I feel it would make an awesome addition to the canon and be a great way to explain many of the organizations that have come out of the Fallout Universe and we could also see the impacts of other regions in these stories. Plus any reason to brake out my old 45's and 65's would be awesome. :fallout:

My 2 caps...

Depends who's writing it. Chris Avellone? Tim Cain? Yes. Todd Howard? Emil Pagliarulo? Errr, no.

Yup, I'd like one. But only if the author is good and really knows his way around the Fallout universe (original Fallout dev a huge plus!)

On a side note, I'd love for Van Buren to at least be released as a novel.

As far as I know, Bethesda has been approached about it by a publisher, and they don't want any, since they wouldn't have time to check them on canon.

I'd read a Fallout graphic novel... but not a regular one. Video game related novels are usually lame, but most graphic novels that I've seen are pretty amazing.

I'd read a Fallout graphic novel.

Maybe a comic book, but not a novel.
It'd be nice, but still I feel that a Fallout Novel wouldn't be so good idea.

I would personally love to see either one. I would love to see the events of the FO timeline laid out in a more "reading friendly" format.

Oh yeah. I think Fallout would be great as a graphic novel.

I like to be the one progressing the story in my RPGs. A short story, or graphic novel, would be ok, but half the fun of fallout is making awesome choices, like helping a caravan fight off raiders, and then robbing them blind. A novel might also try to progress the story. I wouldn't mind some filler but it would have to be extremely well done.

I understand where you are coming from, but what I am asking for is some back ground information that leads up to the game that we are about to play. I am interested in how people got to where they were and the reasons around how specific organizations got to the DC Wasteland. I want to understand how Megaton wasn't approached by Lyon's or the Outcasts or why the Enclave didn't try to invade Megaton and take the nuke. I mean it is not hard to imagine some of the caravans in the wasteland giving this info to the Enclave or the Outcasts. I would love to have read the story about James before he got into Vault 101, even if it did ruin a bit of the story. I think filling in some details with Short stories or Graphic Shorts would go a long way to helping people have a better picture of the story being told in the settlements around the DC Wasteland and those characters in its Ruins. I want to believe that the people who have taken up the banner of the Fallout Universe desire to bring more to the story then just a small patch of land that makes the game feel small compared to how you traveled all around the Deserts of the South West in Fallout 1 and 2. Now I understand that the way I sound may get you thinking that I dislike Fallout 3, but I don't because I am not someone who thought Bethesda was going to be flawless. I would like the stories because it would not only show us that Bethesda cares about the Fallout Universe but it cares about the fans that play in it. My desire doesn't come from wanting to read the story that we play in the game that comes out. My desire comes form wanting to read the back story to help me understand the events that take place in the game and how they impacted the people in the story that we do play in the game. Bethesda could do this and I feel they could make a great story that ties in well with its game. The thing is a majority of people have to have things to look at and visualize because their imaginations are not completely developed. This problem is not unfamiliar to me because I suffer from this lack of imagination. I to would like a Comic or Graphic Novel but I wouldn't mind a Novel or a Collection of short stories. The biggest point of all this would be to expand upon the Fallout Universe and give us something to fall int as fans. This is being done for Star War: The Old Republic so I don't see why it can't be done for Fallout. I think a Fallout comic could make some good money for Bethesda because people would read the stories and be interested in the Fallout Universe. so it would serve to expand the Fallout nation. This is my take, love it or leave it, it has been spoken.

Didn't vote, as there is no answer for "OH HELL NO."

Fallout 3's writing is the worst part of the game, in my opinion.

The originals were outstanding, but I think alot of the quality was in the dialogue, and the branching choices.

Either way, it's the same way I feel about ALL games being turned into books or movies.

I play a game because it's *MY* story. *I* control the action.

Watching some dooshbag actor, or pre-ordained novella hero mug his way through the gameworld, while I have to sit there like a jack ass and NOT interact with it, is stupid to me.

Why would I want to be a spectator on someone ELSE'S adventure, when I could be having my own?

I would love to have a more fleshed out hard copy of the "Fallout Bible". But it would depend on who's writing it. Obviously Avellone would be a good choice. However, even he wrote very little of what happened between 1950 and the start of the Resource Wars. And Bethesda owns all rights to the canon, so any novel would be up to them..

Yeah, I'd pick up a Fallout book. I'm a bit of a paperback junkie, myself, and I go through a couple books a month usually - so I'd probably pick one up for a quick read; why not? If I'm going to read a book anyway - then one of them might as well be a Fallout one.

Game novelizations work best when they supply background to the game, rather than trying to reiterate or recapture elements from the actual game. I think there's tons of potential to cover some interesting areas of the Fallout universe. What I think would be interesting is a series covering Lyons' detachment of the Brotherhood cross-country on the way to DC. I'd imagine it was quite an adventure, and it could be an interesting exercise covering his internal battles as he struggles with the priorities of his mission and his own changing ideas about his feelings about his own role in the Wastes.

Awesome, this is kind of what I was hoping for as well. Thank you for your input.



Interesting, but sounds like someone needs to go back to his Hunter S. Thompson Novels. Now go head and go read it for the Billionth time like a good fan. Its the only Fiction I believe your complicated mind would enjoy. O I forgot here is this too the book where I believe your name is derived. "What? No. We can't stop here. This is bat country. " Classic!

That's cute, but I don't see how any decent writer would care to hack out a cover book of a video game. If it's anything like the Star Wars/Star Trek drivel, forget it. I wouldn't even let my kids read that crap, and they appear to only be semi-literate, much to my dismay.

It only has to be as good as the game's level of writing, though - it's not as if any of the Fallout storylines are going up for an Oscar any time soon. I mean, some of the D&D novels aren't half-bad, actually - and that's pretty much the same thing. (I've read a couple of the Splinter Cell books and they were pretty entertaining.) I mean, not every book I read has to be Crime and Punishment just as not every movie I watch has to be Citizen Kane.

You know, just staring at the title of this thread I thought to myself "Well, maybe not necessarily a Fallout novel...but what about a Post-Apoc novel as meticulous and epic as the scale of the first Dune book?" Damn if I wouldn't pick that book up right quick (if it was generally regarded by the Post-Apoc crowd as being worth it).

How do you figure that the book only needs to be as good as the game's writing? If that was the case, I'd never read a book like that. Wait, I never have.

I don't care about your reading habits. If you want to read something like that, more power to you. I just don't want to waste the limited time I have to read for pleasure on trash, when I could be reading a classic or something profound.

Raymond Chandler's not profound and is borderline "trashy" (pulpy, as I'd call it). You don't have those moments where you'd pick up a Chandler novel? C'mon...not everything has to be Lautremont.

Not really. I might have when I was younger. If I want mindless, I'll watch a movie. Chandler was a better wordsmith than most, though, I'll admit that much, but if I'm in the mood for detective sorts of things, I usually end up reading Le'Carre and get my spy fix at the same time.

Well, I can only ever speak for myself and based on my own opinions. Without trying to make an assumption (or implying a judgement value on it) I might read more books than you do. I'm a bit of an insomniac, so it's not unusual for me to read 100 pages or so before bed. So I try and read a lot of higher-quality books, but I also have time for some "junk food" literature, as well.

ie, if someone only watches one movie a year they're going to want that movie to be pretty frakking good. But if you're watching two or three every day there's more room for some that are primarily just for entertainment value. And that said, there's no inherent reason why a videogame book can't be pretty good. The Mass Effect novel wasn't half bad as a pulp science fiction novel - and the author actually did a decent job of providing sympathetic characters that I cared about. And the way in which they did that gave me new insight into some of the characters in the videogame - lent some more weight to their predicaments.

Do you consider Comic Books/Graphic Novels a decent form of Art and Literature...

(i.e. The Watchmen, Road to Perdition, History of Violence...)

Define "decent". I haven't read a comic since Heavy Metal was out. I don't know. I've encountered some very interesting stories in places I didn't expect to find them. An example might be anime, like Moribito or Ghost in the Shell, or some not so gifted writer who buries a good story under marginal prose.

Actually, I majored in Sequential Art in college, so I'm a bit biased in that regard. Every medium has the same potential for "high" as any other. The quality of storytelling in a comic has the same potential as in a film, play, or novel - the oft-times limited view of comics as children's superhero drivel (or that such comics represent a majority of the market in that particular medium) has nothing to do with it's potential.

Some of the best works I've encountered have been in graphic novel form - Maus, the Watchmen, 300, a lot of Will Eisner's later work, etc.

I'd say the same for videogames and (to stay on-topic) books based on videogames. There is no inherent worth, or lack thereof, in any medium. The tools you use to craft a story vary widely, but the potential is the same throughout. When movies first came out in the early 1900's, there was a pre-concieved notion that they would never measure up to live theatre, for example. Later, the same stigma applied to animated being only for children. The quality of the work has more to do with the target audience and the competence and will of the people involved in it's creation than in which way they choose to apply their particular vision.