Classic stories I wish were video games

Would Edgar Allan Poe have written storylines for video games?

With a game like Dante’s Inferno under development at EA, anything seems possible. If we can have an adaptation of the Dante Alighieri’s epic poem — a staple in high school classrooms across the country — why not other literary works as well?

Hollywood has borrowed time and again from classic books, and it’s about time video games do the same. So from magical realism to romantic adventures, here are 5 masterpieces that would make great game concepts.

The Library of Babel

This short story offers an otherworldly and immersive setting for an RPG-style adventure game. Magical realist Jorge Luis Borges liked to mess with his reader’s minds, and this story is no exception. The Library (also known as the universe) resembles an M.C. Escher lithograph. It’s made of an “an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries,” and its shape is a “sphere whose exact center is any of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.”

Wait, what? That’s right, it’s an impossible object. And navigating its immensity would be mind-boggling, but also an experience uniquely suited for a video game.

Gamers would play as a young librarian seeking the book of his life, or the text that explains the meaning of his existence. Since the Library is also the universe, a loose interpretation holds that every place imaginable exists inside it. Open one door and you’re in China during the Ming dynasty. Open another and you’re in the American Civil War.

There are also lots of heretical librarians running around, so fighting them with magical spells would be exciting. Your character, of course, learned magic from years of poring over all that ancient lore (what else would you do in a gigantic library?).

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Despite the lame title, this novel from the early 1900’s introduced one of the world’s first masked heroes. This story likely inspired the author of Zorro, and it lives in the tradition of today’s disguised comic book heroes. Using the French Revolution as a backdrop, the tale offers plenty of opportunities for swordfights and daring escapes.

Gamers would assume the role of Sir Percy Blakeney, a British nobleman secretly known as the Scarlet Pimpernel. He leads a society of 19 aristocrats in saving some important Frenchmen from being beheaded, a practice of execution that was all the rage at the time.

The Scarlet Pimpernel signs his correspondence with a red flower of the same name. He’s adept at fighting with a rapier. He’s wealthy and cunning, all the while maintaining a boring and unimpressive façade. An original badass, his adventures during the French Revolution and beyond could make for some intense, dramatic moments.

The Odyssey

One of the greatest adventures of all time, this Greek epic provides tons of material for interesting gameplay. Taking control of the poem’s hero, Odysseus, gamers would fight monumental bosses including giants, sirens and monsters with multiple heads. They would also journey across the seas of the old world and even dive into the underworld, in sum experiencing a legendary adventure that’s been seldom (if ever) matched in literature, movies or video games.

It could begin with the Trojan War (actually part of Homer’s previous poem, The Illiad, but these are just minor details). After that, the opportunities are limitless. Odysseus could chop through enemies in a God of War style, which would be appropriate, given the subject matter neatly nested in Greek mythology. The boss fights could be similar in importance to the ones from Shadow of the Colossus: epic presentations meant to make you go, “Wow.”

Odysseus is among the world’s oldest heroes, and commanding him would certainly be a treat.

The Heart of Darkness

When Africa was still largely uncharted, a black area substituted for it on maps and globes. Africa was the great unknown.

In this game, players would become Marlow, a soldier who plunges into the heart of the continent’s darkest areas. It would be a first-person shooter, and gamers would use weaponry from the 1800’s to fend off monsters and shamans, enemies that would get progressively more challenging and twisted as the player went further into the dark realm.

Despite not being a major part of the actual story, supernatural elements would fit nicely in the game. Like the other books on this list, this one provides a quality atmosphere for a video games’ events. Throw in a few major boss battles, especially with Kurtz towards the end, and you have the fixings of a great experience.

The Most Dangerous Game

This story pits hunter against the hunted, and gamers would get to play as the latter.

In plot of the original short story, Sanger Rainsford must survive on an island for three days while General Zaroff attempts to hunt him down. When adapted for the game, this same basic scenario could be taken to different settings — what’s most important here is the “hunter versus the hunted” concept.

A game whose goal is solely to survive could prove interesting. That said, this would mostly be a game of stealth, but gamers could probably wind up fighting with their pursuer’s minions as well, maybe even breaking into the hunter’s home and wreaking havoc on his possessions.

Couple this idea with a top-notch storyline and some romance and you have a title somewhat similar to Metal Gear Solid is in the making. Building on the survival factor from MGS3, hunting could be an even bigger part of the game, what with how the character was dropped onto an abandoned island in the original story. There’s lots of tasty things to be eaten in those sorts of places.