Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Literature-Based Games

I got the idea to write a list of literature-based games while writing my movie-based game list -- I could think of a couple off the top of my head, but I figured I'd be grasping just to find ten halfway-decent games. I was wrong, though -- there's actually a surprisingly high number of book-based games. Several of the games are obvious video game versions of popular book series that managed to fare fairly well as stand-alone products, but there are others that you likely didn't even know were based on books. Now, naturally, there is a wild abundance of book-based games that were released alongside the movie version of that book -- those aren't counted here. The main restriction here is that the game must not be released in close proximity to any movie version of the book (no shared audience regardless of any lack of similarity between movie and book), and must also not share any significant stylistic elements with any movie version of the book. In the end, I found about 20 popular games that fit into these criteria. The ones chosen for this list represent a cross-section of those: some are excellent examples of games based on popular books; others are popular games that you likely had no idea were inspired by classic literature; and others are joint book-game projects that seek to actively make the best use of both mediums. But all share two criteria: all are based on literature with no intermediary medium, and all are great games.

I'm fairly certain that every list has a single game that inspired the list, and this one is no exception: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was the first example that came to my mind when I started thinking about games with a literature basis. Released in 1996, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire told the story of the novel by the same title, but from a different perspective. It's the closest thing on this list to a true exception, for two reasons: first of all, while the game was based on a book (arguably, I'll get to that in a minute), the book was based on a movie -- so while it doesn't technically violate our list rule, it almost does. Secondly, whether or not the game was actually based on the book is somewhat arguable: official reports indicate that while the Shadows of the Empire game came out a year after the novel, the project as a whole was a united effort from beginning to end. A story was formulated, and the novel, the game and a comic book series were separately commissioned to tell that story. Still, to many, Shadows of the Empire was the game version of a popular book, and in my opinion is the second most-recognizable book-based game (after a later entry on this list). Subsequent games on this list are largely unknown games about popular books or popular games based on unknown books, but Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is both a popular game and based on a fairly well-known book. The other notable element of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire as a project is that its success is largely responsible for the release of the Special Edition Star Wars trilogy, which itself directly led to the prequel trilogy -- a multi-billion dollar impact of the book, game and comic project.

Although a movie was released based on Frank Herbert's Dune in 1984, lack of influence on the games and its poor reception, combined with the depth and breadth of the book series' video game counterparts, lead to its inclusion here. Published in 1965, Dune was Frank Herbert's acclaimed science fiction novel, winner of multiple awards, that went on to spawn a wildly popular six-book series, numerous prequels and sequels, and -- what we're concerned with -- several video games. The book series is so popular and acclaimed that it is considered by many -- including 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur Clarke -- to be the 'Lord of the Rings' of science fiction. But what's most interesting to me about the video games that follow it -- received fairly well, but by no means award-winning -- is the breadth of genres they cover. The original game is an interesting adventure/real-time strategy hybrid; Dune II and its remake, Dune 2000 fall squarely in the classic real-time strategy genre; Emperor: Battle for Dune sits well alongside Command & Conquer among modern real-time strategy games; and the ill-received Frank Herbert's Dune is an adventure game. The most notable among these is Dune II, which is credited by many for revolutionizing the real-time strategy genre with direct mouse control. Its impact on the genre is so strong that a popular nickname for the genre's cornerstone example, Command & Conquer, is "Dune III". These real-time strategy games form the core of the Dune video game franchise -- now cohesive separate and apart from the novel series -- and serve an interesting role in shedding light on the civilization and world of Dune in ways that a linear novel never could.

The Witcher, our #8 game on this list, is an extremely interesting case. I make no claims of being completely familiar with the novel series, so by all means correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge the video game version of The Witcher was actually released before the novel series -- in the United States, at least. The Witcher is a series of novels and short stories released by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, started in the early '90s. The series stayed largely in Poland for many years, with the English translation of the first story collection coming in 2008. The video game version, however, was released in 2007, even in the United States. To the American audience, the video game version of The Witcher was largely their first exposure to the series. As a game, The Witcher was a quiet success in the United States. It received fairly high marks from rating web sites, and won several PC RPG of the Year awards, as well as specific awards for its cinematics and soundtrack. In all, the game sold over a million copies worldwide, many in the novel's native Poland. As a game, The Witcher is reminiscent of a fairly standard western, PC RPG, featuring an active battle style, but borders on revolutionary in terms of its graphics -- it introduces a much more flexible environment creator, many new stylistic effects, and an excellent new lighting system. Several plot elements are praised as well, including the delayed impact of many responses and a deep "morality" system. For those that particularly enjoyed the game's plot, the novels are being continually translated into English, and will likely find a strong audience in today's fertile ground for classic supernatural worlds.

The quintessential "popular book, unknown game" item on this list is our #7 entry, The Wheel of Time. Released in 1999 for the PC, The Wheel of Time was a first-person shooter based on Robert Jordan's wildly popular Wheel of Time book series. I'm not solely featuring it here because it's a book-based game -- it was actually a fantastic game. Upon its release, it received fantastic reviews labeling it as a legitimate competitor to the other major first-person shooter franchises of the time. Unfortunately, the timing was off -- released at the peak of popularity for franchises like Quake and Unreal (and built on the latter's engine), it failed to gain ground on its competitors and faded into obscurity, occasionally ducking back into the spotlight for various organizations' "Most Underrated" lists. One of the key features of the game's quality was the involvement of the series' creator, Robert Jordan. While he did not play as prominent a role in the game's creation as another author we'll see later in this list, he was consulted frequently, resulting in a game that actually provides a unique take on the book series. What's more, the game stays remarkably true to the world created by the book series, deviating primarily only for gameplay enhancements (such as teleportation points and a beam attack that does not unravel the fabric of space and time, as indicated in the book). Additionally, like most games I mentioned on my movie-based list, a definite contributor to the increased quality in The Wheel of Time is that it does not attempt to re-tell the stories of any of the books, but rather adds an interesting additional element and further information.

DON'T PANIC. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is most recognized as a novel series, though those in the know are aware it started as a radio broadcast, and went through several iterations before becoming the internationally best-selling book series it is today. For the book series itself, I'm not even going to bother describing it -- if aren't familiar with it, there's nothing I can say to endow you with the profound wisdom, insight and life-long fortune that comes with knowledge of the Guide. What I will say, though, is that you might not be aware that there is a game version of the book series. A game? Of Hitchhiker's? Blasphemy! Or so I thought too, until I was informed that the game was actually designed by Douglas Adams himself (as with nearly all Hitchhiker's spin-off media, including plays, radio shows TV adaptations and games). Released in 1984 for several different consoles, the game is wholly remarkable for the involvement of Adams himself -- and his influence is felt throughout, despite (or enhanced by) the game's text-only influence. The puzzles are as devious as one would expect from a Douglas Adams game, actively breaking many of the conventions of most video games. I don't have room here to say all I want to about the game, but I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page about it, especially if you're a fan of Adams' work. I've included a second game in the title here -- Starship Titanic. Released in 1998, Starship Titanic was also designed by Adams, reflecting an idea first proposed in Life, the Universe and Everything, and featured over 14 hours of voice recordings from a large voice cast, highlighted by John Cleese and Adams himself. The game claims to take place in a different universe from Hitchhiker's, but knowing Adams, the truth of that is anyone's guess.

I have no way of checking, but I think this might be the first time a game has made a top ten list before it's even released. I feel it's justified, though -- Dante's Inferno, based on the first part of Dante's epic poem "The Divine Comedy", deserves recognition on this list based solely on what we already know about it. The poem portion -- titled "Inferno" -- chronicles the journey of the author through the various circles of Hell. The game, titled Dante's Inferno, will mirror this journey, with early reports indicating that the liberties taken by the designers are largely for gameplay purposes. While Dante in the epic poem plays little role besides observing what goes by, affordances obviously have to be made to make the journey more friendly for a game. Thus, instead of an aimless pleasure cruise through Hell, Dante in the game is a Crusader, fighting through the circles of Hell in order to save the soul of his lost love, Beatrice. Thusfar, the most newsworthy aspects of the game are the marketing techniques undertaken by Electronic Arts in seeking to drum up hype for the game. Analyzed from a literary angle, however, there is the potential that the game may come even closer to the purposes of Dante's Inferno than the poem itself did. The allegorical undertones of the original poem are of the Christian's journey through recognizing and repenting for sin; by situating the game in the eyes of an actual main character, the game may display this theme even more prominently, as the playable Dante must confront and atone for his own past sins (likely through battle, naturally) in order to achieve his objective. Whether EA and Visceral Games go this route remains to be seen, but the game Dante's Inferno may represent one of the most interesting literary adaptations in video game history, outdoing the source material itself. Maybe.

If Dante's Inferno appears to remain as true as possibly to its source material, American McGee's Alice goes in the precise opposite direction. American McGee's Alice is a plot sequel to Alice in Wonderland and its own sequel, Through the Looking Glass, though I'd say it's a safe bet that Lewis Carroll wouldn't exactly consider the game "canonical". This isn't the Alice you remember -- this time around, she's suicidal, catatonic and clinically insane. Wonderland, itself a product of her own mind, is therefore completely turned on its head as well. No more happy bunnies and crazy haberdashers frolicking around -- the whole world's gone to the dogs. But perhaps the most interesting element of American McGee's Alice is simply how incredibly well-done it is. The premise of the game is undeniably pretty bizarre -- but the implementation is flawless. Utilizing a twice-modified Quake III engine, the game is doubly graphically incredible: on a surface level, the simple quality of the graphics was notably ahead of its time, and on a deeper level, the visual design of many worlds was flawless, perfectly immersing the player and drawing relevant connections back to the real world. The audio was heavily praised as well, and a soundtrack was subsequently released. A sequel has supposedly been in the works ever since the original game's release, and there are rumors of a movie version as well -- all pointing to the success of the original game. Despite the very obvious liberties taken with Wonderland (and I think it's pretty clear that the game doesn't violate the "no graphical similarity to any movie versions of the book" rule), American McGee's Alice is likely the single most recognizable book-based video game ever produced.

Have you heard of a little series called Suikoden? Of course you have -- it's a very large video game franchise. What you might not know, though, is that a tactical game released six years previous named Bandit Kings of Ancient China is based on the same source material. That might come as a surprise because who knew Suikoden actually has separate source material? But yet, it does. Like the next item on our list as well, Suikoden and its less-known predecessor Bandit Kings of Ancient China are based on one of the most beloved novels from classic Chinese literature: loosely translated "Water Margin", the novel tells the story of an outlaw in 12th century China. The earlier game based on the book was a unique type of turn-based strategy game, and was considered by many to be far deeper than other comparable games of its time. The more popular game (and subsequent series), though, is Suikoden. At the time of its release, Suikoden was regarded as one of the best RPGs for the already RPG-heavy PlayStation. Unlike the adaptations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Suikoden deviates far more notably from its literary basis: it borrows the general themes of rebellion against a powerful government, but alters most character and plot elements, and genericizes the environment a bit. But what the game did achieve was even higher popularity: it went on to inspire numerous sequels and spin-offs in other genres, many of which borrowed more notably from the original literature inspiration for the Suikoden series, with genres that more easily lent themselves to direct adaptation of the source material. And with these two popular game series (Suikoden and Romance of the Three Kingdoms) based on classic Chinese novels, don't be surprised if the next hit video game bares the title Journey to the West or Dream of the Red Chamber, the other two great classical Chinese novels that do not yet have a video game adaptation.

You're likely familiar with Dynasty Warriors, and you might be familiar with the series it spun off from, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This spot is not meant to recognize the two games themselves, but rather the entire series and franchise of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its spin-offs -- Dynasty Warriors included. But wait -- literature-based? These games? Indeed -- this large video game franchise, encompassing almost two dozen games and numerous ports and remakes, is based on a pair of classic Chinese novels -- Records of Three Kingdoms and Records of the Three Kingdoms. Both novels tell the story of 3rd-century China and the warring dynasties of the day: Records is a largely historical account, written shortly after the conclusion of the era by Chen Shou, and formed the basis for Romance, a romanticized, dramatized and novelized (but otherwise fairly faithful) retelling of the events of the historical book. The latter has become one of the most famous books to come out of classic Chinese literature. Together, the two books have inspired an utterly inordinate number of games of a variety of genres: the Romance of the Three Kingdoms game series itself is largely a strategy game, while later installments in the series become strategic RPGs. The Dynasty Warriors series began as a fighting game before evolving in later installments into one of the most popular beat-'em-up franchises of the latest game generation. And a third spin-off series -- Dynasty Tactics -- falls squarely within the turn-based strategy genre. On the whole, the games remain truer to the text of the novels than most games can, largely because the two novels -- Records of Three Kingdoms more prominently -- are mostly annals of battle that took place during this period of unrest, easily translating into modern games.

I think there's a common formula for most top ten lists. There's always one relatively unknown game that inspires the list and gets ranked at the top spot despite the fact that no one's heard of it except the list author. That might appear the case here, but it wasn't the game that inspired this list. If you're a bit on the older side, you might recognize this game -- and if you're a bit on the intellectual side, you might recognize the book it's based on. First published in a magazine in 1967, Harlan Ellison's short story "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" won the Hugo Award in 1968, the second of almost a dozen that Ellison would go on to win. The game version would debut 30 years later, with Ellison writing and designing much of the new content. Like other games on this list, the game version alters elements of the original story largely to include gameplay elements: the plot shift is from a journey among the five remaining humans on earth to find food, to individual journeys for each of the five remaining humans to overcome their "fatal flaws". The crucial element is that the game mirrors very much the same atmosphere, mood and message of the original -- an impressive feat considering the difference in mediums. The impression left is that while the story's plot and the game's plot are mutually exclusive (both end in events that prevent the other story's viability), they do both accurately reflect how the characters would behave in the different situations. The game, despite its simplistic interface for its time, met rave reviews upon release -- it won several awards, and was highly praised for introducing a new level of psychological depth to the video game industry. To many, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream marked the moment video games become a viable medium for expressing a truly reflective, psychological, intellectual plot. So what does the title mean? Well, you'll just have to read the story or play the game to find out. Or read Wikipedia. Whichever. No, but seriously, if you can find a copy of the story, it's certainly worth a read.

There are several honorable mentions for this list: the more obvious ones are well-received clearly book-based games like the Sherlock Holmes (especially Secret of the Silver Earring), Conan the Barbarian (the recent THQ and Nihilistic Software release), and the Hobbit (the 1982 Beam Software release). Some also-notable less-known games include Culpa Innata, an adventure game inspired by Schrödinger's Cat by Alev Alev Alatlı, and Death Gate an adventure game loosely based on The Death Gate Cycle series. What I find most interesting about book-based games is the discrepancy between these and movie-based games: whereas the best movie-based games are those that do not attempt to re-tell the movie's story (instead creating a new story in the same universe), book-based games largely have much more success in re-creating their source material's actual plot. This can likely be attributed to the extra development and detail permitted by the longer novel format, although in many cases it is also due to the involvement of the source material's author, most notably Douglas Adams and Harlan Ellison. This involvement meant the games actually provided an author-controlled extra insight into the original material, and takes the medium far beyond simple entertainment. In my experience, video games are becoming a more and more attractive expressive medium to new authors -- the interactivity allows an extra degree of manipulation and immersion in the story, and for many authors, the possibility for multiple plot lines and endings is a very attractive alteration to their traditional narrative style. With the advancements that are being made in facial rendering, automatic lip sync, realistic text-to-speech, and interactive narrative in general, we can expect games to become a more and more viable medium for expressing truly literary-quality stories.

List by DetroitDJ (09/21/2009)