Reading is fun, it has the ability to take you to a place of imagination and make-believe that few other forms of entertainment can accomplish. For a long time now Hollywood has been taking the latest New York Times bestseller and recreating it as a film, usually ruining the original author's work in the process. However it is very rare to see a video game developer/publisher take the time/money to re-imagine a novel into our industry's favorite past time. Maybe it's the subject matter but Visceral Games and publishing-powerhouse EA are attempting to do just that with their upcoming action game Dante's Inferno. Only time will tell if this is a successful and repeating practice but just for fun we decided to come up with the top 10 books that should be made into video games; check out the list below and sound-off your opinion in the PlanetXbox360.com forums,
by clicking here.
10) Ender’s Game: Despite the novel’s emphasis on more psychological and cultural aspects there’s a good amount of sci-fi action content to base a game on. Penny Arcade made a joke years back when rumors of a film sprung up again. They wondered which would be worse, the side-scrolling space shooter or the fighting game. While I don’t think the world is ready for genius children pummeling each other in a space station, there’s some significant sci-fi material that could be transformed into an RTS or a turn-based tactics game. There have been a few strategy games in the past that attempt to utilize the full 3-d, unrestricted motion of deep space but the control scheme can be overcomplicated. A more intuitive, motion based system like Natal could vastly simplify things; use gestures to rotate your view of the map, give ships their directions and general orders while menu-based commands or ship customization could be done via the controller. Given the nature of the story there might not be too much you could do with the existing stable of characters but the various ships in your armada could be replete with officers with interesting back stories, or the game could embrace the very nature of the battle as put forth in the book and make you completely unaware of the people on board, simply thinking of them as tactical pieces.
9) The Sword of Truth: Rather than suggest a game that takes you along the path of the main characters in this series, I’d recommend a more KOTOR-style treatment. The history of the world the series is set in has some great potential for huge stories. If you’re unfamiliar with the books the story takes place centuries after a series of wars between various wizards where various magical items were created, men reshaped into living weapons and all sorts of bizarre things were loosed on the earth. The best adaptation for this would likely be a Dragon Age/KOTOR style RPG or a more action oriented RPG. There’s plenty of options for different styles of characters, one of the most interesting of which would likely be the ‘war wizard’. They’re generally immensely powerful but have no conscious control over their abilities. Imagine the excitement of being in the middle of a tough battle and just at the moment you think you’ve lost, your character unleashes a torrent of magical fury that helps tip the scales back in your direction. There’s enough elucidation into the history of the world that the developers would have a framework of events and ideas to start from but more than enough freedom to create concepts, people and places for their purposes.
This feature list continues on the next page, please click below to reveal our next couple choices for the Top 10 Books that Should be Made into Video Games.
