Books and Gaming – A Match Made In Heaven?

Books and Gaming – A Match Made In Heaven?

Oct 09

As far back as I can remember, books were seen as basicly the exact opposite of video games. I remember my mom yelling at my when I was a kid, telling me to “stop playing those stupid games and go read a book or something.” However, books and videogames seem to have found common ground as of late, and are using each other’s popularity to thier advantage.

Case and point: Did you know that there is a Mass Effect book? Actually, two Mass Effect books. Written by Drew Karpyshyn, who also served as the lead writer for the game, Mass Effect: Revelation and Mass Effect: Ascension are both supposed to be pretty damn good books. Revelation is set before the original game, and not only provides some new background for Saren, but also several new characters. Ascension mainly follows those new, non-game characters and is set after the orignal game. If you want more insight into the world of Mass Effect, these are probably worth picking up.

Next isThe Elder Scrolls. While we’ve all been sitting around like suckers hoping Bethesda comes up with a ES5 before 2010, Greg Keyes has been hard at work writing The Elder Scrolls : The Infernal City. Set shortly after the events in Oblivion, Infernal City is the first of two planned novels based on The Elder Scrolls series. And while I can’t attest for this particular book, I have read other books by Keyes (he has also written several Star Wars novels and the award winning Kingdoms of Thorne and Bone series) and he is a fantastic author.

Infernal City has a scheduled released date of November 24, 2009.

Last but not least is the flip side of the coin – Cyanide Studio’s rights aquistion for the videogame version of A Song of Ice a Fire. Ice and Fire, penned by George RR Martin, is not only one of the worlds best selling (and simply best) fantasy series’, but may also hit the cable box worldwide as HBO has also purchased the rights for the television series and casting has already begun (Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and Mark Addy have already signed on.)

Cyanide, a French studio, plans to release both an RPG and Real Time Strategy game based on the novels. While the titles for the game(s) have not been released, expect them to either play on the series name (A Song of Ice and Fire) or one of the books (A Game of Thrones, A Storm of Swords, A Clash of Kings, A Feast for Crows, and the yet unreleased A Dance with Dragons.) While a board game has already been released, expect to see the videogame versions hit the shelves for consoles and PC sometime in 2011.