Video Game-Inspired Fan-Fiction Novels Coming Your Way

It seems as though video game-inspired fan-fiction novels are all the rage at the moment. There are three coming out by the end of the year that I’ve read about: Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance, Splinter Cell: Endgame, and the one I’ve heard most about, The Elder Scrolls: The Infernal City.

The first to hit will be The Elder Scrolls: The Infernal City, written by by Greg Keyes, which will be published by Del Rey on the 24th of November. There were recently hints in the novel’s blurb that alluded to a fifth Elder Scrolls game, and this blurb was subsequently taken down, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure that Bethesda would never drop one of their most successful franchises. There’s and excerpt from The Infernal City available online right now at randomhouse.com. It’s not bad, I guess. I had a read of it today.

The second one, following close behind, is Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance, written by Oliver Bowden, which will be published by Penguin on 26th November, just after the game’s release, which is scheduled for the 20th. It’s funny because there was initially a trilogy of books planned for the Assassin’s Creed series, including The Invisible Imam, but they were cancelled. There’s a description of the novel, Assassin’s Creed: Renaissance, on Amazon.

The third one I’ve read about is to be published by Berkley, and indeed based on another Ubisoft game- Splinter Cell: Endgame (not to be confused with EndWar, another Tom Clancy title, or Megadeth’s latest album, Endgame). This one is going to be released in December, and is based on the Splinter Cell series. In addition to this, there will be a novel based on HAWX, predictably called Tom Clancy's HAWX. They are both written by a "David Michaels" which is said to be a pseudonym used by many different authors.

When's the last time that Tom Clancy wrote a novel, anyway? It's just become a brand name.

The only novel that doesn’t have a tie-in title to speak of is the Elder Scrolls novel, it seems.

Video Game-Inspired Fan-Fiction Novels Coming Your Way

Elder Scrolls V Revealed in Novel Blurb…Briefly

Over the past few days, I’ve been busy with other stuff, and so my feeds have been building up, most of them unread. This is a nightmare when it comes to Kotaku, because their feeds mainly contain a lot of inane rubbish (worse than my stuff), and pictures that clog up the whole process of wading through it.

Anyway, I did come across something interesting on there recently. Kotaku noticed a blurb for the Elder Scrolls novel, Infernal City, at waterstones.com, which read as follows:

“A novel that takes places forty-five years after the Oblivion Crisis, which is the story of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion game and the expansion pack Shivering Isles. It partly bridges the gap for the next game, which is set 200 years after the Oblivion crisis.”

This text has apparently been taken down since then, and in these cases, even though it may just be a rumour, it seems to confirm the situation, since it happens on sites like Linkedin all the time. Someone posts some sensitive information, and later it gets taken down, or the person’s profile is deleted.

This is the new synopsis:

"Four decades after the Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel is threatened anew by an ancient and all-consuming evil. It is Umbriel, a floating city that casts a terrifying shadow - for wherever it falls, people die and rise again. And it is in Umbriel's shadow that a great adventure begins, and a group of unlikely heroes meet. A legendary prince with a secret."

There’s no doubt in my mind that there will be another Elder Scrolls game, although there are concerns that this game might be an MMO.

Infernal Sky will be published in 32 days, late November, as of the time of writing.

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Kotaku

Elder Scrolls V Revealed in Novel Blurb…Briefly

Bethesda gets Busy…Ruining other People’s Plans

Bethesda is going to be pi$$ing two camps off now- Elder Scrolls fans, and Aliens and/or Predator fans.

The next Elder Scrolls installment will be a novel and then another after it.

Fans of the Elder Scrolls will have to be content with Morrowind and Oblivion for the foreseeable future as Bethesda has turned over the work of writing two novels to continue the series to Greg Keyes, to be released this year. The first book is called The Infernal City.

Bethesda’s also busy with their game, WET, and in addition to this, they’ve given Fallout: New Vegas to Obsidian, who was supposed to be developing an Aliens RPG at one point, and they’ve given Rogue Warrior to Rebellion, supposed to be developing Aliens vs. Predator.

Bethesda gets Busy…Ruining other People’s Plans