What is the best book-to-video game adaptation?

[popopdc]

What are some of the best video games that are based on books or set in universes from books? What made them successful at capturing those books and their worlds?

[ShiraNoMai]

The few I can think of off the top of my head are the Harry Potter games (mainline and LEGO variety) and Lord of the Rings (mainline and LEGO, as well).

Both of those I feel crutch a lot on the movie adaptations (because they were effectively movie games) but from what I gathered, they did expand upon a few things to open it up, especially for things like side quests and fleshing out fights/plotlines for the sake of action/adventure segments.

I can say that the reverse is actually quite neat. Like the Halo book series, for instance, is supposed to be really cool.

[Maniakkid25]

I'm gonna nominate Megami Tensei. Yes, the Persona series and all that started as an adaptation of the book Digital Devil Story: Goddess Reincarnation ("Megami Tensei" literally translates to "Goddess Reincarnation", hence the name of the series) on NES, making it among the oldest continuously updated game series of all time, and the third of the Big Three of JRPGs (the other two being Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest; yes, it's actually that prestigious in its native nation of Japan). Sadly, the books have never officially been released outside of Japan; these are very 1980's pulp fiction type books, and to say that the appeal is niche is understating it. There is a fan translation of the first and second book (it's a three book series), but currently no translation exists for the third as far as I know.

[Moonface]

The few I can think of off the top of my head are the Harry Potter games (mainline and LEGO variety) and Lord of the Rings (mainline and LEGO, as well).

Both of those I feel crutch a lot on the movie adaptations (because they were effectively movie games) but from what I gathered, they did expand upon a few things to open it up, especially for things like side quests and fleshing out fights/plotlines for the sake of action/adventure segments.

I can say that the reverse is actually quite neat. Like the Halo book series, for instance, is supposed to be really cool.

In the case of Harry Potter, I feel like that although they were released to coincide with the movies, they weren't straight-up clones of the movies and would add a lot of original content in until about halfway through the overall series. They weren't like say, the Ratchet & Clank Reimagining, which was blatantly just taking the movie and turning it into playable levels with little scope beyond that.

I've never played them, but the best ones are probably any like The Witcher or Metro and such where a game was made based on/inspired by the books without being tethered to a movie adaptation. I find if a movie adaptation is involved alongside the game adaptation that there's a high chance for the game to be neutered down to what the movie contains in a likely two hour run time blown out to 8+ hours, rather than the game doing its own way of telling the same story of the book.