Video games often get their inspiration from historical events, movies, television shows, comics, and even regular books, but it’s not often these days that players see books being published based on video games.
In the early 2000s, as many gaming publishers strove to make video games into multimedia franchises, several books were published based on games and their worlds to expand their universes and drive renewed interest in gaming properties.
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These days, as fewer people read physical books, fewer and fewer books have been made based on video games, but there are still a good number of books out there based on games that are worthwhile reads.
Here’s a list of a few great books based on video games that delve deeper into their universe’s lore, tell enthralling stories, and expand upon characters and events referenced in games.
8 Doom: Hell on Earth
Earth’s Demonic Invasion
-
- Released
- October 10, 1994
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Violence
- Publisher(s)
- GT Interactive
- Engine
- id tech 5
- Franchise
- DOOM
- Nintendo Switch Release Date
- July 26, 2019
- Platform(s)
- Android, iOS, Nintendo Game Boy Advance, PC, Sega Saturn, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PlayStation (Original), Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- How Long To Beat
- 7 Hours
- PS Plus Availability
- Premium
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
1993’s Doom is one of the most impactful video games ever made as it revolutionized first-person shooter gameplay and created the modern multiplayer deathmatch concept, but what it wasn’t especially known for was its story.
Sure, the original Doom and Doom II had a bit of a narrative, mostly found in their manuals, but that wasn’t the focus of the games, with authors Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver taking it upon themselves to expand the games’ stories in Pocket Book’s 1995 novels.
The first Doom book, Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead, was an alright adaptation of the first Doom game, but it wasn’t exceptional, as it was just mostly following Space Marine Flynn “Fly” Taggart describing in first person how he kills demon-like monsters.
The second book, Doom: Hell on Earth, is a bit more interesting as it showcases a complete demon invasion of Earth, with most government agencies immediately surrendering to the invaders and only a few Mormon resistance fighters putting up much of a fight.
7 Mass Effect: Revelation
The First Mass Effect Product
Similar to how Halo: The Fall of Reach was the first Halo product released due to how it was published a few weeks before the debut of Halo: Combat Evolved, the book Mass Effect: Revelation was technically the first Mass Effect product released due to it being published a few months before Mass Effect 1.
Revelation is also similar to The Fall of Reach in that the book is a prequel to the first game, with Revelation taking place in 2157, 26 years before the events of Mass Effect 1 and three years after the birth of Commander Shepard.
The book, written by Drew Karpyshyn, centers around a young David Anderson as he rises through the ranks of the Systems Alliance and the N7 program during the early years of humanity being inducted into the multi-species government, the Citadel Council.
What follows is essentially a murder mystery as Anderson and the reader learn more about alien cultures as well as multiple species’ perspectives surrounding artificial intelligence, setting up events for Mass Effect.
6 Gears of War: Aspho Fields
Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago’s Past
In the Gears of War series, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago are portrayed as extremely close, almost brother-like comrades during their fight against the Locust, but the games never really delve into their past or explain how they got such a close relationship.
Karen Traviss’ 2008 novel, Gears of War: Aspho Fields, goes into great detail on the background of these two soldiers’ relationship, showing how the two, alongside Dominic’s older brother Carlos, grew up together as kids and served alongside each other in the Pendulum Wars.
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The book often flashes back and forth between the past, detailing the soldiers’ harrowing experiences against the Union of Independent Republics, and the present, detailing how the COG is struggling to defend itself in the wake of the Lightmass Offensive seen in Gears of War 1.
5 Star Wars Imperial Commando: 501st
The Imperial Fate of Clone Commandos
Star Wars: Republic Commando is a fairly underrated Star Wars game, being one of the few to focus entirely on Clone Troopers and showcase the more rigid, militaristic side of the galaxy far, far away in Halo-like first-person gameplay.
While the story of the Clone Commando Delta Squad was sadly never continued in a sequel game, their story and the story of other Clone Commando squads were expanded upon in the now Legends Star Wars: Republic Commando novels, also written by Karen Traviss.
This series ended with Star Wars Imperial Commando: 501st, set a few weeks after the end of the Clone Wars, as members of Delta, Omega, and other Clone Commando squads are split between those forced to serve the Galactic Empire and those striving to live a free life.
For a Star Wars book, Imperial Commando is pretty dark as Clone Commandos are forced to brutally hunt down Jedi survivors and sympathizers. Free Clones, meanwhile, struggle to find purpose in life beyond war, while still aging more rapidly than the average human.
4 Assassin’s Creed: Forsaken
The True Story of the Kenway Family
In Assassin’s Creed 3 and Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, players are introduced to the Kenway family, with the pirate turned Assassin Edward Kenway, his Templar son Haytham, and his Assassin grandson Connor, but there are several parts of their lives not shown in the games.
Oliver Bowden’s 2012 novel Assassin’s Creed: Forsaken sheds some light on these mysterious parts of the Kenway family tree, on top of adapting the main plot of Assassin’s Creed 3 in book form, but from the perspective of Haytham.
Despite being published before Black Flag‘s release, Forsaken manages to perfectly fill in the gaps between Assassin’s Creed 3, Black Flag, and bits of Assassin’s Creed Rogue as the book details how Edward raised Haytham and how the former pirate tragically died early on in his son’s life.
The book further delves into Haytham’s young life as a Templar as well as the fate of his older half-sister, Jennifer Scott, who briefly appears at the end of Black Flag.
3 Dead Space: Martyr
The Origin of Unitology
Aside from the zombie-like Necromorphs, the main antagonists of the Dead Space series are the cultist-like members of the oppressive religion Unitology, which dominates most human space.
Unitology’s teachings and their often crazed members are the cause of most Necromorph outbreaks in the series, but their origins are relatively unknown save for the biased history lesson told in Dead Space 2‘s Church of Unitology.
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B. K. Evenson’s 2011 novel, Dead Space: Martyr, delves into the horrifying backstory of Unitology’s “founder” Michael Altman as well as the first Necromorph outbreak on Earth in 2214 following the discovery of the Black Marker deep underwater in the Chicxulub Crater.
Martyr is the terrifying true account of Altman’s life and perfectly illustrates how government and religious movements can manipulate events and history to their own benefit while showcasing how psychologically tormenting the Markers truly are.
Humanity’s First Contact with the Covenant
The Halo franchise is arguably the most prolific video game series to be adapted into book form, having published over 37 novels and an additional 12 comic books since 2001.
While most Halo books are great, I’d argue that one of the best is Joseph Staten’s Halo: Contact Harvest, the fifth Halo novel ever published and the first to properly explain the origins of the Human-Covenant War.
Contact Harvest is primarily set in 2525 on the agricultural Outer Colony world Harvest and follows a young Sergeant Avery Johnson as he struggles to train a local militia who are the only hope of stopping a Covenant invasion force after negotiations go haywire.
Aside from showcasing humanity’s first bloody encounters with the Covenant, Contact Harvest is a perfect glimpse at colonial history, the UNSC’s pre-war struggles with The Insurrection, AI relationships, the Covenant’s inner political and cultural climate, and the trauma of Covenant planetary glassing.
1 BioShock: Rapture
The Rise and Fall of Rapture
The BioShock trilogy of games is, without a doubt, one of the greatest games ever made, and while several audio logs do explore a bit of Rapture’s past, none of them go into quite as much detail as John Shirley’s BioShock: Rapture.
Rapture takes place from 1945-1959, detailing exactly how Andrew Ryan built the underwater city, recruited its citizens, and ultimately how it fell due to its own ideals and the addictive nature of ADAM.
Aside from following Ryan himself, most of the book follows Bill McDonagh, the city’s general contractor and member of its Central Council, as he aids Ryan in building the city, only to see it fall upon itself due to Ryan’s poor governance.
Rapture is a truly enlightening and tragic story as it shows how a seemingly perfect city can still falter under the ambition and addiction of men, but hope still remains with those who act selflessly.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
