The Sword and Laser discussion

Hey guys, beyond the Halo titles, what game tie in books have you read and are worth reading?

This all came from me finishing bioshock infinite and wondering what a mind screw of a novel it would be.

I enjoyed the War of the Ancients Warcraft books.

I got The Well of Eternity when I preordered the original WoW collector's edition, and ended up buying the next two.

I read the first three Mass Effect novels and enjoyed them quite a bit. Then again, I enjoy all things Mass Effect.

The Dragon Age novels are worth checking out. If you are in to that sort of thing. Also the Gears of War books are fairly good.

The writing on the Dragon Age games was awesome, period. If they got any of the same writers to do the books, I'm not surprised they're worthwhile.

The only game tie-in novel I read was the first City of Heroes one, and it's pretty bad. It aspires to mediocre. Which is a shame, because that game had such a rich world and easily the most diverse set of characters (on both sides) of any game ever made.

I looooooved the Resident Evil novels by S.D. Perry. The third one (adapting RE2) was especially great. Couldn't get through Zero, though.

Can anyone tell me if the Mass Effect, Dragon Age or Resident Evil books are ok for a 13 year old? He's played some mass effect when he saw me playing the 3rd one, but I don't think I let him play Dragon age-at the time I was playing it he was to young.

He read Darksiders: The Abomination Vault recently and really liked it.

I haven't played the Star Wars Old Republic MMO (still kind of mad they went the pay-to-play MMO route but I digress) but I have read three of the four tie-in novels, and I've enjoyed them quite well. So far Revan has been my favorite because it ties up the endings of KOTOR and KOTOR 2 while giving great backstory to TOR- plus Drew Karpyshyn is probably my favorite Star Wars author.

Deceived and Fatal Alliance are good too- Deceived for the character backstory for one of the MMO characters, and Fatal Alliance for setting up what's going on in the Star Wars universe at this time (which Deceived does as well).

Only one I haven't read is Annihilation but only because I'm a "dead tree" person and haven't found it at my bookstore yet.

Kristina wrote: "Can anyone tell me if the Mass Effect, Dragon Age or Resident Evil books are ok for a 13 year old? He's played some mass effect when he saw me playing the 3rd one, but I don't think I let him play..."

From what I remember (I read the ME novels about a year ago) they're good for a 13 year old. Some violence, the only sex I can think of is in the 3rd book and its not descriptive (not like GRRM or anything, just a mention of it I think) no excessive swearing that I can recall.

The dragon age novels at least the 3 out so far were done by one of the games main writers and have a very similar feel to the games though narrower stories. And i can't think of anything in them that a 13 year old wouldn't have already been exposed to other places. Unless he's been rather sheltered.

Scott wrote: "I haven't played the Star Wars Old Republic MMO (still kind of mad they went the pay-to-play MMO route but I digress)"

SW:TOR is free to play now. It's a pretty bad game though. Boring as hell and so slooooow. Voice acting for every little character was a terrible, terrible idea. It's not doing well, so I suspect it will be closed by EA sooner rather than later.

Trike wrote: "Scott wrote: "I haven't played the Star Wars Old Republic MMO (still kind of mad they went the pay-to-play MMO route but I digress)"

SW:TOR is free to play now. It's a pretty bad game though. Bori..."

Yeah so I've heard/read. Yeah, I know it's free-to-play but I read that they have it set up so they force you to use the online store to buy abilities, etc. that would be free to paid subsrcibers.

I've been wanting to read The Witcher books for a while.

didn't the witcher books come first? before the games?

Scott wrote: "Trike wrote: "Scott wrote: "I haven't played the Star Wars Old Republic MMO (still kind of mad they went the pay-to-play MMO route but I digress)"

SW:TOR is free to play now. It's a pretty bad game though.

Yeah so I've heard/read. Yeah, I know it's free-to-play but I read that they have it set up so they force you to use the online store to buy abilities, etc. that would be free to paid subsrcibers. "

I can't comment on the state of the game. Here's my criticism of it from last year:



Needless to say, I won't be going back to it, ever.

I really enjoyed Rise of the Horde.

If books came first, regarding The Witcher, that can be a good thing. Got to check them out.

The Witcher books came first.

yup, I finally had a chance to look it up and confirm, David beat me to it

The first three ME novels were good, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Anderson's run in with Saren in the first book. It really fleshed out that future villain for me. But the second two are more connected to each other than the first. I wished the fourth had been better, they really dropped the ball on that one both in terms of coherence and editing.

I didn't even know there were Witcher books...

The Warcraft, Starcaft, and Diablo books are all very solid series. The S.D. Perry Resident Evil books are good. Mel Odom's Hellgate: London series was actually better than the game. Lastly, I have enjoyed Greg Bear's Forunners Saga for Halo.

Ryne wrote: "The first three ME novels were good, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Anderson's run in with Saren in the first book. It really fleshed out that future villain for me. But the second two are more..."

I didn't read the 4th one because I saw there were all kinda of errors about the ME universe. Like, stuff the guy could have looked up on wiki, he just got wrong. The first book is best but the 3rd one is most interesting with the Grayson storyline and what happens to him.

Dara wrote: "I didn't read the 4th one because I saw there were all kinda of errors about the ME universe. Like, stuff the guy could have looked up on wiki, he just got wrong."

I have a similar problem with one of the two major authors for the World of Warcraft novels. His priests were kung-fu warrior monks before Blizzard decided to add kung-fu warrior monks to the game.



As for other game related novels: Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many was... interesting. It has a World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War style to it. But since it's trying to cover all of the history between the end of the last Next Generation cast film and the start of the video game, it's too broad in focus. Like if there had been chapters in WWZ where someone mentioned how they ran into werewolves while hiding from the zombies in a forest.

Daran wrote: "The Warcraft, Starcaft, and Diablo books are all very solid series."

I never thought about it but I suppose they would be.
I love the writing in Blizzard games.
One of my favorite scenes is from Diablo 2 with the fallen angel, Izual:

"Hell itself is poised to spill forth into your world like a tidal wave of blood and nightmares. You and all your kind are doomed."

I've read one of the Eve books, based on the MMORPG Space flight/combat game, andI quite enjoyed it. The references to the game where kept to a minimum so it still worked as a stand alone novel.

I found the Dragon Age novels okay. They're much better than most video game tie-in books I've read, but compared to other fantasy novels, they're pretty average. I expected the witty banter of the games, but the dialogue in the books is pretty lackluster. Clearly Gaider is not in charge of dialogue over at Bioware. They're pretty good for fleshing out the games' backstory, although I didn't care for the reveal at the end of The Calling.

The worst video game book I ever read was Star Wars: The Ruins of Dantooine, based on Star Wars Galaxies. It was just horrible.

I believe The Dark Wheel by Robert Holdstock was one of the first ever video game tie in novels, it came with the game Elite which was released back in 1984.

It's short but I loved it, you can find it online for free (and legally as far as I know)

The Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 books have some really great work done. Sure, GW has been a bit of a sick lately, but the books are still good. The Magic The Gathering books are also a bit of a toss up, but sometimes they're done right.

Not exactly a tie in book, but the The Books of Skyrim is a ebook that actually is a collection of all of the books from the Skyrim game. It is actually quite good reading and really fleshed out. The amount of text here is incredible and about 1000 pages. If you want to learn more about the lore of the Tamriel world, then definitely give this a read.