Expanded Universe

[Loony BoB]

Don't use time travel.
XIII suffers from this. As soon as you put time travel into a game, it basically puts in too many loopholes. Things won't make enough sense.

Chrono Trigger says "Hey smurf you."

I have no opinion on expanding game series to books, TV shows, and other media, but game series being spread out across thirty-seven different consoles can smurf off. I'm glad I never got into the Kingdom Hearts series. I would be pissed off to no end at how many consoles I'd have to play games on.

Chrono has two games, both are based around time travel from the start, both probably have loopholes due to it but despite all that I think Chrono is a bit like Doctor Who - an exception to the rule because it doesn't take itself too seriously and, as mentioned, are based around time travel from the start rather than suddenly introducing it later on in a way that causes people to go "BUT IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE". I haven't played both games, though, so it's hard for me to comment fully on the Chrono series.

[Bolivar]

An interviewer once asked George RR Martin if he's worried the show will ruin the perception of his books and he invoked another author who said no, the books will always be right there on the shelf, written just the same way they always were.

In short, I'm not a fan of expanded universes, I'm just not interested in that sort of thing. FFVII and its story will always remain just the way it was made in 1997 for me, but I do respect a lot of people like the compilation and I'm glad they got a couple more games out of it.

[Iceglow]

The main appearance of Jace in Gears prior to the Gears 3 came from the Graphic Novels they released, he's apparently in the book based on events after Gears 2, prior to Gears 3... but I can't remember his name being mentioned.

The most interesting thing I can think of in regards to expanded universe will be the game Defiance. Defiance is going to be an MMO-RPG 3rd Person shooter style game released pretty soon. What makes me think this is going to be interesting is that there will be a TV show what features certain NPC characters from the game and the game universe. The difference will be that the game will be set in a different location to the TV series.

[kotora]

It becomes a problem when the games assume you've actually read the books. A game's story should be able to stand on its own without requiring the player to read parts of the story from books in order to understand it. Usually with all these spinoffs it's the result of a game becoming popular and everyone trying to cash in on it, without them being pre-planned, which usually results in a huge clustersmurf of a mess. Everyone just goes and makes trout up as they go along. The KH series being a good example.