It's kinda funny to me, because I was just at the Doctor's office the other day, and he asked about my Kindle, which had just froze while I was waiting.Denamic said:I just had a moment to let that sink in.Grey Carter said:
This is amazing.
That's not entirely true. The book "Rapture" by John Shirley was pretty good. Wasn't amazing, but it did a fantastic job of filling in the gaps of Bioshock's story and putting more sympathy behind the characters. It's the only one I've read, but I thought it was pretty decent.SurfinTaxt said:
It is kind of bad when it happens with books.M920CAIN said:
The first two ME books were also damn good. Of course, they're still written by the head writer of the first Mass Effect game, but still.Sinclair Solutions said:
Oh, I'll happily admit that I've only read the first two and a half books. Can't bear reading any more of them to be honest.SurfinTaxt said:
I didn't mean to compare Martin to Jordan (and especially not Goodkind, he really is not good) in any way other than he, in my opinion could benefit from trimming some filler out. He is certainly a better writer than both of those. I was perhaps being a little glib.SurfinTaxt said:
I really don't mean to interrupt in this little thing you've got going here, but: You do realise that the first three mass effect books were written by the game's lead designer? I find it hard to believe that someone who was the lead figurehead in the creation the universe would "water it down" simply because he's writing it on pages. I'm aware Drew isn't the greatest author but he's written pretty damn good books in the past (Darth Bane novels, the previous ME books before this one)And I'd say they were hardly atrocities.SurfinTaxt said:
So if I want to read the book in a renegade or paragon voice do I get a different ending or are we still waiting on that dlc?Grey Carter said:
Grey Carter said:
Problem with that idea is that editing a book is a LOT cheaper than refunding EVERY BOOK THAT WAS SOLD. Most games, when they are unplayable at launch don't get refunded, they are just patched. Calling it non-canon could of been done, and would of been cheaper, but than you have to explain to your investors why your not selling the book that you spent their money to publish.Therumancer said:You know, as I've been saying since my PnP RPG days, it would be nice if in situations companies like this not only declared something non-canon, but actually instituted a recall and refund on products.
Correcting "errors" in something like this is kind of pointless, and hurts the lore and franchise. It's sort of like how companies like Palladium and WoTC/TSR/Hasbro/whever has D&D have made revisions within differant printings of the same "edition" of a PnP book, or how sometimes there will be differances between printings of a given novel. I remember actually sitting down with differant printings of RIFTs, say the main book or Silver Anniversary copy and finding other pre-Ultimate Edition copies that had differances in them. A major shock in that community came about when the now-ancient "RIFTS Japan" was released and some of the classes were listed as having special abillities referancing mechanics that were not in the game originally. Say if you had an original copy of RIFTs, explaining that some Ninja could make a dodge against ranged weapons with less of a penelty was a "WTF" moment. It was referring to the stupid addition of a -10 to all dodges against ranged attacks without the defender being able to use his dodge bonus (now infamous) that simply wasn't in the game before more recent printings and thus probably like 90% of the people were oblivious to. Not to mention how paticularly dumb this rule was to begin with, even if you understand the reasoning which is an entirely differant cup of beans.
The point is that companies need to take responsibility for the things they do, and crap printed products that do damage to an established property. Just as a toddler toy that represents a choking hazard gets recalled with a sincere apology, the same should happen to bad RPG books, or lore-destroying novels like this one.
To be honest, I'm avoiding "Deception" intenitonally, even if I don't normally read much game tie-in fiction. I would however like a side by side analysis as to whether or not this is a worse affrong to the established universe it claims to represent than the famed Harry Potter fanfiction "My Immortal" (which I did try and read... but it causes almost physical pain, I kid you not). Perhaps an idea for an episode of "No Right Answer"? Perhaps an extra long pod-cast edition featuring readings of both works one after another... the guys from Drinking games could stop by with booze to help kill the pain part way through.
