In contrast to the rules and limitations of cinema, television, and video games, the creative freedom in the world of literature is boundless, making it the perfect storytelling medium. That's not to say that there aren't well-constructed tales to be found in games, but when adapting a work from one medium to another, it's vital to remember their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Books are a considerably less restrictive medium than films, making them an ideal subject matter to adapt into video games. This is probably one of the reasons why there are more quality games based on literature compared to the avalanche of shoddily-made movie or TV tie-ins. The best video games based on books take themes, characters, and settings from the written word into the realm of gaming.
Updated on March 7th, 2023 by Jackson Lockhart: With more and more games drawing inspiration from books, and with many classic games having their literary inspirations forgotten, this list has been updated to reflect the rich history of book-to-game adaptations.
17 I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream
Based On: I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream By Harlan Ellison
Much like the Harlan Ellison short story of the same name, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a graphic adventure centered on a group of humans who are tortured by a sentient supercomputer known as AM, voiced by Ellison himself.
The game expands upon the story by placing the characters in their own personal scenarios that force them to confront their inner demons. Each scenario features a morality system where players can solve puzzles righteously or at the expense of others. Depending on the choices the player makes, many different outcomes are possible.
16 Dynasty Warriors
Based On: The Romance Of The Three Kingdoms By Luo Guanzhong
Although not as well known in the West as other famous Chinese works of literature, such as The Art of War or Journey to the West, Luo Guanzhong's The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is nonetheless one of the most important pieces of literature in Chinese history. Itself a spin-off of the strategy game The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Omega Force and Koei Tecmo's action fighting game Dynasty Warriors is their most successful game, having sold over 20 million copies.
Set in the historical period of China's Three Kingdoms, much like the novel, Dynasty Warriors features Chinese nobles and lords based on real historical figures as they fight each other for control of China, seeking to unite it under a single dynasty. Originally a traditional fighting game, the series has evolved into more of a hack-and-slash game, with the battles between playable characters representing the historical battles as told in the original novel.
15 Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments
Based On: The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Developer Frogwares incorporates different literary influences in their Sherlock Holmes titles. Nemesis had the consulting detective take on Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin, and The Awakened incorporated some Lovecraftian mythos. What might be their finest title took inspiration from Fyodor Dostoevsky's tale of guilt and redemption entitled Crime and Punishment.
The game is separated into six self-contained cases, with many of the perpetrators having sympathetic motives. Much like Dostoevsky's detective, the player is given the option of turning the guilty party over to the authorities or simply looking the other way.
14 A Total War Saga: Troy
Based On: The Illiad By Homer
Homer's Iliad may very well be the most famous story ever told and is one of the most important works in the entire Western literary tradition. The story of Paris and Helen, the greed of Agamemnon, the genius of Odysseus, and the undying love between Achilles and Patroclus have rung through the ages and been told and retold in different forms throughout the millennia. The characters appeared in everything from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy to Supergiant Games' Hades.
A Total War Saga: Troy did a fantastic job of adapting these famous characters and their stories into the format of their games. The rage of Achilles, arguably the central focus of The Iliad, plays a major role in how he fights and governs for players who select him. Odysseus, on the other hand, is far more cunning and relies on strategy rather than numbers. The game also features different modes, such as a more realistic mode that plays out much like the historical Trojan War may have and a fantastical mode with mythological monsters and divine intervention more in-line with Homer's tale.
13 Discworld Noir
Based On: The Discworld Series By Terry Pratchett
Perfect Entertainment finally found its stride with its third game based on the Discworld series. After two titles that suffered from obtuse puzzle logic and creative liberties taken with the source material, Noir offered an original tale that played to the medium's strengths rather than a loose adaption of Terry Pratchett's previous works.
The city of Ankh-Morpork takes on a more Maltese Falcon atmosphere with a little bit of H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. While the pre-rendered graphics haven't aged as well as the cartoony art style of the first two games, the humorous writing and vocal performances still shine.
12 World War Z
Based On: World War Z By Max Brooks
Max Brooks's World War Z may very well be the greatest work of zombie fiction ever made, but its history in adaptations has been poor. The 2013 movie was almost unrecognizably different from the book, with very little overlap, if any. The 2019 video game, on the other hand, fell far more in line with the novel while keeping arguably the only good thing the movie came up with: incredibly fast, crowded hordes of zombies.
The levels, which are designed similarly to Left 4 Dead, feature moving between locations and facing down hordes of zombies at a time, but are more reminiscent of the novel. The levels feature the evacuation of Japan, the disastrous battle of Yonkers, where the U.S. Military was defeated by the infected population of New York City, and Father Sergei Popov in Moscow, on his mission from God to wipe the Earth clean of the infection. The standout feature is its game engine, designed specifically to be able to handle hordes of thousands of zombies at a time. There really is no other zombie experience quite like it.
11 Suikoden
Based On: Water Margin By Shi Nai'an
Suikoden takes inspiration from the Shi Nai'an novel Shui Hu Zhuan, in which 108 warriors rebel against an oppressive government. Like its source material, Suikoden allows the player to recruit up to 107 party members to their cause.
While the game's use of sprite-based characters on a polygonal battlefield was seen as dated when compared to other PlayStation titles, the feature of recruiting hundreds of characters was fairly unique for JRPGs. Game designer Warren Spector deemed the game as one of his favorites and an influence on his titles such as Deus Ex and Epic Mickey.
10 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
Based On: Rainbow Six By Tom Clancy
The latest entry in the long-running series, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege took a different approach than its previous iterations. While still featuring the central concept of an international team of experts in counter-terrorism, Siege opted for a war games style of game, wherein the different operators would compete against each other. As they practiced attacking or defending, they trained themselves to be the ultimate response team.
Despite its differences, the game has nonetheless managed to distinguish itself as one of the best hero shooters of its generation and remains a fixture of competitive gaming. Time will only tell if Rainbow Six Extraction will match the quality and reception of Siege, but for the foreseeable future, Rainbow Six Siege remains one of the best team-based games on the market today.
9 Metro: Last Light
Based On: Metro 2033 & Metro 2034 By Dmitry Glukhovsky
Based on a series of novels by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro Last Light is an FPS that takes place in a post-apocalyptic Moscow. With nuclear radiation poisoning much of the air, survivors have taken shelter in the subway system, using whatever resources they can scrounge to get by.
Much like the bottle caps in Fallout, bullets serve as the unique currency in this wasteland, forcing players to choose between more ammunition or a better weapon. What sets this apart from other nuclear wasteland games is a strong emphasis on supernatural elements, such as the many creatures players encounter.
8 Spec Ops: The Line
Based On: Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad
Yager Development decided to go in a more psychological and narrative-heavy direction with their foray into the long-running Spec Ops series. Drawing influence from the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Spec Ops: The Line sees a trio of soldiers taking on a recon mission in an occupied Dubai. However, things don't go as planned, and they're treated as hostiles by the soldiers they came to rescue.
In spite of their orders to fall back, Captain Walker and his team decide to press on. As the story progresses, Walker's morality and sanity are tested when he crosses the proverbial line.
7 Far Cry 2
Based On: Heart Of Darkness By Joseph Conrad And Red Harvest By Dashiell Hammett
The Far Cry games truly gained popularity with its third entry, which remains one of the best-selling and most beloved games in the franchise. But it was Far Cry 2 that truly set the trends that have made the series one of Ubisoft's staple franchises, improving the mechanics of the original and making its tone and setting more distinct. Future games in the series would follow more in line with the mechanics of Far Cry 2, most notably including the use of a charismatic but unpredictable and dangerous villain.
The arms dealer known as the Jackal, the main antagonist of Far Cry 2, initially seems to be a mirror to Kurtz, the imperialist character in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but he is later revealed to be far more morally nuanced. The story also takes inspiration from Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, as the player character ends up destroying both factions rather than choosing a side.
6 Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Based On: The Lord Of The Rings By J.R.R. Tolkien
Monolith's Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor allowed players to explore the more visceral side of J.R.R. Tolkien's acclaimed fantasy series. The rain-soaked hostile land of Mordor is the player's oyster as the game mixes the parkour movement of the Assassin's Creed franchise with the rhythm-based combat of the Batman: Arkham titles.
Unique to this game was the nemesis system that gave enemy orcs distinct names, personalities, and weaknesses. Orcs who manage to kill the player get promoted and derisively recount the previous fray if challenged again. Eventually, players could game the hierarchy of Sauron's forces to their advantage.
5 Parasite Eve
Based On: Parasite Eve By Hideaki Sena
In Parasite Eve, Square mixed elements of Capcom's Resident Evil franchise with its own history of character-driven JRPGs. Based on the novel of the same name by Hideaki Sena, the game puts players in control of an NYPD officer named Aya Brea, who attempts to stop the deadly Mitochondria Eve and her attempt to wipe out the human race.
The dark subject matter made Parasite Eve the first Square tile to be rated M by the ESRB. This PlayStation classic saw a sequel on the same system and an abysmal soft reboot with The 3rd Birthday on the PSP.
4 Dune II: The Building Of A Dynasty
Based On: Dune By Frank Herbert
The Dune series, particularly the first novel, has been notoriously difficult to adapt to other media. Before the 2021 film, the most successful adaptation was, surprisingly, a board game. But there have been other noteworthy adaptations, like the early PC game Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty. It established several key features of the real-time strategy genre, including the fog of war, a technology tree, the need to gather resources, base-building, and, most critically, featured one of the very first AI in an RTS game.
While its graphics can't hold a candle to modern RTS games, nor the upcoming Dune game based on the visually-stunning film by Denis Villeneuve, it nonetheless paved the way for the entire RTS genre. It would go on to be a massive influence for some of the biggest names in early RTS games, such as Warcraft, Command & Conquer, and Starcraft.
3 The Witcher III: Wild Hunt
Based On: The Witcher Series By Andrzej Sapkowski
It's safe to say that CD Projekt Red's video adaptions of Andrzej Sapkowski's fantasy novels helped push The Witcher series into the mainstream. While the novels managed to achieve a huge following in Eastern European territories, it wasn't until the game adaptions that the series became the international success that it is.
The third installment, Wild Hunt, is the culmination of everything the Polish studio had learned and is easily the finest entry in the trilogy. While those who have played the first two installments will get little nods and Easter eggs, Wild Hunt is still perfectly accessible to newcomers.
2 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow Of Chernobyl
Based On: Roadside Picnic By Arkady And Boris Strugatsky
With the long-awaited, long-delayed sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl finally on the verge of release, there's never been a better time to revisit this Slavic classic. Based on the novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. follows a similar pattern of events. In the world of Roadside Picnic, six small towns across the world were the subject of first contact with a mysterious and powerful alien race and are now contaminated and kept quarantined from the outside world due to the inexplicable phenomenon that occurs there.
In S.T.A.L.K.E.R., however, a mysterious disaster occurred for the second time within the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where criminals and adventurers have created a new life within the zone, fleeing into it to avoid the law or in search of profit through bounties, finding artifacts, or performing tasks for researchers. With mutants, other hostile stalkers, deadly radiation, and mysterious forces plaguing the zone, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is one of the most unique RPGs available, and its popularity is no surprise.
1 Bioshock
Based On: Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead By Ayn Rand
Ken Levine's Bioshock was a narrative-heavy shooter that tasked players with surviving the dangerous underwater city of Rapture. The ethos behind Andrew Ryan's would-be utopia was largely taken from the objectivist themes found in the works of Ayn Rand.
Rand's books, such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, advocated rugged individualism while decrying government interference and compromising with the whims of the poor and the weak. However, the impracticalities of such a society prove to be Rapture's undoing, culminating in a hellish dystopia whose inhabitants become unhinged and drugged-out shadows of their former selves.