Line #9 Main/InGameNovel


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6	Many video games have backstories, often told via tidbits of [[FlavorText information]] that the player can only read a little of at a time. This is the PamphletShelf.
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8	Rarely, however, some games go so far as to actually have a full, readable story, from beginning to end, within the game itself. Some of these stories are almost long enough to be real published novels! This is the In-Game Novel. Naturally, because writing an actual full-length novel is time consuming and possibly costly depending on how much the author is paid, these tend to be shorter than the average published novel, but still very long by video game standards.
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10	Compare InGameTV. Contrast PamphletShelf.
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12	!!Examples:
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14	[[foldercontrol]]
15
16	[[folder:Action]]
17	* ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' includes a humorous short story tying into the events of the first game, a book review on a novel written by one of the support characters in the first game on its events from her POV and the book itself as extras.
18	[[/folder]]
19
20	[[folder:Action-Adventure]]
21	* One sidequest in ''VideoGame/LennasInception'' involves collecting library books for Paige. Some of them give information on the game's backstory, while others are just for humour.
22	[[/folder]]
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24	[[folder:Adventure]]
25	* ''VideoGame/{{Armikrog}}'' has one of these, befitting how it is a SpiritualSuccessor to ''The Neverhood'', which also had one of these. It details the names of P's adoptive parents, how the heart of the mountain works, the in-universe origin of the word "Armikrog" and how the titular fortress came to be.
26	* in the third part of the Dracula trilogy ''Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon'' you can read differenct documents you collect while playing the game. Beside others the complete [[Literature/TheBible bible (in Latin, but translated when read)]] and the original novel ''Literature/{{Dracula}}''.
27	* ''VisualNovel/LastWindow'' provides an novelization of the game that expands as you complete more chapters, providing more insight and information about the characters. If you can beat the game without using the novel's enclosed hints, it unlocks an expanded epilogue that ties up the last few ends of the story that we don't see in the game.
28	* As books are a major theme of the ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' series, naturally there are several readable books in the games. Most of them give you backstory to the various worlds and characters, also occasionally giving puzzle clues.
29	* ''VideoGame/TheNeverhood'' has The Hall of Records, a 30-something-screen-long hall along the length of which almost the game's entire backstory is written. Yes, seriously. [[spoiler: And there's a PlotCoupon with more backstory that requires traversing the entire hall to pick up.]] Most of it is irrelevant worldbuilding.
30	* One of the books in ''The Riddle of the Sphinx'' is the entirety of the third book of the Old Testament.
31	* ''VideoGame/SilentHill3'' has a "crappy fairy tale", as Heather put it, that can be read. It's divided into a beginning, middle and end that can be read out of order, yielding different thoughts from Heather based on what order you read it in. You're only required to read the ending to leave the office building.
32	[[/folder]]
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35	[[folder:Educational]]
36	* The original ''VideoGame/JumpStart1stGrade'' contained a modest bookshelf of in-game stories to teach young children reading. The books typically contained short stories that the game would read aloud with limited animated illustrations. Combined, there were 52 unique stories on the shelf, subjects of those stories ranging from counting, telling time, animals, caricatures of world cultures, silly poems, and entertaining short fiction, and at the end of each story the game would give a simple comprehension question at the end before proceeding to the next. Each story was an average of 3-4 pages each, the shortest stories were the Mother Goose rhymes at one page each, and the longest story was a whopping 10 in-game pages, seven at a close second. This meant the game featured a cumulative number of over 200 pages of fiction. For an educational game for first graders made in 1995, that does seem rather impressive.
37	** Its successor, ''VideoGame/JumpStart2ndGrade'', only featured six stories at two pages each. The focus wasn't so much on reading the stories as filling in the blanks with parts of speech specific to the book chosen and customizing the story. This game focused slightly more on mathematics than reading, likely because the first grade game already covered that department quite well.
38	* There was a Disney game for PC and [=PS1=] called ''My Disney Kitchen'', it could be thought of as a cooking simulator game like ''VideoGame/CookingMama'' but with more freedom and it was targeted at small children. However the game contained in a small box in the game a full cookbook of around thirty real life recipes for the kids who played the game to make with their parents.
39	[[/folder]]
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41	[[folder:First-Person Shooter]]
42	* 35 pages of a comic book set in a war zone evocative of WWI, entitled [[https://imgur.com/a/h8VRE/layout/horizontal/#0 "The Shadow"]], are scattered around the levels of ''VideoGame/KillzoneShadowFall''. Once they're all found it can be read via the game menu. In-universe, the book was banned for its negative depiction of war.
43	[[/folder]]
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45	[[folder:Hack and Slash]]
46	* ''VideoGame/DantesInferno'' packed in the entirety of [[Literature/TheDivineComedy its source material]] in an autoscrolling extras menu.
47	* A staple of the ''Franchise/{{Drakengard}}'' series which features short novels as part of the various weapon backstories. Usually, more of the novels is revealed the more the weapon is powered up.
48	* ''VideoGame/KingdomsOfAmalurReckoning'' has plenty. They tend not to stretch for more than 5 pages at most, and include a variety of descriptive texts about the world, in-game fiction, and personal diaries. These last probably tell you more about the characters in Amalur than anything else you might do, but can largely only be acquired through theft.
49	[[/folder]]
50
51	[[folder:MMORPG]]
52	* ''VideoGame/{{Mabinogi}}'' has literally dozens of readable books, ranging from a few pages to over 20. A handful concern game mechanics; but the majority are purely flavour text, and unnecessary to actual gameplay. Most of those are concerned with the main storyline for the game; but some are just standalone stories of adventurers, or musings by {{NPC}}s. Many are required for skill advancement, but only possession is necessary, reading them isn't.
53	* ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' has a large amount of books that can be found during quests or by defeating bosses. A full list can be found [[https://runescape.wiki/w/List_of_books here]].
54	* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'' has ''[[http://sto.gamepedia.com/Accolade/Lore The Path to 2409]]'', a 29-volume text which tells the major historical events between the end of ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'' in 2379 and the game's start in 2409.
55	* VideoGame/UltimaOnline not only had books that were readable (though none as long as a full novel), you could also buy blank books and ''write'' your own story, for the public to read. Some of these could be quite epic in length.
56	* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has books scattered all over the game world containing pieces of the lore of the game. The first expansion dropped this habit for the most part, though they began making a comeback in later expansions.
57	[[/folder]]
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59	[[folder:Platform]]
60	* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'' contains a full illustrated children's book in the game. The book is substantial by video game standards, contains painted illustrations on each page, and could easily pass for an actual children's book. It details the backstory behind Rosalina.
61	[[/folder]]
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63	[[folder:Real Time Strategy]]
64	* Completing a mission in ''VideoGame/Outpost2'' unlocks another chapter of the game's pair of novellas, uncovering a tale of survival for your chosen colony of Plymouth or Eden. The novels tell much the same story, but from the perspectives of two Elders (the original colonists from Earth); one of whom stayed with Eden, and the other left to found Plymouth. The only difference, [[spoiler:in the end, is who comes out on top.]] Also, three quarters of the structures have short stories associated with them, too, such as a father showing his son the newly built light towers - and receiving a complaint about not being able to see the stars now, to combat stories around manually piloting the robotic vehicles. More than a few of them tie directly into the novellas, and all take place in the same continuity. In all cases, the quality of the writing is remarkably high, for being written to go with a relatively old RTS game.
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67	[[folder:RPG]]
68	* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' has around 70 different books. All are of a reasonable length alone and provide mostly non-game related information about the setting. Some are linked series, including fairly substantive histories of Shadowdale and Waterdeep.
69	* In ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'', one town has a bookshop where you can buy and read several of these, which are fairly long by video game standards. There’s a tourist handbook filled with information about the game world, a book of myths and fairy tales, and a five-part adaptation of the first game’s plot, retold in the most [[StylisticSuck hilariously awful]] way possible.
70	* ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' contains a handful of chapters of a book that you can read. The protagonist discovers them as he goes along, and the book happens to uncannily mirror his current situation. One, ''Literature/TheManWhoWasThursday'', is a real novel; the other, "Jacob's Shadow", is not. There's also the four history books at the cathedral in Paris from which the player can read extracts briefly summing up the history of the Knights Templars.
71	** The Sequel ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'' included several chapters of "Jacob's War", which was apparently a sequel to "Jacob's Shadow".
72	* ''VideoGame/DivineDivinity'' is chock full of those, there is at least one long series about the adventures of an ork pirate, others are about summoning demons and spells, yet others are either short stories or about the in-game world, teaching about plants, animals and monsters, or history.
73	* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'' includes a series of codex entries which, when taken together, allow the player to read ''Hard in Hightown'', the most famous novel by in-universe popular author Varric Tethras. This particular example is so popular with the fandom that it actually crossed into {{Defictionalization}} - in 2018, Bioware published an expanded and illustrated version of the book, meaning that Varric is now a popular author ''out''-of-universe too.
74	* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series is known for having a robust background in books and scrolls. These books tend to range wildly in size from 2 pages to over 30 pages, and range from personal journals to ballads to historical texts to short stories, to outright novels. Some of the longest are ''[[http://www.imperial-library.info/content/real-barenziah-complete The Real Barenziah]]'', ''[[http://www.imperial-library.info/content/king-edward King Edward]]'', ''[[http://www.imperial-library.info/content/2920-last-year-first-era 2920: The Last Year of the First Era]]'', and ''[[http://www.imperial-library.info/content/36-lessons-vivec The 36 Lessons of Vivec]]''. The books are so extensive as to have [[Literature/TheElderScrollsInUniverseBooks their own work page]].
75	* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'', you can read a book full of backstory. It's pretty long for an in-game book, and even then, Ramza admits that he ''can't even read most of the text'' due to it being written in an ancient language; he's just reading a different character's notes and translations written in the margin.
76	* ''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'' has five books, dubbed as the Sun Saga series, that retells the events of the last two Golden Sun games. You have to find said books and some of them are {{Permanently Missable\|Content}} if you go beyond one of many [[PointOfNoReturn Points Of No Return]].
77	* ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'' has the "Thousand Years of Dreams", readable excerpts from the lives of the Immortals (mostly Kaim), unlocked after certain things trigger them in the game.
78	* ''VideoGame/{{Opoona}}'' has the Catalogue d'Arts, which is, essentially, a small art history textbook on the various art movements that have arisen on the planet of Landroll. You have to find the art pieces in the overworld to add them to the book, but the book gives each piece substantial backstory, and even expounds on the history of the artists who made it (such as [[TheGhost Caval]]).
79	* ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' had the Super Luigi books, which formed quite a long story by video game standards when you put them all together.
80	** Made even more funny by the fact that Luigi tells you the same story... but it is noticeably different from the book version. You get to decide for yourself whether the book story was altered when published or if Luigi's just trying to make the tale more interesting on his own.
81	* ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'' has the Circle of Zerthimon, a history of the Gith people; reading through it and discovering what the lessons are leads to some awesome stat upgrades and spells for both the Nameless One and Dak'kon.
82	* Every game in the ''VideoGame/TrailsSeries'' has at least one. Most also have an unofficial sidequest where if you find every volume (which are generally collected by talking to people at the right time - [[GuideDangIt who are often in places that there is no logical reason to go to during the narrow time window when they will give you the book]]) of one of them, you get either an InfinityPlusOneSword or the raw materials needed to make one. Several of the books are serial-numbers filed off stories about real in-universe people who turn up later in the series, while others range from in-universe newspapers to books talking about the wildlife and culture of the country the current game takes place in.
83	* ''VideoGame/{{Wild ARMs 3}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/WildArms1 Alter Code F]]'' have chapters of a book that you can collect and read. The first being a ''VideoGame/{{Wild ARMs 2}}'' FanFic with Marivel and Anastasia, the second being some other story entirely.
84	[[/folder]]
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86	[[folder:Simulation]]
87	* ''VideoGame/AirplaneMode'' simulates being a passenger on an airplane. A passenger who brought a few books! You can read them, and they're quite long. There's also a readable magazine with long articles.
88	* In ''VideoGame/WorldNeverland: Daily Life in Elnea Kingdom,'' the library contains a substantial number of books detailing the entire history of the game's world, and fleshing out not only the land it takes place in, but many of the countries outside of it. Since ''Elnea'' is [[NoExportForYou the only game in the series released in English,]] this adds a lot of context for English-language fans.
89	[[/folder]]
90
91	[[folder:Wide Open Sandbox]]
92	* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'': Players can write their own novels in books in-game, as they can be as long as 50 pages full of text; in the Java edition, it's even more pronounced, as the max number of pages is doubled to 100. And if third-party editors are used, those limits go out the window -- the hard cap is actually more than '''two billion pages'''.
93	[[/folder]]
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95	[[folder:Other Media]]
96	* Odd non-game example: The book version of ''Creator/PennAndTeller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends'' contained a compilation of Sci-fi short stories (attributed to various pseudonyms) that was used for one trick. Apart from one gimmick used in the trick, the stories were all fleshed out and some were written quite well.
97	[[/folder]]
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Context Main / InGameNovel