What makes a game cinematic? The answer is changing

polygon.com:

For two decades, the words “cinematic” and “blockbuster” have been, for most game directors, synonymous. During this window, which stretches back to the original God of War and Halo, we’ve enjoyed (or, for others, endured) big-budget video game creators aspiring to emulate their blockbuster film counterparts.

If — somehow — you’ve never seen the films of Steven Spielberg or Michael Mann, you’ve nonetheless experienced them via contact highs from Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto, and practically every other Big Game released this millennium.

But Indika, a game that sounds like a weed strain and plays like being stoned and scrolling through the Criterion Channel, has me hopeful that we’re approaching, with narrative video games, a turning point for what it means for a game to be “cinematic.”

What fuels that hope is Indika’s creative similarities to a micro-budget indie horror film from the ’90s.

Is it possible for one game to change the look of an entire medium? And why would it be Indika, a game most readers haven’t played, or even heard of?

25 years ago, The Blair Witch Project inspired countless parodies with a single shot. You know the one. You can see it in the trailer, the poster, or at the top of this story. The lead actress-slash-camera operator holds a cheap camcorder inches from her face. Tears well in her eyes, and a flashlight casts hard shadows across her dry skin.

She’s terrified. She’s a mess. She’s barely in focus or even in frame.

At that time, few commercial directors would film a shot so crudely, nor would a celebrity offer the audience such an intimate look inside their nostrils. Filmgoers expected movies to conform to a certain look, sound, and feel. But The Blair Witch Project didn’t resemble anything in theaters; it looked like a cheap documentary you’d find on the local PBS station. It looked real.

With that emphasis on “realism” above all else, the amateur camerawork accomplished its goal — scare the shit out of people — better than any