
Games, he said, are “an incredible storytelling tool, one that filmmakers should embrace instead of reject. In the next ten years, they’ll yield a couple of narrative masterpieces. Already they allow you to tap in to a more immersive narrative experience than most movies. Not all, but most.”
He’s sure that his gaming hobby has leaked into his film making. “Videogames use art direction, colour and storytelling in a very pure way that a lot of movies have forgotten,” he explained. “I have a 12-year-old daughter and we play together, but unfortunately she’s more into Sonic and Kirby. We should embrace games not as a separate universe from movies, but develop the stories using both media at the same time. And I think we can.”
