[imisssunwell]

It is my first post here and I wish it was about a more pleasant topic but I have been thinking some things, which I expand bellow, for awhile now. My intention is to stimulate a discussion that could be used as a pool of ideas. I would be thankful if the spirit of this thread is kept calm, fruitful and hopefully productive!

I hate to say it, but after ~1998 the genre is dead. Apart from 2-3 games (Dreamfall, Fahrenheit,?), there is nothing to draw people to the adventure gaming community. Adventure games are no longer hot, very little innovation, stereotyped characters and repetitive gameplay. I am not trying to say that there are no decent titles that an advocate of the genre will enjoy playing, but rather that there is lack of titles which take the genre one step ahead, graphically, gameplay-wise, AI wise and depth wise. This is reflected in the sales of the adventure games and if something doesn't change, the genre will become a dying breed.

A comparison between an adventure game and e.g. a Prince of Persia game, a Bioware RPG game, Half Life 2 or even WoW makes me wonder what happened to the genre I love since my childhood, when monkey island was a top notch game and kings quest offered groundbreaking interaction with a magnificent world. I will attempt to see what abilities new game engines offer and see if these could be transfered to adventure games I will also try to spot key elements specific to the genre that need adjustment.


First of all my perception of an adventure game is an interactive game world, some interesting main character(s?)/NPCs to interact with, puzzle solving and possibly some action sequences. The closest thing that I have found to that, if we restrict to high quality products, are some Bioware rpgs like KotOR & Jade Empire. These games had an interesting story to tell, the main character interacted dynamically with the game universe making the games non linear and also had cool dialogues. The only thing that wouldn't classify them as adventure games is the existence of a combat system.

What can be drawn from games like these?


- first of all a good game needs good graphics, while not an eye-candy anymore KotOR graphics are not bad even with todays standards. Dreamfall excelled in this but I feel most adventure games are using yesterdays graphics.

- second thing is replay value, non-linear games are the way to go because of the opportunity to replay without doing the same old stuff and seeing the same old ending. After all this tactic was pioneered by an adventure game, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, why should non-linearity be absent from 2009 adventure games? Ask the character to make choices, its fun!

- third, playing multiple characters and sometimes having them play cooperatively in a party, one could be the computer expert guy that unlocks the password for a security door while the other member is concurrently trying to do something else. Each party members should feel special, have his own unique abilities in order to make the multi-party setting more fun than single character playing.

- fourth, a (quality) mod tool! imagine if *god please* monkey island 5 came out and it was the great game we all wanted to see. A mod tool would allow customers to e.g. build remakes of MI1, MI2 with modern graphics and also many indy new titles would come up. NWN/NWN2/Oblivion are a pure win just for the mods, so many classic rpg games remade with modern graphics, so many cool new indy rpgs are playable in modern graphics because of mod tools. Imagine the silver lining giving a mod tool and that being used to remake the Perils of Rosella and possibly other, new quests using the games engine (It would be too much to ask so much from a freeware game, personaly I am thankful to TSL team just for doing what they do, but if they ever decide to make commercial releases, a toolkit would make me want to buy their product!).

At this point lets look at WoW, the most successful mmorpg. This game can be a valuable lesson for many single player games, so lets look at some things WoW offers that can be adapted to adventure games:

-Factions: why cant adventure games have factions? when our hero helps a village by doing quests for the citizens, he could get reputation from it. Reputation could reward items, like keys to locked gates or poisoned meat to put some dogs to sleep. I don't want an exhaustive rep grind like ashtongue in WoW, just to feel special for completing the few quests of my favorite village. The grind should not be necessary (after all one may wish to skip this village's quests) but it should bring a reward.

- Professions: professions in WoW are mostly centered around min/maxing and getting raid consumables, how can this be adjusted to adventure games? First of all they could provide alternative means for obtaining some game items. Instead of wandering in the forest for hours, stuck trying to figure how we can get the potion that will let us get past the big ogre, we could pick some herbs in the mean time and craft the potion. This not only adds multi-linearity but also helps gamers get past a point they may be stuck for hours. Again, professions should never be a requirement to finish a quest line imho.

- Items & Stats: By this I don't refer to combat stats nor having to "gear up" a character in an adventure game but wouldn't it be more fun if consuming a flask of charm brought more dialogue options to the table?

- A huge pool of quests to choose until you reach the level cap. I want side quests in adventure games, I want a big world that offers opportunity for exploration and has things to keep me busy while I'm trying to progress in the main quest line. Many areas with different quests, which reward exploration.

- Economy: in an offline game we cant have an auction house and trade channel but quests could reward some gold and this gold could be used to buy eg charm potions or even some quest items (that again should be available by more traditional means). You don't like this quest line but need to do it to in order to acquire a flute? its ok to skip it, the flute is also on sale for 1k gold. Of course prices for quest items should be high so that you can only skip 3-4 quest lines and only if you are quite wealthy. Also how about gambling mini games? play some poker in that SCUMM bar while discussing with pirates.

Finally lets look at the prince of persia games. If there are combat sequences I want them to be as good as PoP but is that all there is to PoP? I think not, PoP also has some very interesting puzzles to solve and which almost always have to do with a good feel of the physical environment around prince. The interesting bit is that many puzzles can be implemented as real time, while others don't have to be real time puzzles and therefore PoP-like challenges can be used in games where there are no action sequences and in games which have some. I know many people disagree with this but imho a blent of "traditional" and real time puzzles would make adventure games more exciting, I don't want adventures to become like Lara Croft but I cant deny that they could benefit from some action.

TLDR: game engines are lacking many features that are present in every quality game out there. From using some of the most sophisticated engines of their era, like SCI, adventure games have now sadly become cheap/low-end games. This needs to change, the genre needs to become top-notch again, else it will be indy-only very soon. I want the adventure genre to be at the front of innovation in graphics, interaction with environment, gameplay and AI.

Other things:

- in-game hint system, in the fashion of UHS hints in every game.

- Day/night cycles, each with their own unique feel. A quest should be doable during both cycles but with different ways. Eg in the night one could break into a house and get that wanted book, in the day he could distract the house owner.


I hope things change and adventure games become interesting again. For the moment being, the only titles I am eager to see released are Heavy Rain and Dreamfall Chapters, all rest are rpgs, action games and shooters. This is saddening me because I consider myself an adventure gamer, back in the day I played only adventure games and an occasional rpg, but I am not willing to spend my money on anything less than very high quality titles. I don't believe that as customers we should see supporting a company as a good thing, companies should get profit if they deserve it, charity is better spent elsewhere, e.g. in support of medical research, I will never buy an okish game just to support the developer. I only spend money on entertainment products if they are indeed entertaining and while I am more than happy to spend on adventure games, the current quality of the genre makes it hard to do so. I feel that by buying games just for the sake of supporting, we spoil the developers as they get profit even from low quality titles.I dont mean to sound harsh, just want to see the genre rise up again, at the front of innovation in gaming and provide my kids happy moments, as I had happy moments with King's Quest.