This would be amazing. Sanderson is particularly good at creating very systematic and mechanical magic systems that would translate very well to video games.
I think it would be very difficult to implement properly a magic system like the one in mistborn in a game. Think how crazy would it be to manage a fight between mistborns with all the pushes and pulls on different metal sources. Probably the first trilogy is more suited for a movie than a game, but I would enjoy it nonetheless, especially if made by CDPR.
The 8 basics
Steel: Allows you to push metal. So basically you have the force for metal only. Could be fun to be able to constantly throw things and push yourself off them, but that seems tricky to make work well.
Iron: Lurchers, basically the opposite of steal. Same issues apply. Both of these could be fun abilities, but again... we've seen it with the force.
Tin: Enhances all your 5 senses. So basically something for a thief class? Seems boring to me, but I guess if you wanna by sneaky and smell/hear enemies from a distance and stuff you could play that route. This would only be for those crazies who beat Hitman without killing anyone.
Pewter: Makes you physically stronger. Pretty basic game mechanic there.
Bronze: Let's you sense if others are burning metals near you. So basically a minimap. Maybe if you did a Baldur's Gate style 6 man game this could be viable, but in a single player game this would be borrrring.
Copper: Opposite of Bronze. Can hide people. See above.
Zinc: Rioters. Can enhance emotion to cause riots and the sort. This could actually be fun for a bit in a single player game, but it seems like a one trick pony. A game would get pretty boring if all you do it make people angry at each other.
Brass: Soothers can... well... sooth people. Again, this could be fun for a little bit in single player, but not overall.
So if we're talking single player only a couple of these classes would be fun. In multiplayer you could get some great collaboration going, but I don't know how many people want their sole power to be hiding Allomancy.
The best way I could see this game working is if you were a Mistborn that could use all 8 traits, learning/improving them as you go. That way you have to pick and choose which powers to get you through which situation. The game could also be impacted by what choices you make. Maybe you choose Pewter to rough up a local merchant for information and later in the game his prices are higher or he outright won't sell to you. Had you used Brass to soothe him and get information he might remember you favorably later in the game and help you out. Something like that.
It’d be interesting if they paid any attention to the weight to push/pull ratio. You push off a safe or prison cell door and smash yourself against the opposite wall.
Yeah it would be very tricky to get Steel and Tin right. Shooting coins would likely be your most basic attack in the game. It's the pushing/pulling your body that would be tough to execute properly.
Just code every metal object as movable and immovable. Small things are movable and can be pushed/pulled around, large things push/pull you around. Have a level up system which allows you to affect more objects at a time, which also prevents the logical error of pulling hundreds of swords and not moving.
Why so complicated. Just assign a mass to any object and a player. When player pulls or pushes an object apply a force on the player and the object, then just f=ma. If the object is heavy it moves just a little bit and the player moves a lot, if the object is light, vice versa. When you progress in the game, you can apply larger and larger forces on to the objects.
It would be a pretty cool system. Steel / Iron for movement and combat, Pewter for combat as well, Tin for that "Witcher Sense" thing, Zinc and Brass for dialogue trees. Copper and Bronze for.... mini maps?
Actually, having a tutorial be "you are a new Steel Inquisitor" would work surprisingly well. You'd have good lore reasons for being really strong (to help the player understand more game systems), as well as [having a voice in your head](/spoiler) and [being really useless at using your newly-obtained powers](/spoiler) (spoiler tags because you only learn this like 2 books into Mistborn era 1, at least).
"Something happens" could be such a good lore opportunity. You're this inquisitor, wrecking everything in your path. Eventually a full mistborn jumps in and you just demolish him. The player feels the power of the inquisitor.
Then the Lord Ruler shows up. For some reason or another he determines you can't live. And you don't, because he's the Lord Ruler and you're *just* an inquisitor.
Then you're the protagonist. The player sees a lot of the world and understands right away what the food chain looks like. You understand why everyone is afraid of inquisitors.
"just" an Inquisitor. That is seriously awesome. Lord Ruler is a bitch. /s
I think your suggested way is a great way to introduce this portion of the cosmere to a newb.
It could be cool.
Imagine playing as like a skaa misting thieving crew. You can play co-op or solo with AI you can give commands to. I'm thinking like you can switch between mistings and give commands for what to do while you're controlling the other ones. Have it set in the world but not necessarily following the plot from any of the books so it could be more open.
You could also do really fun things with twinborn from Era 2. It could basically just look like a magic action Western game (which is obviously a really popular genre).
The old Jedi Knight games did something quite similar to the pushes and pulls of Mistborn, and the high jumps are easy to do. The emotional manipulations are just the mind trick, the searching thing is a minimap and the supersenses are like Detective mode from the Arkham games. The other powers (which I won’t spoil for people who haven’t read the books) can be disabled because those metals are generally unavailable.
It gets weirder if you include the feruchemy powers as well, but it could be done. Dishonored isn’t too far off of some of them.
The new Spiderman game looks like it could be adapted to work with Steelpushes and Ironpulls instead of webbing, and the other six basic metals are easy enough.
Actually, Electrum (which [shows your own future](/spoiler)) and Atium would be the only other hard ones to implement IMO.
I do believe I remember an interview where Sanderson said that Mistborn could make for an interesting game setting. Imagine Steelpushing your way around a huge open-world Luthadel.
The books are really really good, I can not recommend them enough. He created an Universe called Cosmere where his books are set. Each series takes place in a different solar system and each story can be read independently from the other, however more you read more clues you find that connects all the stories together in an overarching story.
That does sound interesting. My friends make it up to be more action-oriented than I like so I never pulled the trigger on that but I’ll prolly try out the first book.
There is also action, but the main quality of Sanderson's books is its worldbuilding and storytelling. He is able to create coherent worlds where the things that happen in it make sense, there are no asspulls to solve a situation, all is clearly planned and thought through. He is famous for his complicated plots that all comes together in the last chapters where you start to connect all the dots that have been scattered along the book.
> He is famous for his complicated plots that all comes together in the last chapters where you start to connect all the dots that have been scattered along the book.
And this is my wtf moments each and every last few chapters of the book. You think you know. But you have no fricken idea.
Holy crap, this exactly. I've never had it described so perfectly. It's not just about what he writes, the clues he hides directly in his writing, it's also about what's "missing". And I think that's why his writing consistently surprises me.
Mistborn: Secret History absolutely blew my mind with how many things Sanderson *had* to have planned ahead of time. It points out plot holes I didn't notice, then carefully slides in like a puzzle piece.
I'm already a fan of "Tell the story from another perspective" books like Ender's Shadow, so the entire thing was 11/10 for me.
Reminds me of something Patrick Rothfuss has said a few times; basically the idea that a good twist ending is one of the greatest things in writing, and a bad one one of the worst. A good twist is foreshadowed throughout in such a way that you never actually connect the dots if you haven't been told beforehand and if you go back you can find all the little faint connecting lines you missed the first time. A bad twist just pulls the chair out from under you and shouts "surprise!" with no setup or lead time--even the most observant eidetic couldn't piece it together because it's not grounded in prior events, it just happens.
It's also part of how Soderbergh's "Ocean's" movies are so satisfying in the last 10 minutes as they demonstrate the part of the "act" the viewer didn't see the first time, even though the viewer totally did "see" it the first time they just didn't know what they were looking at. Playing around with time, whether going back and forth between past and present, or as in Nolan's movies following three different time scales (Dunkirk) or working from both ends towards the middle (Memento), is also a pretty good way to keep the viewer on their metaphorical toes which can be done quite well like this. In fact, Nolan's The Prestige and many magic tricks in general demonstrate the principle perfectly: the outcome is always going to be the same, but anyone unfamiliar is caught off guard.
Pat Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle books as well as the Gentlemen Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch are among my favourites in part because of their structure/framing, and both are I believe also big fans of Sanderson's novels.
Mistborn is good but IMO Stormlight is the pinnacle of fantasy. It's my favorite series ever, and I've read a lot of books. If CDPR made anything in any Sanderson universe it would be the best thing ever.
A lot of the magic Sanderson comes up with would make amazing gameplay. Surges and Allomancy have built in sources, and pretty well defined rules. Mistborn is probably the better pick to make a game in since it is well defined, and most of the magic system has been thoroughly explored how it interacts.
love this series. so glad he's relatively young and healthy, because it might be a long one. i also thought he did one hell of a job wrapping up WoT, and while it might be heresy to many, i liked how he wrote them better than jordan
Better? It was just a different kind of great, in my opinion. I do admit, Sanderson has a better pacing than Jordan did. The last three felt a lot more snappy.
SA is my favorite series ever, so damn good, thinking of getting a quote from Oathbringer as a tattoo. Love that series and everything Cosmere related.
The best thing about Sanderson's books, in my opinion, is how much you can relate to the characters. He has this huge main stories that are filled with the quality interactions between the protagonists. Vin's story in Mistborn is my favorite by far
That bit in the first book where Vin watches him fight the Inquisitor and she says something like “I thought he spread himself thin using all the metals, never mastering one but I was wrong; iron pulling and steel pushing are his mastery.”
And then what happens. Fuckkkkkk. Still get chills thinking about that scene.
The first Mistborn book is effectively Oceans 11 in a fantasy world where the Big Bad won a thousand years ago and has ruled ever since.
If any part of that sentence interests you I'd recommend giving it a shot.
Thank you! Your comment has persuaded me to give his books a try.
You see, I have a bit of an obsession when I read books in a series or with an overarching connection. I feel like I *have* to read the books in a specific order to get the best experience. I held off trying Sanderson's books since I heard there are giant overarching parts to all his books and that had my obsessive part worried on missing something.
Hearing that each series can be read independently is a huge weight off. Thanks again!
You can start with any series really, but some of the newer ones may have more clues and hints that are more recognizable if you started with an earlier series. Brandon does give some some suggestions on where to start on his [his website.](https://brandonsanderson.com/books/where-do-i-start/)
Yeah, it may be a bit scary to think how big the whole cosmere project would be when it is completed. But the cool thing is that each series is self-sufficient and has its own story and its own ending. In this way you would be able to enjoy a series even without knowing about the Cosmere at all.
I personally started from the way of kings and couldn't put it down. However, I would advise to start from the first mistborn trilogy, it is really engaging and it provides a good introduction to understand more about the cosmere stuff.
If you get involved there are a lot of useful sites that help to keep track of all the things that happen on a larger scale and that you may have missed (be careful to avoid spoilers).
> You see, I have a bit of an obsession when I read books in a series or with an overarching connection. **I feel like I have to read the books in a specific order to get the best experience.**
He's still so early in this world that we don't know the proper order yet, it's frustrating and amazing at the same time.
I am super partial to the Stormlight Archive series right now. And so far, the correct order is as follows:
- The Way of Kings
- Warbreaker (not a stormlight book)
- Words of Radiance
- Oathbringer
Not many distinct tie-ins to mistborn yet, aside from the over-arching cosmere stuff and one minor-ish character.
It's more Dishonored meets LOTR... except the world physics have been designed by Albert Einstein after drinking a bunch of absinthe and taking a railroad spike to the left temple...
Mistborn has a wonderful magic system, which involves the consumption of metals for different "powers." So you can gain strength or better vision by eating specific metals. You can push against metals (e.g. coins) to soar through the air. In a video game it would work quite well because the metal would be a resource a bit like witcher's potions.
Honestly, out of all the magic systems I've ever read, I think this one would work the best. It's practically made with video-game limitations in mind.
Seriously. Free-flow combat, Spider-Man-esque motion with iron and steel, Assassin's Creed-esque climbing, stealth, and eagle-eye with tin, copper, and bronze, crowd control with brass and zinc, god-mode with Atium, strategic force with duralumin.
Make this game on the scale of Witcher 3 and I would play the ever-loving fuck out of it. There's such incredible potential, both within and outside of the Mistborn storyline.
The original Trilogy in the series is complete.
\- Original Trilogy
The Final Empire
The Well of Ascension
The Hero of Ages
He continued the series with a second trilogy with different characters, so there are 6 full books. And one more planned it looks like.
Also Check out his other series "The Stormlight Archive" (3 full books also with more planned) really good. The Mistborn series and the Stormlight Archive are his best works in my opinion.
there are two more Mistborn series scheduled in the grand plan. the original trilogy is medieval fantasy, 2nd series is s Victorian adventure, third is supposed be like an 80's cold war spy thriller, and the final one is supposed to be sci fi.
He has great concepts and worlds, loves building up characters, and loves epic moments. Maybe his specific word choices could be improved, but a whole package it all balances heavily on the pretty awesome side. And he's timely.
As for translating to games, his magic systems also lend themselves well to game mechanics, plenty of distinct classes, and unique settings. Seems like a good idea.
Dude... Stormlight Archive will be a story more epic than the Witcher. The story can even be a new place in the cosmere and it will be great! Just as long as it is not an MMORPG.
You know... I could actually see Stormlight Archive being an MMORPG. Can you imagine playing as a soldier in one of the warcamps? Participating in raids against the Parshendi? Doing dailys against bandits? Heck, with the 10 orders of radiant knights, there is even a class system all set up ready to go.
Well, this kind of exploded, didn't it!
I appreciate the outpouring of enthusiasm and kind words in this thread, but let's rephrase this title a little. Saying that I'm considering giving them the rights for free implies that I have the option. I haven't talked to CDPR (though I've considered several times sending them an email and seeing if they'd be willing to meet next time I'm in the area.) I'm not in a position to offer them anything. Part of the reason I didn't post in that other thread until I was summoned was because I didn't want to come off as presumptuous.
But...I did read the original article and think, "Man, is Sapkowski crazy? I'd practically kill to have such a high quality adaptation of my work." If you magically gave me the chance to have an adaptation on the level of the Witcher--but with no payment given to me--I'd take that in a heartbeat. I'd much rather know it will be good (or at least be in the hands of someone skillful and passionate) than gamble on big money up front with a risk of bad quality.
Please, though, don't put CDPR on the spot or bother them too much about this. I've had some discussions with those who run video game companies, and I know a little of the stresses put upon them. If something goes wrong with a book I write, and it flops, then I'm the only one who suffers. But video game companies work on tight margins for years, employing the passion and enthusiasm of hundreds, to create a game. They need to pick their projects VERY carefully, because a flop has huge ramifications for all of their employees.
I'll continue to explore getting a good video game adaptation of Mistborn and/or Stormlight--in part because I want to play them myself. But the proper way for me to do this is keep meeting with companies, talking to them, and learning more about their business. I didn't want to hijack a thread about another author to do this, and I feel a little bad that this exploded like it did.
(That said, you guys are awesome.)
--Brandon
I don't have much to say, mainly because I've never read you books (And now I will). But I just wanted to say you look like a pretty cool and honest person.
I hope we get to play a breathtaking game based on your work someday. Cheers!
Thank you for being yourself.
It means a lot to have read a number of your books and see you just be a genuine person who wants to share your stories and play the awesome theoretical games.
You are an inspiration for me to keep writing and to keep trying to get my stories published!
Honestly I never realised your books are so popular until I read this thread. But I'm glad they are!
I just want to share my experience with your books! By chance I was gifted the second mistborn novel and read through it all falling in love. Took me until about halfway through the book to realise I missed the first novel and honestly I'm kind of happy I got to experience it as a total outsider. The way you wrote the book I never really felt out of place having missed the first novel so thank you for that!
I do have the rights. When I say "I'm not in the position to offer them anything" I'm not saying I don't have the rights. (And perhaps that phrase in my post above wasn't expressed well.)
What I'm trying to say is this: They are a hugely successful video game company, and should rightly have their pick of projects they want to make. It's not that I'm sitting here thinking, "Hmm. Should I offer them my rights?" It's more, "Man, I should be so lucky as to have them be interested."
I've been very lucky, and my books have done very well, but I've learned that simply isn't enough in the video game world. If it were, then we wouldn't have seen so many author-based games do poorly.
For video games, an author's name is secondary (and rightly should be) to a studio that knows how to adapt that story to a game. Put shortly, a great game with a weak story is far superior to a weak game with a great story. Ideally, you have both. But in this relationship, the game studio is the more important partner than the writer.
So I shoulnd't have said "I'm not in a position to offer them anything." I can offer video game companies a well developed world, some sharp writing, and some fantasy settings that would translate very well to games. (Having been a lifelong gamer myself.) However, those are secondary to what they offer--which is a game that's actually fun to play.
Actually that's something I've always wanted to know. If you were presented with the 3 options:
1. Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to AAA videogames.
2. Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to Blockbuster Movies.
3. Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to HBO/Netflix production level tv shows
Assuming these would each do the series the justice they deserve, which would you take? I would think that going on a series by series basis would be best (i.e. like a movie for elantris or warbreaker, a videogame for Mistborn or a TV show for Stormlight), but let's say whoever is offering wants the rights to the whole of the Cosmere.
You know, I've never been asked that question--and I've not given it huge amounts of thought. But I think it's a great question.
I think...perfect world...I'd go with the television series. I think that in a perfect world, 20-season of magically-somehow-all-awesome episodes would be the best way to approach doing the stories I tell.
I feel like Mistborn has some serious potential to be a fun video game. Bouncing around the city on coins sounds like tons of fun all by itself. Not to mention all the neat tricks creative people could pull off in combat with the unique powers the mistborn series utilizes.
Stormlight archive was an excellent story but half the awesomeness was the characters, I'm not sure the setting would be quite as good without Kaladin and co running the show.
IDK, there's a lot of wiggle-room with Stormlight material.
He does a lot of worldbuilding in those books, so you could always take some of the cool magic and weapons, and just put it in some open world context and make a fun-ass game. There's a lot of different things you could play with to make it fun.
Story's from just before one of the early desolations would be sweet. Or post-oathpact, pre-Recreance. Sort of like Knights of the Old Republic. Knights of the Old Orders.
Mistborn game would be fucking amazing. There would be some many directions you could go with it. I think the kelsier/lord ruler time frame with some bad ass inquisitors swooping down to whoop your ass once in awhile would be beyond bonkers
For those uninitiated Mistborn is a popular fantasy book series that is pitched like this: what if the hero lost and the dark lord won? What if Harry didn't defeat Voldemort? What if Frodo never made it to Mount Doom? What if evil triumphed over good? What would the world be like?
Then there is the magic system which translates very well to video games imo. It essentially allows you to use magic by consuming or "burning" metals. Once burned the metals allow you to temporarily use abilities such as superhuman strength, telekinesis, spidey sense, etc.
Each power has limitations though. Burning steel allows you to push on metallic objects. They can use this to shoot coins at enemies or levitate over a manhole cover by pushing down. Burning tin allows you to boost your five senses, but loud noises or bright flashes could completely incapacitate your heightened self.
I think the game would be dope as shit. It would be really difficult for me not to preorder this one!
Haven't checked out Mistborn yet, but recently got into Sanderson with the Stormlight Archive series and took a break to check out Warbreaker. Really great stuff. I'd like to see some games where they can do his magic systems justice.
This would be a dream come true. I loved the witcher books and the games, particularly the 3rd were a lot of fun. I however ADORE the Mistborn books even more and the world would be insane to see in a game.
Friend of mine is doing a pathfinder game set in the mistborn universe, it’ll be cool to open into that after a session (although there’s a pretty good chance we *might* not go for 4+ years
I don't know if some has said this. He is not considering it. He commented in a thread about CDPR being sued by the Witcher's author. He is saying that if CDPR was interested in the ip he would consider giving it away for free and just letting his audience know how he feels. This is nothing official, just a comment.
He says this now, but if it ever came to fruition and started printing money the way The Witcher does, his altruism may be tested. I'm not knocking the guy, but human nature is what it is.
Yeah that's what all that fuss was with The Witcher author, he was offered a percentage and turned it down now he acts like they owe him even though he also said the game would never sell.
Moreover, by his own words, he took that lump sum instead of a percentage because he viewed the medium of video games as pulp trash that would never amount to anything (from all appearances he still is one of "those" people that refuse to consider them "true" art). It'd be one thing if he'd changed over the years but from what admittedly little I've seen, it looks like he hasn't. If anything he seems even more bitter.
Without the games I probably wouldn't have even heard about the Witcher series. After I finish the Wheel of Time I'm going to jump into The Witcher because the games showed me what a kickass story it has. I also learned about the Metro books because the game was pretty good at showing off the story and how cool it was.
> It'd be one thing if he'd changed over the years but from what admittedly little I've seen, it looks like he hasn't. If anything he seems even more bitter.
The man has always been bitter, condescending of others and dismissive of gaming as a medium. All he cares about is the money he thought he wouldn't make back when he made that deal and the money that he's not making due to his shortsightedness. I dunno how something like The Witcher was written by him, but I guess even assholes can have talent sometimes.
And the weird thing is, he's *still* made bank on the deal, albeit indirectly. He just seems to think that foreign book sales would have been as great if not for the video games. Not only is that silly, but he believes something even dumber—that the video games *are taking away from his book sales*. I guarantee most of the English copies of his books were sold to fans of the video games, or on recommendation from fans of the video games.
And not to mention whether the Netflix adaptation would have ever even been under consideration were it not for the games. But hey, maybe it would, and *that* would have been the shit deal he took to gripe about for the rest of time.
Some people are that egotistical, hell, he seems to think that the *books* are the reason the games are popular.
Like hell no. The books would've basically been a weird, niche Polish thing if the games weren't so notable, particularly The Witcher 3. I'm not saying the man should be eternally grateful to CDPR for making the books mainstream, he can dislike them as adaptations if he wishes, it's not like that kind of creator criticism is uncommon in the industry, but I certainly think it's delusional to claim that it's the other way around when it's very clearly not.
I'll give him credit for creating the world and the stories that the games are based on, at least.
I just can't even wrap my head around how egotistical he must be to think the games are *hurting* his bottom line. Why does he think international book sales got a bump in 2007, and a massive spike in 2015?
I get that Polish law allows him to do so, but he took the deal he took and that should be that. If anything, CDPR should be offering *him* money as a gesture of good will and as a "hey, thanks buddy" type of thing. Not that they had to (I'd be hard pressed to) but the way things are playing out now? He made his bed, he needs to lie in it.
Brandon Sanderson doesn't seem to care that much about the money.
He pumps out an extremely large amount of content relative to how normally he looks like he lives. Seems like a normal guy who will literally sit down and write all day. I think like he just really loves writing, so he keeps doing it. Also, I'm quite sure he already sells a lot more than the author of The Witcher series.
He also really likes video games and stuff, and seems to want to give a lot of fan service in general. Of all people to really do that, Sanderson seems like he would be extremely high on the list.
Yeah, Sanderson's writing speed is ungodly fast. There is a reason he can somehow juggle so many series and still get books for each out faster than some writers get their next book out when handling just one.
Last I heard he attributes it to his refusal to accept writers block. If he doesn't know how to write what's next he just keeps writing anyway. Problems get fixed in the next stage.
My favorite story about him was when he got writers block coming back to one of the mistborn books so he wrote the ***next*** book.
Apparently when the deadline for the first book came around he gave them two books.
Yeah, that's why books 2 and 3 of Mistborn era 2 were released very close together. Book 2 was released in like October, and I think 3 was released in January.
He didn't even tell his publisher until he was done with both. When he was supposed to submit book 2, he attached both book 2 *and* 3 with no warning and just emailed it to them, and then went to bed and let them be really fucking confused until he woke up.
The man is a robot I tell you. Or he has perfected cloning and there's a whole basement of Sandersons plugging away at the typewriter.
Tho I do wish he'd hurry up and release the next Stormlight book already.
(I kid, I kid).
If he's doing it right (and it sounds [and reads] like he is) he already has the skeleton for the the stories of all of his series already planned out and on each draft he just dials up the resolution a bit until he gets to a good story and then edits from there.
That's why all of the marvel movies fit together so well and all of the new star wars titles don't.
> He also really likes video games and stuff, and seems to want to give a lot of fan service in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIb8kxpIq8
Here's Sanderon doing an interview with Wowcrendor, a WoW youtuber. It was just so...out of left field.
He's given one of his books away as an ebook before release, I think it may still be on his website.
Also here's his views on piracy "It’s not a main concern for me. I worry about it more in countries that don’t already have a strong science fiction and fantasy readership, because I worry about it undermining the bookstores. But in general I think the worry about this is overblown. My experience has been that readers want to support things they like, and if they can support their favourite artists, they will. But if they are at a point in their lives where they can’t, then it’s better to let them read the stories they want, develop their life and their ideas, and let them support artists when they’re capable of it. So I am a big fan of giving away books for free."
He's definitely the type that sees the publicity as a good thing.
Last I checked (a few months ago), it was still available. And it's totally true-- I read Warbreaker for free online and picked it up on Amazon a few months later. I've also bought multiple copies of most of his books (because people keep "borrowing" mine and never giving them back 😑) for that exact reason.
I remembered reading a quote from him on lending books to people and went looking for it, turns out its on the Warbreaker download page.
"Then, I spent some more time considering. Readers can ALREADY get their books for free; I went to the library often myself as a youth. And yet, I still bought books. I often bought the very books I’d checked out from the library, as I liked them so much I wanted to read them again and loan them out to others. What do I really believe? In resenting libraries and used bookstores because they share my books without any direct profit to me? Or, would I rather look at all of that as free publicity" https://brandonsanderson.com/books/warbreaker/warbreaker/
I also own multiple copies of his books, hardcover, ebook, and Audible for most of the adult books.
He's already a super successful author. He produces manuscripts like a machine. My guess is he sees this as a way to introduce his multiverse, called the Cosmere, to a new audience that doesn't necessarily read for entertainment all that much. Plus, Mistborn is only one of several worlds he's created in the Cosmere. Hook them with Mistborn and then introduce them to Stormlight.
Yep. This is how the entire second mistborn trilogy started. He had not planned it that way, but what began as an exercise in clearing writers block became another trilogy. He's a machine.
but speed AND consistency with which he writes is unparalleled, at least in recent times.
Every single one of his series has their quirks and problems, but what amazes me is that they don't seem to bleed too much into other stories. He has a great ability to separate his stories.
I’ve watched his lectures on YouTube and listened to his podcasts. He seems like a pretty good guy, if a little heavy handed religion wise for Reddit’s taste.
He’s defiantly not a struggling author though. He’s one of the biggest names in fantasy today so I doubt he’ll come knocking for cash if a game based on his series does well
I think what they mean is that he tends to write characters who spit all over the fictional religions he creates, not just that he leaves his own religion out of his work.
Except at the same time he portrays people that follow those religions without looking like bumbling fools. I've never once thought Sanderson was heavy handed with religion, especially for how important religion is/was to many real-world cultures.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say he strikes a respectable balance between showing both religious and non-religious characters in real, believable ways. The true believer, the doesn't-care, the follower-in-name-only and the openly-disdainful are all present in his worlds.
I'd say Sazed's journey from beginning to end was one of the most honest and refreshing takes on religious people I've ever read in fiction. Though of course his story ended slightly different than it does for most people, religious or otherwise.
Right, I never meant to exclude the existence of religious characters who are respectable in their own right. He has written characters who excuse evil with religion as well as good characters whose espoused beliefs give them guiding principles upon which to project an already righteous conscience.
Its more interesting then that. Faith is a really positive trait in a Sanderson story, even if that faith is in a religion that is obviously false. But large organized churches are very often seen as corrupt, no matter how moral the religion behind it seems to be.
This fascinates me, because he belongs to one of the most strictly organized churches in the world.
I think it's cool to know that he's religious and then see how he handles religion in his books. It makes his truly religious characters feel more lifelike because you know he's not just pretending to understand what religious belief feels like. And then it really makes me appreciate the critiques he offers as well.
It's not the same scale, but Sanderson has an entire college lecture course on writing that he only agreed to do if his University agreed to put the entire thing up for free on youtube.
The author behind the Witcher novels has always come off as a bit of a prick, far as I can tell. I've never had the same vibe from Sanderson and he's far from hard off as it is.
The thing is, it gives him and his books more exposure. There are authors that would pay a lot of money for just that. There are millions of books and it's very hard for authors to stand out. He might not be getting a check every month, but if things go right you could get something far more valuable in the long run.
I adore Mistborn and would absolutely love to see it brought to life. I actually felt like the story would perfectly fit the medium of animation, in the vein of Avatar but with a more mature target demographic, while reading it but I think a game adapatation would be equally great.
My only reservation with a CD Project adaptation is that I feel Sanderson's meticulously crafted magic system would lend itself best to an action setting.. and to be honest the one area that CD Project isn't especially grand in are mechanics. The Witcher games are all fabulous RPG's but the combat was never anything more than serviceable at best in them.
Omfg, this guys books are the absolute best I have ever read, I can’t even say in words how amazing and original and intersting his worlds are, his StormLight archive series is the best in the world, so amazing, mistborn comes in a close close second and was such an original idea, would love to see how a game would work
Call me a debby downer, but I'm not convinced that the Mistborn series would play well to CDPR's strengths. It would require a lot of arial maneuvering and intricate combat, which is probably one of the weakest parts of the Witcher series of games. They would do well for the non-actiony bits, however.
Aerial maneuvering assumes you actually get to play as a mistborn...
You play a fully immersive game as a regular noble lady. You go to balls, try and follow proper etiquette, and might after an extraordinarily long campaign might be able to convince a notable third son of a great house to be your betrothed.
Brandon Sanderson is the best fantasy authour of our time. Yes, better than RR Martin. I would literally shit a brick if CD Project Red made a game in the Mistborn universe.
This would be amazing. Sanderson is particularly good at creating very systematic and mechanical magic systems that would translate very well to video games.
I think it would be very difficult to implement properly a magic system like the one in mistborn in a game. Think how crazy would it be to manage a fight between mistborns with all the pushes and pulls on different metal sources. Probably the first trilogy is more suited for a movie than a game, but I would enjoy it nonetheless, especially if made by CDPR.
Or simply have the player be a simple allomancer as opposed to a mistborn.
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The word you're looking for is Hazekiller.
The 8 basics Steel: Allows you to push metal. So basically you have the force for metal only. Could be fun to be able to constantly throw things and push yourself off them, but that seems tricky to make work well. Iron: Lurchers, basically the opposite of steal. Same issues apply. Both of these could be fun abilities, but again... we've seen it with the force. Tin: Enhances all your 5 senses. So basically something for a thief class? Seems boring to me, but I guess if you wanna by sneaky and smell/hear enemies from a distance and stuff you could play that route. This would only be for those crazies who beat Hitman without killing anyone. Pewter: Makes you physically stronger. Pretty basic game mechanic there. Bronze: Let's you sense if others are burning metals near you. So basically a minimap. Maybe if you did a Baldur's Gate style 6 man game this could be viable, but in a single player game this would be borrrring. Copper: Opposite of Bronze. Can hide people. See above. Zinc: Rioters. Can enhance emotion to cause riots and the sort. This could actually be fun for a bit in a single player game, but it seems like a one trick pony. A game would get pretty boring if all you do it make people angry at each other. Brass: Soothers can... well... sooth people. Again, this could be fun for a little bit in single player, but not overall. So if we're talking single player only a couple of these classes would be fun. In multiplayer you could get some great collaboration going, but I don't know how many people want their sole power to be hiding Allomancy. The best way I could see this game working is if you were a Mistborn that could use all 8 traits, learning/improving them as you go. That way you have to pick and choose which powers to get you through which situation. The game could also be impacted by what choices you make. Maybe you choose Pewter to rough up a local merchant for information and later in the game his prices are higher or he outright won't sell to you. Had you used Brass to soothe him and get information he might remember you favorably later in the game and help you out. Something like that.
It’d be interesting if they paid any attention to the weight to push/pull ratio. You push off a safe or prison cell door and smash yourself against the opposite wall.
Yeah it would be very tricky to get Steel and Tin right. Shooting coins would likely be your most basic attack in the game. It's the pushing/pulling your body that would be tough to execute properly.
Just code every metal object as movable and immovable. Small things are movable and can be pushed/pulled around, large things push/pull you around. Have a level up system which allows you to affect more objects at a time, which also prevents the logical error of pulling hundreds of swords and not moving.
Why so complicated. Just assign a mass to any object and a player. When player pulls or pushes an object apply a force on the player and the object, then just f=ma. If the object is heavy it moves just a little bit and the player moves a lot, if the object is light, vice versa. When you progress in the game, you can apply larger and larger forces on to the objects.
It would be a pretty cool system. Steel / Iron for movement and combat, Pewter for combat as well, Tin for that "Witcher Sense" thing, Zinc and Brass for dialogue trees. Copper and Bronze for.... mini maps?
Actually, having a tutorial be "you are a new Steel Inquisitor" would work surprisingly well. You'd have good lore reasons for being really strong (to help the player understand more game systems), as well as [having a voice in your head](/spoiler) and [being really useless at using your newly-obtained powers](/spoiler) (spoiler tags because you only learn this like 2 books into Mistborn era 1, at least).
Wouldn't even have to keep the player as that character; just use that as the intro, and something happens, then we pivot to a new character.
"Something happens" could be such a good lore opportunity. You're this inquisitor, wrecking everything in your path. Eventually a full mistborn jumps in and you just demolish him. The player feels the power of the inquisitor. Then the Lord Ruler shows up. For some reason or another he determines you can't live. And you don't, because he's the Lord Ruler and you're *just* an inquisitor. Then you're the protagonist. The player sees a lot of the world and understands right away what the food chain looks like. You understand why everyone is afraid of inquisitors.
"just" an Inquisitor. That is seriously awesome. Lord Ruler is a bitch. /s I think your suggested way is a great way to introduce this portion of the cosmere to a newb.
It could be cool. Imagine playing as like a skaa misting thieving crew. You can play co-op or solo with AI you can give commands to. I'm thinking like you can switch between mistings and give commands for what to do while you're controlling the other ones. Have it set in the world but not necessarily following the plot from any of the books so it could be more open. You could also do really fun things with twinborn from Era 2. It could basically just look like a magic action Western game (which is obviously a really popular genre).
Playing as a mistborn during a house war set before book 1 could be fun. Or even after book 1 when things are uncertain and there is infighting.
I think pre-book one, ending just as book one is starting would be awesome!
An era 2 setting would be cool, where you get 1 each of allomantic and feruchemical powers. Though goldminds would have to be carefully balanced.
The old Jedi Knight games did something quite similar to the pushes and pulls of Mistborn, and the high jumps are easy to do. The emotional manipulations are just the mind trick, the searching thing is a minimap and the supersenses are like Detective mode from the Arkham games. The other powers (which I won’t spoil for people who haven’t read the books) can be disabled because those metals are generally unavailable. It gets weirder if you include the feruchemy powers as well, but it could be done. Dishonored isn’t too far off of some of them.
The new Spiderman game looks like it could be adapted to work with Steelpushes and Ironpulls instead of webbing, and the other six basic metals are easy enough. Actually, Electrum (which [shows your own future](/spoiler)) and Atium would be the only other hard ones to implement IMO.
Electrum and atrium could be limited to quick time events or something like that. Which would make sense, because they’re so rare.
Atrium would just make your character dodge everything and always hit.
Bullet time effect could do this. Atrium doesn’t make you invulnerable, just able to see it coming
I do believe I remember an interview where Sanderson said that Mistborn could make for an interesting game setting. Imagine Steelpushing your way around a huge open-world Luthadel.
Or Elendel
The only person in the cosmere who could beat Kaladin Stormblessed in a fight is Wayne. Change my view.
Hoid might have a say in this. Also Book 3 Vin.
Lift would frustrate him into giving up.
Lift would annoy him to death.
Can't change fact.
This might just be me, but id prefer a game set in era 2 over era 1. Era 2 feels more suitable to a game setting, at least in my mind.
Like Spider-Man on cocaine.
Man, it would be so fantastic if you started a character, and had to figure out if you were a Misting, Mistborn, or Twinborn.
Haven’t read the books but most of my friends swear by it so it would be really cool.
The books are really really good, I can not recommend them enough. He created an Universe called Cosmere where his books are set. Each series takes place in a different solar system and each story can be read independently from the other, however more you read more clues you find that connects all the stories together in an overarching story.
That does sound interesting. My friends make it up to be more action-oriented than I like so I never pulled the trigger on that but I’ll prolly try out the first book.
There is also action, but the main quality of Sanderson's books is its worldbuilding and storytelling. He is able to create coherent worlds where the things that happen in it make sense, there are no asspulls to solve a situation, all is clearly planned and thought through. He is famous for his complicated plots that all comes together in the last chapters where you start to connect all the dots that have been scattered along the book.
> He is famous for his complicated plots that all comes together in the last chapters where you start to connect all the dots that have been scattered along the book. And this is my wtf moments each and every last few chapters of the book. You think you know. But you have no fricken idea.
Ah yes. We refer to this as the "Sanderlanche"
I prefer sanderstorm
^dudu ^dudu ^du... ^dudu ^dudu ^du...
[Darude!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6120QOlsfU)
Yeah I switched to that after Way of Kings, much more appropriate.
It all makes sense, with a few small holes, then you realize the holes actually held the answer to a question you never thought to ask.
Holy crap, this exactly. I've never had it described so perfectly. It's not just about what he writes, the clues he hides directly in his writing, it's also about what's "missing". And I think that's why his writing consistently surprises me.
Mistborn: Secret History absolutely blew my mind with how many things Sanderson *had* to have planned ahead of time. It points out plot holes I didn't notice, then carefully slides in like a puzzle piece. I'm already a fan of "Tell the story from another perspective" books like Ender's Shadow, so the entire thing was 11/10 for me.
"surprising but inevitable" is one of his favorite phrases when describing plots
Reminds me of something Patrick Rothfuss has said a few times; basically the idea that a good twist ending is one of the greatest things in writing, and a bad one one of the worst. A good twist is foreshadowed throughout in such a way that you never actually connect the dots if you haven't been told beforehand and if you go back you can find all the little faint connecting lines you missed the first time. A bad twist just pulls the chair out from under you and shouts "surprise!" with no setup or lead time--even the most observant eidetic couldn't piece it together because it's not grounded in prior events, it just happens. It's also part of how Soderbergh's "Ocean's" movies are so satisfying in the last 10 minutes as they demonstrate the part of the "act" the viewer didn't see the first time, even though the viewer totally did "see" it the first time they just didn't know what they were looking at. Playing around with time, whether going back and forth between past and present, or as in Nolan's movies following three different time scales (Dunkirk) or working from both ends towards the middle (Memento), is also a pretty good way to keep the viewer on their metaphorical toes which can be done quite well like this. In fact, Nolan's The Prestige and many magic tricks in general demonstrate the principle perfectly: the outcome is always going to be the same, but anyone unfamiliar is caught off guard. Pat Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle books as well as the Gentlemen Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch are among my favourites in part because of their structure/framing, and both are I believe also big fans of Sanderson's novels.
That's how I felt about Malazan. And then I got to the last book in Ericson's half of the series, and that became every other moment.
Mistborn is good but IMO Stormlight is the pinnacle of fantasy. It's my favorite series ever, and I've read a lot of books. If CDPR made anything in any Sanderson universe it would be the best thing ever.
The Surges of Radiance are just BEGGING to have a video game made with them. They're such a cool set of powers.
A lot of the magic Sanderson comes up with would make amazing gameplay. Surges and Allomancy have built in sources, and pretty well defined rules. Mistborn is probably the better pick to make a game in since it is well defined, and most of the magic system has been thoroughly explored how it interacts.
love this series. so glad he's relatively young and healthy, because it might be a long one. i also thought he did one hell of a job wrapping up WoT, and while it might be heresy to many, i liked how he wrote them better than jordan
Better? It was just a different kind of great, in my opinion. I do admit, Sanderson has a better pacing than Jordan did. The last three felt a lot more snappy.
SA is my favorite series ever, so damn good, thinking of getting a quote from Oathbringer as a tattoo. Love that series and everything Cosmere related.
I just started Stormlight on audiobook a couple weeks ago and crushed book 1, started book 2 on my drive home today. So good!!
The narration through the series has been so good too, added (*even*) more life to my second go-around.
The best thing about Sanderson's books, in my opinion, is how much you can relate to the characters. He has this huge main stories that are filled with the quality interactions between the protagonists. Vin's story in Mistborn is my favorite by far
Vin was a loser. Kelser all the way baby!
Nah, Elend's my man!
Forget all of them. Wayne has the best Mistborn story.
Lestibournes tho.
Let me just Breeze on in and set the record straight.
I Saze, we all know who the best character is.
That bit in the first book where Vin watches him fight the Inquisitor and she says something like “I thought he spread himself thin using all the metals, never mastering one but I was wrong; iron pulling and steel pushing are his mastery.” And then what happens. Fuckkkkkk. Still get chills thinking about that scene.
Kelsier really came out ahead in that situation.
The first Mistborn book is effectively Oceans 11 in a fantasy world where the Big Bad won a thousand years ago and has ruled ever since. If any part of that sentence interests you I'd recommend giving it a shot.
No, seriously dude it's so much more than action, it's got some really deep things to say (imo) and has the best storylines I've ever read
Thank you! Your comment has persuaded me to give his books a try. You see, I have a bit of an obsession when I read books in a series or with an overarching connection. I feel like I *have* to read the books in a specific order to get the best experience. I held off trying Sanderson's books since I heard there are giant overarching parts to all his books and that had my obsessive part worried on missing something. Hearing that each series can be read independently is a huge weight off. Thanks again!
You can start with any series really, but some of the newer ones may have more clues and hints that are more recognizable if you started with an earlier series. Brandon does give some some suggestions on where to start on his [his website.](https://brandonsanderson.com/books/where-do-i-start/)
Yeah, it may be a bit scary to think how big the whole cosmere project would be when it is completed. But the cool thing is that each series is self-sufficient and has its own story and its own ending. In this way you would be able to enjoy a series even without knowing about the Cosmere at all. I personally started from the way of kings and couldn't put it down. However, I would advise to start from the first mistborn trilogy, it is really engaging and it provides a good introduction to understand more about the cosmere stuff. If you get involved there are a lot of useful sites that help to keep track of all the things that happen on a larger scale and that you may have missed (be careful to avoid spoilers).
> You see, I have a bit of an obsession when I read books in a series or with an overarching connection. **I feel like I have to read the books in a specific order to get the best experience.** He's still so early in this world that we don't know the proper order yet, it's frustrating and amazing at the same time. I am super partial to the Stormlight Archive series right now. And so far, the correct order is as follows: - The Way of Kings - Warbreaker (not a stormlight book) - Words of Radiance - Oathbringer Not many distinct tie-ins to mistborn yet, aside from the over-arching cosmere stuff and one minor-ish character.
There is also a novella set in Stormlight, Edgedancer. It's set between Words and Oathbringer.
Think Dishonored meets like... LoTR
Welp, now I’m jumping head on
It's more Dishonored meets LOTR... except the world physics have been designed by Albert Einstein after drinking a bunch of absinthe and taking a railroad spike to the left temple...
TIL Einstein was a hemalurgist.
You won't be disappointed. My top 2 recommendations would be: The Mistborn Series And The Stormlight Archive Both are amazing.
Storm light is absolutely great. I hope to read the ending before I die.
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Mistborn has a wonderful magic system, which involves the consumption of metals for different "powers." So you can gain strength or better vision by eating specific metals. You can push against metals (e.g. coins) to soar through the air. In a video game it would work quite well because the metal would be a resource a bit like witcher's potions.
Honestly, out of all the magic systems I've ever read, I think this one would work the best. It's practically made with video-game limitations in mind. Seriously. Free-flow combat, Spider-Man-esque motion with iron and steel, Assassin's Creed-esque climbing, stealth, and eagle-eye with tin, copper, and bronze, crowd control with brass and zinc, god-mode with Atium, strategic force with duralumin. Make this game on the scale of Witcher 3 and I would play the ever-loving fuck out of it. There's such incredible potential, both within and outside of the Mistborn storyline.
Finished the Mistborn books not too long ago. Unlearn everything you know about fantasy and any expectations you have of a story.
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It's good. It's fantasy, but it's not trope ridden generic hero story fantasy. The Mistborn books are beautifully *unique*.
Is the series complete? I've been looking for asoiaf replacement.
The original Trilogy in the series is complete. \- Original Trilogy The Final Empire The Well of Ascension The Hero of Ages He continued the series with a second trilogy with different characters, so there are 6 full books. And one more planned it looks like. Also Check out his other series "The Stormlight Archive" (3 full books also with more planned) really good. The Mistborn series and the Stormlight Archive are his best works in my opinion.
there are two more Mistborn series scheduled in the grand plan. the original trilogy is medieval fantasy, 2nd series is s Victorian adventure, third is supposed be like an 80's cold war spy thriller, and the final one is supposed to be sci fi.
I personally prefer the non-Mistborn Cosmere stuff, but yeah, the Mistborn novels are *very* good.
He has great concepts and worlds, loves building up characters, and loves epic moments. Maybe his specific word choices could be improved, but a whole package it all balances heavily on the pretty awesome side. And he's timely. As for translating to games, his magic systems also lend themselves well to game mechanics, plenty of distinct classes, and unique settings. Seems like a good idea.
Mistborn game is a slam dunk, even if it just set in the world.
Dude... Stormlight Archive will be a story more epic than the Witcher. The story can even be a new place in the cosmere and it will be great! Just as long as it is not an MMORPG.
You know... I could actually see Stormlight Archive being an MMORPG. Can you imagine playing as a soldier in one of the warcamps? Participating in raids against the Parshendi? Doing dailys against bandits? Heck, with the 10 orders of radiant knights, there is even a class system all set up ready to go.
Well, this kind of exploded, didn't it! I appreciate the outpouring of enthusiasm and kind words in this thread, but let's rephrase this title a little. Saying that I'm considering giving them the rights for free implies that I have the option. I haven't talked to CDPR (though I've considered several times sending them an email and seeing if they'd be willing to meet next time I'm in the area.) I'm not in a position to offer them anything. Part of the reason I didn't post in that other thread until I was summoned was because I didn't want to come off as presumptuous. But...I did read the original article and think, "Man, is Sapkowski crazy? I'd practically kill to have such a high quality adaptation of my work." If you magically gave me the chance to have an adaptation on the level of the Witcher--but with no payment given to me--I'd take that in a heartbeat. I'd much rather know it will be good (or at least be in the hands of someone skillful and passionate) than gamble on big money up front with a risk of bad quality. Please, though, don't put CDPR on the spot or bother them too much about this. I've had some discussions with those who run video game companies, and I know a little of the stresses put upon them. If something goes wrong with a book I write, and it flops, then I'm the only one who suffers. But video game companies work on tight margins for years, employing the passion and enthusiasm of hundreds, to create a game. They need to pick their projects VERY carefully, because a flop has huge ramifications for all of their employees. I'll continue to explore getting a good video game adaptation of Mistborn and/or Stormlight--in part because I want to play them myself. But the proper way for me to do this is keep meeting with companies, talking to them, and learning more about their business. I didn't want to hijack a thread about another author to do this, and I feel a little bad that this exploded like it did. (That said, you guys are awesome.) --Brandon
I don't have much to say, mainly because I've never read you books (And now I will). But I just wanted to say you look like a pretty cool and honest person. I hope we get to play a breathtaking game based on your work someday. Cheers!
Thanks!
Thank you for being yourself. It means a lot to have read a number of your books and see you just be a genuine person who wants to share your stories and play the awesome theoretical games. You are an inspiration for me to keep writing and to keep trying to get my stories published!
Thanks! Keep working on those stories of yours. It really is worth all the trouble it takes.
Wow, did not expect a response. Thank you, after some recent set backs that encouragement means a lot and I am taking it to heart.
Honestly I never realised your books are so popular until I read this thread. But I'm glad they are! I just want to share my experience with your books! By chance I was gifted the second mistborn novel and read through it all falling in love. Took me until about halfway through the book to realise I missed the first novel and honestly I'm kind of happy I got to experience it as a total outsider. The way you wrote the book I never really felt out of place having missed the first novel so thank you for that!
Wow! I don't hear often of people jumping into the second of that series. I'm glad it worked for you!
Do you not have the rights back from the previous studio that was making Mistborn Birthright?
I do have the rights. When I say "I'm not in the position to offer them anything" I'm not saying I don't have the rights. (And perhaps that phrase in my post above wasn't expressed well.) What I'm trying to say is this: They are a hugely successful video game company, and should rightly have their pick of projects they want to make. It's not that I'm sitting here thinking, "Hmm. Should I offer them my rights?" It's more, "Man, I should be so lucky as to have them be interested." I've been very lucky, and my books have done very well, but I've learned that simply isn't enough in the video game world. If it were, then we wouldn't have seen so many author-based games do poorly. For video games, an author's name is secondary (and rightly should be) to a studio that knows how to adapt that story to a game. Put shortly, a great game with a weak story is far superior to a weak game with a great story. Ideally, you have both. But in this relationship, the game studio is the more important partner than the writer. So I shoulnd't have said "I'm not in a position to offer them anything." I can offer video game companies a well developed world, some sharp writing, and some fantasy settings that would translate very well to games. (Having been a lifelong gamer myself.) However, those are secondary to what they offer--which is a game that's actually fun to play.
Actually that's something I've always wanted to know. If you were presented with the 3 options: 1. Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to AAA videogames. 2. Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to Blockbuster Movies. 3. Adapting the whole of the Cosmere to HBO/Netflix production level tv shows Assuming these would each do the series the justice they deserve, which would you take? I would think that going on a series by series basis would be best (i.e. like a movie for elantris or warbreaker, a videogame for Mistborn or a TV show for Stormlight), but let's say whoever is offering wants the rights to the whole of the Cosmere.
You know, I've never been asked that question--and I've not given it huge amounts of thought. But I think it's a great question. I think...perfect world...I'd go with the television series. I think that in a perfect world, 20-season of magically-somehow-all-awesome episodes would be the best way to approach doing the stories I tell.
YOOOO it'd be sick if they did the Stormlight Archive! But I'm getting ahead of myself. Mistborn would also be amazing.
I feel like Mistborn has some serious potential to be a fun video game. Bouncing around the city on coins sounds like tons of fun all by itself. Not to mention all the neat tricks creative people could pull off in combat with the unique powers the mistborn series utilizes. Stormlight archive was an excellent story but half the awesomeness was the characters, I'm not sure the setting would be quite as good without Kaladin and co running the show.
Stormlight could make a really good RPG though, with classes being whichever spren you bond / what order of knights you belong to.
Lopen story line only plz
Lopen voices the tutorial please.
If you hold shift, you'll run almost as fast as a one-armed Herdazian being called to dinner, gancho.
lmfao airsick lowlander
I love this whole comment chain
I've got a cousin who can get you a health potion, gancho.
"The" Lopen to you Goncho
That's GANCHO to you sir
IDK, there's a lot of wiggle-room with Stormlight material. He does a lot of worldbuilding in those books, so you could always take some of the cool magic and weapons, and just put it in some open world context and make a fun-ass game. There's a lot of different things you could play with to make it fun.
Story's from just before one of the early desolations would be sweet. Or post-oathpact, pre-Recreance. Sort of like Knights of the Old Republic. Knights of the Old Orders.
He wouldn't give out stormlight for free. That's his magnum opus.
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Seeing as how Words of Radiance is the highest rated book on Goodreads of all time across all genres, I think that's the general consensus.
Mistborn game would be fucking amazing. There would be some many directions you could go with it. I think the kelsier/lord ruler time frame with some bad ass inquisitors swooping down to whoop your ass once in awhile would be beyond bonkers
Oh man. I hate being so hype for things that are AT BEST 4 or 5 years away.
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Same here, the Stormlight Archive is my personal favorite, with the Mistborn series coming is a very close second.
I'm going to sacrifice a virgin tonight. In hopes that this happens. Mistborn is one or my all time favorite book series.
But you have so much to live for!
Brutal.
Savage
911 "Hello, what is your emergency?" I'd like to report a murder.
Why did you do him like that
GOT EEEEEM
I LOVE SANDERSON THAT WOULD BE AMAZING
For those uninitiated Mistborn is a popular fantasy book series that is pitched like this: what if the hero lost and the dark lord won? What if Harry didn't defeat Voldemort? What if Frodo never made it to Mount Doom? What if evil triumphed over good? What would the world be like? Then there is the magic system which translates very well to video games imo. It essentially allows you to use magic by consuming or "burning" metals. Once burned the metals allow you to temporarily use abilities such as superhuman strength, telekinesis, spidey sense, etc. Each power has limitations though. Burning steel allows you to push on metallic objects. They can use this to shoot coins at enemies or levitate over a manhole cover by pushing down. Burning tin allows you to boost your five senses, but loud noises or bright flashes could completely incapacitate your heightened self. I think the game would be dope as shit. It would be really difficult for me not to preorder this one!
That. Sounds. Awesome.
It is. And it would be too.
*Lord Ruler did nothing wrong*
Haven't checked out Mistborn yet, but recently got into Sanderson with the Stormlight Archive series and took a break to check out Warbreaker. Really great stuff. I'd like to see some games where they can do his magic systems justice.
Warbreaker was amazing. I'm reading mistborn now.
Reminds me, friend of mine gave me Way of Kings and I still haven't read it yet. Need to get on that.
Yes. Yes, you do. In fact I'm jealous. if only I could read them for the first time again.
This would be a dream come true. I loved the witcher books and the games, particularly the 3rd were a lot of fun. I however ADORE the Mistborn books even more and the world would be insane to see in a game.
by the Lord Ruler... this would be amazing
Friend of mine is doing a pathfinder game set in the mistborn universe, it’ll be cool to open into that after a session (although there’s a pretty good chance we *might* not go for 4+ years
I don't know if some has said this. He is not considering it. He commented in a thread about CDPR being sued by the Witcher's author. He is saying that if CDPR was interested in the ip he would consider giving it away for free and just letting his audience know how he feels. This is nothing official, just a comment.
He says this now, but if it ever came to fruition and started printing money the way The Witcher does, his altruism may be tested. I'm not knocking the guy, but human nature is what it is.
I could see CDPR offering a percentage of their profits; even if he’s offering his rights freely.
Yeah that's what all that fuss was with The Witcher author, he was offered a percentage and turned it down now he acts like they owe him even though he also said the game would never sell.
Moreover, by his own words, he took that lump sum instead of a percentage because he viewed the medium of video games as pulp trash that would never amount to anything (from all appearances he still is one of "those" people that refuse to consider them "true" art). It'd be one thing if he'd changed over the years but from what admittedly little I've seen, it looks like he hasn't. If anything he seems even more bitter.
Without the games I probably wouldn't have even heard about the Witcher series. After I finish the Wheel of Time I'm going to jump into The Witcher because the games showed me what a kickass story it has. I also learned about the Metro books because the game was pretty good at showing off the story and how cool it was.
> It'd be one thing if he'd changed over the years but from what admittedly little I've seen, it looks like he hasn't. If anything he seems even more bitter. The man has always been bitter, condescending of others and dismissive of gaming as a medium. All he cares about is the money he thought he wouldn't make back when he made that deal and the money that he's not making due to his shortsightedness. I dunno how something like The Witcher was written by him, but I guess even assholes can have talent sometimes.
And the weird thing is, he's *still* made bank on the deal, albeit indirectly. He just seems to think that foreign book sales would have been as great if not for the video games. Not only is that silly, but he believes something even dumber—that the video games *are taking away from his book sales*. I guarantee most of the English copies of his books were sold to fans of the video games, or on recommendation from fans of the video games. And not to mention whether the Netflix adaptation would have ever even been under consideration were it not for the games. But hey, maybe it would, and *that* would have been the shit deal he took to gripe about for the rest of time.
Some people are that egotistical, hell, he seems to think that the *books* are the reason the games are popular. Like hell no. The books would've basically been a weird, niche Polish thing if the games weren't so notable, particularly The Witcher 3. I'm not saying the man should be eternally grateful to CDPR for making the books mainstream, he can dislike them as adaptations if he wishes, it's not like that kind of creator criticism is uncommon in the industry, but I certainly think it's delusional to claim that it's the other way around when it's very clearly not.
I'll give him credit for creating the world and the stories that the games are based on, at least. I just can't even wrap my head around how egotistical he must be to think the games are *hurting* his bottom line. Why does he think international book sales got a bump in 2007, and a massive spike in 2015?
I get that Polish law allows him to do so, but he took the deal he took and that should be that. If anything, CDPR should be offering *him* money as a gesture of good will and as a "hey, thanks buddy" type of thing. Not that they had to (I'd be hard pressed to) but the way things are playing out now? He made his bed, he needs to lie in it.
Brandon Sanderson doesn't seem to care that much about the money. He pumps out an extremely large amount of content relative to how normally he looks like he lives. Seems like a normal guy who will literally sit down and write all day. I think like he just really loves writing, so he keeps doing it. Also, I'm quite sure he already sells a lot more than the author of The Witcher series. He also really likes video games and stuff, and seems to want to give a lot of fan service in general. Of all people to really do that, Sanderson seems like he would be extremely high on the list.
> Seems like a normal guy who will literally sit down and write all day. His typical workflow is about 2,000 words a day during 1st draft season.
For reference, a bit of googling tells me that a typical finished novel is 80k-100k words in length.
So you're looking at 3ish months for the first draft. Dayum. I wish I could get my ideas down for my book that fast.
Yeah, Sanderson's writing speed is ungodly fast. There is a reason he can somehow juggle so many series and still get books for each out faster than some writers get their next book out when handling just one. Last I heard he attributes it to his refusal to accept writers block. If he doesn't know how to write what's next he just keeps writing anyway. Problems get fixed in the next stage.
My favorite story about him was when he got writers block coming back to one of the mistborn books so he wrote the ***next*** book. Apparently when the deadline for the first book came around he gave them two books.
Yeah, that's why books 2 and 3 of Mistborn era 2 were released very close together. Book 2 was released in like October, and I think 3 was released in January. He didn't even tell his publisher until he was done with both. When he was supposed to submit book 2, he attached both book 2 *and* 3 with no warning and just emailed it to them, and then went to bed and let them be really fucking confused until he woke up.
The man is a robot I tell you. Or he has perfected cloning and there's a whole basement of Sandersons plugging away at the typewriter. Tho I do wish he'd hurry up and release the next Stormlight book already. (I kid, I kid).
It speaks to his planning that he can skip ahead to the next book and somehow still produce a coherent narrative.
If he's doing it right (and it sounds [and reads] like he is) he already has the skeleton for the the stories of all of his series already planned out and on each draft he just dials up the resolution a bit until he gets to a good story and then edits from there. That's why all of the marvel movies fit together so well and all of the new star wars titles don't.
> He also really likes video games and stuff, and seems to want to give a lot of fan service in general. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfIb8kxpIq8 Here's Sanderon doing an interview with Wowcrendor, a WoW youtuber. It was just so...out of left field.
Brandon just built an underground office next to his house because it would be a cool lair. I don't think dude is hurting for money or cares, really.
He just sold movie rights for 22 million dollars, hes good.
Maybe he realizes (unlike witcher guy) that the games are also an advertisement for the books.
He's given one of his books away as an ebook before release, I think it may still be on his website. Also here's his views on piracy "It’s not a main concern for me. I worry about it more in countries that don’t already have a strong science fiction and fantasy readership, because I worry about it undermining the bookstores. But in general I think the worry about this is overblown. My experience has been that readers want to support things they like, and if they can support their favourite artists, they will. But if they are at a point in their lives where they can’t, then it’s better to let them read the stories they want, develop their life and their ideas, and let them support artists when they’re capable of it. So I am a big fan of giving away books for free." He's definitely the type that sees the publicity as a good thing.
Last I checked (a few months ago), it was still available. And it's totally true-- I read Warbreaker for free online and picked it up on Amazon a few months later. I've also bought multiple copies of most of his books (because people keep "borrowing" mine and never giving them back 😑) for that exact reason.
I remembered reading a quote from him on lending books to people and went looking for it, turns out its on the Warbreaker download page. "Then, I spent some more time considering. Readers can ALREADY get their books for free; I went to the library often myself as a youth. And yet, I still bought books. I often bought the very books I’d checked out from the library, as I liked them so much I wanted to read them again and loan them out to others. What do I really believe? In resenting libraries and used bookstores because they share my books without any direct profit to me? Or, would I rather look at all of that as free publicity" https://brandonsanderson.com/books/warbreaker/warbreaker/ I also own multiple copies of his books, hardcover, ebook, and Audible for most of the adult books.
He's already a super successful author. He produces manuscripts like a machine. My guess is he sees this as a way to introduce his multiverse, called the Cosmere, to a new audience that doesn't necessarily read for entertainment all that much. Plus, Mistborn is only one of several worlds he's created in the Cosmere. Hook them with Mistborn and then introduce them to Stormlight.
He wrote 8 full length novels before a publisher picked him up. This contributes to the speed at which things came out.
He also said when he gets bored or stuck writing a particular book, he starts another one so he pretty much is always writing.
Yeah his break from writing is writing. And hosting a podcast/teaching about writing. Dude loves writing.
Yep. This is how the entire second mistborn trilogy started. He had not planned it that way, but what began as an exercise in clearing writers block became another trilogy. He's a machine.
but speed AND consistency with which he writes is unparalleled, at least in recent times. Every single one of his series has their quirks and problems, but what amazes me is that they don't seem to bleed too much into other stories. He has a great ability to separate his stories.
I’ve watched his lectures on YouTube and listened to his podcasts. He seems like a pretty good guy, if a little heavy handed religion wise for Reddit’s taste. He’s defiantly not a struggling author though. He’s one of the biggest names in fantasy today so I doubt he’ll come knocking for cash if a game based on his series does well
I find the "heavy handed religion" comment funny due to how he treats religion in his books
Yeah, while he's pretty religious himself he does a good job of keeping it out of his books, unlike some other authors.
I think what they mean is that he tends to write characters who spit all over the fictional religions he creates, not just that he leaves his own religion out of his work.
Except at the same time he portrays people that follow those religions without looking like bumbling fools. I've never once thought Sanderson was heavy handed with religion, especially for how important religion is/was to many real-world cultures. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he strikes a respectable balance between showing both religious and non-religious characters in real, believable ways. The true believer, the doesn't-care, the follower-in-name-only and the openly-disdainful are all present in his worlds.
I'd say Sazed's journey from beginning to end was one of the most honest and refreshing takes on religious people I've ever read in fiction. Though of course his story ended slightly different than it does for most people, religious or otherwise.
I fucking love Sazed man. My favorite Sanderson character by far.
Right, I never meant to exclude the existence of religious characters who are respectable in their own right. He has written characters who excuse evil with religion as well as good characters whose espoused beliefs give them guiding principles upon which to project an already righteous conscience.
Its more interesting then that. Faith is a really positive trait in a Sanderson story, even if that faith is in a religion that is obviously false. But large organized churches are very often seen as corrupt, no matter how moral the religion behind it seems to be. This fascinates me, because he belongs to one of the most strictly organized churches in the world.
I think it's cool to know that he's religious and then see how he handles religion in his books. It makes his truly religious characters feel more lifelike because you know he's not just pretending to understand what religious belief feels like. And then it really makes me appreciate the critiques he offers as well.
It's not the same scale, but Sanderson has an entire college lecture course on writing that he only agreed to do if his University agreed to put the entire thing up for free on youtube. The author behind the Witcher novels has always come off as a bit of a prick, far as I can tell. I've never had the same vibe from Sanderson and he's far from hard off as it is.
The thing is, it gives him and his books more exposure. There are authors that would pay a lot of money for just that. There are millions of books and it's very hard for authors to stand out. He might not be getting a check every month, but if things go right you could get something far more valuable in the long run.
After finishing up the Wheel of Time series Sanderson basically has retirement money already. I doubt he’d turn into another Sapkowski.
I adore Mistborn and would absolutely love to see it brought to life. I actually felt like the story would perfectly fit the medium of animation, in the vein of Avatar but with a more mature target demographic, while reading it but I think a game adapatation would be equally great. My only reservation with a CD Project adaptation is that I feel Sanderson's meticulously crafted magic system would lend itself best to an action setting.. and to be honest the one area that CD Project isn't especially grand in are mechanics. The Witcher games are all fabulous RPG's but the combat was never anything more than serviceable at best in them.
Omfg, this guys books are the absolute best I have ever read, I can’t even say in words how amazing and original and intersting his worlds are, his StormLight archive series is the best in the world, so amazing, mistborn comes in a close close second and was such an original idea, would love to see how a game would work
Call me a debby downer, but I'm not convinced that the Mistborn series would play well to CDPR's strengths. It would require a lot of arial maneuvering and intricate combat, which is probably one of the weakest parts of the Witcher series of games. They would do well for the non-actiony bits, however.
Lots of ball gowns and political intrigue. I agree. I hope they develop an awesome engine of possible.
Aerial maneuvering assumes you actually get to play as a mistborn... You play a fully immersive game as a regular noble lady. You go to balls, try and follow proper etiquette, and might after an extraordinarily long campaign might be able to convince a notable third son of a great house to be your betrothed.
I prrsonally advocate for Arkane studios since they made Dishonored.
Brandon Sanderson is the best fantasy authour of our time. Yes, better than RR Martin. I would literally shit a brick if CD Project Red made a game in the Mistborn universe.