Adapting a piece of work to a video game format is a source of exciting questions.
First of all, a question about the original material : in which socio-economical and political context does it take place?
To what extent did this context condition the choices on the form: narrative, linguistics, syntactic,... and on the content -message, world perception,...- ?
One might wonder if we wish to depict the universe from the original work differently for the purpose of making it resonate with the current global issues.
For instance, a lot of adaptations have been seen lately bringing forward diversity, by adding characters originating from social minorities: The Little Mermaid by Disney, adapted from Andersen’s tales written in 1837, Sandman Tv Show on Netflix from Neil Gaiman’s comics ; or even Dune : Part One the motion picture adapted in 2021 from the novel written by Frank Herbert and published in 1965.
How to tailor the characters while retaining the cohesiveness of the original work ?
It’s generally done in a simple manner, by maintaining a similar narrative structure for the character, or even by adding secondary narrative elements linked to its transformation, which broaden its role and the themes addressed by the work, without misrepresenting it.
One might have questions on the media of the adapted work, in this case, video game: which specifics, in terms of form, does this media involve? In what are they different from the original media form? And how to harness them in the best possible way to deliver an experience which offer a new and nurturing perspective on the original material ?
The game provides plenty of vectors conveying audiovisual meanings: animated visuals, music, sound effects, text and voice, etc... but it’s the interactivity , the gameplay, that is unique to this media.
So how can this gameplay relay the book’s statements ?
The game Ico, one of the pioneer of this concept sometimes known as procedural rhetoric, depicted the affective relationship between the two main protagonists nor by the use of cinematics neither through dialogues, but by the gameplay itself via the actions available to the players and the feedbacks the game produces: holding the heroine’s hand, protecting her from the hostile shadows that want to take her away…
We have to ask ourselves which actions we wish to portray, to promote, to conceal ; which consequences to plan for ; and above all, what does this gameplay system suggest in terms of ideology, message, and behavior. Furthermore, from a narrative perspective, do we wish to tap in the possibility of a multiple branching narrative, as opposed to a linear piece?
There is no magic recipe, all choices are relevant. Providing that the choice made is a conscious one, and applied for reasons that are seen as fair by the conception team. Including the possibility that it may radically change the message from the original piece of work ! As such, if Étoiles, garde-à-vous ! written by Robert A. Heinlein was a militarist book produced in full blown Cold War era, its adaptation on the movie screen -Starship Troopers from Paul Verhoeven in 1998- transformed it into a gory satire, where the war is absurd and of a senseless violence.
The message can be flipped, deformed, repeated, re-interpreted through contemporary lenses and its economical, political, social issues. It’s our mission, as creators, players, to seize remarkable bodies of work, and to bring them to life by adjusting them with the messages we wish them to convey !
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