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Silent Hill by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is perhaps the most popular Japanese author in Russia; even Nobel laureate Ishiguro is unlikely to be able to compete with him. However, Murakami is largely known for the Rat Trilogy, Norwegian Forest, or 1Q84. In them, the reader will find the inner reflection of the characters, conversations about death and love over a glass of wine and a constantly working turntable with another Western disc. It would seem, where is the material for the game, all the more reminiscent of Silent Hill? And here the novel “Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World” comes to our aid.

This novel by Murakami is split into two parallel storylines. In one of them, events take place in the real world and tell about a man who specializes in data processing and encryption using his subconscious. In another, the author draws a certain city frozen in time, in which people live without a shadow – it must be cut off. Locals remember almost nothing about themselves and live in oblivion. It is impossible to get out of the city: it is surrounded by huge walls, which supposedly should protect the inhabitants from the creatures hiding in the forest.

“Wonderland without brakes and the end of the world”, like Silent Hill, is like a dream in which you fall into and cannot get out of it. A mixture of absolutely surreal events and creatures with something quite familiar causes a slight dissonance. And in the adaptation of the novel, Murakami will find a place for his battle scenes, creepy enemies and, if desired, suspense and screamers. At the same time, the result can be a deep game about self-identification, subconsciousness, immortality and memory. At the end of the novel, both storylines will come together, which will give gamers a couple of unexpected twists, and a variety of endings, and romantic lines can make the future title a kind of philosophically sentimental horror. Yes, very often you won’t be able to scare the gamer, but talented developers are quite capable of creating an overall oppressive atmosphere in the spirit of Silent Hill based on the novel by Murakami.

GTA: World War II by Joseph Heller

The theme of World War II in video games is usually reflected in the strategy and shooter genres. What if we create an ironic and rather explicit open-world action around this setting? Some might say that the WWII theme does not fit with humor, but Joseph Heller and his Catch-22 would disagree. The hooligan novel with elements of absurdity has become one of the most iconic works of the 20th century about the war.

The plot revolves around an Air Force captain Yossarian, or rather, his attempts by any means to “roll away” from the service. Name Catch-22 refers to the main paradox of the book: only mentally unhealthy people can leave the war, but if you want to, then you are healthy, because your desire is quite rational, therefore, welcome back to the service.

The absurdity of what is happening is added by one of the key characters of the novel – Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, who decided to streamline the military chaos and build a business around it, or rather, the “Syndicate”, which does not recognize division into conflict parties, but operates only with the concept of benefit. And here “Catch-22” begins to resemble as much as possible a gangster game. A gamer could be engaged in the shadow supply of food and weapons, cover brothels in Italy, conclude “business deals”, including even with the Nazis, and use each military transfer to find new clients and useful contacts, and occasionally go (fly) to the front … It is this senseless and surreal that the war is presented in Heller’s novel. Therefore, the developers would have the opportunity to give the player a huge open world and fill it with even more insane and absurd activities.

In all this surrealism, the storyline would move Yossarian, who, despite everything, still dreams of fleeing the war. And the player could achieve this goal in different ways, which, in their own way, would change the moral character of the protagonist and affect the fate of other characters.

Interactive film by Stuart Turton

Stuart Turton’s detective novel “The Seven Deaths of Evelina Hardcastle” is literally set to one day become a video game. The protagonist Aiden Sloane, who came to a masquerade ball in an old estate, repeats the fate of the character of Bill Murray from the movie Groundhog Day. At the end of the festive evening, an unknown person will kill a young girl Evelyn Hardcastle, and to prevent this, the hero has a week. He will live the same day over and over again, but … in different guises. Sloane will see the events of this day through the eyes of all its participants, so that on the basis of this, he will compose a complete picture of the intrigues taking place in the estate and determine the killer.

At the same time, the whole plot is not built exclusively around the salvation of Evelina Hardcastle, since the hero will have to reveal the secrets of the other guests of the estate, and at the same time investigate the mysterious death of the girl’s brother, which occurred 19 years ago. And all this in the surroundings of Downton Abbey, with the inherent decorations of an English mansion of the 1920s, salon conversations, ostentatious virtue behind which the lowest impulses are hidden, and, of course, constantly drizzling rain and light fog.

The novel itself, even without adaptation to gaming realities, already allows you to create variable gameplay on its basis. In such a detective quest, each new character, in which Aiden Sloane moves, would have his own skills and characteristics, which would affect what information he can get and how to analyze it. For example, being in the role of an obese (very obese) gentleman, the gamer would lose the opportunity to actively track down the killer and participate in the pursuit, but this deficiency would be fully compensated for by excellent deduction.

On top of that, the book’s plot can give developers some wiggle room to implement a really interesting choice system that will influence the narrative. Indeed, the novel has enough situations that make the reader, along with the hero, stop and think about how best to act. Well, the cherry on top – plot twists, the opportunity to make intriguing flashbacks and the variability of the ending. In short, with proper implementation, one of the best titles in the interactive detective genre can turn out. And David Cage, with his script holes, will finally think about how a logical narrative should look like.

Shooter about the war in Yugoslavia by Arturo Perez-Revert

Arturo Perez-Reverte is a famous Spanish writer, famous for his detective stories in the spirit of The Da Vinci Code and historical novels. Perhaps harsh literary critics would call him a “pop author”, but his bibliography contains one very curious work – “Comanche Territory.” In it, Perez-Reverte spoke, among other things, about his own experience of working as a military journalist during the conflict in Yugoslavia. The book does not have a clear plot outline, rather scraps of stories and memories of death, pain, war and the pursuit of exclusive footage to satisfy adrenaline addiction.

Military events in the former Yugoslavia remain a very poorly covered topic in video games, especially against the backdrop of most other conflicts of the 20th century. In addition, the work of Perez-Reverte is devoid of an ideological background, heroization and romanticization of war. The mundane and largely senselessness of bloodshed are also motives quite fresh for video games. The novel adaptation could be divided into two parts. In one, we could play the role of a journalist and, like the hero of Outlast, only with a camera and without weapons, make our way through the hell and madness that is happening around, along the way, carefully documenting everything. In another part, the developers could give the gamer the opportunity to try himself in the role of a soldier performing world tasks. And in the finale, these stories can be brought together by showing the war and its individual events from two different angles – through the rifle scope and the camera lens.

Story-driven survival by Cormac McCarthy

The novels of the American writer Cormac McCarthy are ideal for screen adaptations, which is only “No Country for Old Men”, which was then filmed by the Coen brothers. Why not try adapting his works for video games then? The best place to start is The Road, a dark, post-apocalyptic novel in which the plot revolves around a father and son traveling across America in an attempt to survive and find a place that even remotely resembles the civilized world. No zombies, aliens or mutant animals – the main danger here is represented by people who have lost the remnants of humanity and merged in agony with a dying planet.

“The Road” in many ways could resemble the first The Last of Us, although the amendment is more of a Naughty Dog game borrowing certain features from McCarthy’s novel. But the adaptation of his book could have turned out to be more harsh and even frightening. McCarthy showed that in order to terrify the audience, zombies do not necessarily need to jump out from around the corner – it is enough to bring the main characters into the basement, where a gang of cannibals keeps a “lunch” still alive.

In addition to clashes with gangs, the search for supplies and other attributes of the survival genre, which can be successfully implemented in the post-apocalyptic setting, the game adaptation of The Road, like The Last of Us, could be built around the relationship between the two main characters. The story of a father who tries to help his child adapt to a harsh reality, but at the same time maintain humanity in him, is a heartfelt motive. And at the same time, you can diversify the game with freedom of choice in difficult situations, decisions in which will affect the plot, the morale of the characters and their health: “Should I take the thief’s clothes and doom him to a cold death for his son?” There are many such moral dilemmas in The Road, and it makes us think about the moment at which we lose our humanity and stand on the same level with those cannibals. Against the backdrop of refined and sterile post-apocalypse in the gaming industry, in which there is time for dancing with a girlfriend, “The Road” could become something really dark, serious and deep.

Naturally, this is only a small fraction of cool literary works that would surely become equally powerful games. Therefore, in the comments, tell us which novels, in your opinion, deserve adaptation by game makers.