From Ink to Code: The Revival of Classic Narratives in Modern Video Games

By: Averi James

Over the past few decades, the video game as a media form has increased significantly in popularity. While there are many genres that simply focus on aspects of gameplay and cooperation, such as arena shooters, puzzle games, party games, and more, narrative video games are among the most beloved and awarded on the market. Of course, before there were video games, or TV shows, or movies, there were books, and these stories have been inspiring newer generations of storytelling for, well, generations. As a lover of both of these mediums, I wanted to take a look at some of my favorite video games and the literature that has inspired their stories and settings in order to garner a greater appreciation for both.

A man and his son travel across harsh and dangerous environments after the death of the boy’s mother. During the journey, they must navigate their estranged relationship while the father tries to instill a hard sense of morality into his son. This is the general premise of both Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Santa Monica Studios’ God of War (2018), and the similarities are pretty clear while playing the latter. Upon looking into it, I learned that Cory Barlog, head developer of the game, has stated himself that the novel inspires much of his work. McCarthy has had influence in other successful games, developers at Rockstar Games citing his novel Blood Meridian as one of the inspirations for their popular Red Dead Redemption series. Like the previous entry, the games take a sort of general blueprint of the novel’s premise – the main characters get picked up by a gang when they’re younger and run with them for a while. The gang itself is led by a narcissist into increasingly dangerous and risky situations to chase a never-ending high. Funnily enough, both God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 were contenders in 2018’s Game of the Year awards, the former winning the title and the latter winning in almost every other category. Without the backbone of McCarthy’s novels, these games might not be as beloved as they are.

Moving into the genre of horror, Fromsoftware’s Bloodborne takes inspiration from a couple of literary sources. Like its Fromsoft siblings Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, it draws in heavy influence from Kentaro Miura’s manga Berserk. One of the most notable is the hunter’s mark, often considered being the symbol of the game, looks strikingly similar to the brand of sacrifice from Miura’s manga. However, Bloodborne stands apart from its siblings in that it is also heavily inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. From claustrophobic gothic cities to ancient civilizations that communed with outer gods, dreaming cosmic entities that hold the fabric of reality together to a strange, overlapping sense of time, there is no end to the Lovecraftian influence. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in particular has a very clear homage in the game’s DLC, which features a fishing hamlet that mutated into fish people after discovering and worshiping a goddess of the sea.

Our final entry on the list is another horror game, Resident Evil: Village, the eighth main-line installment of Capcom’s classic horror franchise. Each of the game’s main antagonists hail from popular horror villains and tropes, and three of the five villains have very obvious literary backgrounds. Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters are partially inspired by Dracula and his wives from Bram Stoker’s classic, Karl Heisenberg takes on the role of Mary Shelley’s Viktor Frankenstein, and Moreau is the titular character in The Island of Doctor Moreau.

There are plenty of other games that carry on the legacies of our favorite stories, and some stories have gotten direct adaptations like The Witcher, “The Call of Cthulhu,” and “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” While it is a bit of a stereotype that readers look down on video games for being a waste of time and gamers dislike reading because it’s boring, I have met manypeople who actually think that way. I hope with this list I can inspire both parties to look into the other; pick up a book that inspired your favorite game or look into a game inspired by literature that you love! The narrative is an expression of the human soul and should be enjoyed no matter the medium.