The book, which delves deep into the cyberpunk dystopia of the game, will be penned by James Swallow, whose previous science-fiction literary efforts include work in the Warhammer 40K, Star Trek, and Stargate franchises.
As for the novel, it is set in the not-too-distant future, a time when great innovation and technology mesh with chaos and conspiracy. The narrative will center around two "unlikely heroes": Anna Kelso, a Secret Service agent, and Ben Saxon, a special-ops soldier. Additionally, some of the novel's characters and story elements will overlap both the novel and the video game. Neither Deus Ex: Human Revolution nor The Icarus Effect have a release date more specific than 2011.
This doesn't sound very promising. The name alone makes me cringe.
Something tells me Square Enix just wants to whore out the IP as much as they possibly can.
I'm not actually that negative towards this. I'm entirely neutral. Good or bad I'm unlikely to read the book so it doesn't much matter to me.
My guess on where the negativity comes from is that it stems from one or more of the following:
1) "unlikely heroes" is not a description that is often associated with good things. There are shining examples with which it is associated, but most of the time it comes up it's like a neon sign reading, "This will probably suck." It works for children's books pretty well though. So if the Secret Service agent is a mouse and the special ops guy is a water shrew, it just might work.
It is made more problematic by who it is being applied too, a Secret Service agent and a special-fucking-ops soldier are unlikely heroes? Yeah, and Godzilla is unlikely to cause property damage. Generally speaking when the term "unlikely hero" can be applied to someone whose job description is "likely hero" it means a massive case of "Did not do the research" or wall banger after wall banger so bad you could carve a hallway through the Pentagon with your forehead.
Secret Service agent and special-ops soldier are not jobs that necessarily will make someone a hero, but they don't give you the job in the first place unless they think that, should the situation arise, it's pretty damned likely you'll be a hero. There's a good chance if you become a Secret Service agent that you'll end up spending your time tracking down counterfeit money and never be given the opportunity to be a hero, but the fact they made you an agent means that they think you meet a certain standard. It means that if you become a hero no one should be surprised.
Calling those two people unlikely heroes and then saying what they do for a living is like when you say a character is the world's greatest investigative journalist and then the only example of his writing you give is, "To say the Israelis were caught off guard, Cameron Williams had written, was like saying the Great Wall of China was long," and you never, ever show him investigating a story he intends publish.
This presents a problem, if we are to believe the only description we have, something doesn't line up. These people are in a position where you'd have to be a likely hero to be there and yet they're unlikely. Why are they unlikely? Is she a drunk and he a complete and utter coward? Then why haven't they been fired? For any possible explanation that would make them unlikely, why haven't they been fired or transfered into a different job? How did they get the jobs in the first place?
2) Chaos and conspiracy. When and where is this set? Israel might work. If the Pan-Arab invasion didn't result in a stable replacement there could be chaos there. Places where there is chaos now would probably work as well, places on the edge would as well.
If it is set around the same time as Deus Ex 3, China is not an option. Hong Kong is even less of an option than the rest of China. The US and Europe aren't options. Mexico and Canada can only be options insofar as it is possible for them to be chaotic without screwing up the US too much. Can't be Australia.
We're talking about at least (er, approximately at least, maybe) 40% of the world's population living an orderly existence and that's supposed to be a time of chaos? Even assuming that everywhere else is going nuts, how chaotic can they be if it never spills over into three out of six inhabited continents or China? How chaotic can things be globally if everyone is still respecting borders and making sure not to have a major economic impact on any of those not actively chaosing out?
Sure there can be local chaos, we've got tons of that now, but for it to be A Time Of Chaos without being, you know, a time of chaos seems somewhat odd. That said, chronology is hazy here, so they can presumably get away with just about anything, and there is one nuclear war that doesn't have a date attached.
3) Maybe they're familiar with the author and don't like his work.
4) It sounds like a slush pile plot. It certainly could be good, but the description might as well read, "It will end with the revelation that his name is Adam and her name is Eve," for all the originality it exudes. There's no guarantee that such stories will suck, but they have a higher tendency to do so than stories that are not, "Unlikely heroes in a time of chaos and conspiracy," because there's something missing from the quoted description: the story.
With the exception of points 1 and 3 above, what we've been told tells us nothing. It might as well have said, "Stuff happens, there are characters." Other than telling us that the main characters are an Secret Service agent and a special-ops soldier who won't be written like a Secret Service agent and a special ops soldier, what have they told us? The setting is something that sounds like it's from the mind of a five year old. That's not a problem (a one sentence description of Deus Ex's setting probably would too), but for something to be good it needs more than that, much much more. We're given no indication such things exist. Instead the impression is left that this buddy cop book will hinge on the unlikeliness of the likely heroes and the genericness of the described setting. Which makes it sound like slush.
Maybe there's a good reason not to share the through line or deliver half decent elevator pitch at this time, but since we don't know of that reason, if it exists, it appears that the books selling points are probably what has been shared, and those are almost certainly not the selling points of a good book.
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More than anything above, there's almost no information given and the little information that is given doesn't make any sense if you're higher up the evolutionary ladder than a demented bee. Does that mean it will be bad? No. Not at all.
But when the only information you have is a few tidbits, some negative and others actually neutral but strongly reminiscent of crap at first glance, I don't think you can blame people for being negative.
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I'm also guessing that the moment someone actually describes why they view this as a negative development all of my guesses above will be proven completely wrong.
Slush pile indeed. As with books written with the story taken from movies after they're released are hardly engaging reads, I don't think one based on a game will be all that thrilling. I'm now waiting for the announcement Matel will be be releasing action figures as well. ffs
Growing old is inevitable.......Growing up is optional
Slush pile that and its being rushed to be released with the game. Also nearly ever video game related novel I've read in recent years has been terrible, I wasn't a huge fan of Mass Effect's novel and also that GOD AWFUL Elder Scrolls Novel- a lot of these things are created not to be good, but to just sell. To write a good novel takes time and to write a highly successful novel requires something different from the rest, already its at a disadvantage.
Furthermore the writer's credibility doesn't completely bode well, it seems like he's been forced into a science fiction/video game type cast so I doubt anything massively original is going to come from the author- but he could prove me wrong. I can also see the fact that it is a cyberpunk novel and instantly that dooms it when selling it to literature buffs- because they're pretty unanimous in saying that cyberpunk is dead, now that I think of it there really hasn't been a majorly successful cyberpunk novel in the past 10 years. Simply all its here for is to sellout for the fan dollars and I don't approve of that.
Just to add to my initial comment, that was just my immediate first impression and I didn't have time to expand.
My 'wtf' is aimed at mainly the fundamental concept of a novel being written about a computer game. I'm not sure about anyone else, but to me that just sounds bizarre. 'Bizarre' meaning neither good nor bad, but just a really strange idea. I don't know if this is common-place in the world of gaming, but I think it just sounds a bit odd. Having said that, if a decent, official and canonical book was written about the original DX, I'd certainly give it a go. And if this one turns out to be any good, and I'm interested enough in DX3 after playing it, maybe I'll take a look at it as well.
And we were expecting much from a videogame tie-in?
If DX was popular enough, I could see a good book being written within the DX universe, but not in phase with game releases. It might end up passable, but I'm probably not going to read it either. I vote that Chris be chosen to read the book for the forum, in case the "overlapping story elements" affect DX canon ;-)
Needs editing to remove the radio and game crap, and it sounds like they dubbed it off the radio into an MP3 and reencoded it as a low-bitrate FLV (as if...). Here's a less crapified version that can be skipped through (I suggest mplayer/vlc to skip ahead by 10sec intervals)- http://www.sheldonpacotti.com/games/KFJCdx20011104.mp3
