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<blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 5020553" data-attributes="member: 4720">Sure.&nbsp; But it's not bad because those ideas have been used before (together or otherwise).&nbsp; It's bad because the execution isn't on a level that allows you to ignore it.Planescape was brilliant, but it was not brilliant because it used &quot;new&quot; ideas like Dickensian slang or a city full of philosophers essentially vying for the ear of the &quot;throne.&quot;&nbsp; It was brilliant because it stitched them together so well you never went looking for the serial numbers.The Matrix didn't use anything that had not been used before.&nbsp; Dark City was practically the same movie, released one year earlier.&nbsp; And read any old sci-fi short story collection from the 70s or 80s and you can find every one of those plot elements.&nbsp; Bullet time wasn't new, either.&nbsp; But the production values on all of it were such that practically no one noticed, and it became a phenomenon.Video games and movies actually have it harder then PnP settings in this regard, though, because our visual storytelling is so impoverished.&nbsp; You see one shot in a cinematic that looks like something from a movie you saw and all of a sudden your brain kicks into high pattern-recognition mode.&nbsp; Since Hitchcock pretty much wrote the only grammar most people use for modern visual storytelling, it doesn't take long for that to happen.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost, post: 5020553, member: 4720"] Sure. But it's not bad because those ideas have been used before (together or otherwise). It's bad because the execution isn't on a level that allows you to ignore it. Planescape was brilliant, but it was not brilliant because it used "new" ideas like Dickensian slang or a city full of philosophers essentially vying for the ear of the "throne." It was brilliant because it stitched them together so well you never went looking for the serial numbers. The Matrix didn't use anything that had not been used before. Dark City was practically the same movie, released one year earlier. And read any old sci-fi short story collection from the 70s or 80s and you can find every one of those plot elements. Bullet time wasn't new, either. But the production values on all of it were such that practically no one noticed, and it became a phenomenon. Video games and movies actually have it harder then PnP settings in this regard, though, because our visual storytelling is so impoverished. You see one shot in a cinematic that looks like something from a movie you saw and all of a sudden your brain kicks into high pattern-recognition mode. Since Hitchcock pretty much wrote the only grammar most people use for modern visual storytelling, it doesn't take long for that to happen. [/QUOTE]

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