When franchise novels, etc don't feature familiar characters

[23skidoo]

I recently finished playing Dragon Age: Origins. Quite a fun game, and I was quite happy to learn there were comic books and novels based upon it.

I was disappointed to discover this isn't the case. True, there are novels set in the same universe, but if I was expecting to find a novel expanding Morrigan's story, or featuring Sten or Oghren or any of the characters I liked from the game, no luck (or, rather, little luck - a couple of characters do make brief appearances in the most recent novel Asunder but the other books are all set decades before the game and the comic features stories with unrelated characters; ditto the Felicia Day webseries).

This isn't the first time I've run into that. I loved Mass Effect 2, but the novels and comics mostly lost me because they don't feature the characters I grew attached to. Only exception is the Redemption mini-series that features Liara and Miranda from ME2. Even back in the late 1970s and early 1980s I remember being disappointed that none of the Star Wars novels featured the team from A New Hope - either it was just Luke or Leia on their own, or it was Han Solo and Chewie on their own. And I didn't bother buying the Marvel Comic for months because they got stuck in some bounty hunter arc in which none of the familiar characters (except I think Vader) appeared.

As anyone else here been annoyed with this? I mean, I appreciate the idea of the creation of a fictional universe, and certainly there are tons of Star Trek novels out there focusing on characters outside the various TV series (New Frontier, for example). But I do find it odd early on when a franchise releases spin-offs that don't feature the characters the fans like. Sort of like if James Cameron approved an Avatar novel and it takes place 1000 years before the movie, when most people would want to read more about Jake and Neytiri. When the Star Trek literary franchise began, they didn't pull a New Frontier on us for decades. Likewise, for Doctor Who other than a handful of novels over the years (raise your hands anyone who has actually read Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma) it took until only the last few years before Big Finish started doing audios based on ancillary characters, and even then they often end up tentpegging them to an established, popular character (for example, Leela appearing in the Jago & Litefoot series; Gallifrey featuring Romana and Leela again; the next UNIT miniseries, the first produced since Nicholas Courtney died, features the Seventh Doctor as its tentpeg).

Back to Dragon Age and ME: I get that folks think they can't do novels featuring Warden/Shepherd because the games are set up that the character can be male or female depending on the player's preference (the Redemption miniseries lampshades this at one point) but even so, clever writing would allow the character to appear and not be directly "gendered". It's just a shame to hear that a novel based on a game or film I like is coming out, only to find little of interest unless I've become deeply invested in the universe of a game or film (and sometimes I do, but sometimes I just like the characters; that's probably why I never really got into Myst and its novels - the characters never appealed to me).

Alex

 

[bullethead]

I actually find the opposite to be true, at least during the production run of movies/episodes/games/whatever. I prefer tie-in stuff that doesn't directly involve the plot or characters since anything that happens is usually invalidated in the primary medium or becomes critical to understanding what is going on in the next installment of the primary medium.

The worst kind of tie-in is the one where it's mostly disconnected from the primary medium in terms of characters, but is still incorporated into the primary medium to some degree, because those sorts of things usually set up or flesh out events or characters that just show up out of nowhere and the audience is supposed to care about. That sort of thing is just grating, especially since it's become a crutch for writers who don't want to spend time establishing and fleshing out characters in the work itself and just expect everyone to read the lead up material or know someone who did.

 

[Kegg]

I recently finished playing Dragon Age: Origins. Quite a fun game, and I was quite happy to learn there were comic books and novels based upon it.

I was disappointed to discover this isn't the case.

Well I think the difficulty with a game like Dragon Age or Mass Effect is that there's simply a large level of choice. Innumerable character arcs and plot points are basically things that are decided through the actions and inactions of the player, and the main protagonist is, yes, a blank slate with various degrees of customisation dependent on the game.

The reverse course would be, for example, how the Star Wars franchise has handled Revan and the Jedi Exile from Knights of the Old Republic, which kind of underlines this issue. You have a lot of characters going on about Revan, but he's not my Revan, and that's not the story I played through, so I have no real attachment to this character other characters are discussing.

Turning a multiple choice story into one with 'right' and 'wrong' answers, to me, kind of undermines the multiple choice bit. It's required obviously for any decision-based RPG that's set in a wider universe (like Star Wars), but otherwise is preerable to avoid... which makes telling prequels or stories otherwise unrelated to the choices of the player-protagonist the best direction to expand literary works.

On the other hand, a good way for such games to expand their story content in a way that plays to the strengths of the player-driven system is DLCs, and these games tend to have a lot of them.