Books vs Film

I've been watching rather a lot of telly over my week off, as well as reading around 1000 pages on and off. I've managed to avoid the games, although I've still played them a little. What I'm thinking about at the moment is the relative merits of the 3 methods of telling a story. I'll start with games ...

The games I like tend to have a strong aspect of Role Play type involved in them. They either follow the story of your character or the story of your empire. The "protagonist" will evolve over time, either expanding as an empire or improving as a character. Almost all games will have a story planned out that guides the evolution of the character, as it gains abilities, weapons or just places to go. However, where most fall down is the amount of variation they allow with games without variation being called Linear. The games that will be remembered have multiple endings or multiple paths to get through to the ending. Each time you play, you'll have a different story. There's also a chance for choice, although I almost always go the "good" path and struggle to maintain an "evil" path if the game allows one.

The big drawback of story games though is the effort that needs to be put in to progress. There's usually a difficulty level built into the game, some games are pitched at a level that's so high that it gets frustrating. Yes, there may be a cracking story built in there but it can get extremely tedious banging on the shell over and over again to get the chestnuts out. It's still a decent way of telling a story but needs the difficulty pitched just right to avoid it being an Interactive Movie but also to avoid it being too hard and an exercise in masochism.

On to TV ... Telly and film is the lazy way of being told a story, it just involves sitting in front of a screen and allowing the story to wash over you. It has the advantage of allowing timing and hopefully a little originality. The actors and actresses put their own stamp on how the story comes across, although some are better than others. I've become a big fan of both House MD and NCIS over the past few months because as well as presenting good stories, they have excellent character interaction. The screen also allows the director to show the imagery required by their story, instead of relying on the imagination. Babylon 5 is an excellent example here of imagery that supported an excellent story, instead of hiding the lack of story that was 10,000 BC.

Trouble with TV and film though is that often the budget will interfere. Either they don't have the money to afford the imagery, sets or sheer number of people or they can't fit what they want into the time. The film 300 was excellently paced, it was as long as it needed to be. However, I had a chance to watch again a documentary on the battle of Thermopylae and associated naval battle and again found that documentary to be relying on padding to make it fit its slot of 2 hours with ads. We see also the Star Trek Syndrome, where there will be a problem running through the whole episode, that's only solved in the last 10 minutes. Or a double episode that's been split to add in a cliff hanger, even though the story to be told could only really support 1.5 episodes.

There's a good contrast with the Sharpe stories. There's a symbiotic relationship here, with the books and TV series depending on each other. The TV series depends on the books to get the story, however the series has no hope of keeping up with the scale of the Napoleonic Era engagements in the books. The TV series relies on adaptations that are of a scale that can be afforded and concentrates on character interaction. The books can go full out with the scale, with the reader's imagination painting the picture of 10's of thousands of men facing each other with muskets. The circle of symbiosis comes from the TV series providing publicity for the books, I don't think there would have been so many Sharpe books without that publicity.

On to books. These can break all the rules that both games and TV have to deal with. The reader's imagination translates what the author has put on the page and the only limit is the skill of the author at describing what's happening. Books can also take a break from narrative for a page or two to add in descriptions of the situation, the hardware or the customs. TV and film can't really do that, except as narration from people on screen. There's still the chance for fun, although the timing tends to depend on the reader's speed.

Some authors are better than others though. I'm taking a break from Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series because I found the first two a bit long and tedious. In comparison, David Weber's At All Costs was well paced at 900 pages. I'll still read the WorldWar books but I'll read some better ones in the meantime. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks got read through this week, next step is Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds.

Coming full circle, I had a moment of weakness this week and gave Amazon a bit of trade ... I acquired the first series of Blakes Seven, which had its first three episodes watched last night. The excuse was me acquiring the D&D Players Handbook, which will see some extended service starting tomorrow night. I covered Role Play Games via computer above but it's a bit different when you're playing them with other people, away from the computer influence. It's a lot more fun, plus the tediousness of computer RPGs gets taken away by a person acting as the Game Master. They'll interpret the rules, some will try their hardest to kill players :-) but they'll also know that it's more fun to finish the story which is easier to do with players that are still alive.

TV, games, books all have their place and they all allow a different scope in how they allow their stories to be told. Games are let down by excessive repetition, although the online game Eve is a good leader here because groups of players write the story by which its universe is developing. The developers just write the rules they play by. Games like Warcraft have fixed content that you can only experience if you put an insane amount of time in. TV series often don't get the time to get the wider story underway, Babylon 5 only just got a 5th season approved and the spinoff Crusade was cynically axed before it had a chance to blossom. For books, sometimes I think that a series will go on a bit too far. Anne McCaffrey's Dragon series suffered when it sprouted a history that I think broke its self consistency. Other series need to keep raising the stakes until things get a bit silly. I have a feeling this may be where David Weber's Honor Harrington books will fail, although that point hasn't been reached just yet. This isn't just books though, Stargate SG-1 went on for two series too long when it could have ended properly with a season ending time travel episode.

Right - time for a closing bit ... I haven't touched Baldur's Gate 2 for a good few weeks and I last left my mercenary army on the outskirts of Meduna, preparing for the final push. There's the story of the escaped prisoners in Blakes 7 to remind myself of plus I'll be looking to check out Chasm City and an author who I've not read before.

Oh - TV and film have one major advantage - they leave your hands free for popcorn !