Hi again it's your old friend.
I was having a discussion with Walter of
Ludonauts the other day and I pointed out that out of all genres in gaming, adventure games are the only one in which the story and the gameplay are basically literally the same thing. I mean, in a very strong way, an Adventure Game is
"a game in which the players primary goal is to complete the story."
In my eyes that is the one true facet that sets Adventure Games as a genre apart from the other genres of gaming, so including anything else in a definition is probably superfluous.
Think about the primary goals in other games... In RPG's you level up, clear "dungeons," fight monsters. In FPS and 3rd person action games your goal is to kill monsters, get weapons, and get to the next map. Same with platformers. In RTS's you conquer other armies, nations, planets, or other opposing forces. In a puzzle game your job is, not surprisingly, to solve the puzzles. Etc. In modern incarnations of these genres, story is often present, but it's bolted on as an afterthought to the above primary goals, or as a reward for completing them.
In adventure games this isn't the case. Your goal as a player is to see the story all the way through.
I know that's a pretty wide open definition of adventure games (especially considering it doesn't include the word "puzzle"), but after I said it to Walter I realized that it's at least my personal definition of what an adventure game is.
Think about it. Think about
video game cutscenes - you know, full motion video sequences - the non-interactive bits in a game. In every genre except adventure games, the story parts are told in cutscene. They are the parts the player doesn't deal with. In adventure games, the story parts are the only things
not in cutscenes. For instance, in
traditional old school* adventures, whenever a player fires a gun, gets in a fight, even when the main character has to
jump, the cutscenes take over. The parts that the player
plays in an adventure game are the story bits.
Anyway, I just wondered what anyone else happened to think about that very simple definition.
I think the fact that I hold that definition is why I am more tolerant than many when it comes to adding other types of gameplay to "adventure games." As long as the new gameplay is there to enhance my ability to play the story, I'm all for it. For instance the fighting in Dreamfall - it's not designed to change the players motivation from "complete the story" to "win 30 fights" - it's there because within the story, Zoe gets in a fight.
For the record, the recent realization that I've probably held that definition of "adventure game" in my head ever since I first played one almost surely explains why I have almost always considered Myst a puzzle game. In Myst the puzzles are the gameplay, and the story is a slowly doled out reward for completing said gameplay.
* Modern adventure game desigers are now occasionally allowing the player to do things like jump and fire weapons since they've finally found ways of doing it without the game suddenly turning into a platformer or shooter, and I do include that sort of thing in my definition of adventure games (shooting a gun or getting into a fight for story purposes, not for the sole purpose of shooting and fighting), but I think the point I'm trying to make is clearer if for examples we discuss old school games where the distinction is far more obvious.