Gamertell

The first-person shooter Fire Warrior has been adapted into a novel. The Dawn of War games also have a novel attributed to them. The Warhammer 40,000 franchise is going pretty strong. However, with the multitude of novels and the sparse amount of games in the franchise, it is a bit surprising there aren’t more games based on great books.

With the novels in place, the Warhammer 40k franchise is in prime positioning for different styles of videogames. The Eisenhorn trilogy, for example, is one of The Black Library’s best Warhammer 40k trilogies that would make a great set of games if done correctly, possibly as film noir, detective, horror and/or espionage games.

The Eisenhorn books follow one of the best Imperial Inquisitors known to man, Gregor Eisenhorn. He has hunting down conspirators who are trying to throw the Imperium of Man into chaos. These conspirators also try to make it seem that Eisenhorn has become a heretic and joined the side of chaos. To clear his name he must hunt down and destroy the people and things who are trying to ruin him. The agents include Chaos Marines, daemonhosts, fellow inquisitors and one of the most influential families in that specific galaxy.

The style of the Condemned games would lend itself particularly well due to the gritty undertones, investigative aspects and visceral gameplay. The Elder Scrolls presentation would also work well since they have such a massive scope.

Even the health and sanity system in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth lends itself to a potential game. Rely on physical indicators of your character’s health rather than a HUD. If your character is limping, you have to either mend a broken leg or remove a bullet. If you’re bleeding stop the bleeding before you die. If you’re having trouble aiming, you probably broke a bone in your arm or hand that makes it difficult to hold the weapon or aim with much accuracy. If the character goes too crazy due to images that would disturb a normal person, they break down and possibly commit suicide.

The Eisenhorn trilogy would be ideal for a survival horror FPSes. It really wouldn’t be that hard to write up a script since the dialogue for the books are fine as-is. The story is enticing and the imagery already is written up. It would just take an ambitious team of designs to set something up in the proper scope in design.

Site [The Black Library: Eisenhorn]