Imagine what a book written byKeanu Reeveswould look like. You’re imagining a hyper-violent fantasy about an ancient being who can’t be killed and now works for a secret division of the US Army, aren’t you? You’re dead on.
The Book of Elsewhere, published this July, is as generic as it is predictable. Reeves’ 2021 comic BRZRKR, which the novel is based on, even has the main character look exactly like its writer. It makes sense from a marketing perspective, but that’s an unbearable way to think about making art. From an alternative (and more charitable) perspective, perhaps Reeves just created a self-insert into a cool story he thought up, and has the power and privilege to publish it.
That said, The Book of Elsewhere feels generic and tired. Even the magic of China Miéville, one of my favourite modern authors, can’t save the story from mundanity. While it doesn’t quite work as a novel, I think the concept would be perfect for a video game.
Note: I’ve not read the comic, but the novel feels like it would be much better with a punchy visual component to accompany each scene, so I’ll be picking up BRZRKR soon.
BRZRKR: The Video Game
BRZRKR: The Video Game (it’s probably called that rather than the more generic The Game of Elsewhere) would probably be a first-person shooter, but a third-person action game could work just as well. I mean, you could make a top-down Hades-esque roguelike if you wanted, but the point is that it needs to be gory and introspective in equal measure.
The core concept of BRZRKR, a soldier who heals every wound he suffers like Wolverine, is perfect for a video game. Every time you die in any situation, you see a cutscene of your player character knitting his wounds back together. It would be cool to see the wounds match whatever killed you – your flesh crawls back onto your bones after being exploded by a grenade, your eye pops back in its socket after being headshot, etc. – but aside from the gore, this game needs some introspection.
I envisage this game as a Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, or I Am Your Beast. Games that are ostensibly games about shooting people, but deconstruct the military industrial complex and the ethics of what you’re doing. These are themes touched on in the novel, but never explored to an extent that I felt satisfied with. In the hands of a director like Hideo Kojima, however, it could reach its full potential.
A Story Across Time
B, Unute, or whatever you want to call the protagonist of The Book of Elsewhere, has lived for millions of years. He’s seen civilisations rise and fall. What better format for a video game than levels across every epoch of Reeves’ alternate history?
While The Book of Elsewhere is set in the present day, Unute hints at great civilisations of the past. In Reeves’ version of Earth’s past, whole epochs have been wiped from the annals of history, forgotten after calamitous events. Unute has survived them all. Remembers them all.
If this isn’t the perfect way to format your video game, what is? Early levels can be pre-Stone Age, we can play through a story in one of the fantasy cultures Reeves has invented. Then we shoot forward a few millennia. The Stone Age. Shoot forward. Ancient Egypt, the building of the Pyramids. Shoot forward. Modern day.
All this concept needs is an opponent chasing Unute through time. Without risking apeing Assassin’s Creed too much, this story needs its Templars. However, I think it might be more interesting to pit Unute against the very forces trying to control him in each era. They’re unrelated to each other, but speak to how governments and armies colonise history with their inventions and victories.
The Book of Elsewhere is a flawed book with a generic story. However, transplanting it to a new medium provides the opportunity to take the core concept and make it more interesting. Its creator Keanu Reeves would obviously don his mo-cap suit to play the lead, meaning that marketing is already taken care of. He’ll turn up at The Game Awards and call someone breathtaking again and the game will sell a bazillion copies.
There’s a kernel of something good at the heart of this novel, and I feel like it can flourish into its full potential as a video game. Are you reading, Kojima? I’m sure you’ve got no plans after Death Stranding 2. What do you say?
