The Seagull is an upcoming stylized 3D adaption of the classic by Anton Chekhov

Well, in concept I think it's kind of awesome, doing this kind of thing with classic theatre. In specific . . . I studied The Cherry Orchard in university, and I really didn't like it. Good writing, I guess, in the abstract . . . but it's like, I disliked every single character pretty much, and the ones that I felt vaguely sympathetic to past the dislike were so damn feckless and useless it was infuriating. There these morons are bitching and whining about how awful it is that they're going to lose their ancestral home, this cherry orchard, because they're running out of money, and talking wistfully about the old days back before their time when the cherries from the orchard got made into preserves and sold far and wide, but now the place is just useless if pretty. So, what, did people stop eating jam since the old days? Far as I could tell, the only reason they're not still using the place as a real orchard is that they're useless and decadent. None of them even once considers the possibility of getting together some cherry pickers and making them some preserves to sell--or, indeed, the possibility of doing any kind of gainful work at all. Some of the lower class people are more ambitious, in the sense that they're scheming to get rich quick, but none of them are interested in doing anything useful, they're more like wannabe scam artists.

I guess that's sort of the point, but everyone's so annoying that it's just a pain in the ass reading/watching it. The Cherry Orchard put me off Chekhov. Maybe The Seagull is better.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 4 June 2021 at 9:09 am UTC

Hm, I'm not really sure what to think about this. First I should mention that I love Chekhov's works (I've seen Ivanov, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard in theater and read several of his short stories), but at least the theater plays are very depressing and do not contain a lot of action (just like Purple Library Guy said: The protagonists usually love to lament about their fate without having any motivation to change it).

Video games on the other hand are living from their dynamic nature, and that seems to be the complete opposite of Chekhov's plays :-) While in theater it doesn't matter if there's only one single scene (because the live experience and the actors are predominant there), in a video game that's a bit odd... And I guess that's the reason why the trailer is looking quite boring to me.

I really hope that there is an audience for such games though :-)

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI guess that's sort of the point, but everyone's so annoying that it's just a pain in the ass reading/watching it. The Cherry Orchard put me off Chekhov. Maybe The Seagull is better.

You may want to try some of his short stories, those often contain a lot of humor. Try e.g. Kashtanka as a (longer) example if you want to have a good mix of both his humor and typical bitterness. I haven't read / seen The Seagull yet, but the summary doesn't make it sound like you would enjoy this play any better :-P On the other hand: If you've only read it I'd recommend to watch it live anyways, that's a completely different experience.


Last edited by Iggi on 4 June 2021 at 5:19 pm UTC

Maybe it's Chekov's writing, maybe it's the performances of the actors, but what's shown in the trailer doesn't feel like characters talking to each other. Rather, they feel like they're saying things totally unrelated to each other, like machines spitting out preset comments at random. What results is this weird "floaty" feeling to the whole proceeding, which personally doesn't draw me in.

The visual style does seem a bit more compelling, but in isolation I don't think that can carry the whole thing.