14 DAY TRIAL // Book publisher Del Rey and video game developer BioWare have announced that they are again working together to launch yet another novel in the Mass Effect series, called Deception, which will be the fourth linked to the video game universe.
The author for the new novel will be William C Dietz, who has experience with creating prose that is linked to video games.
His latest book was Heaven's Devil, a novel which is linked to Starcraft II, the real-time strategy title from Blizzard that launched exclusively on the PC in July 2010 and performed very well at retail.
Deception will be following the adventures of a character called Gillian Grayson, which was not present in the Mass Effect video games, but appeared before in the Ascension entry in the novel series.
She has undergone scientific experiences that have given her a number of almost superhuman powers, and the new novel follows her as she needs to decide how to use her powers and whether she will side a group which shares her powers or use them to protect the normal human population.
It's not clear how much of a connection the Deception novel will have with the upcoming Mass Effect 3 title, which BioWare says will be launched during this fall.
The game will again have Commander Shepard at the center of the experience, with him looking for allies in the galaxy just as the Reapers are assaulting Earth, occupying all big population centers.
BioWare has hinted that the Mass Effect universe is very important to the company and to its future plans and that more games linked to it might be launched after the current trilogy is completed.
Deception and other novels might be used to introduce new characters and create a backstory for them before they are included in new video games created by BioWare.