180: The Greatest Shame of All

[alzheimers]

They may not count as "novels", but I remember reading cluebooks for RPGs that gave the walkthrough in the form of a narrative and were really fun to follow the story through. The original Bards Tale cluebooks in particular were standouts that I remember sneaking in my backpack to read during lunch.

 

[Schmutzli]

One of the other reasons why some books are better than others is that game novels in the same series are often written by different authors.

If you are going to start on the Halo novels, I suggest the Eric Nylund ones to start: First Strike, The Fall of Reach, Ghosts of Onyx. The others, so far, are very bad, even though I keep buying them.

 

[Mr. Amazingly Awesome]

Yeah I have to agree the Eric Nylund ones are pretty good but I really don't like the other ones.

Besides reading the Halo novels I gave the novelization of Metal Gear Solid a shot, it was just terrible. Stay very far away from it!

 

[UnwashedMass]

One thing I could never understand is why the DOOM novelizations, adapting a game a subliterate could play with two buttons and a hoarse grunt, were so much better than the adaptations of Infocom games, properties renowned for their writing and literary quality. Low quality in spin-offs is rarely a surprise, but what was startling in this case is how much better the DOOM books were than they really needed to be.

 

[Darkwolf9]

[Andrew Webster] keeps his two-dozen-strong collection of Star Wars novels in chronological order.

So do I, although mine's closer to one dozen.

Me too and after Christmas it will be even larger.

I'm not sure what it's like to feel embarrassed to read those books. I love the Star Wars expanded universe and while there's probably not a single book that will be remembered by anyone outside of the fans, who cares. Then again sometimes I reminisce on the Pokemon days and wonder what if, so maybe I'm not the best person to talk.

 

[Darkwolf9]

One thing I could never understand is why the DOOM novelizations, adapting a game a subliterate could play with two buttons and a hoarse grunt, were so much better than the adaptations of Infocom games, properties renowned for their writing and literary quality. Low quality in spin-offs is rarely a surprise, but what was startling in this case is how much better the DOOM books were than they really needed to be.

It's because in the Doom series they had so much more to work with. You didn't have to worry about sticking to a story or in a particular universe. All you had to do was make the character did things that he did in the game, which was kill stuff. Where as in the Infocom games the writer had to take so much more into consideration when writing.

 

[Alex_P]

After I played through "Planescape: Torment", I thought to myself about how it would make a fantastic book. After finding a copy of the novelization on E-bay, I found that I was very very wrong. That game had hours of beautiful prose and dialog already...the book would have been far better if they were merely copy and pasted into a coherent form. That was the first and last time I ever read a novel based on a game.

That book was a horror and a travesty from start to finish. A sin against art!

Rereading the Circle of Zerthimon 100 times [http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/Torment/zerthimon.php] is way more fun.

-- Alex

 

[Sillyiggy]

I found this interesting because this is an area I was considering diving into in the near future. Mostly because of my love of the story telling behind the game 'Planescape: Torment' I have been considering buying the book and if it is even remotely as interesting as the game it may quickly become a favorite read.

Anyone familiar with the territory of video game books think particular titles stand out as superior?

EDIT: Hehe, sounds like it may not be a very good book (reading other posts). Pity, such an awesome story and dialogue deserve a great book.

 

[BallPtPenTheif]

Great article even if you do have one foot stuck in the bear trap. You even, for a moment, caused me to reconsider my knee jerk contempt for videogame literature but then it came back. My biggest problem is that even if videogame literature became more refined it would still only have the velocity of a Michael Chrichton novel and those are not the qualities I look for in literature.

I won't make grand statements about the lack of potential inherent withink videogame source material since even Rod Serling was able to convey profound things within a Science Fiction themed television show. I guess what I'm saying is that videogames needs their own Rod Serling.

 

[Alex_P]

EDIT: Hehe, sounds like it may not be a very good book (reading other posts). Pity, such an awesome story and dialogue deserve a great book.

Yeah, the problem is that that particular book is a story that resembles the game only very generally and superficially. It's not just a bad retelling, it's not really a retelling at all! None of the themes or style of the game story make it into the book, nor do a lot of really simple details like what the supporting characters look like or what the whole point of the game is.

It's like the authors either barely knew anything about the game. My best guess is that they wrote the whole thing before Torment had concept art or a fully-developed ending. The only other explanation would be that they hated everything about the game and decided to replace as much of it as possible while still being able to publish their story as a Torment novelization.

Man, that shitty book really broke my teenage heart.

(What was actually pretty fun was getting a dialogue browser, e.g. Infinity Explorer, and reading through the game's dialogue, including some of the cut content. The old Planescape D&D campaign setting material is kinda interesting, too, really fills in the world -- you can probably find some of it really cheaply in PDF form these days.)

-- Alex

 

[Jangles]

Perhaps books based on games can't be good because in comparison to the game, which has the assistance of technology to flush out it's story has an implied advantage over it's paper-bound brother.

Try reading a book before you play it's game and you may be surprised.