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Originally Posted by MoriartyL
...You're looking for realism? In an adventure game? [blink, blink] It's not realistic to have all those puzzles lying around in the first place! Force the player to oil everything and fiddle with things, and it's not only still not realistic, but it wouldn't even be as much fun! I mean, brain-teasers are one thing. I don't like them, but I can respect them. Simply messing around with machinery doesn't challenge the brain, just the patience. |
I'm not sure if you're being entirely serious or not, but, I grew up dismantling toys and electronics, especially ones with mechanical parts, to see how they worked. Hell, I recently had to change OLD skeleton key locks on two doors and was fascinated to see how they actually worked. PLUS, a tension spring popped bringing the whole cluster crashing apart, and while it took a bit of time understanding what the parts did, I eventually figured it out. I left satisfied in both the fact that its working again, and that I now have an intimate understanding of how the lock internals work.
I've been a huge proponent of 'construction' or 'repair' puzzles and have been heavily working them into our productions, desperately trying to avoid arbitrary color/sound/lever/block puzzles.
The high concept is that if well done, "puzzles" like these allow for real-world association of parts; relationships and hierarchy. You're not fighting abstraction of alien devices that "just work", and are now fiddling with tangible and recognizable functionality. This is the big reason why Half-Life2's physics puzzles worked so well. You were immediately able to recognize patterns and object-function and associate them realistically to the direct problem at hand.
Of course ultimately...to each their own.
Cheers
