Skip to main content
GamesRadar+ GamesRadar+ The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
flag of UK
UK
flag of US
US
flag of Canada
Canada
flag of Australia
Australia
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Games
  • TV
  • Movies
  • Hardware
  • Video
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Guides
  • Deals
  • More
    • PS5
    • Xbox Series X
    • Nintendo Switch
    • Nintendo Switch 2
    • PC
    • Platforms
    • Tabletop Gaming
    • Comics
    • Toys & Collectibles
    • Newsarama
    • Retro Gamer
    • Newsletters
    • About us
    • Features
Total Film
Gaming Magazines
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
  • Subscribe from just £3
  • Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
  • Try a single issue or save on a subscription
  • Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From$12
Subscribe now
Trending
  • Gamescom 2025 schedule
  • Gamescom
  • Battlefield 6
  • New Games for 2025
Don't miss these
Upcoming video game movies - Five Nights at Freddy's
Movies Every upcoming video game movie you need to know about
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild screenshot showing Link, a male character with elf-like ears, blond hair, and bright blue eyes
Movies The Legend of Zelda movie is exciting, but I'm still begging for 5 specific video game movies to get adapted next
Best video game movies: Milla Jovovich as Alice in the first Resident Evil movie.
Movies The 10 best video game movies of all time, ranked
Mass Effect 2 - Garrus
Adventure Games The 25 best video game stories to play right now
Death Stranding 2 PS5 screenshot
Open World Games Hideo Kojima was "so bummed" Death Stranding 2 Easter eggs were "revealed on social media right away," but "I'm retweeting all these things so the blame is on me"
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Ratchet and Clank The mystery of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart's final Easter egg has finally been revealed, but Insomniac had to show us itself
Death Stranding 2 Pizza Martial Arts and Karate
Open World Games Death Stranding 2's cameos don't stop at celebrities and vtubers - Pac-Man shows up with a playable mini-game set on the open world's map
Red Dead Redemption 2
Adventure Games 25 best adventure games to get swept up in right now
Final Fantasy 10 HD Remaster
Final Fantasy This Final Fantasy 10 Easter egg is a reference to the JRPG the 2001 installment never became, and it's so obscure that even Square Enix forgot to include it in its remaster
Vin Diesel in the cover art for The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
FPS Games Unreasonably good Xbox FPS featuring Vin Diesel was so under the radar, not even the studio noticed when it got canceled: "They basically forced the publisher to restart the game"
Relooted screenshot showing a cinematic of all of the characters that make up the heist team
Games Day of the Devs Summer Game Fest Edition 2025 brought us 7 new reveals - here's what they were
Luigi running from ghosts in Luigi's Mansion
Games The 25 best GameCube games of all time
Resident Evil Village
Games The 25 best video game villains you just love to hate
Crash Bandicoot PS1
Crash Bandicoot Long before the Super Mario Bros. movie grossed $1.3 billion, Sega's president tried making a Crash Bandicoot movie but was told "video games is like a toy business"
Death Stranding 2
Action Games I'm glad the heatwave is over, because if it wasn't I'd think I hallucinated these weird Death Stranding 2 moments, from dancing dolls to sci-fi directors fighting while making pizza
  1. Games
  2. Action

8 video game tie-ins that reveal critical plot points

Features
By Ashley Reed published 31 July 2014

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

The devil's in the detours

The devil's in the detours

Fun fact: the first Halo novel was published in 2001, and now you feel old. Supplementary material for games has been around for decades, but these days the medium is inundated with it. Now you can expect annualized novel releases to go along with every Assassin's Creed, and it's a surprise that Call of Duty DLC maps dont get their own comic books. Still, for the benefit of those uninterested in reading stuff, most of these tie-ins are fairly easy to ignore. In the end, anything they say can be easily picked up from the games they're based on.

... Weeeell sometimes. See, the more popular a franchise becomes, the more stock it tends to put into its side-offerings, hiding morsels of important, fresh info in those supposedly optional pages. So if you focus just on the games in such a series? You are going to be very, very confused. I'm here to help though, with this list of games with critical information hidden in tie-in material. Read up before you get too far behind.

Page 1 of 10
Page 1 of 10
Haytham became a Templar after his father's murder (Assassin's Creed: Forsaken)

Haytham became a Templar after his father's murder (Assassin's Creed: Forsaken)

Haytham is the black sheep of the Kenway family. A Templar caught between Edward and Connor, his Assassin father and son, he is undoubtedly the biggest killjoy at Assassin Christmas parties. This raises the question of how and why Haytham jumped ship, which is never answered in either Assassins Creed III or IV. That seems like a glaring oversight... until you read Assassin's Creed: Forsaken, where you find out that Haytham became a Templar following his father's brutal murder.

Taking place 13 years after the end of ACIV, Forsaken covers Haytham's life story from birth to death-by-spoiler. Turns out that on the eve of his tenth birthday, Templars stormed the Kenway home, murdered his father, kidnapped his sister, and blamed the Assassins for the whole thing. The leader of the Templars then takes Haytham under his wing, and by the time Haytham learns the truth in his 30's, hes too far down the rabbit hole to go back. Man, knowing that makes him seem a lot more sympathetic... which would have been good to know while playing the game but whatever.

Page 2 of 10
Page 2 of 10
The events of Halo happen because Cortana and Master Chief met (Halo: The Fall of Reach)

The events of Halo happen because Cortana and Master Chief met (Halo: The Fall of Reach)

The combination of a virtually fathomless brain paired with indestructible brawn, Cortana and Master Chiefs partnership is critical to the Halo series from the start. The galaxy, not to mention the universe, owes a lot to those two, as it would have been obliterated more than a few times by now if they'd never paired up. In fact, according to the tie-in novel Halo: The Fall of Reach, the events of the Halo series (and the resulting non-destruction of the universe) only happen because these two met.

Covering both Master Chief (sorry, John-117) and Cortana's origin stories, Fall of Reach explains that Cortana is a flash-cloned copy of a prominent scientist, and Chief is the once-child-soldier she chooses to team up with. Nearly separated during a Covenant strike on the human settlement of Reach, they're able to escape due to Cortana's craftiness and Chief's pure gumption. Taking coordinates recovered by Chief on one of his missions, Cortana plugs the values into their ship and directs it to... Halo, thus kicking off the entirety of the series. Of course, that's the simplified version. You could fill a whole book covering everything that hapoh. Right.

Page 3 of 10
Page 3 of 10
Portal wouldn't have happened without Doug Rattmann (Portal: LAB RAT)

Portal wouldn't have happened without Doug Rattmann (Portal: LAB RAT)

In case you ever wondered who you can thank and/or blame for "The cake is a lie!" look no further than Dr. Doug Rattmann. Not that you'd know who that is if you only played Portal, the game from which he originates, as it simply shows the creepy dens where his graffiti is scribbled. You only learn his true identity from the Portal comic book, LAB RAT, where you find out he's the only reason Chell gets to go toe-to-terabyte with GLaDOS at all.

Rattmann, one of the only Aperture scientists to survive GLaDOS' assault on the facility, is an unmedicated schizophrenic who carries on conversations with a companion cube (which... sounds familiar). But don't let his madness fool you. He's the one who broke into Aperture's data bank and moved Chell to the top of the test subject queue so that she could defeat GLaDOS. Plus, he also gets her cryo-bed running so she can survive the unknown amount of time that passes between Portal and Portal 2. So thank him for that, too. He's the reason the broken day counter is funny and not deeply tragic.

Page 4 of 10
Page 4 of 10
Final Fantasy VII's Advent Children is coherent (Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile)

Final Fantasy VII's Advent Children is coherent (Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile)

Well here's an interesting one: tie-in material for the tie-in material! That's the most apt way to describe Final Fantasy VII's On the Way to a Smile. A short-story collection, it details the events that take place immediately prior to Advent Children, and does its best to plug the movie's many gushing plot holes.

The collection contains seven stories in total, each focusing on a different character who appears in Advent Children. Together they answer burning questions like where Denzel came from (orphaned by the Sector 7 plate collapse, rescued by Cloud), why Cloud went back to being mopey (survivors guilt), how Rufus is alive (convenient office escape hatch--yes really), what Kadaj and company even are (clones; its always clones), and where the hell the rest of the crew went (tl;dr soul-searching). The final story, Case of the Lifestream, is itself divided into two parts that focus on what the hell is going on with Sephiroth and Aerith respectively, making it an invaluable resource for VII fans. Only the Case of Barrett was officially translated to English though, so you'd best start digging up fan translations if you ever want to understand that movie.

Page 5 of 10
Page 5 of 10
Orc Warchief Thrall is a rags-to-riches story (Warcraft Legends)

Orc Warchief Thrall is a rags-to-riches story (Warcraft Legends)

Warcraft doesn't sneak info into its tie-in material--it crams in as much as will fit and struggles to get the zipper closed. Much of the Crafts lore is covered exclusively in its 21 novels, six manga series, 11 comic books, and plethora of other side projects, only to be introduced into the games with little explanation. One of the best examples is Thrall, Warchief of the Orcs, who the games don't tell you started life as an orphan in a human internment camp.

According to the Warcraft Legends manga series, Thrall is rescued from beside the dead bodies of his parents as an infant and raised a warrior in a human prison camp. During his time there he develops human-like intelligence, which makes him both way smarter than the average Orc and desperate for freedom. Breaking out of his cage, he flees to the nearby mountains where he comes in contact with his own people, becomes a mighty shaman (wait...), redeems the Orcs in the eyes of the spirits (but...), succeeds Orgrim Doomhammer as Warchief (wait who...), and liberates his people from human enslavement. Yeah, and that's the simple version. Face the books yourself if you dare.

Page 6 of 10
Page 6 of 10
Shepard is alive because of Liara (Mass Effect: Redemption)

Shepard is alive because of Liara (Mass Effect: Redemption)

It's safe to say that the beginning of Mass Effect 2 is a bit... vague. Following an attack that wrecks the Normandy and blasts Shepard into the vacuum of space, s/he wakes up two years later in the middle of a lockdown with zero clue how s/he survived. There's a vague explanation involving Cerberus and the Lazarus Project, and a nod in Liara's direction, but not much besides. It's only through the Mass Effect: Redemption comic that it becomes clear how deeply Liara was involved.

Beginning a month after the Normandy's destruction, Redemption follows Liara's journey as she searches for Shepard's body. In the process she meets Feron, who becomes her partner in crime, and Miranda, with whom she makes a shaky pact to get Cerberus' support. So begins a dramatic journey as Liara struggles against the influence of the Shadow Broker and upsets the plans of the Reapers, ending with Shepard being left in the care of Cerberus' scientists for resurrection. And s/he won't remember a damn thing. Poor Liara, so underappreciated.

Page 7 of 10
Page 7 of 10
Ridley eats people to regenerate (Metroid manga)

Ridley eats people to regenerate (Metroid manga)

There's enemies who won't die, there's enemies that just won't ****ing die goddamJFDL;AFDS, and then there's Ridley. Samus' forever foe, he has a nasty habit of coming back from violently explosive deaths. Plus, no amount of destruction can seem to get rid of him. While sometimes his immortality is helped along by robotic enhancements or cloning, neither of those is the true secret to his regeneration. That only comes up in the 2002 Metroid manga series, which establishes that his secret to youthful perfection is eating people.

Focusing on Samus' origin story, the manga series ruminates in particular on her rivalry with Ridley, as well as the pterodactyl pirate himself. At one point, having cornered Samus, Ridley goes into gory detail about how he was able to survive the damage he sustained on her home planet, saying he ate the bodies of the dead to reclaim biomass and heal himself. Given that he manages to mysteriously heal on various occasions, we can only assume that his primary means of escaping death is this continued consumption of homemade Soylent Green.

Page 8 of 10
Page 8 of 10
Team Fortress 2 has an extensive storyline and character development (All Team Fortress side material)

Team Fortress 2 has an extensive storyline and character development (All Team Fortress side material)

At first glance, you might think Team Fortress 2 is about shooting things and wearing hats. However, nothing could be further from the truth. It's about a grudge between brothers, nefarious organizations, robot armies, and shooting things and wearing hats. And if you want to learn about any of that (except the shooting and the hats--have we covered that part?), you'll have to look to the game's side material.

While more than one extended universe on this list could be called "extensive" (Warcraft and Mass Effect can fight over that crown), Team Fortress 2 is unique in that the game has no story at all, and every smidgen of plot comes from its supplementary works. With each comic or video Valve puts out to promote a new cranium-based adornment, more of the mercenaries' personalities are revealed, and additional threads are added to the oddly intriguing plot. It's all so twisty and turn-y that it's nearly impossible to summarize in a slide. Thankfully, you can get it all for free right here. You're welcome.

Page 9 of 10
Page 9 of 10
If you were a REAL fan, you'd know

If you were a REAL fan, you'd know

While we can pinpoint critical tie-in exclusives 'til the Last Guardian novelization comes out, these are some of the biggest ones out there to help get you started. Planning on picking any of these up? Seen any yourself and up to assessing their quality? Or are you in the camp that says all tie-in-exclusive info should die in an all-inclusive blaze? Tell us in the comments below.

The trove of tie-ins is always ripe for plundering. Check out theTop 7 Best movie games you probably never played, or weep bitter tears over 12 cancelled movie tie-ins that could have been awesome and All Star Wars games are no longer canon uh oh.

Page 10 of 10
Page 10 of 10
CATEGORIES
Android iPad iPhone PC Gaming Nintendo Wii-u PlayStation PS4 Xbox Xbox One Platforms Mobile Gaming
PRODUCTS
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Final Fantasy VII World of Warcraft Halo 2 Mass Effect Metroid Prime Halo 3 Team Fortress 2 Portal Mass Effect 2 Metroid Prime Trilogy Halo: Reach Metroid: Other M Portal 2 Super Metroid Halo 4 Assassin's Creed III Metroid Halo Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos Metroid Fusion
Ashley Reed
Ashley Reed

Former Associate Editor at GamesRadar, Ashley is now Lead Writer at Respawn working on Apex Legends. She's a lover of FPS titles, horror games, and stealth games. If you can see her, you're already dead.

See more PC Gaming Features
Read more
Upcoming video game movies - Five Nights at Freddy's
Every upcoming video game movie you need to know about
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild screenshot showing Link, a male character with elf-like ears, blond hair, and bright blue eyes
The Legend of Zelda movie is exciting, but I'm still begging for 5 specific video game movies to get adapted next
Best video game movies: Milla Jovovich as Alice in the first Resident Evil movie.
The 10 best video game movies of all time, ranked
Mass Effect 2 - Garrus
The 25 best video game stories to play right now
Death Stranding 2 PS5 screenshot
Hideo Kojima was "so bummed" Death Stranding 2 Easter eggs were "revealed on social media right away," but "I'm retweeting all these things so the blame is on me"
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
The mystery of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart's final Easter egg has finally been revealed, but Insomniac had to show us itself
Latest in Action
Hideo Kojima in a screenshot from the Xbox and Bethesda 2022 showcase.
Hideo Kojima will give a "glimpse into future projects" at his "Beyond The Strand" anniversary event for Kojima Productions' 10th birthday this month
Kaser stands in front of a glowing blue background as the imprisoned dragon Lord Arena swirls behind him like a fish - key art from Lost Soul Aside used on the PlayStation store
Lost Soul Aside review: "We (don't) have Final Fantasy Versus 13 at home"
Valor Mortis
Ghostrunner devs abandon parkour for Valor Mortis, a first-person soulslike that might explain why the rest of the genre follows Dark Souls' lead
A screenshot of James Bond in 007 First Light's reveal trailer.
007 First Light is getting its own dedicated PlayStation State of Play this week, with "over 30 minutes of gameplay" including James Bond's "first mission as an MI6 recruit"
Hollow Knight: Silksong
When is Hollow Knight Silksong out? Release date and time
Hollow Knight: Silksong screenshot showing Hornet being attacked by a giant enemy.
Hollow Knight: Silksong price is $20, Team Cherry confirms, laughing in the face of $80 games as it cements one of the most anticipated indies of all time as just $5 more than its predecessor
Latest in Features
Borderlands 4 screenshot shows someone holding a weapon forward towards the camera.
"We tend to commit to the bit": Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford talks Borderlands 4, the evolution of looter-shooters, and $80 game discourse
A mech firing a machine gun in the desert in Menace
Menace is an XCOM-Warhammer hybrid that makes turn-based strategy feel like an immersive sim, and for the first time in my life I'm playing a game that seems made for me
Metal Gear Solid 5 showing Snake and Ocelot looking to the horizon in front of more soldiers
10 years later, Metal Gear Solid 5 remains a masterpiece that was never going to live up to its own hype
Dogtooth
The new Yorgos Lanthimos movie is getting rave first reactions out of Venice Film Festival, but I think it's worth revisiting his breakout feature Dogtooth before Bugonia hits theaters this fall
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Legacy of the Forge DLC showing Henry and two allies standing looking down
I built a home and ran a business in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's next DLC, and the added role-playing guarantees I'll spend another 70 hours in my current game of the year
D&D Player's Handbook laid out on a wooden surface
Will romantasy be the next great crossover for Dungeons & Dragons? Fourth Wing could be the perfect D&D setting, if you ask me
  1. Kaser clad in black and Victor in white clash swords in Lost Soul Aside
    1
    Lost Soul Aside review: "We (don't) have Final Fantasy Versus 13 at home"
  2. 2
    Hell is Us review: "The lack of waypoints and explicit objectives is a double-edged magical sword that pulls me deep into its harsh world"
  3. 3
    Shuten Order review: "The Danganronpa creator's new multi-genre mystery feels like a forgotten DS cult classic I would have been obsessed with"
  4. 4
    The Rogue Prince of Persia review: "I roguelike but don't roguelove this freerunner – there's just not enough to stand out"
  5. 5
    Shinobi: Art of Vengeance review: "So close to being to a pitch-perfect revival of a classic series, but just can't quite line up the killing blow"
  1. Jacob Elordi as the monster in Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein
    1
    Frankenstein review: "A classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation"
  2. 2
    Weapons review: "A twisted fairytale that bests Barbarian"
  3. 3
    The Fantastic Four: First Steps review: "An occasionally thrilling heroic adventure that sits safely within a B-tier MCU range"
  4. 4
    Superman review: "A triumphant reinvention and a promising start for the DCU"
  5. 5
    Jurassic World Rebirth Review: "An unscary sequel that needed a little more time in amber"
  1. John Cena as Peacemaker holds a gun to the head of a different John Cena as Peacemaker in Peacemaker season 2.
    1
    Peacemaker season 2 review: "Darker and sadder than the first year, but there's still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids."
  2. 2
    Wednesday season 2 part 1 review: "Complex and exciting but weighed down by too many subplots"
  3. 3
    Alien: Earth review: "Arguably the franchise's strongest outing since James Cameron's Aliens"
  4. 4
    King of the Hill season 14 review: "Hank Hill himself has evolved into a much more open and accepting person"
  5. 5
    Eyes of Wakanda review: "A creative premise shortchanged by the runtime and Marvel bloat"

GamesRadar+ is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Review guidelines
  • Write for us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...