The popular video game series Assassin’s Creed has come under legal fire as a man claims the games steal the plot of his novel, Link. The novel apparently includes a device which allows the user to explore and relive ancestral memories, not unlike how Assassin’s Creed projects the player into the past. The Sentinel has the story.
Of course, every game that features a spaceship isn’t coping Heinlein’s works, and every game that has sword-swing barbarians doesn’t pay royalties to Conan. If this suit is going to go anywhere, it needs to prove a thorough ripping-off, not just one guy’s opinion.
That might be tricky.
This really isn’t going to go anywhere broad tropes are common to all fiction and this is a sweeping generality of a literary device. We need a smoking memo or a draft manuscript showing direct involvement of the previous text before this has any merit.