Khay
2016-06-11, 01:14 PM
So you may have heard of the Baldur's Gate videogame triology - a series of incredibly popular (and incredibly good) AD&D-based Western RPGs. Developed by Bioware in the late 90s/early 00s, the games are sometimes credited with reviving the then-stagnant RPG videogame genre (alongside other classics such as Diablo and Fallout).
What you may not have heard is that the game series also has a novelization. (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baldur's_Gate_trilogy_(novels)) The novels are known mainly for three things: a) Their existence makes for a good trivia question, b) they are canon, and c) they are complete garbage. Or they have that reputation, at least. I've always been curious about the novels, so when I had to go on a five-hour train ride for work-related reasons the other day, I decided to grab a few ebooks and take a look myself.
My verdict? The books are... well, they're just bad. I really mean they're just bad - they're not quite bad enough to wrap around to "so bad it's good" status. The writing is fairly consistently on the lower end of "competent" which means that, for the most part, the novels are just kinda tedious. At the same time, they're extremely short, so at least they're over before the experience becomes unbearable. It's really just airport bookstore-grade Thud and Blunder (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThudAndBlunder). Basically, if it wasn't for the contrast with the games, the novels would've probably just gotten a few lukewarm reviews, then faded into obscurity.
To put it another way: The novels aren't great Let's Read fodder. I was planning to do a sporking, basically; put up a thread in the forums, do weekly posts, and snark my way through the books to numb the pain. But I can only say "So Abdel kills a guy and Jaheira gasps at how manly he is" so many times before it becomes boring.
So I'm going to do a different thing! Basically, I'm going to put the novels and the games side-by-side and do a long-form dissection. I'm going to make the same choices in the games that the protagonist makes in the books (whenever possible) and contrast the two storylines. I'll try to be objective as possible and only bring the snark when it's really deserved - which is going to be quite often, mind. In addition to judging the novels on their own merits (such as they are) I'll pay very close attention to whether the novels do the source material justice, and whether the story they tell is better or worse than the story told by the games.
So TL;DR: Consider this post an interest check - would you want to follow a combined Let's Play/Let's Read thread? The Let's Play part is going to require a fairly significant amount of effort (Abdel makes really dumb choices) so I'll only do it if people are interested.
What you may not have heard is that the game series also has a novelization. (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Baldur's_Gate_trilogy_(novels)) The novels are known mainly for three things: a) Their existence makes for a good trivia question, b) they are canon, and c) they are complete garbage. Or they have that reputation, at least. I've always been curious about the novels, so when I had to go on a five-hour train ride for work-related reasons the other day, I decided to grab a few ebooks and take a look myself.
My verdict? The books are... well, they're just bad. I really mean they're just bad - they're not quite bad enough to wrap around to "so bad it's good" status. The writing is fairly consistently on the lower end of "competent" which means that, for the most part, the novels are just kinda tedious. At the same time, they're extremely short, so at least they're over before the experience becomes unbearable. It's really just airport bookstore-grade Thud and Blunder (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThudAndBlunder). Basically, if it wasn't for the contrast with the games, the novels would've probably just gotten a few lukewarm reviews, then faded into obscurity.
To put it another way: The novels aren't great Let's Read fodder. I was planning to do a sporking, basically; put up a thread in the forums, do weekly posts, and snark my way through the books to numb the pain. But I can only say "So Abdel kills a guy and Jaheira gasps at how manly he is" so many times before it becomes boring.
So I'm going to do a different thing! Basically, I'm going to put the novels and the games side-by-side and do a long-form dissection. I'm going to make the same choices in the games that the protagonist makes in the books (whenever possible) and contrast the two storylines. I'll try to be objective as possible and only bring the snark when it's really deserved - which is going to be quite often, mind. In addition to judging the novels on their own merits (such as they are) I'll pay very close attention to whether the novels do the source material justice, and whether the story they tell is better or worse than the story told by the games.
So TL;DR: Consider this post an interest check - would you want to follow a combined Let's Play/Let's Read thread? The Let's Play part is going to require a fairly significant amount of effort (Abdel makes really dumb choices) so I'll only do it if people are interested.