Why exactly is the novel crap? Seriously, now I'm dreading hearing what the novel could have done to get some of the hate people seem to have for it with all this buildup.

Have you actually read it? It completely splits from the video game's storyline from the very first page: the protagonist, Abdel Adrian, is a Sellsword who actually left Candlekeep years ago, and is widely travelled (Baldur's Gate, Athkatla -- he was a warehouse guard in Athkatla!); Imoen (like many other characters) is non-existant; Gorion is killed by random mercs, unconnected to Sarevok; Sarevok is unaware of protagonist until the last of the mercs fall to him; Tamoko is Sarevok's sex slave come assassin; Xzar and Montaron work for Sarevok... I'm not even going to continue. It's a complete farce.

Edit: oh, and the salt in the wound is that WotC actually adopted such trash as 'canon'.

Never read it, and don't plan on it. I can get making up a backstory for the main character that doesn't quite match up with the one in the game, since the general lack of detail on the origin seems to have been done to allow the player to come up with that on their own; problem is that the protagonist can't have been outside of Candlekeep, since his heritage is why he was brought to Gorion as a child, in an attempt to keep him safe and maybe have him turn out to be a halfway decent person. Having him have a life in the city prior to Candlekeep just begs the question of why Sarevok didn't kill him as well, aside from the plot convenience fairy waving her wand.

Changing some of the characters to give them more involvement in the plot I can also get, at least theoretically. I mean, the NPCs as it stand don't really do all that much beyond follow the PC around aside from a few that come with a minor sidequest attached. Characters with that level of inactivity just wouldn't work in a book, so some change is understandable. Having Xzar and Montaron being retconned into double agents for the Iron Throne who are pretending to be Zhents (or just scrapping the whole Zhent angle altogether) could give them a way to have some connection to the main plot outside of being just two random dudes the protagonist meets. Hell, they could have become minor villains in their own right if the writer put their mind to it.

Killing Gorion off by random thugs is pointless as hell, though. Actually, it's more than pointless, it's actively harmful to the narrative. In the game, his death serves to reveal to the PC that Sarevok is after them and is a threat able to take on the likes of Gorion; killing him with random mercs doesn't do anything to establish the main conflict at all.

Actually, the more I think about it, I might be tempted to pick this up, if only to do an MST3K style running critque on Goodreads. I mean, it's not like it could be any worse than Dracula: the Undead.

......and Minsc was a busboy at the Copper Coronet, he also has an afro *pukes*. Calling the novelization a complete farce and trash is still giving it too much credit.

The thing that bothered me most about the novelization was Abdel Adrian was a complete moron throughout the series. It's been a while since I read them so I'm forgetting a lot of stuff but it seemed to me that Abdel thinks more with his two handed sword rather than his brain. Butchering the events in the game was bad enough, but making Abdel an unlikable idiot made reading the movels even harder.

To my embarrassment, I do have all 3 novels cos I wanted to see how faithful they stayed to the games but looking back, I probably should have gotten them second hand instead. Game to movie conversions tend to be bad and novels seem to be the same. Although I'm curious, I'm afraid to see what the PS:T novelization is like because I know it's generally reviled by fans of the game.

Which may now be non-canon, in fact.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/407601/#Comment_407601
http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?whichpage=0.72&TOPIC_ID=19166&

Not everyone accepts this as canonisation: e.g. http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Minsc is still slapping a canonicity warning box on Minsc's entry (but then http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Xan gives Xan's race as Eladrin in an apparent bid to make everything conform to 4th Edition usage).

I generally hate when an RPG gets novelized. It it supposed to be my story after all, hence the name role-playing game. I even hate small things, like when a sequel states that the hero of the prequel was X gender/race/hair color/pet dog/whatever, because I feel that it destroys my hero, who was not X. In these moments I feel that everything I did in the prequel was a waste.

About the BG book: I had the "pleasure" of reading parts (couldn't bring myself to read the full >_<). I have to admit that the main reason I stopped reading was not the story but the abysmally bad translation. I'm studying to be a translator myself, and the translation of this book almost made me cry..... It was definetly done by someone who just "speaks the language", but not a translator....

I was hesitating whehter I should get the book in English, but I ended up not to. It seems it was one of the best decisions of my life.
If you want to read the actual story of Baldur's Gate, read a fanfiction. Seriously.

Hahaha. The novelization isn't complete wash on its own. No masterpiece by any means. It barely functions as a fantasy adventure novel and there are only a million and twelve professionally published fantasy's out there far better than it is.

But as a Baldur's Gate tie-in novelization, let's just say it takes some serious liberties. Not ever a bad thing with me, usually. But I know fans get butthurt when writers take creative license with the source material.

It really has no business even existing. On its own it rates as maybe a slightly below average fan fiction (complete with shipping).

It is, however, ZERO indication of how the game's story plays out. The plot and characters of the book just differ far too greatly.

Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II are legendary games. Planescape is garbage compared to these games.

PS:T is a legendary game. You don't have to like it personally, but there's a reason https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/ raised over four million USD.

It's obvious he was looking for another IE game with dungeon crawling and combat. PS:T just isn't that game, but calling it garbage, well........................ their loss.

Planescape is *different* compared to those games. That's kind of the point of this thread. You get a vastly different experience with PST compared to the other Infinity Engine games.

You don't have to like it, but it is unfair to judge Planescape's quality by comparing it to its contemporaries.

Planescape ownes much of its notoriety to its uniqueness. It is what makes it appealing, even superior to some people.