Videogames as full experience novels.

[readergamer]

Despite being the "Next Generation" of Systems, power and storage wise. Many games still use the simplistic story lines of:

1.) Fight off the invading aliens.
2.)Rescue the captured Princess.
3.) Shoot the Zombies.
4.)Gain the most points.

All are not nearly in the same league as the best written Novels like A Night to Remember, Lord of the Flies, To kill a mockingbird and my personal favorite Tom Clancy's Spec-ops Series.

I am quite fed up with the waste of vast potential for tell great and appealling stories through the incredible power of the modern Consoles. All use 4.5Gig DVD Disks as storage, vastly more than cartridges of old. But why play new 128-Bit super realistic games, when the non-existent plot, hollow, baseless characters, weak written dialogue are the same as 8-bit antique Nintendo games of the 1980's.

Maybe if capable writers jump on the 40 billion dollar Videogame bandwagon we will see rich, complex stories, deep and multi-dimensional characters, professional written dialogue and so on.

 

[bebe]

I don't know...to me video games are video games and novels are, well...novels. -B

 

[Darren]

readergamer, it's certainly an interesting idea. Kind of the new electronic book, or maybe a new kind of audio novel, but with more multimedia content?

After a while though, wouldn't it just become a film?

Books can be read anywhere, and at any time - one of the reasons I think electonic books won't catch on.

 

[readergamer]

Maybe... make the Games themselves as deepening and enriched, depth filled experience a Well-written story on paper is.

If I am going to spend my time, playing a vitual Character in a Virtual world, interacting with other virtual characters, Videogame Designers should take a hint from Novel and Book writers who fill their work with elaborate believable surroundings and well-spoken conversations among Characters. Not to mention character who actually display some distinctive character qualities.

I love to read Paperbacks to and am surprised, despite the power to process real life Physics in Real-Time, and amazing Abilities, modern Games and their Designers have not caught up to Books in general complexity of Character, Plot, Enviroment, Situations,Flow, and Development.

 

[loci]

quite a few rpg's have good stories to em...
thief 1+2 had quite alot of depth for fps..
but i do agree, most games lack depth and don't stay with you, the way books do..
thief 2 was amazing tho...great story which kept me engrossed, and the first game that made me feel that i did something bad...when i knocked a guard out and dropped him in a canal to drown

the old 'type in'adventure games were quite close to books tho, coz they relied alot on your imagination

 

[Tobytook]

Originally posted by loci
quite a few rpg's have good stories to em...

That might partly explain why the top-selling (and therefore, it could be argued best) RPGs* often spawn quite decent novels. I'm thinking primarily of the sprawling D&D universe, including Forbidden Realms etc, and sci-fi games like Cyberpunk.

(*RPGs = Role Playing Games, just in case anyone reading this is not familiar with the acronym - unlikely, but it could happen.)

Coming at it the other way, most of the (how shall I put it?) more cerebral RPGs - Call Of Cthulhu, Vampire etc - are either based directly, or draw enormously, on established individual works of fiction within specific genres. Even many active "shoot-'em-ups" fall into this category; Cyberpunk a good case in point - its title appropriates the term first coined by modern sci-fi writer William Gibson, who himself built upon ideas first used by titans like Arthur C Clarke, PK Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, etc. So the literary heritage of RPGs is generally pretty high-brow, and - to avoid this thread being bent completely out of shape - I haven't even mentioned the huge importance of Tolkien on the birth of "fighting fantasy" RPGs: the first of their kind produced on a big scale, I think.

Anyway, to bring this back in line with Videogame concerns, Darren made the point about how they might simply turn into films - but how about if more "options" were written into the game, allowing the player to personalise and imprint more of their own character on it? That would make them closer to the old Choose Your Own Adventure books in essence. Imagine, a game could be a sort of electronic Stream of Consciouness work. Sounds silly, doesn't it? - but consider becoming famous as the James Joyce of the PS2!

By the way, excellent topic readergamer. And I especially admire you for smuggling in the audacious equating of Tom Clancy with the likes of William Golding. Nice one.

Welcome to The Book Forum.

Tobytook

 

[readergamer]

Take Silent Hill 2, one of favorites, but still dim-witted as hell. You play the role of James Sunderland as he was called to the smoke and haze filled resort town of Silent hill by his supposed dead Wife. What a interesting beginning plot point! but the story is never fully explained or are the characters history, traits, connection to the town etc... what a waste of a DVD!.

Applying he option of choosing your own adventure as the role of a complex character James Sunderland in a Mysterious town would be a absolute thrill, but you are guided around on rails with one confusing plot point after enough......(Blah!). Who is that big freaky pyramid guy with the huge sword? what is his history? or the horrible sounding creature in a jail cell that barely appears with a faint glow of your flash light?......so facinating, but left hollow and uninteresting by the likes of Konami.

It is suppose to be"Survival-Horror" but is in reality a interactive B-Horror movie, but there are times in the both 1 and 2 of Silent Hill that are creepy and more depth and complexity would have been marvelous.

I am into Stephen King's "It" and am entralled by the depth of all things in it, the T.V movie can't touch it or any game for that matter.

 

[lujan]

I love book to game conversions, one more way for me to immerse myself in the world from the book. Wether it be a Tom Clancy game my favourite for tactical squad based, or rpg, Betrayal @ Krondor comes to mind, a ground breaking rpg at its time. However, my favourite games. for depth, are text based adventures, I used to have hundreds on my first computer.

Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy
Several based on Asimov novels
& Alice in wonderland being my favourites

being text, they could be enourmous involved worlds, without the graphic overhead, and fit on a few floppy disks.

I want to see more rpg's based on books

 

[D'Artagnan]

Readergamer, perhaps you would enjoy the huge library of old-school rpg's offered by consoles such as the PS1 or the Super NES? It's easy to download SNES emulators games, so you shouldn't have much trouble getting a hold of these. And it's true that the majority of them don't compare storywise to novels, but a lot of those games are absolute gems, usually with fantasy-oriented storylines.

May I suggest Final Fantasy 6 (released as Final Fantasy 3 in the USA), Chrono Trigger, or delightful action-rpg's, such as Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma? Check those out, by all means!

And well, it may appear odd that I'd be referring you to Super NES games when the GameCube, PS2, and XBox are out, but for some reason it's harder to find something of such entertainment value in today's games. It appears the gaming industry has focused a lot on improving graphics but has forgotten about other essential aspects that make a good game.

 

[TownBear]

electronic books
never heard the term b4

can't image just getting to the best part of the book... and the batteries run out! LoL

i think i'd throw the electronic book across the room lolllll

 

[ledaatomica]

readergamer .. have your ever played Myst and Riven? I believe the game is quite different from quite a few that I have played .. the game is mostly about solving puzzles and reading books that are linked to worlds ..what more can we ask?