Videogame tie-in novels range from "relatively acceptable" to "total shit," and it would appear that Mass Effect: Deception is firmly in the latter category. According to the amount of series inconsistencies found in the book, it was written by somebody who's never even heard of Mass Effect.
A public Google doc has been opened for fans to list errors, and so many people are editing it that it's currently in read-only form for everybody else. Some of the errors verge on nitpicking, while others are downright grotesque or simply bad writing.
"This includes a character ‘growing up’ from being autistic, turning Mass Effect’s only gay male character straight and then killing him," notes the document, "and being literally impossible to reconcile with the timeline made by the games, comics and other books."
One can definitely question people spending their free time correcting errors in a tie-in novel, but for Mass Effect fans, this document is going to make some essential and entertaining reading!
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Contest:
10:00 AM on 02.01.2012 | 
what the fuck bioware
sup with quality assurance?
They're actually pretty damn brilliant. Of course, that could just be the fanboy in me talking.
Didn't Nicholai fantasize about raping Jill in one of the books?
Pretty much. There's also the author's obsession with Rebecca that to the point where I expected the novelization of Zero to be 1000 pages long.
The Resident Evil books were flat-out terrible. Even Dead Island's novelization was better than them.
Admittedly, I haven't read Zero. When I first started collecting them years ago, we had no internet. I thought about buying it not so long ago, but the prices for Zero were silly.
Still, I found the ones based off games (not Perry's 'original' stories) to be pretty decent. 'City of the Dead', especially. Though that's most likely because S.D. Perry touches on the possibility of romance between Claire and Leon.
I love RE way too much...
That is pretty funny though.
I didn't mind the Rebecca stuff in Perry's books. No, what annoyed me in the RE novels was that smug Mary Sue wanktard, Trent.
I totally forgot about that guy out until you mentioned him. Now I remember how he was the one that saved Wesker and probably gave him the superpowers he had in Code Veronica.
Thanks a lot. Now I have to start forgetting him all over again. Goddamn Perry and her crappy original characters.
But, oh God, this looks terrible.
This is the first Mass Effect book Drew Karpyshyn didn't write, so that may have something to do with the lack of continuity. I was really looking forward to the next chapter for many characters I've really come to like from the books, and it's sad that this (probably last) chapter ends on such a disappointing note. If this book is a error-heavy as implied, it will be a very large, noticeable blemish on an otherwise incredibly comprehensive sci-fi universe.
Well, my copy comes from Amazon today. We'll see if I can get through the whole thing.
Its also worth noticing that the first novel was released before ME 1, which means its more a preview than a tie-in.
Bioware's Dragon Age books are a lot better imo. But I'll still give this a go, though the whole hetreo-fying someone then killing them is a bit much. Though to be fair if you turned a seemingly straight character gay, people would not be as up in arms.
Don’t spend too much time or money trying to find them, but if you can find them for cheap, then I say go for it. I only read the first one, and it was right in the middle of the road; It wasn’t awful, but it certainly wasn’t going to win any awards.
That said I have read the other DK novels and I'll save you the time. Don't bother.
I just finished reading Resistance: A Hole in the Sky and it was alright. I still need to play Resistance 3 to see how it turns out since the book ends pretty abruptly. I recently bought Borderlands: The Fallen but haven't started reading it yet.
Heh, I was going to make a jab at the book name myself. Glad someone else agrees.
So what are we gonna' do now?
Well, this is like all things though, Avid fans know the continuity and such, and know where things should feasibly move from there. Yeah it comes off as nerd rage, but I think it serves to keep some creators in line sometimes -obviously this should be one of those times.
I mean, whats the point of making these long, storied, lores, and write long, thick, (boners) series bibles to keep the multitudes of stories in check, if someones going to come out of left field and write something that stays so far away? You're just wasting everyones time, your own and the fans.
Also, I'm happy I'm not the only one who's read the RE books here, they were pretty damn good for what they were.
Wait I screwed it up let me start over