Scourge of Worlds (2003)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Written by Richard Elliott and Simon Racioppa
Directed by Dan Krech
Starring the Voices of Dan Hay, Lester Rosenthal, Anna Deas, and Caroline Lesley

Features:

• None. The style of the disc is a feature.
  

Released by: Rhino
Region: 1
Rating: NR, safe for all ages
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it, or buy it if you love gaming

Scourge of Worlds is a kind of visual experiment: can the fun and intellectual stimulation of choosing-your-own-adventure (popular in books a while back) work for adults and in the video format? This film, based upon the Wizards of the Coast game Dungeons & Dragons, is a series of CGI scenes with a twist: as each plot point evolves, the viewer chooses one of two options such as whether or not to allow a bounty to escape or whether you try to take him back for your reward.

The three main characters of the game are based upon three of the avatars from the D&D game, the fighter Regdar, the wizard Mialee, and the halfling thief Lidda. Secondary characters are also archetypal representations of their respective classes, such as the druids and the cleric of the light god, Pholtus. The main characters are not extremely well-developed with the time spent on them, and yet their personalities are still fairly clear, through the choice of their dialogue and the very nicely done animation.

This film needs to be considered on two different levels: its success as a choose-your-own-adventure game and its success as a film narrative. As far as it goes as a game, it was lots of fun. The addition of the visual element to what used to be a plain old paperback book was novel and fun. In that respect, it was more than a successful experiment. As a normal film, it was also interesting, as the challenge was creative and the battles, while few, were exciting. The plot revolves around the player’s attempt to stop a confused cleric from opening a super-powerful artifact known as “the Scourge of Worlds.” The plot is typical adventure roleplaying, but fun, nicely-presented, and detailed. The plot has a lot of natural places for players to make choices. On the other hand, from beginning to end, it will only take you about half an hour to work through one of the possible storylines. Searching out all four of the different possible endings would take you about the same length of time as a normal movie, but some of that footage is recycled as story possibilities intersect.

The graphics are simply lovely. The characters move and speak almost naturally, very nearly on par with games like Final Fantasy X or the Final Fantasy movie. It will be exciting to see what the next self-propelled video adventure brings.

In short, if you remember choose-your-own-adventure books from your childhood and loved them or if you love RPGs and gaming, then you will want to see this disc. It probably won’t be worth buying unless you know you will want to see the same short story again and again; even finding all of the different possible tracks will only take you a good evening of fun or maybe a weekend. But if you love fantasy, then it’s certainly worth at least a rental, and collectors will want to have it for the D&D tie-in. Meanwhile, I will be looking forward to the payoff of this experiment—longer, more engrossing DVD choose-your-own-D&D-adventures.