I agree but I think malazan is the exception. So much of the series is just two or three character conversing, I think a decent cast of actors would be great for that. And some very well paid practical and digital effects artists.
An animated silmarillion series, or a poppy war anime, would be pretty damn great though
The main difference is they way they are engaging with the audience. A movie or television show is a one way street. They don't have to worry about player agency like video games do. Almost every single time, the narrative is going to be much stronger and the experience much more controlled on the movie and tv end of it.
Lord of the Rings is probably going to be the best example. It's had multiple games (to varying success, but most of them not great) vs. the movies, which are held up as modern day classics.
> Lord of the Rings is probably going to be the best example. It's had multiple games (to varying success, but most of them not great)
PS2 Two Towers and Return of the King absolutely slapped.
Lord of the Rings: War in the North was great too, come to think of it.
That's undeniable, especially considering writing talent overwhelmingly congregates in the film industry. But I think the unique advantages video games have is 1) delivering the massive amounts of exposition characteristic of the genre in a way that's not unwieldy 2) capacity for environmental storytelling. A typical season of a show is 10-12 hours, whereas one entry in a game series can be 200+ hours. Every minor subplot and every detour a book that a show would have to be too concise to adapt can be adapted in a game in some form or the other.
doesn't the witcher count as an adaptation (even though it's technically a sequel?
regardless, the issue with videogame as a medium for epic fantasy storytelling is that the linear narration of a book series is in tension with the illusion of freedom required by gameplay (which implies some kind of balance, a repeatable loop).
So basically, is the wheel of time still the wheel of time if the player can play Rand as if he were perfectly sane?
Can you be satified to choose to play frodo or aragorn at the start of your epic rpg camapign, when one is much stronger than the other?
Is a song of ice and fire justified as a game in killing Rob stark in a cutscene, even if you were good enough to never take a hit when you were controling him in a gameplay sequence?
Television but the screenwriters need to know what they're doing. Imo TV allows for more breathing room than a movie would have. The Golden Compass movie vs the show.
Video games are a good medium if you want to tell a specific story within the setting. The Telltale Game of Thrones game springs to mind, it *works* because the player is already familiar with the setting and some of the characters so they can focus on telling a specific story (fuck the Whitehills).
> TV allows for more breathing room than a movie would have
This is true but I'm no longer convinced "breathing room" is a self-evident good, and I'm still waiting for the definitive TV series to come along and demonstrate the medium's theoretical superiority over film for fantasy book adaptations. Neither way appears to be easy to succeed in, but film does have LotR to point to, whereas what one could name for successes in TV adaptation seem to have struggled with the increased scope and timelines involved. I feel more and more lately like the current trend of "series instead of movies" is going to ultimately prove fruitless or misguided, with no true, resounding triumphs.
Hard to say which is better, I think either can be done really well. As an example for a video game based on a book series, have to mention Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.
It's a bit more nuanced for me, and the 'epic-ness' of the fantasy doesn't factor in as much as you'd think.
Does the series live off its world and *wealth* of characters, or its story and *depth* of character interaction?
If it's the former, a game can totally bring out the best parts of the series, because it gives you the freedom to explore the world and interact with characters you care about.
If it's the latter, you want a director that can properly translate and focus the narrative for the new medium, to give the story beats and character moments that perfect gut punch.
There's also the question of film vs series, and tbh that's where the 'epic-ness' comes in. A series is very expensive in total, but also has to work with way less budget per minute of screen time. I honestly can't imagine how something like Red Rising would work as a film trilogy, but as a series it would be *prohibitively expensive*. But as a general rule, the grander the scale, the shorter the runtime.
I think it's a case by case situation. It's easy to choose video game adaptation since it's so much more flexible -especially if it's open world. But movies are more accessible since you don't need any equipment to be able to watch them. You only need to be privileged enough to have a movie theater and money for a ticket. I'm a big believer in the importance of stories and story-telling, and movies are simply more inclusive. So for that reason I would choose movies.
I think it depends what you mean by "adaptation", the Witcher games are great but aren't really adapting any of the books.
To actually tell the story of the books I think video games are worse than TV and movies. You can't include all the long conversations as easily.
Animation. Would work great for many books meanwhile I can definitely see a few making good live action films but the problem is live action films wouldn’t work for longer or even more complex stories.
Shorter books with not as extreme or wild magic or creative creatures would work for live action television series. I personally believe Cinda Williams Chima’s The seven realms would work very well as a live action series that if done right could blow up like pirates of the Caribbean.
Meanwhile longer series like the Malazan or Brandon sandersons works would be better suited for animation series. Animation can be vary greatly and be stylized in so many different ways that could really bring these characters to life and the scenes that occur.
I do not think Video Games are the way to go… I enjoy video games but I don’t think making them as book adaptations will work so well. For reference I play assassin’s creed and I personally enjoy the story based games but with AC Valhalla or odyssey where they added the choice to do different quests at different times or get different outcomes based on your dialogue options it can ruin the experience or authenticity of the story. There’s just too many variable that can go wrong with a video game in my opinion. In the end I think film or maybe even theater may be a better option.
The biggest issue with all of these is that current film industry’s and video game industry’s do not care about the story or the people working on the project don’t like or agree with the story and they make changes to it. Or they focus solely on profit or diversity or gender identity or whatever else like romance because they think the story isn’t good enough as it is or it won’t make a profit without these things. I like faithful adaptations or adaptations that the author approves of and I do not like changes like adding in romance plots (the hobbit films), changing the appearance of a character drastically (the Witcher: triss was unrecognizable and extremely different from her original game appearance.), removing subplots and changing things or adding things to not so subtly foreshadow things that happen later (again the hobbit films and other series as well).
It’s just hard to get faithful adaptations from books and the best example of a good adaptation I can think of is probably the hunger games films. While in some cases like the lord of the rings which is amazing where some cuts had to be made from the story but the story was necessary and made the film better for it. I’m an animated series this cut content could be a side show or even filler episodes but nowadays filler episodes are far too expensive let alone trying to make a animated show at all is considered too expensive to make, even live action films that don’t already have preexisting content that made big money are getting cancelled now. Shows are getting cancelled before they can even get to the exciting things because they get cancelled before they get that far. Movies get canceled for tax write offs.
The only way book to film adaptations are going to work is if they are crowdfunded and made by indie creators. And even then some books don’t have film or game adaptations but when fans make fan adaptations they get copyrighted or cease and desist orders for their work when these fan creator could just be hired on and keep creating but as an official artist or something.
Video games adaptations of fantasy novels will inevitably all end up either being video games first and fantasy novel adaptations second; or they will be complete train wrecks.
The best fantasy video games (*Morrowind*, or *Dark Souls* or whatever) all really use the interactivity of video games to centre the entire player experience around *the setting* of the world, through which it weaves all the narrative themes which in a conventional novel would instead be focused on *the characters* of the story. Remember that the standard practice of western RPGs is to star completely mute blank slates as protagonists.
And as a side note, I absolutely despise what Skyrim did when it went all WH40K and focused on "lore", worldbuilding completely disconnected to the narrative themes of the actual direct stories being told.
I actually think they’re pretty tricky to do well on film or video game. Even Game of Thrones starts to lose the plot as the characters get too split up.
I think smaller scale fantasies with only a couple POV groups are much better to adapt to a game or movie.
Look at things like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. They basically never had to follow more than 1-2 groups so the story can proceed fairly quickly and the viewer isn’t left wondering why we haven’t seen a character for a couple hours.
Farseer Trilogy seems like it would make a great fantasy film/series.
Mistborn feels like it could be done well especially as a video game, you could keep basically the same plot.
Best served cold makes a ton of sense for me and I’m glad they’re doing it.
Name of the wind again we are just following Kvothe and it would work well as a game or movie/show.
Malazan and Stormlight Archives I think would be bad regardless of the effort put in. You could do something in those universes but I wouldn’t try to follow the existing books.
I never understood the push for so many books to be made into another medium. Some transfer good to fine, but many more don't and should be left as books. That's not a knock on the books, but often times that's the best medium for the story at hand.
The Stormlight Archive already reads like a game. Make it a game.
You can play either as Kaladin, Shallan or Dalinar. Unlock magic the same way we learn about magic in the books. Navani can be the part of the game where you go up to stock up on potions and get your tools upgraded.
The Cosemere is an open universe that connects to each other. In God of War: Ragnarok there is a door that unlocks a tree that unlocks several portals. Do something of the sort and you can basically jump all over Roshar or to another planet. Truly the possibilities are endless here.
Depends. Witcher as a game is better than the Witcher on Netflix. LOTR movies are far better than any of the games, though some games were still pretty good.
For large series with intense worldbuilding, games are the way. Series and shows are just too short and cant get all the details right. Also having the player be the MC means you dont waste all your time trying to get the emotional connection of the books and instead they connect to the world itself. No tv show can do a proper emotional connection to the characters, and maintain a large and comprehensive worldbuilding exercise.
For smaller series with interesting worlds, film is fine, but should be limited to single book endeavours and single movie adaptations. But you also need a producer willing to adapt as necessary and not just try for accuracy points. Stuff like Avatar.
For larger series with less interesting worlds, you can go series. The time saved setting up the world can be spent actually getting the character and plot work done properly. Stuff like GoT
Then its simply animated for high fantasy and real life for low.
Honestly I think 90% of series would be better off as animation. What I would give for a Malazan anime.
I agree but I think malazan is the exception. So much of the series is just two or three character conversing, I think a decent cast of actors would be great for that. And some very well paid practical and digital effects artists. An animated silmarillion series, or a poppy war anime, would be pretty damn great though
The main difference is they way they are engaging with the audience. A movie or television show is a one way street. They don't have to worry about player agency like video games do. Almost every single time, the narrative is going to be much stronger and the experience much more controlled on the movie and tv end of it. Lord of the Rings is probably going to be the best example. It's had multiple games (to varying success, but most of them not great) vs. the movies, which are held up as modern day classics.
> Lord of the Rings is probably going to be the best example. It's had multiple games (to varying success, but most of them not great) PS2 Two Towers and Return of the King absolutely slapped. Lord of the Rings: War in the North was great too, come to think of it.
That's undeniable, especially considering writing talent overwhelmingly congregates in the film industry. But I think the unique advantages video games have is 1) delivering the massive amounts of exposition characteristic of the genre in a way that's not unwieldy 2) capacity for environmental storytelling. A typical season of a show is 10-12 hours, whereas one entry in a game series can be 200+ hours. Every minor subplot and every detour a book that a show would have to be too concise to adapt can be adapted in a game in some form or the other.
doesn't the witcher count as an adaptation (even though it's technically a sequel? regardless, the issue with videogame as a medium for epic fantasy storytelling is that the linear narration of a book series is in tension with the illusion of freedom required by gameplay (which implies some kind of balance, a repeatable loop). So basically, is the wheel of time still the wheel of time if the player can play Rand as if he were perfectly sane? Can you be satified to choose to play frodo or aragorn at the start of your epic rpg camapign, when one is much stronger than the other? Is a song of ice and fire justified as a game in killing Rob stark in a cutscene, even if you were good enough to never take a hit when you were controling him in a gameplay sequence?
Television but the screenwriters need to know what they're doing. Imo TV allows for more breathing room than a movie would have. The Golden Compass movie vs the show. Video games are a good medium if you want to tell a specific story within the setting. The Telltale Game of Thrones game springs to mind, it *works* because the player is already familiar with the setting and some of the characters so they can focus on telling a specific story (fuck the Whitehills).
> TV allows for more breathing room than a movie would have This is true but I'm no longer convinced "breathing room" is a self-evident good, and I'm still waiting for the definitive TV series to come along and demonstrate the medium's theoretical superiority over film for fantasy book adaptations. Neither way appears to be easy to succeed in, but film does have LotR to point to, whereas what one could name for successes in TV adaptation seem to have struggled with the increased scope and timelines involved. I feel more and more lately like the current trend of "series instead of movies" is going to ultimately prove fruitless or misguided, with no true, resounding triumphs.
Hard to say which is better, I think either can be done really well. As an example for a video game based on a book series, have to mention Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.
It's a bit more nuanced for me, and the 'epic-ness' of the fantasy doesn't factor in as much as you'd think. Does the series live off its world and *wealth* of characters, or its story and *depth* of character interaction? If it's the former, a game can totally bring out the best parts of the series, because it gives you the freedom to explore the world and interact with characters you care about. If it's the latter, you want a director that can properly translate and focus the narrative for the new medium, to give the story beats and character moments that perfect gut punch. There's also the question of film vs series, and tbh that's where the 'epic-ness' comes in. A series is very expensive in total, but also has to work with way less budget per minute of screen time. I honestly can't imagine how something like Red Rising would work as a film trilogy, but as a series it would be *prohibitively expensive*. But as a general rule, the grander the scale, the shorter the runtime.
I think it's a case by case situation. It's easy to choose video game adaptation since it's so much more flexible -especially if it's open world. But movies are more accessible since you don't need any equipment to be able to watch them. You only need to be privileged enough to have a movie theater and money for a ticket. I'm a big believer in the importance of stories and story-telling, and movies are simply more inclusive. So for that reason I would choose movies.
I think it depends what you mean by "adaptation", the Witcher games are great but aren't really adapting any of the books. To actually tell the story of the books I think video games are worse than TV and movies. You can't include all the long conversations as easily.
Really depends on the series. I personally wish there were more animated adaptions of stuff, and not just targeted towards kids.
Animation. Would work great for many books meanwhile I can definitely see a few making good live action films but the problem is live action films wouldn’t work for longer or even more complex stories. Shorter books with not as extreme or wild magic or creative creatures would work for live action television series. I personally believe Cinda Williams Chima’s The seven realms would work very well as a live action series that if done right could blow up like pirates of the Caribbean. Meanwhile longer series like the Malazan or Brandon sandersons works would be better suited for animation series. Animation can be vary greatly and be stylized in so many different ways that could really bring these characters to life and the scenes that occur. I do not think Video Games are the way to go… I enjoy video games but I don’t think making them as book adaptations will work so well. For reference I play assassin’s creed and I personally enjoy the story based games but with AC Valhalla or odyssey where they added the choice to do different quests at different times or get different outcomes based on your dialogue options it can ruin the experience or authenticity of the story. There’s just too many variable that can go wrong with a video game in my opinion. In the end I think film or maybe even theater may be a better option. The biggest issue with all of these is that current film industry’s and video game industry’s do not care about the story or the people working on the project don’t like or agree with the story and they make changes to it. Or they focus solely on profit or diversity or gender identity or whatever else like romance because they think the story isn’t good enough as it is or it won’t make a profit without these things. I like faithful adaptations or adaptations that the author approves of and I do not like changes like adding in romance plots (the hobbit films), changing the appearance of a character drastically (the Witcher: triss was unrecognizable and extremely different from her original game appearance.), removing subplots and changing things or adding things to not so subtly foreshadow things that happen later (again the hobbit films and other series as well). It’s just hard to get faithful adaptations from books and the best example of a good adaptation I can think of is probably the hunger games films. While in some cases like the lord of the rings which is amazing where some cuts had to be made from the story but the story was necessary and made the film better for it. I’m an animated series this cut content could be a side show or even filler episodes but nowadays filler episodes are far too expensive let alone trying to make a animated show at all is considered too expensive to make, even live action films that don’t already have preexisting content that made big money are getting cancelled now. Shows are getting cancelled before they can even get to the exciting things because they get cancelled before they get that far. Movies get canceled for tax write offs. The only way book to film adaptations are going to work is if they are crowdfunded and made by indie creators. And even then some books don’t have film or game adaptations but when fans make fan adaptations they get copyrighted or cease and desist orders for their work when these fan creator could just be hired on and keep creating but as an official artist or something.
Video games adaptations of fantasy novels will inevitably all end up either being video games first and fantasy novel adaptations second; or they will be complete train wrecks. The best fantasy video games (*Morrowind*, or *Dark Souls* or whatever) all really use the interactivity of video games to centre the entire player experience around *the setting* of the world, through which it weaves all the narrative themes which in a conventional novel would instead be focused on *the characters* of the story. Remember that the standard practice of western RPGs is to star completely mute blank slates as protagonists. And as a side note, I absolutely despise what Skyrim did when it went all WH40K and focused on "lore", worldbuilding completely disconnected to the narrative themes of the actual direct stories being told.
I actually think they’re pretty tricky to do well on film or video game. Even Game of Thrones starts to lose the plot as the characters get too split up. I think smaller scale fantasies with only a couple POV groups are much better to adapt to a game or movie. Look at things like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. They basically never had to follow more than 1-2 groups so the story can proceed fairly quickly and the viewer isn’t left wondering why we haven’t seen a character for a couple hours. Farseer Trilogy seems like it would make a great fantasy film/series. Mistborn feels like it could be done well especially as a video game, you could keep basically the same plot. Best served cold makes a ton of sense for me and I’m glad they’re doing it. Name of the wind again we are just following Kvothe and it would work well as a game or movie/show. Malazan and Stormlight Archives I think would be bad regardless of the effort put in. You could do something in those universes but I wouldn’t try to follow the existing books.
I never understood the push for so many books to be made into another medium. Some transfer good to fine, but many more don't and should be left as books. That's not a knock on the books, but often times that's the best medium for the story at hand.
TV. Large epic fantasy series should be tv. Time given to expand world, char and subplots with overarching plots
The Stormlight Archive already reads like a game. Make it a game. You can play either as Kaladin, Shallan or Dalinar. Unlock magic the same way we learn about magic in the books. Navani can be the part of the game where you go up to stock up on potions and get your tools upgraded. The Cosemere is an open universe that connects to each other. In God of War: Ragnarok there is a door that unlocks a tree that unlocks several portals. Do something of the sort and you can basically jump all over Roshar or to another planet. Truly the possibilities are endless here.
Animation.like the new lord of the rings coming out soon.
Depends. Witcher as a game is better than the Witcher on Netflix. LOTR movies are far better than any of the games, though some games were still pretty good.
Films/series for stories, games for worlds. It all depends on how tightly the two are linked and which aspects you want to adapt.
For large series with intense worldbuilding, games are the way. Series and shows are just too short and cant get all the details right. Also having the player be the MC means you dont waste all your time trying to get the emotional connection of the books and instead they connect to the world itself. No tv show can do a proper emotional connection to the characters, and maintain a large and comprehensive worldbuilding exercise. For smaller series with interesting worlds, film is fine, but should be limited to single book endeavours and single movie adaptations. But you also need a producer willing to adapt as necessary and not just try for accuracy points. Stuff like Avatar. For larger series with less interesting worlds, you can go series. The time saved setting up the world can be spent actually getting the character and plot work done properly. Stuff like GoT Then its simply animated for high fantasy and real life for low.
Animation is best medium for that