[DustyShinigami]

Originally Posted by stepurhan

If my understanding of interactive movie is correct I'd have to disagree with you there. Beast Within is an FMV game but it's not an interactive movie. The distinction relates to how the player's actions affect the game.

In the Beast Within (and other FMV games) the player has to solve certain puzzles to make the story advance. Until they solve those puzzles they have a certain freedom to wander around but the game doesn't move on until they have. As an example from that game, gaining admittance to the Hunt Club is vital to completing one of the chapters and the story won't advance until you do.

By contrast, in an interactive movie, the action advances regardless of what you do. Your actions simply help determine the direction the story takes. To use Voyeur from my earlier post as an example, every time you spy on a room, the game time advances. If you weren't looking at a room when some vital action occurred then that's tough (part of the game is picking up clues when things are happening so you can look in the right place)

I had hoped to link to an actual example that I'd remembered but, alas, the popurlarity of the site has forced it to be taken down. (hosting costs). Instead I can only provide you with a YouTube link. The game was called Survive the Outbreak and the video I've linked to is the intro. It's a zombie survival situation and at the end of each video you are offered a choice of actions. You should be able to follow the story by selecting the related videos named for each action but I can't guarantee that it will work perfectly (in a couple of cases you were offered the same choices on two different branches but earlier actions changed the results so selecting the video on the right path might be tricky)

Ah, okay. Thanks for clarifying that for me.