Are fantasy games better than fantasy novels?

[Lord of the Here and Now]

My first post on the SFX forums, so firstly - Hello [waves furiously. Big cheesy grin]

As I was playing Skyrim earlier today I realised that many of the most memorable experiences in the fantasy genre that I've had over the last few years have mostly been in video games. I'm starting to think that fantasy computer games are supieror to the majority of the current (say the last ten years or so) crop of fantasy literature.

Here is my thinking:

New graphics have made it possible to really bring such worlds to life in a way that, erm, vocabulary challanged authors can't.

Since the player is partialy in controll of the length of the story games very rarely outstay their welcome, they can be as long or short as your want them to be - unlike fantasy serieses that currently seem to be in competition to see who can take up the most shelf space.

If you start a fantasy game you can be fairly sure that there is an end already concieved for it (I'm looking at you Wheel of Time).

As games have to concentrate on the players character you don't find yourself slogging through hours of stuff on a subsidary character you couldn't care less about.

Games tend to play with epic, heroic and religious tropes in a way that seems to have been dropped from fantasy literature recently in favour of basing worlds off historical periods so closely I might as well read a historical novel.

Following on from the last point, games have Big Ideas - for example, worlds set in a dying musicians brain, waring countries devided by a mountain range that is the carcass of a long dead god, time travel, etc etc.

This is not to say that fantasy books are guilty of all the above but most get scuppered by one or two (does Malazan really need that many books to fall? I'm not touching Game of Thrones untill there is an actual ending and only if the common consensus is that its a good 'en. Entire books of the Wheel of Time don't feature the main character. And so on.

A lot of this might have to do with the fact that games are still flexing their creative muscles and learning what it can and can't do. The dazling brilliance of a lot of modern games art direction. That often hundreds of people are involved in developing a games world as aposed to a books one. All making the worlds feel fresh.

Where as a lot of fantasy books have the air of being a wee bit creativly tired and desperate to disasociate themselves from Tolkien.

So - what do you think? Do I have a point? or am I hunched golem esque creature, twisted of mind and gross of cynicism who really needs to broden his fantasy reading?

Thank you.

[Note - none of the above applies to Terry Prattchett: for he is the light and the giver of joy. Come let us hold hands and contemplate his greatness, and his beard]

[PeteWhite2005]

Mate, if you keep posting like that you are more than welcome in these parts, great post.

I broadly agree with what you've said too. Both oblivion and skyrim are massively more gripping than the majority of modern fantasy, the stories are tighter, and the constraints of the main character mean the story has to move along at pace, sommat missing in both the wheel of time and a song of ice and fire (both of those overarcing stories are good, but gawd do the books drag!) the main stroy of world of warcraft is quite interesting too, though the game itself is stale.

Would like to ask if you've read Tom Lloyds Twilight Reign books? Hes a youngish fantasy author with a series that is moving at a good pace.

[vonbloodbath]

It's an interesting point, though I'm not entirely sure I agree; personally, as I've grown older, I've found myself reading more and more SF and less fantasy; that has carried over into gaming too. So, despite Mass Effect and Dragon Age being, broadly, the same thing, I love ME and loathe DA. Similarly, never got on with Skyrim, or Oblivion, or any other recent fantasy game (short of Lord of the Rings stuff).

For me, it all still feels very old school; both in terms of its "fluff", which creatively is still mired in Tolkein, either aping him, or very self-consciously not, and also in terms of "crunch" - the games just feel tired to me, although that may just be my gut reaction to the world building. SF. even broadly derivative SF, just feels like it has more potential, whereas fantasy games - and novels, I only really read George RR Martin and Scott Lynch now - feel very, very familiar.

I've had a few chats with friends about it, because it's a puzzler. I've got friends that I tabletop RPG with, and we all have broadly the same tastes, in movies, TV shows, music, chips and dips (Frijolemole - mmm!) and games. The one glaring exception is they love the DA and Elder Scrolls games, and I really, really don't.

So maybe I'm an anomaly, and you should disregard everything I just said.

Also, welcome to the boards!

[Saul Iscariot]

You are not alone VBB, I to favour Sci Fi over Fantasy, oddly I would also cite ME and DA as the obvious examples. I think story telling in games has grown up a lot in the last decade or so. The impact that this has had in video games is amazing as it has a unique form of story telling with the reader.

[Aeyjay]

i thought DA was just as good as ME storywise.

i have always been a fantasy reader more than scifi but honestly gaming has encroached on my reading alot. I used to read 1 or 2 books a week now it's more like 1 a month. I also read alot more graphic novels and TPB's than books these days as well.

however whether games are better than novels is abit of a red herring as they are different media completely, it's like saying which is better sculpture or painting. there are some fantastic fantasy games like the elder scrolls games there is some average ones and also alot of dross but that can also be said of novels as well.

part of rpg's which most fanasy games fall into you start out as a lowly unskilled gimp and by the end you are mighty warrior/mage and this basic game mechanic does sort of limit the scope of where the game goes.

[Lord of the Here and Now]

Originally Posted by PeteWhite2005

Would like to ask if you've read Tom Lloyds Twilight Reign books? Hes a youngish fantasy author with a series that is moving at a good pace.

No I haven't. As you agree with me and are therfore a man of good looks and sound judgement
I've taken it as a recomendation and have downloaded it for my ereader to start on this afternoon.

Originally Posted by Aeyjay

i thought DA was just as good as ME storywise.

however whether games are better than novels is abit of a red herring as they are different media completely, it's like saying which is better sculpture or painting. there are some fantastic fantasy games like the elder scrolls games there is some average ones and also alot of dross but that can also be said of novels as well.

part of rpg's which most fanasy games fall into you start out as a lowly unskilled gimp and by the end you are mighty warrior/mage and this basic game mechanic does sort of limit the scope of where the game goes.

That basic game mechanic is also true of most literature too - most characters have a development that's 'upwards' whether physical or emotinal. Maybee its a limit of human narrative generally? (where's an English Lit student when you need one)

The sculpture/painting analogy is perfect . So, if you don't mind, I'm going to nick it and run with it. Plus it gives me the chance to wax pompous, something I can never turn down. [I'm afraid I am that man in the pub who will argue anything at all - all I can say is that after enough drinks I eventualy shut up]

As I think my point is that fantasy games and fantasy books despite being different formats play with the same ideas and themes in presenting a world/narrative. In the same way that painting and sculpture can play with the same ideas and themes and one media can do certain things better than another.

So, off the top of my head and with dangerously little research, take the theme of metamorphosis in the Greek myths. In a painting like Dali's Narcissus...

http://www.artwallpaper.org/Salvador...issus/img1.jpg

even a painter with all the fluid and dreamlike techniques of a serialist is reduced to depicting a static before and after - man looking into pool juxataposed with the flower he's been turned into.

Where as a scultper like Bernini can take the same theme and do it better because sculpture doesn't rely on a single fixed perspective. From one angle his metamorphosis of Daphane just looks like a man grabbing at a woman....

http://repainterdiaries.files.wordpr...lo-daphne1.jpg

but as the you move round the sculpture your movement makes the metamorphosishappen right in front of your eyes in real time

a leg becomes a tree trunk, her hair bursts into foliage and her hands become srpouting twigs

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/b/b...ni_apollo2.jpg

[hmm...maybe she trod on one of the Rani's tree mines]

ermm.. I think I had a point but its gotten lost somewhere in the art. oh yes, fantasy computer games do the same themes as fantasy literature but better. I think, no, yes, I'll stick to that.


I think Vonbloodbath's (Frijolemole? i've never even heard of it - so I'm probably the anamolous one here) and Saul Iscariot's experiences bare it out too as it seems its the fantasy tropes that put them of those fantasy games rather than the gameplay or quality of production.

phew - that rambled

p.s - thanks for the warm welcomes

[PeteWhite2005]

Originally Posted by Lord of the Here and Now

No I haven't. As you agree with me and are therfore a man of good looks and sound judgement
I've taken it as a recomendation and have downloaded it for my ereader to start on this afternoon.

He has a habit similar to GRRM to killing off important characters, but the world he built is rich enough.

[Lord of the Here and Now]

Originally Posted by PeteWhite2005

He has a habit similar to GRRM to killing off important characters, but the world he built is rich enough.

When I get a fair way into it I'll post some thoughts up in the what you are currently reading thread.

Like Vonbloodbath as times worn on me I've slowly started reading less fantasy novels in favour of either their historical myths and legends source material or science fiction - which is a shame as it was fantasy that helped foster my love of reading to begin with. So I'm happy to take any sugestions.

If worst come to worst and I can't get back into the genre through the written word then at least I'll have the games to play.

[vonbloodbath]

Originally Posted by Lord of the Here and Now

That basic game mechanic is also true of most literature too - most characters have a development that's 'upwards' whether physical or emotinal. Maybee its a limit of human narrative generally? (where's an English Lit student when you need one)

You rang? You could be right; the predictability of the hero's journey is possibly one of the problems. As I mentioned above, part of my issue with fantasy, is that when it's not trite or predictable, it feels very self consciously not so. An example, ironically an SF example, would be season 1 of Torchwood. Trying so hard to be grown up, it actually ends up feeling more juvenile. I suppose, since fantasy has more recognisable tropes, it's an easy temptation for writers* to either succumb to convention, or to present a simplistic twist / reaction to conventional genre markers.

*of course, one of my issues with games is that while they are a fantastic medium for interactive storytelling, the writing is, very often, piss poor. Often the writing is an afterthought, and the designers/coders do the writing. This is getting better though...

Originally Posted by Lord of the Here and Now

Frijolemole?

It's a Mexican bean dip. Delicious.

[runalong]

Hmm I tend to find the few games I play these days are probably a bit too linear. Possibly the advantage is that you are the star whereas in books you are only ever listening to a first person narrator or supreme unseen one.

I think you may find that more recently we ate starting to move away from the olde Tolkien - Joe Abercrombie tends to look at the greyness of fantasy characters, Scott Lynch as mentioned but there are some more interesting writers whose books that games would struggle with are Neil Gaiman's American Gods or Katw Griffin's books perhaps more urban obit less a quest novel and with a unique writing style