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Multiple Upcoming Games, Movies Based On Jordan's Wheel of Time
Today film studio Red Eagle Entertainment announced plans to establish Red Eagle Games, a studio that will produce games based on Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The games will be developed alongside movie adaptations of the series, which Red Eagle announced a few months ago. They'll be working with Universal on the films. "[Red Eagle producer Rick] Selvage said in an interview that the game company will make a series of games that will be co-launched with the movies. In addition, Red Eagle Games will make a massively multiplayer online game based on the Wheel of Time universe." Wheel of Time fan site 'Dragonmount' recently spoke with Selvage about the movie plans.
I am surprised as I haven't been following this news since Jordan's death. I will say I am excited as I picked up Eye of the World for a quarter at a used bookstore in high school. I've been a huge fan ever since but have often wondered if there is any possible way a game or movie can do this series justice.
... the political games ... the extensive dream sequences ... keeping the dream world and waygates straight ... so much they could get wrong!
Wheel of Time has such extensive (sometimes laboriously so) plot lines running in tandem and across multiple characters that may not cross for thousands of pages. Can this be set in film successfully? The introspection of the characters when you're seeing things from their points of view
In truth, I wondered the same of George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire & Ice series recently licensed by HBO. I guess we'll see if they can do that series justice as well.
As for the games, I was a bit disappointed with the 1999 version which was basically a Hexen engine playing as an Aes Sedai in one of the Ajahs. A visually pleasing game, though. I certainly hope they do better with The Wheel of Time MMOs & don't dish me another buggy clone like Lord of the Rings or Warhammer.
Red Eagle & Universal, please don't screw this up! Disclaimer: I am a Perrin fan.
My work here is dung.
Red Eagle Games will make a massively multiplayer online game based on the Wheel of Time universe.
Because if there's anything the PC gaming market really needs, it's another MMO.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Featuring exciting braid-pulling and skirt-smoothing mini-games!
"Jordan is barely even cold, the 13th book hasn't been published yet, and everyone is already clambering to get wrist deep into his creative work and exploit it."
Good thing we don't have life plus 70 years so the heirs could defend his "property".
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Seriously..? I started reading the Wheel of Time many years ago, and while the first book was pretty good, subsequent books became increasingly self indulgent, whiney, and so meandering that the story barely advanced. By about book 5, most of the characters were so un-likeable that I could not longer relate to/empathize with them. This has to be one of the most dissapointing series that I have ever read.
CAPTCH: bleeder, as in "you miserable..."
Considering that books 6-10 describe what happens over a span of about 3 days, there won't need to be nearly so many movies.
You're kidding right? Most of those later books can be compressed into about 14 paragraphs.
I wonder how many movies there are going to be? Hopefully I'm still alive when the last one comes out(if they ever wrap the series).
They'll probably start out with a clear story arc and a plan to make six or seven very good films that wow audiences, then just belt out a few extra ones that focus largely on minor characters that viewers don't care about while ignoring the compelling story that got everyone interested in the first place. Universal will then go out of business when there's only one movie left to make, and Paramount will take over and expect us all to believe their conclusion is a valid part of the series.
(If you can't decide whether to mod this funny, mod it insightful or just stomp off and cry into your pile of dead-end hardcovers, you must be a disgruntled Robert Jordan fan.)
Unfortunately the game is impossible to finish, because it dynamically generates more and more new mini-games, side quests, and bosses as the player gets closer to the end.
How on earth are they going to condense down as much material as is in one of those books (let alone the whole series) into a movie without leaving out half the story? The Lord of the Rings books are half the size of Jordan's and each of those movies were over three hours long and still left some good stuff out.
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That's the kind of thinking that leads to a wisecracking CG animated Jamaican sidekick to a newly midichlorian fuelled Rand al'Thor.
crazy dynamite monkey
Wiki links are only useful when there's a chance that somebody reading the article hasn't heard of the series. I can talk to non-nerds and they still know what the series is, even if they don't know much about it.
I guess what I'm getting at is that you'll have to turn in your nerd card.
Thanks for the laugh.
I made it thru Crown of Swords...but mainly because of being too stubborn to admit to myself that I was getting sick of it. Had to do a cross country road trip several years later and got the audiobook for Winters Heart thinking I would catch up that way...
Somewhere in Kansas in the middle of the night I decided that it was so tedious and boring that I threw it out the window in disgust. I admit that it might have had something to do with driving thru Kansas...you can't do that alone and stay sane.
I think I reached a point where I just DESPISED every female character in that book.
Because "doing it justice" would mean somehow designing a game where the the more you play, the further away end gets!
That would require some impressive new technology, to say the least...
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
At least late-game repetitive time-sinks will be source-material accurate.
paintball
Speaking of which... the third (and last) Mistborn book just came out in hardback. If you have never read anything of Sanderson's, do yourself a favor - go out and buy the first one. Make sure you have some cash left over, though, because, if you are anything like me, you will be back in the bookstore the next day, after having stayed up all night to finish, buying the other two (and anything else of his you can get your hands on).
Mistborn is the best low-fantasy I have ever read, and it's close to the top of my best fantasy in general list.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
Oh please. By the fifth book, Jordan was already wrist deep in skullfucking his own creative property by recycling storylines and padding word counts with endless descriptions of wardrobe. They're doing nothing but carrying on a tradition Jordan started himself.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
My feelings exactly. Take the world that WoT is most often compared to, LotR. There are certainly lots of parallels - Middle Earth is huge, there are lots of different nations with their own history, traditions, culture, and appearance, and the author crafted each with an incredible attention to detail. However, reading through the books (never mind watching the movies) in LotR doesn't give NEARLY as much a feel of the setting as WoT does. In WoT I can imagine the parts of the cities, the look of the farms, and the speech of the people - even for specific settings that were never visited. Without reading a lot of the LotR background, I've found this not nearly as easy to do. It's just not as immersive.
There's a lot more to this comparison, but I think I'll stop here.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...