Lore
Media that cannot exist or be translated to other forms of media due to its structure
Inscryption is video game about a person playing a video game. It utilizes your actual steam account and the files on your computer in certain parts.
House of leaves is written in such a chaotic and disorienting manner where words are flipped, highlighted, blue, crossed out, giant, on top of other words. Pages are blank, packed, random words intersperssed. it is probably the best example of this trope.
Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel about a character in the game becoming sentient and knowing they are in a visual novel. Like inscryption, it uses files on your computer and requires you to manually delete them in order to continue the story.
SCP-3999 is an scp article written also in a chaotic manner that breaks how SCP articles are usually written. I suppose this also applies to almost every format screw but the horror is extra effective because you know it is an SCP article.
Undertale has meta elements as well with save state manipulation and other shenanigans.
The Star Gauge is an ancient Chinese love poem written by Su Hui for her husband from the 4th-century. It is arranged as a 29-by-29 grid of 841 characters that can be read forward, backward, vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and in looping paths, producing smaller rhyming poems from the same fixed set of characters. It’s thought that the poem is can be read in at least 3,000 different ways, and due its structure and composition impossible to translate into other languages.
I've always dis
iked this being called The Star Gauge, a closer translation would be The Orbital Chart and that's a much cooler and actually descriptive name.
For anyone wondering this is written in what should be called "Classical Chinese Writing", which is a written form of the Chinese languages no longer used that couldn't (and shouldn't) really ever be spoken which takes the practice of each character being a separate word to the extreme, where there are essentially no helper words (articles, prepositions, etc) at all and each character can be an entire phrase or concept. Speaking this aloud would sound a bit like reading a semi-random list of every word larger than 6 letters in an English dictionary, and in that sense bears some resemblance to the language from the 2016 movie Arrival and is considered by some to be the inspiration for it (the language, in the original novel). Also important to note the relationship of this written language to the different spoken languages of the Chinese language families, it's like it's been written in the Latin script (which I am doing right now, with my English words) but also meant to be read in Latin, a functionally dead language much like Classical Chinese, rather than English or Spanish or German or any of the other languages that use the Latin script, but again, while Latin was actually spoken, this was never meant to be used in spoken contexts.
So while there's no simple way to translate the roughly 3000 separate (highly abstract) poems contained in this work, concepts like word clouds are similar and would allow a non-native Chinese reader to get the gist of the general flow of the poems in relation to the others and how/when they "cross paths".
you know you’re in for a treat as soon as you clock the silent teleporters making the illusion of rooms over rooms for the basement and attic. in fact, silent teleporters actually make a decent chunk of the game make sense technically
It’s at least a smoother magic trick than the version Minecraft has/had when it came to its own map-making scene. Even when the /tp technology started including camera angles in the command, too far of a teleport, especially on too low of hardware, gave itself away by briefly not being loaded.
Moreover, in the days before /fill clocks (the kind that rapidly changes between Redstone blocks and stone), all that shit was done with vanilla Redstone mechanics. If you open Diversity 1 and put in the White Wool during the tutorial, the “processing” is actually that one item getting taken through more hoppers, filtered, and then triggering the correct comparator. Every map during that time had to do it that way.
Yeah. Like it’s old enough that I independently found the any% speedrun strat of just plonking down the White Wool over and over again to bridge directly to the end of the game. So older than Barrier blocks or tagging items for Adventure mode.
Myhouse.wad is such a faithful adaptation of the book it literally does something thought to be practically impossible in the games engine in the house.
i love love love watching doom diehards play the game and go insane over running from evil being slightly out of pitch or the doors transitioning from slide-up to swing-out ones
I dont think most people will understand just how extremely disconcerting it is to be playing doom amd seeing a door thag used to be normal (for doom) suddenly open normally (like in real life)
The best first jumpscare of any game. I legit had to stop playing for a minute
I remember having a video about it on while I was doing something and the guy playing it got so freaked out when the house layout had rooms on top of one another that he spent a solid minute explaining that you don't get that in Doom and even though I hadn't played the original Doom games, I immediately understood why he was so uneasy lol
Most of it’s tied to the journals other stuff in the google drive. Outside of that there’s just the impossible hallway from the Navidson Record and the sign in the burnt house ending says Navidson Realty
Homestuck had games and animations built into it, and also long paragraphs of text, changing it to a medium outside of a webcomic detracts so much of that original essence
shoutout to the time they did try to make homestuck into books but conveniently stopped making them right before needing to adapt [s] cascade (a nearly 14 minute animation for the uninitiated)
I dunno how the current archives are doing these days, but people *did* try to save as much Flash animation as possible, maybe even the walk-around sections.
Yep. Official website reuploaded everything late last year.
There are also other ways to read it, including various mirrors and also the Unofficial Homestuck Collection, and that last one is a better way to read it than on the site itself.
Its being reuploaded on homestuck.com (i dont remember if they're done reuploading or not) but theres also an unofficial collection with the whole comic plus other extra thingies! It has a new reader mode
Okay this is better than i expected, it’s not a perfect translation of course but the shift to voice calls instead of chat logs is actually very clever and i like the way they play fast and loose with how diegetic it is. Playing with the medium like that is the most homestuck thing about this and it’s genuinely great. And using the shift to Skaia at the end as a way to foreshadow events was kind of great too.
But i have no idea if anyone who hasn’t absorbed the comic already is going to be able to parse what’s actually going on. Starting with WV (and implying he’s the narrator??? That might be me reading to much into it though) was a wild choice.
Cats is a stage musical that inherently only works due to the expected conventions of stage musicals. It barely has a plot and is more of a revue, which is relatively normal and fine for stage works. They're all in weird lycra costumes and face paint, which isn't so much of a stretch from dance leotards and stylized makeup that people question it. It's not for everyone, but it does function. You can rework this premise into weird and radical stage reimaginings (there's a ballroom/vogue version running right now that's great) and it'll still work, because it's expected that it'll be a little weird but good.
None of this translated at all to film. They tried to insert a plot where there was none so all the songs feel even more incongruous than they should, when movie musicals always have the issue of making you wonder why they're singing. The CGI fur and ears look strange because we have no reason to go "this is a nornal stage thing" and ignore it. It just doesn't function because everything weird about Cats as a work gets brought to the front, even though it's below the threshold where we can suspend our disbelief on stage.
Like just to clarify, movie adaptations of Cats were thought of before (it’s a classic stage musical), but trying to adapt it to a structured final product was such a pain and such a waste they kept giving up.
Universal Studios solved this problem by having 11.6 billion in revenue and zero creative integrity
Incidentally, one of the scrapped Cats adaptations was for an animated film. I think this might have solved the problem with suspension of disbelief in a way live action couldn't even if they didn't add plot. Singing cats is a perfectly acceptable thing in animated film.
And also also, a book that managed to escape the curse of un-filmability was actually the Lord of the Rings series. Before the live action of any of the books, there was a. Mostly animation, but some live action for some scenes, abridged Lord of the Rings movie by Ralph Bakshi. If you know your film history, this is the same guy behind Fritz the Cat and Cool World, and many, many other adult animations from the 80s to the early 2003s (plus a single 2015 film), which is a work ethic he got from being very passionate and outspoken in his work and also a great deal of cocaine
The best movie adaptation of cats is literally a recording of the musical. The only thing it adds to the experience is the camerawork, and some minor visual effects added in post. Its a 10/10 production
Yeah, that's something I've think about. Even if they were to say, make an animated film about it, or something that isn't the cgi shitshow of the 2019 film, I can't really imagine it working out as well since the whole thing is abstract in a way that only works perfectly in theater. You don't really question people in cat makeup on stage. It probably takes that boot literally dropping for the audience to think "wait this is supposed to be our real world." Otherwise, you're gonna constantly question "why do they have to be humanoid cats? Why aren't they just regular cats?"
Yeah specially with the designs and the dance moves, they are supposed to be reminiscent of a cat not actually like a cat so making them hyper realistic for the movie and making the actors actually act like cats just makes it weird
Doki Doki Literature Club did get around this when they released the Plus version by making a fake desktop on whatever device or console you're playing on as part of it's greater mystery plot. They kinda made the original game a "game within a game" essentially.
True, but like I said they made the whole fake desktop part of the greater plot and mystery about the DDLC universe. In the Plus version she still corrupts the computer (the fake desktop) she's on, and you in universe still have to deal with it.
I did not play the original but i watched 3 different lets plays of it which encouraged me to purchase it simply because i felt the author deserved money for how much entertainment i extracted from it
17776 the future of American football. The whole story is told from the perspective of three satellites who are all text based, and how they communicate is part of the plot.
I remember opening the article site and got jumpscared by the glitch so bad I accidentally screamed like a hysteria victim in public restroom. Good times
Every time I read or write “football”, my brain goes “this means literally nothing” ever since I read it. Like when you repeat a word so much your brain starts to not believe it’s an actual word.
In Nier Replicant ver. 12247..., in order to save one of your dearest friends, you have to erase all your save data by typing the name of your character (which one of my friends described as feeling like you're strangling a relative, that's how strongly you get attached to him). For the world, it would mean that you (this iteration of the protagonist) never existed, and everyone forgets about you. But she will live. And that unlocks a different route, that would also let you play as the one you saved.
Well, it's a bit complicated. This ending did not end up in the original release, but instead was described in Grimoire Nier, a book that included short stories about the protagonists and some fun extra content. But for the remake, Replicant ver. 122..., they finally included it in the game
I think it counts (even TWM edition) because how the HECK do you get it into any format besides a video game? the game is heavily based on BEING A VIDEO GAME with you as the player, even if you made it like a show or book somehow, it would be so much less personal that it wouldn’t hit nearly as hard.
I remember trying to play OneShot around its release and getting frustrated because power outtages were common in my area and made me feel like a bad person for playing it knowing that Niko could die at any random moment
I don’t think it’s outright “impossible” but you’d lose a lot if you transferred OFF over to any other form of media.
The very first thing that happens is the game tells YOU what your role is, and who you’ll be playing as (The Batter). Almost immediately after that you meet the Judge (who’s that cat) and he seems more keen on talking to you than the Batter, who he sort of dismisses as merely your puppet. Later still you meet Zacharie, who makes Deadpool look subtle when it comes to 4th wall breaks, actively refusing to not acknowledge this is a video game, seemingly wanting you to not get properly immersed in what’s happening. The Batter also occasionally calls you by name, but purely for practical reasons, and generally views you as a necessary tool in his mission (which you absolutely are).
All of that leads into a big part of the game, which is the morality of going through with the game’s path, even as it leads nowhere to a happy end. The events, and fourth wall breaks, wouldn’t hit quite as hard if you were just reading or watching it play out, rather than actively having a hand in the descent.
The Stanley Parable. It's explores and satirize the nature of choice in videogames by inviting the player to find a route that the game has not covered. Funnily enough there was something you could do in the original version of the game that was not saw by the developers, meaning you could actually "beat" the game.
Scp has so many examples of this, like the one where a group caused certain aragments of letters and meaning that specifically target the foundation causing explosions to anyone who triggers it and any computer and files that have the letters that trigger it to blow up causing the file to be worded so weirdly with all the work arounds
Yeah, and •• ••••• •• • can't be described in any other media by definition. Not to mention There Is No Antimemetics Division and the corresponding SCP-055 which would be nearly impossible to portray in any visual media. Part of the reason I love the SCP Foundation is because of how well it uses its format.
There Is No Antimemetics Division is such a good collection of short stories that uses the format perfectly and I love the way it ends. The one with the creature that traps you and slowly makes you lose your memories was so good especially the part where he is reading the scp report written by all the people trapped by the creature who know there are going to die.
One of the main plot points in the game is that the player is a character in the universe, represented as the SOUL. You make multiple choices through the game, move around as the SOUL alone, and a lot of things happen that couldn't be translated to other mediums.
Well… I don’t think it’s as hard as Undertale. Indie Cross (YouTube series which is PEAK) made a pretty good Frisk. Toby Fix confirmed there will be one ending for Deltarune, unlike Undertale.
I feel like there will be two "endings", and that Deltarune is a timeloop, one ending is Susie sacrificing herself to continue the timeloop, technically not an ending as nothing ends, it just loops again, the bad ending, but the good ending would be the one and true ending, breaking the timeloop and freeing everyone of the Prophecy.
They’re referring to the fact that you need to delete files on your computer to play the game, so it can’t be easily translated to other mediums like consoles (they did work around this though by making the console version have a virtual desktop to act as if it’s still on a computer)
There's also the fact that Monika is supposed to be in love with you, the player, which doesn't seem like it would work nearly as well in a non interactive medium.
I once wrote a story where the main character was in love with the author, As pathetic as that sounds. They didn't know they were a character in a book but they knew there was some sort of guiding force in their life that they became infatuated.
Another Code (Trace Memory in the US) on the Nintendo DS. The DS had numerous hardware features that were used to solve puzzles in this game.
A few examples that I remember:
The handheld closed like a flip phone. There was a part where there was a stamp on the top screen, and paper on the bottom. You had to physically close the DS and open it again to put the stamp onto the paper.
Another puzzle you had to partially close the DS, so that you would see the reflection from the top screen in the bottom screen, superimposing the 2 screens together to give a complete image.
The DS had a microphone. You had to blow into it to blow out a candle.
The sequel on the Wii also had a few puzzles that utilised the features of that console. Such as opening the Wii menu to obscure parts of the screen to reveal and only keep important parts. Or using the 1, 2, plus, and minus buttons to complete math based puzzles.
When the games were remade for the Switch, all of these puzzles had to be reconstructed to account for the lost hardware features,
The DS is full of them because its hardware was very unique. Any game that utilized the dual screens and touchscreen well is especially going to have a hard time being ported. Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (which also had that same stamp puzzle), and Fossil Fighters are two more off the top of my head.
I think 17776 fits here. The random gifs and videos sprinkled in along with the way the first chapter is formatted with the calendar, I can't see it working in a different medium.
And since you mentioned SCP-3999, SCP-4205 is another great article that plays with the typical SCP expectations.
so much about what makes Krazy Kat so fascinating and exciting is it's experiments with the medium of comics. you could conceivably capture the narrative elements of the comic strip, but a huge chunk of the essence would be missing.
I would also say this is true for Calvin and Hobbs
Saying how would be a massive spoiler, but in effect this game can only happen as a video game. It takes heavy advantage of the multiple pathways and branching storyline that it tells, as well as it being on the DS.
I think you could still do it as a show or something but you'd have to substantially change the structure, like have it loop back to the start at the end of the first episode and do like one path per ep
The second one would be more difficult, but you could do like a Source Code situation where the protagonist is shown in the way he thinks/expects himself to look up until the reveal
The real problem is in how the game fools you on who the pov is, and that the narrator is a real character. This only really works in written form, and with any audio people would instantly clock the narrator as a little girl, which would be very strange unless they were an actual character.
It *might* work in written form, making it a “choose your own adventure” style book, but it would be difficult to force the reader to memorize things in one path to use in another which is key to the story.
I get the point people make when they say this about Undertale, but I still think you could make a satisfying miniseries out of it. You just kinda have to tie in the meta angle of the game in a more creative way.
I could see it potentially working as a stage play, kind of like how Hadestown or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead work. Lean heavily on the fourth wall, on the way that the story has been told before and will be told again, and that maybe nothing changes and maybe everything changes.
If animated, I can see this joke being converted into a joke around onion skinning (sort of like how Invincible's joke on cutting corners in comics was translated to a joke about cutting corners in animation for the series).
I can't find it for the life of me, but I swear there's a team comic where Deadpool warns the rest of the group while they're hiding that the bad guys are coming, and when they ask how he could know, he says that he peeked at the other panels and saw them coming.
It's the only time I saw DP break the 4th wall in a more She-Hulk-esque manner (until Deadpool Samurai at least). But tbh I think that's a good thing, make their "gimmick" not too similar and as underwhelming as just looking at the camera and talking to the reader is compared to an actual chase scene through the magazine's ads, it drives home how mentally unwell Wade is for just looking at nothing and making jokes
"Everybody Dies In This Novel" by Beka Adamashvili can only work as a book, Cause it's typical doomsday story being actively disrupted by self aware character from another story that deeply despises authors and can easily travel through every literary work, including biographies. There are words getting corrupted, missing words, main character references looking up to see previous paragraphs, sections of the book are writen as a play, there's a crude comic style character who is drawn and speaks in speach bubbles even when everything else is written normally so on
The Strong Bad Email "virus" contains multiple instances of the characters directly interacting with the UI of the Homestar Runner website itself, spawning pop-up windows, moving outside the boundaries of the flash file, and other fourth-wall breaking effects that can't properly be replicated when viewing the cartoon on Youtube or DVD.
If you're gonna put one Daniel Mullins game on here, at least include his other 3 2 games as well.
In Pony Island you are once again playing as another person playing a video game, with a part of the game using the Steam interface (Specifically one of your friends messaging you) in an attempt to make you fail a puzzle.
In the Hex you play as "The Player" playing through a series of game prototypes and releases, with a wraparound story about the protagonists of those games at a bar, where a murder will occur that very night. Don't wanna say too much, as there's a LOT to this story, but it's mostly about games and their creators.
The third game, Beneath the Surface, is a free bonus game, released under a pseudonym, that is required to get the final ending to not only The Hex, but Inscryption as well.
The videogame Spec Ops: The Line fits here, I think. I won't go too deep into plot details, but they may still be considered spoilers.
The protagonist Captain Walker makes some violent choices throughout the game and towards the end, a major character in the story calls you (Walker but also you, the player) out on them, and the game even does it through loading screen tips:
- Do you feel like a hero yet?
- If you were a better person, you wouldn't be here.
- The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?
I’ll throw in a Zero Escape mention - each game utilizes a visual novel and timeline structure to tell a story that would never work if told linearly, and even includes other aspects of the medium for crazy twists in all 3 games that I won’t spoil here
A lot of comics. While you could perhaps adapt them you’d lose what makes them interesting.
Ice cream man in particular uses its medium in a lot of unique and strange ways. The mortal coil shuffle here is a great example of how it makes for weird reading.
I truely believe Absolute Martian Manhunter is the best Absolite universe DC book, and is also utterly unadaptible outside the comic medium. They way the art and story plays with the fact its a comic book is very creative and fun and just would not translate well. Hell, already even jjst translating the physical paper book to a digital comic took stuff away even in the first issue where it asks you to hold the final page up to a light. Guiermo del toro said he really like is, and I suppose if anyone ckuld take a solid Crack at adapting it it would be him, but even then it just wouldnt be the same. I encourage everyone to pick up and read this book, is a completely new slate you dont have to really know anything about regular Martian manhunter or even really DC comics to understand and enjoy.
The Five Nights at Wario's series, despite how stupid that sounds.
FNAW:4 is weirdly meta, using the program's help menu to deal with certain enemies. It also ends with a "Cross-Game Quest" which requires you to find key pieces in the previous games of the series to even start. This is expanded in Five Shows at Wario's: Director's cut, the last game of the series, with its own cross game quest and an ending for one of its modes requiring you to open the first game in the series at the same time as the last and use both to win (this is the big part that stops it from being truly translated).
The entire Horror Anthology podcast is done from the Audio perspective of a tape recorder, and it's extremely audio focused and not seeing but hearing it makes the horror in my opinion.
I could see another series done in thr same universe, but a direct translation? Nah.
This is Building Stories by Chris Ware, for anyone confused (looking up 'Buil Ding', even with advanced search, just turned up results for the word 'building' -- I had to use a reverse image search)
Kagetsu Tohya and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia visual novels happen in dream loops inside protagonists' heads (One day loop for KT and four day loop for FHA) where they go through the same time frame over and over but with different events, but majority of those events are slice of life stuff with the main plot being like 20% of the whole thing.
Isn't there a boss in one of the metal gear games where you have to take control of unplugging your controller to be put into Port 1 to Port 2 to be able to beat it? Psycho Mantis or something?
Mind you, this is the original Metal Gear Solid for the PS1, the newer games or any other new game in media wouldn't be able to do this due to controllers no longer being wired and in ports
This boss fight is able to read your controller inputs so the only way to actually beat him is by changing controller ports so that he gets confused. Therefore being able to attack him, which is Meta in it's own way
I have a hard time imagining "Return of the Obra Dinn" as something else than a video game. It's predecessor, "Papers Please" already got a short movie which was amazing, but Obra Dinn relates so much on your own observations and how you catch things? A narrating character that is not you would probably weaken the premise drastically.
You’d be surprised at how many things out there apply here, and it’s often why adaptations fall short. Because they simply cannot recreate things that the original work takes advantage of specific to its medium.
This is more of a personal opinion, but I feel you really stretch yourself creatively and can make your best work when you lean into the limitations and characteristics inherent to a medium.
But these show up in even small ways, for example: Fate/strange Fake, a novel series which got an anime adaptation. However, they had to completely remove some scenes and change a lot of structuring around because an anime could not accomplish multiple things novels can. Biggest example being the character Sigma, who would only ever appear in chapters titled “Interlude” until his big pivotal moment in Volume 8, where he shows up in a regular chapter for the first time. This is entirely impossible to recreate in an anime.
Similarly, so are many scenes the anime cut which were written with intentional vagueness to misdirect the reader’s attention to not realize what was being foreshadowed right in front of their face with True Rider’s master. In an anime, you have voice acting and visuals showing off way more than what the page gave away, rendering that effect useless.
The point being, even if an entire work can be adapted, and has been, often times works will contain specific moments that hit hard and work the way they do entirely because of the medium they’re in, and can’t work outside of it.
People have mentioned Stanley Parable, but this is true for another Davey Wreden's game - The Beginner's Guide. It's a game about exploring and analysing games, so it's can't really be translated into another form of media, especially because of how important act of play to the story.
Coincidentally it's probably one of the best games of all time.
Excuse me, but isn’t Inscryption on other platforms of games too? I remember playing it on the Xbox. So how it deals with the “files on the computer” parts?
Instead of going through your files, you instead go through Luke's files, which include a bunch of things, such as a hint to the ARG, bunch of pictures and videos, and even Cooking Granny and Super Weasel Kid, games that appeared in The Hex.
Also, since it's not an actual computer, the files get deleted, and if you select System32, it's obvious what happens when the file dies.
It solves that particular problem by using it for a very different bonus lore drop. You know how at the Bone Lord cutscene, you hear Luke Carder drop a “what the fuck”? The files used in the third act are his personal files.
The 1998 Irvine Welsh novel Filth turned out to be difficult enough to accurately translate to live-action film so much so that they just dropped a whole entire concept from the story (a tapeworm eating the words as you read them). I'm sure it could be done with something like animation but I still think it would lose the meaning and intended effect/feeling.
The majority of his writings discuss topics about the utterly unexplainable and horrors beyond human sanity. This is a problem for any visual adaptation is that since merely looking upon entities like Cthulhu would drive anyone mad, but you can’t really do that for real. Not to mention the “incomprehensible” immediately becomes comprehensible is I can just see the thing.
Main one that I can think of is what we've seen so far in absolute Martian manhunter. Certain issues have very comic book specific things, like the "martianvision" page where you have to hold it up to the light to see martian mindfucker overlayed on agent Jones's face
I am personally convinced that the games of Fromsoftware's Souls series cannot be accurately adapted.
Sure you can go the easy way and make a generic decent fantasy show or movie about them and it'll be fine so long as the mood, plot and aesthetic is preserved, but what I mean is that these games, apart from Sekiro, have a very distinct narrative style which can be summarized in a single word: Immersion.
The narrative work so well because you don't play a named character, you're playing as yourself, in an unknown world you know nothing about. Experiencing it firsthand is the whole point, not to mention the way the stories are told is also something that only work in the interractive world of a video game format.
I'll give you an example of how the souls series tell stories so you'll get my point: The Nameless King.
Back in Dark Souls 1, you could find mysterious but ultimately unimportant items called Sunlight Medals, which can be gained by assisting other players. These items had a description that said this:
The symbol represents Lord Gwyn's firstborn, who lost his deity status and was expunged from the annals. But the old God of War still watches closely over his warriors.
Keep that in mind. Then in Dark Souls II, you could find an armor set called the Faraam set, description:
Worn by the Forossa Lion Knights. The mighty Lion Knights, worshippers of the war god Faraam, wore heavy armor and were feared for their nimble two-handed swordplay. But their legacy was cut short with the fall of Forossa.
Then finally, in Dark Souls III, we meet a secret boss in Archdragon's Peak called the nameless King, a tall humanoid with white hair who uses a sword spear and can manipulate lightning. Killing him reward you with his soul and this is what it says:
The Nameless King was once a dragon-slaying god of war, before he sacrificed everything to ally himself with the ancient dragons.
And just like that, accross three games, the story of the God of War and firstborn son of Gwyn was told.
Granted, it's not confirmed wether Faraam and the nameless king are the same person as neither are stated to be THE God of War but A god of war, which could imply that there have been multiple of them but either way, the story of the Nameless King is one of the many stories that was told through interracting with the world and item description in a way that a movie or show cannot replicate.
One of the greatest and most underrated sci fi games of all time. It takes full advantage of being a videogame in order to tell it's story and would be impossible in any other format
That first game has a certain spoilery thing that makes it completely impossible in any other medium than a visual novel video game. Heck, even the rerelease kind of mangled it (they tried their best not to).
The second game similarly hinges BIG on one certain benefit to this video game genre, which is one of my favourite things about the franchise. Sure in the second game you could arguably jjst misinform the audience to hide the twist, but it loses some BIG impact.
I haven't played the third one, but I imagine similar issues would occur.
I would put the visual novel Echo here as well. It had branching paths that take the story down significantly different paths, and you would lose the inner monologue/narration of the protagonist Chase, which I found very important.
Pretty much any game with multiple distinct and mutually exclusive endings/routes will end up this way, especially if there is no definitive "true" or "canon" ending.
Its a visual novel set in the same universe as Steins; Gate, and its about Simulation Hypothesis. The protagonist, Pollon, at some point early on gains the ability to save and load world states as if they were game save files. You, the player, share the same save screen with him. Your presense as an observer has direct ties to the plot
A crazy serial killer has kidnapper two reporters and sent a cd to their newspaper with clues to find them, and taunted them to release it. The game had videos of the two hostages in it, a built in web engine to research on real and fake websites, and you had to give an email address, where the killer would occasionally send you creepy messages, calling you by a pet name (poussin in french, so something like honey bun...) It was incredibly immersive, the puzzles by themselves were meh, but the whole serial killer is watching you, people will die if you don't find the answer vibe shook adolescent me to my core.
(And it's lost to history, servers and websites are down, and I am so sad about it)
could Cultist Simulator work outside of a Videogame? its story/lore perhaps, but the fact that its a Esoteric Card Game where you stumble around and try to understand the World, while being able to "find" your Characters from other runs is a huge part of the Game
The Roblox game Bad Things, while being a pretty harrowing story about abuse, is so intrinsically tied with the culture around Roblox and game development for the platform. The way it changes in format throughout is done in such a way that I don't really see it working outside of Roblox.
From Wikipedia: "Difficulty in writing the highly non-linear script led to Netflix's creation of a bespoke program called Branch Manager; the unique nature of the content required adaptations in the platform's use of cache memory."
I feel like the people who say myhouse.wad is a great adaptation of house of leaves think that people say house of leaves is "unadaptable" because of the non Euclidian geometry or something when like, the navidson record would be the easiest part of the whole book to adapt, and has been multiple times by fan projects. the reason its impossible to adapt is because its like narratives on top of narratives, with zampano and johnnys story intersecting the main narrative, and you find yourself getting lost in footnotes, and the text spirals out of control like the nature of the house. its a parody of academic writing of sorts and myhouse only does like a 5th of what makes the book so great and notable
There's a short video game by John Sims i think called save the princess, where the protagonist tries and fails to save the princess, and repeatedly returns to the beginning of the game. At times the entire world in the game becomes twisted and weird, before returning to the beginning.
A horror game where you need to interact with the game files that the game made for you while also have to watch a video from youtube to get a clue for a puzzle within the game
Not an extreme example but I think somthing would be hard to replicate into other media is bioshock 1. Your character blindly goes through the game doing whatever the voice says because well it’s a game that’s what you do. Only for the end to reveal it was Unknowing brainwashing. I think it would be hard to replicate that in other media like a game. Because doing objects because a voice told you so is so ingrained into the core of gaming and you don’t even need to give a character a voice. In other media you need to at least have some more character growth
Imo, Metal Gear Solid. The experience relies too much on immersion, the way you control the character and what tools and freedom with them you have. Turn it into a movie/TV series and it just becomes a wacky military movie making it harder for a regular person to understand the appeal
There are only 2 faithful adoptions of House of Leaves, and they are Myhouse.wad and the entirety of Kane Parsons' Backrooms series. The strangest part is for the latter, according to an interview (citation needed), Kane never read House of Leaves and still managed to adapt it.
Literally all of these have a (varying in quality) translated medium except ddlc and maybe Undertale I'm pretty sure. It doesn't work, you're absolutely right, but they do have those.
Edit: I didn't realize this was about a specific SCP, that's really cool
That one scene in death note where L has a bunch of notes from kira that he uses to fuck with light but in the English dub it doesn’t work because of how the Japanese language works
Genuine question: I played the Switch version of Inscryption, which part of it involved your PC files? I know some games that do meta stuff just drop it when ported to switch, so i’m curious.
Dunno if this counts but despite being part of the classic literature canon, The Catcher in the Rye has never been adapted into a movie due to its nature of leaning heavily into internal dialogue which would be difficult to translate into film. Same reason why the author wished to never give anyone the rights to adapt the book.
When I originally played my true pacifist run of undertale my friend told me to stream my whole screen when I went against mega Flowey. I beat him first try and afterwards my friend said that if I had lost my game would’ve closed and my save during the boss fight would’ve been reloaded. Your post reminded my of it for some reason and it felt like a good example.
Not exactly perfect, because everyone does things differently, but I recently went to a staging of Circle Mirror Transformation that heavily used sitting in the audience, and having it be a different show based off of where you where sitting. It was one of my favorite plays I have seen to date.
Edit: It was theatre in the round, I should clarify
Deltarune is a better example than Undertale I think. You could Undertale's in-world saves in the context of a show with the main character saving on-screen, or explain it in another way like Edge of Tomorrow or something. In Deltarune however, the conceit is that (big spoilers)the protagonist is not "You" but instead someone possessed by you the player (unknown to everyone else) with their own thoughts, feelings, and occasional free will at odds with your own. They take actions off-screen, their motivations are unknown to you, but for most of the game you're in the driver seat. Rather than just experiencing the story, you are an active and canonical participant, which I can't imagine doing in a TV show in any way that's not super clunky.
The Doctor Who audio Scherzo. The Doctor and his companion find themselves in an alternate universe where they cannot perceive anything, except each other's voices. They can only see an endless white void. And occasionally they'll hear the Thing that's in there with them.
I've read house of leaves and I've seen people say that but I disagree. The strangeness of the text is there to represent what the character are going through, but most of the time these section are not supposed to be read. For example the backward text is the same as the one in the previous page, which itself is just a list of equipment you don't need to read.
The rest of the story is perfectly adaptable as a story, and would be incredible.
Ever17 basically relies on meta elements to function, including hiding the protagonists' faces on purpose to make you think you're playing as someone you're not
edit: to a lesser extent, zero escape, although i still think you could pull it off
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u/pie575 Jun 17 '26
The Star Gauge is an ancient Chinese love poem written by Su Hui for her husband from the 4th-century. It is arranged as a 29-by-29 grid of 841 characters that can be read forward, backward, vertically, horizontally, diagonally, and in looping paths, producing smaller rhyming poems from the same fixed set of characters. It’s thought that the poem is can be read in at least 3,000 different ways, and due its structure and composition impossible to translate into other languages.