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Originally Posted by Snarky
Your talk of an adventure game that is all story and no puzzles or exploration (as far as possible) leads to something very much like these "dating sims", though. If you take out those elements, that's what you're left with, I think.
OK, so your vision might not require scenes of sex with anime girls... but it wouldn't exclude it either.
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I didn't mean to imply that I wanted an adventure game with no puzzles, no exploration, and NOTHING to replace them! That's really a retarded conclusion to draw, Snarky. I didn't even say I wanted that game in general - I said that
if someone could pull it off
and have it be as compelling as a traditional adventure, I would be excited by the prospect.
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Anyway, attention everybody: I am more than aware of the fact that the theories I proposed in this thread don't hold much water when applied in any practical sense. I proposed the whole notion mostly to get everybody talking, and in hopes of maybe making people think differently about their favorite genre of game for a few minutes.
Random thoughts:
I think Dreamfall is an adventure game, and I think Ragnar Tornquist thinks it is too, but I think after all the ridiculous backlash in his blog comments and on forums like this, he no longer feels comfortable calling it one. That might be a bit ridiculous and far fetched to speculate on, but I think theres probably some truth to that guess.
I worry that adventure games are increasingly known as the "puzzle mystery genre" instead of "the storytelling genre" and that makes me sad. It breaks my heart in fact. I think the designers whose games I grew up with (the golden age Lucas and Sierra graphic adventure makers) saw adventure gaming primarily as an interactive storytelling medium with puzzles used as a vehicle for delivering that story. I think now it's flipped to be the other way around. Realistically I understand that puzzles are an intrinsic part of adventure games, but I think the equation is becoming increasingly lopsided, with designers building games in which the story is merely a vehicle for a series of inane puzzles, instead of the other way around - or better - trying to have them both working in tandem/in harmony. It worries me.
I attended a very large handful of sessions on storytelling in games at this years Game Developers Conference and you know how many recent adventure games were used as examples, in any context? Zero. Modern adventures didn't seem to even show up on these peoples charts when it came to story discussion. Classic adventure games, yeah, but nothing new.
It was for or these reasons (and probably some other ones too that I can't think of or don't really know) that I threw this stuff out for discussion.
I do happen to hold a personal "ideal" picture/definition of adventure games that is pretty similar to what I've argued for in this thread, but, in a realistic sense if someone on the street came up to me and said "what's an adventure game" I would definitely give them a definition that included puzzles, dialogue trees, what-have-you. I think ideally the standard definitions we use when describing adventure games are a little worn out, and sometimes needlessly limiting out of habit or out of a lack of questioning, but I also know, on average, what elements more or less every adventure game on store shelves has contained for the past 20 years. I'm not completely retarded.
