Chris Nolan discusses Inception game

Chris Nolan wants to go deeper. Deeper into the world of trans-media crossover intellectual properties, anyway, having seen his comments to a press conference for his film Inception in Rome.

Variety reports the director as saying: “We are looking at developing a videogame based on the world of the film, which has all kinds of ideas that you can't fit into a feature film.” He's non-committal on the timelines, but the way them Hollywood types work, you can bet someone's locked him down to a deal a few years hence. They're all the same, them Hollywood types. Yeah, I'm talking to you, in your suit and...stuff.

Be fair to Chris though, Inception lines itself up beautifully as a game. Mild spoilers for anyone yet to see the film: as soon as the camera goes inside the central, multi-stage quadra-dream, we're into a traditional level structure. It even manages to sidestep the traditional narrative reaches that developers use to show natural progression: there's no need for a connecting sewer level between two maps, you can just press the big red 'NEW DREAM!' button.

The time constraints the director mentioned only let us see a few possible worlds in-movie, but each one can be mentally ported to a game: the first level chase scene, the mountainside shootout, the close-quarters hotel rumble. The film shows that brain-invading parties get counter-attacked by the mentally prepared, gun-toting projections, providing a cheap and guilt-free source of killable meat to shoot with your dream-guns.