Good Games Based Off Classic Sci Fi/Fantasy Novels

[IHatedSega]

Are there any great ones that people dont talk about? I heard Dune had a good game based off it, and I Have No Mouth And I must Scream is as creepy as the story. Im playing Chrono Trigger and got to the Dream Kingdom and I thought about The Foundation and Enders Game or Book of The New Sun. Why didnt so many great books become classic RPG's? The Demolition Man would be spectacular as a game, and several Philip K Dick novels would be way better as games than movies. Sword of Shannara was made into a game, but The Heritage of Shannara Series would be way better since they arent Tolkien ripoffs and Druid of Shannara is one of my favorite Fantasy novels.

So, what gives, wheres all the great adaptations?

[Gameguy]

There's a few Discworld games that are considered to be pretty good.

[Nature Boy]

The first two things that come to mind for me from back in the day are:

The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-hitchhiker-s-guide-to-the-galaxy-_2472.html

and

Dragonriders of Pern

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-dragonriders-of-pern_1723.html

The third is actually Orson Scott Card's Empire books, and the related Metroidvania game Shadow Complex (plus the fact that he wrote the plot for Advent Rising).

Plus wasn't there a FPS based on Russian book which escapes me (again for 360).

So they exist, but not in the numbers we see made into movies.

To be honest I'm okay with that, as a novel is a obviously something that doesn't require the reader to make any choices, whereas a game can steer you in the direction of an overall story but can't ultimately control the choices you make in the game without making the game rather dull and too much like watching a movie or, ahem, reading a book.

Having said that, I'd love to see someone make a Battle School video game, without any reference to Ender itself, just because it reads like it would be fun to play and figure out battle puzzles.

[IHatedSega]

The only Russian Sci Fi novel I know of is We, thatd be an amazing game haha.

They wouldnt be literal translations, and plenty of games only have one story and one outcome to them.

[G-Boobie]

The only Russian Sci Fi novel I know of is We, thatd be an amazing game haha.

They wouldnt be literal translations, and plenty of games only have one story and one outcome to them.

There's a Russian sci-fi horror novel called, "Roadside Picnic" which the "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." games are based on. If your PC can run them, they're excellent FPS/RPG hybrids with great atmosphere. In that same vein, "Metro 2033" is based an another excellent Russian sci-fi novel and is also the game you're thinking of. The author escapes me. Some of the team that worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are behind the game adaptation, though its much more of a straight up shooter.

[Edmond Dantes]

The title of this thread immediately made me think of Interplay's Lord of the Rings, Volumes I and II (sadly they never did a volume III).

These were top-view PC games that had a sorta-strategic battle system, day-night cycles, and where instead of experience points, you gained levels by doing sidequests. The first volume was re-released as an Enhanced CD-ROM that had footage from the Ralph Bakshi movie. Just one note: this is NOT the same as the awful SNES game, even though both were made by Interplay. I seriously don't know what the SNES disaster was about.

There were a lot of other Tolkien-based games, some good, most not. There is actually a website which catalogues Tolkien-based games (http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/) and it's just amazing how big it is.

Getting away from Tolkien, the Sierra game Betrayal at Krondor was the sequel to Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga novels (Magician, Silverthorn, and A Darkness At Sethanon), and Feist later novelized it (the hardback of the novelization actually included the game). I've never played it, but Betrayal at Krondor is considered a classic among fans of PC RPGs.

And now it's time for a cheap shot: Dino Crisis is probably the best Jurassic Park game I've ever played *is shot*

[Trebuken]

The Witcher series is based on the books.

There is an older PC game for 'The Wheel of Time' which I enjoyed, though I my have been the only one.

ZORK was a book (I think the book came first). It was a choose your own adventure book.

War in Middle-Earth series was decent. I recall one or two other decent Middle-Earth games.



There is no such thing as a Tolkien rip-off. I used to think that way too. Tolkien is the foundation, so everything naturally stands on it. Except Dennis L. McKiernan, he's a rip-off, but a good one.

[IHatedSega]

There is no such thing as a Tolkien rip-off. I used to think that way too. Tolkien is the foundation, so everything naturally stands on it. Except Dennis L. McKiernan, he's a rip-off, but a good one.

Ok, but Terry Brooks really over did the formula in his first two novels. If you havent read the Heritage novels though, besides the 3rd book, its amazing.

Road Side Picnic was awesome, Im sorry to hear that the other brother died this year. Ill look up the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

[kupomogli]

Parasite Eve was based off of a movie which was based off of a book.

[Gameguy]

ZORK was a book (I think the book came first). It was a choose your own adventure book.
The game came first. There were 4 choose your own adventure books related to the series, and 6 novels later on.

[Jorpho]

There's a few Discworld games that are considered to be pretty good.The first one is adventure gaming at its most obtuse worst, but the other two are much better, I hear.

Legend Entertainment is the biggie. They did PC games based on Frederick Pohl's Gateway, Calahan's Crosstime Saloon, Xanth, Death Gate, Shannara, John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles, and, as was mentioned, The Wheel of Time; all of them are adventure games except for the last, which was a first-person shooter. Gateway (and its sequel) are quite nice, though they don't really hold up as well as the books did. Death Gate is okay, but mostly fluff.

There's an old game based on Gibson's Neuromancer that is apparently pretty good, too. And apparently there's a text-adventure sequel to Fahrenheit 451 that Ray Bradbury even said good things about.

[substantial_snake]

Never played it myself but I remember people seemed to think highly of Dune II on the genesis/PC, also heralded as one of the first solid examples of an RTS game.

[Jorpho]

And speaking of Russian sci-fi, there are games based off the wildly-popular fantasy novels "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" – or at least, the games have as much to do with the novels as they did with the movies. And they are also quite poor, apparently.