Gamertell

In 1998 Sergei Lukyanenko created a dark fantasy mystery-thriller franchise that would grow to include four books, two movies and a computer game.

This Russian craze is known as World of Watches and began with the book Night Watch released in 1998 and translated into English in 2006.  The movie Night Watch was released in 2004, two years earlier than English translation of the book. The move is quite incredible although it is a bit bizarre and only loosely based on the book.

The franchise will soon be expanded further with the book Final Watch being released in English October 2, 2008, and a third movie tentatively titled Twilight Watch and released in 2009.

The PC game Night Watch, developed by Nival Interactive and released in the United States on June 29, 2006, follows both the books and the film. The game is a weird mixture of strategy and role-playing that plays out like Icewind Dale or Baldur’s Gate, which some reviewers didn’t like. The reasoning is that the game is based on a book series that innovated Dark Fantasy for the first time since Clive Barker but the game itself lacks original thought. The storyline is a rich one that connects the times between the three stories of the Night Watch book and the two movies but is a bit convoluted. In the game, Both the Night Watch and the Day Watch find ways to sway Others to Light or Dark with electronic transmitters. Having a party built up of the most recent recruits to both sides you have to stop the scheming on both sides.

Night Watch, the book, stars Anton Gorodetsky as he goes through the mundane tasks of the Nightwatch, essentially trying to prevent an all-out war from breaking out between the forces of Light and Dark. He is a low-level mage who has yet to learn his full potential. Due to his past experience with both the Dark and the Light, he’s a cynic in regards to the forces of Light but has a general distaste for the forces of Dark. The book, as with the other three novels, is broken up into three shorter stories showing Gorodetsky as he tries to come to terms with his growing powers and his own search for love as one of the Others. For those who are unfamiliar, the Others are psuedo-magical beings. Mages, witches, shapeshifters, vampires and werewolves make up this small portion of society.

In the first story, titled “Destiny,“ Gorodetsky’s mission is to track a group of vampires who have been illegally feeding on humans. To do this he channels the vampires by drinking blood. While he is hunting, he comes across two people that change his mission from catching illegal feeders to a mission that would save all of Moscow while protecting two fledgling Others who have greater potential than he has. The movie based on only this part of the first book.

The second story of the Night Watch book, titled “Among His Own Kind,“ is the basis for the 2006 film Day Watch. Someone is killing Dark Ones seemingly without cause and has framed Anton, though he does end up killing a few in self-defense. His mission is to find out who framed him and clear his name. To do this he has to switch bodies with another member of the Night Watch. This naturally leads to a level of comedy with mistaken identity since the person he switches bodies with is a friend and confidante of Anton’s girlfriend.

The third story, titled “All for My Own Kind,“ is simple. The mission of the Night Watch is getting some much needed rest so they go to a cabin owned by one of the members. Anton, being a cynic but also a selfish lover, can’t have fun. Meanwhile Svetlana, his girlfriend, is being put through the motions to becoming a Grand Light Sorceress. He leaves the retreat and heads to Moscow. This almost ruins the ritual to make Svetlana a Grand Light Sorceress. If the past movies are any indicators the third movie might actually end up being based off of this part of the book. We’ll find that out sometime next year.

The other three books (Day Watch, 2006; Twilight Watch, 2007; and Final Watch, 2008) are also divided into three parts each. The premises for the books are the same though each focuses on the growing struggle to stop a world-ending war between good and evil.

Site [Sergey Lukianenko] Site [Night Watch (Game)]

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