Secret Stage, Amazon’s stunningly animated online game anthology tribute, is both a beautiful, impactful car by way of which some quick tales are instructed or a soulless piece of capital C Content material, relying on which episode you’re watching.
The present is primarily developed by Blur Studio with some assist from Amazon’s MGM Studios. If you happen to’re aware of Blur’s work on among the finest cinematic trailers from the previous decade or so, you received’t be stunned that the animation throughout all 15 episodes is really lovely. It’s the notable lack of coronary heart and soul in its storytelling because it aspires for large, emotional status that lets down a number of of the episodes, which—if excised—might have made for a extra spectacular collection. As a substitute, we basically have 15 trailers, all with roughly the identical emotional cadence, and only some of them succeeding in telling a narrative that doesn’t simply really feel like a very costly commercial.
As I take a look at the 15 video games Secret Stage’s anthology episodes cowl, I’m nonetheless unsure why the present selected these tales to inform. However I’ve a idea: An Amazon collection releasing an episode primarily based on the corporate’s MMO New World below the guise of a creative endeavor makes for straightforward promotion. Harmony, a short-lived hero shooter Sony has no intention of selling any longer however was clearly hoping can be its subsequent huge live-service hit, has a whole episode that looks like an prolonged cinematic trailer devoted to its “we have now Guardians of the Galaxy at residence” world. In different phrases, whereas a number of of the video games featured in Secret Stage are big properties with the cultural cache to make them apparent decisions for an anthology paying tribute to video video games, most episodes really feel like extensions of promoting.
Secret Stage airs on December 10, that means among the video games this present highlights are both not out but or have been in lively improvement alongside the present. Harmony is, after all, the strangest and most awkward inclusion given the sport’s destiny, but it surely’s Exodus: Odyssey—the upcoming sci-fi recreation from Wizards of the Coast’s Archetype Leisure—that will get probably the most exhaustingly self-indulgent episodes. The sport was introduced lower than a yr in the past, and we haven’t even seen it in movement. Wizards of the Coast’s properties additionally make one other look in a Dungeons & Dragons episode. Once more, Secret Stage makes extra sense as a enterprise transaction than it does as 15 tales being instructed as a result of somebody on the market genuinely felt they have been price telling.
Harmony isn’t PlayStation’s solely episode. Simply the worst, least self-aware episode of the present follows a younger lady who works as a supply courier for an organization that rewards employees for his or her private finest supply instances with focus-tested beauty upgrades. She sheds her monotonous company life by hanging out with a blue slime monster and operating away from digital actuality (or perhaps actual? It’s not fairly clear) variations of PlayStation characters like a colossus from Shadow of the Colossus and Kratos from God of Warfare as she bikes by way of the town. See, you get up each morning with that grindset, attempting to get one of the best cosmetics whereas working your life away in your careless company homeowners, however the true cool children don’t purchase into that system with their foolish little jobs and play PlayStation video games as an alternative? Firms are evil and manipulating you into doing their bidding with horrible rewards, however getting again to your PlayStation is your secure area? The model won’t ever damage you? Or one thing? Except you’re a developer below its umbrella, I suppose. It trades any type of coherent storytelling for cameos from a lot of PlayStation characters in an effort to make followers clap and cheer, and will simply be condensed right into a TV spot on the Tremendous Bowl.
A number of episodes are unusually nondescript. Crossfire’s episode is a reasonably generic navy shooter cutscene characterised virtually solely by the edgy bleakness of its early 2000s period. Exodus’ episode is attractive to have a look at, however in the event you put a gun to my head I don’t assume I might have been in a position to determine which recreation it was from. The instances Secret Stage’s episodes do stand out happen when the present leans into stylistic animation that doesn’t mix into the remainder of the collection. These are 15 distinctive video games, so why do half of them look the identical? It makes such a distinction once they look distinct, just like the episode primarily based on Sifu, which sums up the sport’s roguelike martial arts construction, and the one for Spelunky, which ditches the photorealism employed by most of Secret Stage and captures the adventurous spirit of Mossmouth’s cave-delving journey.
A few of the diversifications are much less devoted. The Pac-Man episode takes a psychological physique horror method to the early arcade mega-hit, an idea which is attention-grabbing in a vacuum and leads to among the present’s most memorable sequences. Nevertheless, within the context of Pac-Man’s sometimes all-ages historical past, it feels just like the formally licensed equal of a Disney character getting thrust right into a horror property as soon as it enters the general public area. Mega Man doesn’t go fairly as onerous in that route, but it surely nonetheless turns the colourful collection of motion platformers right into a considerably darkish coming-of-age story that marries Secret Stage’s status storytelling leanings with the daddy/son dynamic of the titular robotic hero and his creator. It’s one of many collection’ standouts, however even higher episodes like this one, Sifu, and Spelunky can’t clear the stench of cynical promoting that lingers over the entire present.
Secret Stage is, in a phrase, uneven. Its animation is gorgeous, but it surely looks like Blur Studio leaned too onerous on its expertise of creating trailers with swelling emotional arcs designed to nudge a buyer to their closest recreation retailer. When creator Tim Miller introduced the present again at Gamescom in August, he tearfully known as it a “love letter” to video video games. However the result’s one thing that feels extra like a set of costly commercials, one in every of them for a recreation you possibly can’t even play anymore.
