I haven't seen any links on the site or any reference to Diane Duane's X-COM book. Am I the only person who has ever read it?

i've read it... it's a little sappy. and it does not seem to do the game justice.

I mean bases are not multi level and no terror mission has hundreds of aliens.

I like Hobbs stoory.. "X-Com: Unknows menace" He Knows how to bring the game to life.

-Blade

There's a similar thread over in misc, if I am not mistaken.

Anyway here are my gripes on the book:

- Too short. When you come to the end, you really feel like there should be more. Some better form of closure.
- The battles that promised to be the more exciting ones were too brief.
- The scale of the battles were ridiculous. Oh, and the aliens have mixed crews. Nothing wrong with either of these. It just didn't feel consistent with the small-scale skirmishes in the game.
- The scale of the base was a little ridiculous too, but hey, nothing wrong with flourishing artistic license a bit.
- Too technologically advanced (well, it was a short book, so I suppose you can't expect to start from scratch). Much of the advanced technology isn't explained, even in brief, so it makes the book a bit harder for people who have never played the games to understand what's what.

Despite all that, it was still entertaining. Granted, nothing spectacular, but still entertaining.

- NKF

Well I've been seriously thinking about writing a script with a friend for an X-COM movie. My friend submitted a screenplay for Red Planet, and they chose one other script over his. He's agreed to help me.

I'm probably going to write a book first, for fanfic, and see how everyone likes it. The thing I like about Duane's book is it's more realistic. Late in the Alien war, Snakemen would be pouring out of battleships in the hundreds into terror missions. I think it's realistic. Movies and books can't stick too closely to the game. Think about it: what if you had to kill hundreds of aliens over a city-wide terror map? That would just be abusive.

And those bases they have are like I imagined real-life ones would be: freaking huge. Like 8-10 craft per base, and hundreds and hundreds of personel per base. Seems real to me.

But where do you start? In a movie you obviously can't span the timeline of the entire war, it's too long. And a book would get boring spanning the entire war. You'd either need to cover a small portion of it, like Duane did, or do a time lapse. Show the beginning of threat for a little bit, then fast forward and with a little new intro, get back into it, with all the advances.

You guys are very organized too, and with such good organization and resources we could seriously get a script for a movie together. It would be so cool. I'd love to hear some comments.

be in touch wiht pocthesaint you should, as making an x-com fan movie he is involved in (i think).

but as far as that sort of thing goes... i think that the best way would be only to show the highlights so to speak. showing every tactical mission is over kill. showing special ones, such as the first mission, a base defense, a base attack, a couple of ufo recoveries/ grounded ufo attacks, an interception, and of course cydonia. once one has been seen, others can be mentioned. anyway... as i said, xcom movie is also in the works somewhere

Yeah, Poc's movie looks cool, but it's more of a home video type thing. I mean, like not for Hollywood. I'm talking like large scale movies, something big. A box office #1 for at least 2 weeks baby. Something that will raise entusiasm with X-com, and maybe even get Genesis made!!!

Problem with X-COM is that it's going to be hard to get people interested, since not very many people know of X-COM and stuff, only the die-hard computer gamers and stuff. And you'd need to get everyone's interest, if a movie trailer comes on your TV with a Snakeman on it, and you aren't an X-COM fan, you're gonna say "are you kidding me?" and spit on the TV and turn to Playboy. You should have been there anyway.

Anyway, I'd love to hear more feedback and stuff about this. Thanks. I'm gonna go start reading all the fanfic, looks good.

ture, but if you see a well done trailer with some sectoids on it your gonna think "hmm... might see that" and then switch back to the playboy channel.

so most people haven't heard of snakemen, but everyone has heard of sectoids in one form or another.

I think this is getting slightly unreleated to the topic. I think you should create a new thread.

I think it sounds like a good idea, the trailer could work if you did it in really short bits, fast paced, plenty of action....... it always works, i mean like, some tiny clip of an interception, a few sectoids, some spiffed up x-com soldiers.... you get the idea, i think it would be great to see an x-com movie, and it would really put some new life into the series. One thing though. genesis is dead, gone, as in "This is a dead parrot, an ex-parrot, a late parrot" gone, it was scrapped along with its dev team, and besides, if you're going to get a new game from firaxis, i think sid meier can be trusted to make a good game. But anyway, good luck to you,

WHy is evryone so focused on a movie? X-com would make a horrible movie, but a fantastic series. Think of Stargate SG-1, then put the effort sunk into that into an X-COM theme. Mmmmmm fantastic. I'd watch that EVERY thursday night!

Indeed. The trick with making a movie about X-Com is that the war lasts for 3 years and it is hard to correctly direct the movie so that it is not too fragmented. A series however could easily negate that problem and though people would have to watch as many episodes as possible so that they don't lose the thread on the soldiers, technology,... it would be quite a good one. In fact that problem might make the series even more addictive since you couldn't afford to miss too many episodes.

To fix the fragmented problem just do like they did with LOTR and make three at the same time. Back to the book for a min. From what i hear the writer (whose name i don't care to remember) didn't play the game, didn't go into detail about the tech and aliens involved plus she skimmed over the battles with minimal detail (this is what i read about in a review). Sence some of you have read the book please tell me if this discription is accurate.

-PSY GUY-
(If only Tom Clancy wrote the book *sigh*)

Actually, the series sounds like a good idea, except that making each episode too Important would turn people off. But there you could cover individual battles and stuff, terror sites, alien bases, maybe a little bit with the psi and science stuff,

the one thing that you do have to do....... non-random characters, otherwise char. development goes down the drain

Diane Duane (the author) would have HAD to have played the game to write this book. I mean, at least a little bit. You couldn't write that book without playing it at least a few missions.

I felt the book accurately described stuff, and I just loved the last alien base assault mission, combined everything, actual ground combat, and there were even dogfights between X-COM craft and UFOs. The book was written in a way that makes the game realistic. Everyone has their own opinion though.

You should definetely read it yourself, Barnes&Noble currently has it in stock at its stores now I believe.

Never read the book as I can't find it...

As far as te movie is concerned (which is where this thread has now turned to) I think it's a good idea but I don't really want to see a starship troopers kind of thing. The movie was great but it was a chapter of the war... That sucked big time... The series WAS better, even though it was completely computer generated. I saw the series before the film in fact and when I did get around to watching it... I really wasn't that impressed...

Well, Fox, I liked the book, too. It's not great literature, by any means, but I really enjoyed reading it. I've read it at least two or three times over several years. Want me to try to find you one and send it to you, TJ?

:rolleyes: I think the only sucky thing about the book was the sucky ending. I was cheesed off that there was no mass firefight in the Andermatt Base and that it was a "fight-to-death' 5 men left and 1 clip each scenario...add a bit of spice to it.

The book had a lot more emphasis on out of combat situations, and to be honest, I think it did a good job of representing the possible considerations that a base commander would have to make. Maybe not totally realistic, I don't know. I like how the book doesn't focus totally on combat because I think that players don't necessarily think of what is supposed to be simulated outside of the tactical screen.

Keep in mind that a series of books would have to stretch over however many years AW1 took. Not in terms of gameplay, but whatever the official storyline was.

I've been contemplating buying the X-Com: UFO Defense novel by Diane Duane, but some of the reviews on Amazon are quite bad

Has anyone here read this book? If so, what's your verdict?

If you like the game, you'll like the book.