Are you okay with reading comics/books that bridge story gaps between games?

If developers expect people to read comics or books to fully understand what happened between games, then they have failed. I've never done it and don't expect I ever will.

The only case where I've done it is the Mortal Kombat comics (komics?). I enjoyed them a lot. I also wrote a series of blogs recapping the aftermath of their events paired with the events of Mortal Kombat X. I can't see myself doing that for a franchise I'm not completely invested in though.

Post-Mortem Kombat X

• The Living (Part 1)
• The Living (Part 2)
• The Dead (Part 1)
• The Dead (Part 2)
• The MIA

Finishing up reading the comic. I need to look at the date it came out because it's actually revealing the story of two (like what happened after the end of two), so I suspect it came out after Outlast 2 and is merely connecting the dots more. Hmm.

It's called supplemental material for a reason. There shouldn't be anything in there that is even remotely important to the story.

Not if it's integral to the story. I'd feel the same way if I was reading something that in turn has expected me to play a game or watch something else already.

The story you are telling in a particular medium should feel complete there, and supplemental material should just be for the bonus info.

As long as it's not integral to the story i'm fine with it, i have played a few games with in between comics and haven't read any and they didn't take away from the game too much

Echoing what other folks have said, I don't mind so long as it's not completely integral to the plot of the game itself. Unless I'm an extremely big fan/very interested in the pitch of the book/comic/etc, I'm probably not gonna read it.

I'm cool with having to figure some plot stuff out during the game itself (in fact, I generally prefer it that way), but obviously there is a point where it's not a cool narrative thing anymore and instead just gets in the way of enjoying the game.

The story should work on its own in the game. This goes for movies too. Lookin' at you, Star Wars.

"that's explained in the book" doesn't excuse poor story telling. Each creative piece has to work. With that being said, expanding on things in books and comics is fine. I welcome it and partake in that sometimes myself. It's cool to have universes and stories expanded upon.

If the developers wish to go down that route I think it should be supplemental material and not be "essential" to understanding the story of the game.

Tangentially I remember hearing that the Injustice comics were pretty good so I might check those out.

When I hear people talking about how much they love the lore in Overwatch it makes my eyes roll out of my head because as far as I can tell there's no story within the game and it's all in the form of these webcomics and short videos

I wouldn't mind it if it was something covered in the game. Assassins Creed is really bad about that stuff. AC Origins pretty much dumped all of Bayek's origin story into a book

I ain't got time to invest in transmedia synergies...or bleed.

Put it in the game or leave it on the cutting room floor.

@musclerider: Overwatch is a weird one. They nail setting and tone in a way that makes you believe that Blizzard must have a massive lore bible out there. The game is begging for stories and spin-offs.

Overwatch was an MMO that failed to launch, so maybe that explains it...

No thanks. Have the story make sense naturally with what's in the game instead of making Liara comics explaining the discrepancies.

If the game wasn't designed to be a trans-media story from the get-go then I usually just ignore the non-game content. Very rarely does a game's story feel worth exploring further, so the game is generally enough for me. That said, I'm also a large .hack fan, and that series hangs its hat on telling a bajillion stories across several anime series, some books, two game sagas, and more. When it all comes together nicely, I think it's a cool experience, and .hack mostly came together. The only other game where I didn't mind it was Final Fantasy XV, but the XV story functions on its own already for the most part. The movie tells some events that happen near the start of the game's story, the results of which are told in-game, and the anime is just there for some background info on the main characters so I thought it was unobtrusive enough. Not ideal, for sure.

I don't think I've ever been aware of anything to seek out, besides that FFXV movie (which was an enormous waste of my time, much like the story in the game). I remember I got a comic with Dark Souls 3, read the first panel, and threw it straight in the garbage.

Is any of this stuff ever good?

I voted for the third option because it's the closest to how I feel. I think it largely depends on the specific game (or specific story). Overwatch is an interesting example because the comics fill in backstory for characters, and they're released for free.

I know there's a Tomb Raider comic, but I don't know if I should read it before playing Rise of the Tomb Raider. Obviously I can just look up whether or not I should read it, but it's not really communicated to potential players/readers exactly how important it is.

To expand on my answer, I consider myself to be a pretty big Star Wars fan. I've dabbled in some of the new canon stuff, but IMO it seems like there's TOO MUCH stuff to cover between RotJ and TFA. Thirty years of history/lore is a LOT. At the same time, I was perfectly happy reading the 4-issue comic series about Captain Phasma between TFA and TLJ, because it was short and I felt it didn't waste my time.

Then you have something like the Mass Effect comics, some that take place between games and some that are origin stories, that I feel add a little to the characters but are in no way necessary to get a feel for those characters that you wouldn't get from playing 30 hours of each game.

So really, the TL;DR here is that it simply depends on how invested I am in the story, and how that info is shown in the game.

I don't want to have to do required reading beforehand to understand who characters are and what motivates them. Lookin' at you, Halo 4 and 5.

That said, if a story just fills in side details, that's fine. Sticking to the Halo franchise - the expanded universe stuff during the original trilogy was fine. The Fall of Reach was a pretty cool book when I was a teenager and, from what I understand, still holds up as surprisingly good space-military stuff. I remember liking First Strike as a teenager a lot as well. These books filled in a lot of detail about Halo's universe, but you don't have to read them to get what's going on in the games. Post Halo 3, those games took a nosedive into that "required reading" territory. This didn't bother me all that much during ODST and Reach, I'd already gone through the material necessary, but then I didn't play or read anything Halo related until 4 came out and, like many others, I had no idea what was going on beyond the generic plot thread of "you awoke an ancient evil, now go stop it".

If I have to read or watch any sort of outside media to understand the story or character motivations, you've made a serious mistake. Talking to you, Halo 4.

Trans-media stuff in general makes me roll my eyes a little bit, and the idea that your video game lore is deep and intricate enough to warrant spending money on novels, comics, or even animated movies is presumptuous. It's like if the people obsessed with world building for the sake of world building got together with the marketing team and said "Know what we really need? A comic that explains what Character X was up to between Game A and Sequel!" I'm sure there's some tie-in material that's actually worth reading on its own merits (people have nice things to say about The Fall of Reach) but if your details are actually important, put them in the game.

If they want to put ancillary story in a comic, I have no objections, as long as Idon't have to read them for the games to make sense. I'm never going to read said comics, but more power to the people who will.

I'm in the "don't do it" camp, for a variety of reasons. One of the more annoying issues for me is that supplemental material is typically outsourced and made for business reasons rather than creative ones. So the quality and accuracy can vary extremely widely, for example like Mass Effect Deception.

Though the greatest sin is definitely putting story-critical details in side media. I remember having a completely different experience with Halo 4 versus a friend who had read all the novels.

I don't like comics.

I think it's a terrible idea that's rarely executed well. Expanded universes in general are antithetical to good storytelling, but if you're going to do it, at least make the stories as far removed from the main series as possible.

One video game book that stands out to me as being quite good was Dead Space: Martyr. It's a pretty fun pulpy horror novel that is definitely relevant to the main series but so far removed that it's clearly inessential.

This was one of those weird instances where the comics had a much, much better story than the game if you ask me. But I also think that the comics and the game do not line up at all, so it's less a gap being bridged and more of a what-if story.