I still haven't mulled over the thread in its entirety because there is a lot of stuff all over the place, but as far as "gameplay" v "story" in adventure games and other games... they all have "gameplay," its just different in different places. I mean at this point in time "gameplay" traditionally means the more tactile stuff - walking/running/jumping/climbing/pushing/fighting, but in adventure games, its the puzzles. I mean, I know that's totally obvious and lame, but ... yeah.
Its weird to me, stories in games, across genres, to look at where they put the cutscenes and where they put the gameplay... In traditional adventure games, you're playing along fiddling with things, exploring, talking to people, putting together the clues, all the things you do to you know, play the game, the "gameplay," but then every time the main character has to run, jump, or pick up a gun, the game will go to a cutscene to illustrate what happens. In almost all other story-based genres, though, at their core all you do for the "gameplay" side is running and jumping around with a gun, but then every time the main character has to talk to someone, thoroughly investigate an object, or manipulate complex machinery or something, it goes to the cutscene. I'm frequently pissed off when I encounter this from both sides of the fence. Its so annoying to finally chase a guy down in my car or over a bunch of rooftops or something all I want to do is poke at him, get some answers out of him, you know? The thing is, I only have the option of shooting him, watching a cutscene of my interrogating him, or, if I'm lucky, I get to shoot him then watch a cutscene. Alternatively, playing an adventure game it's incredibly frustrating to spend hours and hours to gather all the clues to find out "whodunnit," only to have the game wrench control from me at the crucial moment, forcing me to watch the guy I was helping solve the case for the past 6 hours do the epic final chase and arrest without me. It's funny to me that traditionally, adventures allow one half to be playable and other genres focus on the other half. Traditionally, if you have both halves playable in your game you somehoe manage to alienate everyone and piss them off because you're not adhering to genre conventions. (unless you're Fahrenheit, for some reason) And, of course, if you have neither half playable you have a complete computer animated film :) but thats another story I guess. Wow I just went really really off topic. Sorry about that :( |
Also to answer your question, I wouldn't play a game if it was nothing but a bunch of brilliantly constructed puzzles unless it was presented to me as "a brilliant puzzle game." If someone said "this game is chock full of story and atmosphere and crazy interactive immersive brilliance" but then it was nothing but a bunch of poorly disguised levers, I would be pissed.*
*Note: I am pissed at most modern adventure games. How do you fix this? Not by "adding action" or whatever. What does that do, other than fake people out a bit more? "Is that one of those ... 'adventure games'? If so, why not just make a movie?!" "Oh, no no, this one's got action!" "Ohh, I see. [plays game for an hour] ... Wait a second, this is nothing but a bunch of poorly disguised levers with a shitting jump button!" doesn't seem like it's going to help much? ... Unless you're talking about something more like Psychonauts? (Which isn't really an adventure game?) ... or Fahrenheit, which is, from what little I've played, really just the ultimate extreme version of window dressing on a series of levers - levers, I might add, which have been affixed with simon says and dance dance revolution games one must complete before pulling them? (Fahrenheit seems fun though :)) ... Which sort of goes back to the suspension of disbelief thing from earlier I guess, successful suspension of disbelief which might answer my earlier question as to why Fahrenheit has somehow resonated with adventure gamers and gamers of non-adventure-games alike. Hm! Nevermind. ... I'm never going to get out what I'm trying to say. I keep disappearing off into inane crap that has nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make - the point which I'm very sure is relevant and interesting but keeps doing nothing but dancing around in the back of my mind making faces at me :( My brain is disintegrating. I haven't been sleeping enough. Sorry everyone for bothering this thread at all :( edit: Tried to bring it all back around there in that added second to last paragraph. Maybe I succeeded :) |
Jake,
You aren't bothering me. I have been reading people's posts here as they argue back and forth and in those 2 posts up above, you have clarified more things for me than reading pages of other posts in other threads. Bother away. Even with little sleep, you make a lot of sense! Now, Go. to. bed. :P |
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This age-old riddle is an inventory puzzle. The person posing the riddle explains the context immediately before setting you loose to think of the answer. Once you finish, he'll undoubtedly give you some other similar riddle to follow up on it, with a completely different context. Having a story to tie the two riddles together would not make them any better. Jake: I have no idea what you're trying to say. Sorry. I'd like to clarify my earlier statements and point out that if a certain Form's strength is not storytelling, then it is wrong to put in a story by default. Maybe once the Form is really well developed, and everyone sees how it can contribute to the landscape of art, then someone can shake things up by focusing on story. But these Forms all have unique strengths, and before those strengths are found it's a waste of time, not to mention a confusion, to focus on anything else. Okay, maybe that wasn't so clear. I think Jake's rubbed off on me. :devil: Adventure's strength is story. Exploration's strength is world design. Platformer's strengths are grace and the most direct artistic expression ever devised. FPS's strength is intensity. And so on. All of these Forms should look to their strengths to see how they should evolve and become pillars of culture. So the adventure Form should remove any elements not serving the story, and study how more personality can be expressed by the interactivity and interface. The exploration Form should remove its secondary gameplay mechanics (puzzles, action) and study how world design on its own can be more expressive, as well as more advanced world design techniques. The platformer should replace the clumsy controls of today and remove the emphasis placed on silly mascots, and study how controls can allow for more nuance and grace. The FPS should stop worrying so much about story and find new twists on the action. (You can probably tell I don't much like FPSs.) And so on. |
Jake: I like your comments. And I think that I agree with them.
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Mind you, I have some trouble seeing how an "exploration form" can actually be classed as a game. But that's for another discussion. |
First of all, it occurs to me that I've been using the made-up term "Form" a lot in this thread without explaining myself. I use it to mean "form of art or entertainment" since that phrase is too long to use repeatedly. I hope no one here minds.
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Forms cannot evolve if all their creators can do is make them more like other Forms. Each Form must find its own unique voice, or the result is a whole lot of games which do a whole lot, but don't do anything particularly well thanks to all the interferences. Their voices are much more clear when they aren't diluted by other Form's ideas. Quote:
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Well, let's put aside the fact that you just provided the micro-context, thus telling a micro-story, thus creating a primitive adventure game with both puzzles and a story. There are still some issues. First of all, I think having such a puzzle on paper and in an interactive enviroment are two quite different experiences. In the first case you go through a process of solving it in your head until gou gain insight into a correct solution. In another you can try the things out and eliminate the options that don't work with certainty, it's easier that way. You can't say the first approach is better than the other, they're just different. Secondly, that works well for a linear sequence of self-contained puzzles, but well designed puzzles in an adventure game are often intertwined. Think about the puzzles in Day of the Tentacle. When you solve a piece of a puzzle in the past, the context in the future changes (in fact, that way you're telling the story by solving puzzles - "wow, a vacuum cleaner appeared out of nowhere!"). You can't put that on paper without giving away the solution or at least hinting at it. And finally, I provided inventory puzzles as an example, but there are other types that don't work as well in other media. What about dialogue puzzles? They hardly make any sense without context and you can't put them on paper cause they rely on interactivity too much. I doubt a game consisting only of a series of unrelated dialogue trees would be much fun to play and some complex systems would be too tedious to solve on paper. For instance, if NPC's responses depended on some other system (NPC's mood or disposition, perhaps) and that system could be influenced by asking the right questions, you could either provide an exponentialy growing list of question/answer combinations or some kind of an algorithm. Therefore, it would be much more enjoyable to play it on a computer. |
@MoriartyL: I disagree. You seem to be under the impression that all games that fall under a certain umbrella or have the same(?) form are the same and emphasize on the same things. So a FPS game is a FPS. A RPG is a RPG. A RTS is a RTS. A [insert fancy label name here] is a [insert fancy label name here]. And so on. And that's not the case. Thanks God!
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So when I talk about what adventures should and should not be like in the future, I'm of course referring to the norm, not the exception. I'm referring to the game which everyone will think of when they hear the word "adventure", so that they immediately know where the Form stands. If there are old-fashioned adventures in the future, that's great -I actually don't like seeing old types of games get completely left behind- but this should not be the standard. |
I'm kind of confused now. Are you talking about the future of interactive storytelling or about the future of adventure games? Or are they both one and the same? Ah, well.. how should I put it? The former should be all about some out_of_that_stupid_box _thinking (not necessarily the same as starting_from_scratch or whatever). At least to an extent. Why? Because every story is different. So need to be the games. It'll be exciting once designers start to do that. I think some of them are already doing it and have been doing it for years now.
To think like: "Okay, now I have this beautiful story to tell, now how do I want the player to experience it? How do I want to get him involved? And how can I strengthen the bond between the player and the plot? How can I make him feel emotionally attached to the story?" Slider puzzles? Give me a break. I mean, if I'm playing that Mafia game (looks like GTA, feels like an interactive movie!) I wouldn't want to push some levers and solve some contrived inventory puzzles or whatever. I'd want to have some Mafia stuff to do. System Shock 2 would outright suck as an adventure game as well. Or at least, what some people consider to be an adventure game. :shifty: See what I'm trying to get at? Don't worry, I don't either. Or do I? :\ HELP! |
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The man looked in the mirror, and saw what he saw. He took the saw, and used it to cut the mirror in half. He then put the two halves together to make a whole. Finally, he jumped through the hole. He was free. Quote:
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You wouldn't even have to deviate so much from each respective genre to gain that extra level of interactivity that allows you to chase-bad-guy/interrogate-bad-guy. Just some clever design choices. And someone said "we wouldn't be hanging around this forum if all recent adventure games were bad." The only reason I stay here is the (sometimes) nice community, and my love for the classics. I mean, when a 10 year old game looks better than a 3 year old game, it's hard to enjoy the current level of quality in adventure games, IMO. |
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What good is a storytelling medium which can't even do action stories? I don't mean slopping an action game, and everything that comes with it, on top- I mean having a framework flexible enough that if there should be some point in the story which calls for action, it should be possible without changing the interface or the pacing. (Real-time is out of the question, but why not have the game wait while you decide how to fight?) If the story demands strategy, again the framework should be flexible enough, but not by sticking an RTS on top, but by using the same materials which have in the past only been used for puzzles. If these materials are not good enough, then let's replace them now before we run into a story the adventure Form can't handle. Adventure games are destined to be a storytelling medium- of this I am certain. To push it forward, game creators must do whatever is necessary to pave the way there. They must eliminate puzzles when they are only there for their own sake. They must stretch the interface to fit more types of stories. They must dispell myths regarding classification. They must stop being afraid to make their games linear. And they must stop assuming that the main attraction of an adventure game is its gameplay. There is a lot -and I mean a lot- of work ahead, and it does not lie in trying to "recreate the magic of the classics". On a side note, I do think there is much hope for interactive storytelling outside the adventure Form, but that will probably only come much later, not to mention that it's a completely different issue. |
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So that real-time stuff (not necessarily aaaaaaaaaaargh "action" (what the heck is action anway?) is absolutely not out of the question by default. But since you're still talking about, eh, adventure games.... (stuck in a small, cute box since 1898)... ;) Quote:
Err, what games have you played during the last 10 years? Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, that list goes on and on. |
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However, that's not an inventory puzzle, that's wordplay and it works only in English. Quote:
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One of the appeals of Day of the Tentacle is the way the puzzles logicaly flow from one into another. The whole game is one huge puzzle comprised of smaller, more or less self-contained sub-puzzles which can further be broken down to elementary puzzles. You can change the names of the characters or get rid of the names altogether, you can scratch the humor (not entirely) or change some aspects of the story, but if you scratch it completely, you'll end up with a far less satisfying experience. You can't change the order of the sub-puzzles without breaking the experience either. The strength of adventure games lies in this interplay between story and puzzles, not in story only. Seemingly, we want the same thing, but what you're suggesting is that adventures as we know them are a conceptual misfire; I disagree, but I want other flavors of interactive storytelling in games to be explored as well. Quote:
Dialogue puzzles are usually used as a way of getting a character to part with a certain object/information or getting you past the certain point in an enviroment. What I'm trying to say is it appears there's no substantial intelectual prize for solving a dialogue puzzle, more often then not the real prize is something else. It suggests that solving a series of disjointed dialogue puzzles wouldn't give you much satisfaction all by itself. Maybe if you used some sort of abstract language, but then the real puzzle would be in cracking the code. |
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I'm not saying there's no space for sandbox games, or Morrowind-style games in the world of games, but if your focus is to tell a story they might not necesarilly the best direction to go. Quote:
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I think what has made the so-called "death of the adventure game genre" is that we no longer feel in control of the plot and the characters.
When these games were at their peek they were considered more sophisticated than the platformers and racers on our megadrives and nintentos. Now, other genres have surpassed AGs in terms of 'Interaction'. 'Interaction' plays a major role in the games of today. Now I'm not saying that AG games don't have interaction because they do, but not enough as opposed to other games. Truth is that a lot of people prefer a game where they have more freedom to explore, more activities to do and more outcomes to make (Tomb Raider, GTA). whether you like these games doesn't matterk, they have all sold well. I admit I haven't bought "Fahrenheit" (although I've played a short demo). I believe that the game has been successful because of the variety, or at least, the ILLUSION of variety has made the game more appealing to cater to other audiences other than AG gamers. How can point'n'clickers compete? They can't. At least not in the state that they are in at the moment. A game such as 'Blade Runner' was on the right track - multiple endings and situations etc. And from what I've heard is that the game did at least moderatly well when it was released and gained good reviews. We all like control of what we are doing in our games, or at least the majority of gamers, and programmers and publishers or AGs of today haven't always been keeping this in mind. I think what the creator of this thread is kind of asking is "should we sacrefic the old fashioned elements of AGs and move on for good to cater for the next generation of gamers, or keep these games as they are and hope they expand in popularity?". Or at least where to draw the line between the two. |
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Insane_cobra:
I wasn't joking when I asked you to remind me of a dialogue puzzle from DoTT. I can't remember any good puzzles revolving around dialogue, and it's hard for me to talk about something I don't remember. Regarding the question of interactive storytelling, I have no choice but to agree to your position. You see, your quote of this Rouse guy is eerily similar- no, make that totally identical to my thoughts around a year ago regarding the ideal interactivity. While I still hold onto this notion for platformers, I spent a very long time trying to think of how it could work in adventures without any success. That's why I came up with my current ideas of how adventures should be linear, and completely forgot about my earlier dreams. The reason I bring all this up is to explain that your quote put me directly in conflict with my earlier positions (which I haven't thought about in a while). I refuse to disagree with my younger self as a matter of principle, so you win. This means that the adventure Form has about three times more evolving to do than I thought. That should take around two centuries, I think. |
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Here's a nice piece on adventure game puzzles (although it wrongly puts insult sword fighting in Monkey Island 2). Quote:
That happens to me all the time, sometimes I change my mind more often than my socks. I think that's a good thing, constantly changing and questioning things, but maybe tomorrow I'll think otherwise. ;) Quote:
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On linearity, idealism, and interactivity in Adventure Games:
isane_cobra, MoriarityL: Let's suppose you're a little boy, sitting at the campfire with your boyscout leader. Now just bear with me. He sits down to tell you a story. Do you want to tell him, and decide for yourself where the story goes? Or do you want to hear the freaking story? Sure, there's the campfire game of going around in a circle, and each person telling a piece of an undetermined story, but is that ever really fun? As fun as hearing something wild or engaging or frightening from your boyscout leader? Hell no! Look, I used to think that ultimate interactivity, that idealist uber-interactivity, was a great idea. But quite frankly, once you attempt to design that (which would have to still be limited-- one cannot acheive total and complete interactivity without the advent of AI), you create a model of life. The more interactive you are, the more it is like life. Guess what life is? Boring! Very very boring! Fact is, I don't care if the player of my adventure game wants to get involved with some nothing NPC-- because I'm going to design a game where he won't want that: he'll be involved with a hotter, more interesting, main character NPC, damnit. The whole point of linearity is to eliminate all desires of wide-range, open-ended, superfluous interactivity. In a game, if there is a desire to do something that you cannot do, there is one or two of two things that are wrong-- 1) the story is not compelling enough 2) an unperformable action is too glamorously depicted, which thus distracts from the story I'll give you an example-- in B.A.S.S., in the St. James Club, there is a character named Babs. Babs is hot. She serves no purpose whatsoever-- she gives you no information. However, the fact that you can talk to her, in a mildly in-depth manner, makes you believe -- hope -- that she is of some importance to the overall story, or at least an option, or an embellishment of the story itself. I remember hoping (when I first played it, around age 12) that there was some way to get the main character and Babs together, and when I found out that there wasn't, I was definitely slightly peeved-- "they should let you do it! even it's not part of the whole story!" WRONG. BUZZZ. Quite frankly, what caused the desire for all of that was not Babs herself, in all her pixelated glory, but the fact that there was the ability to interact with Babs, that she seemed like an important or accessible character, made me desire more interactivity. Therefore, interactivity spawned the desire for more interactivity, and thus let me down, beacuse there wasn't any more. You know what I think Babs should have been? Sitting down at the bar, or a table, with someone else. Or engaged in a conversation. OR have no dialogue options. This eliminates the illusion that she is important, and therefore eliminates the desire for more interactivity, which will ultimately let someone down. This is not to say that Adventure Games should be strictly linear, with no extranneous options or interactivity availabilites whatessoever. Hell no! Personally, I would have been fine if, in Grim Fandango, you could have entered the festival outside of Manny's office, and maybe talk to a few people, find a few worthless objects, etc. etc. (and worthless objects can be fun-- remember the gum from the desk in Fate of Atlantis?). Do you know why? Because it would have added to the story. The festival was, in fact, an attraction, and being able to parttake would have caused no harm to the story's path. But let me tell you something-- thank god I wouldn't have the ability to, say, set the tents on fire, or sit down and order a cup of coffee at a coffee stand, because if I sit down, and can order a cup of coffee, then I wonder, "Well why can't I flirt with the waitress? WHY CAN'T I DO THAT, HUH?", and if I can flirt with the waitress, then I wonder, "Why can't I have more pickup lines?", "Why can't I get the cappucino?", "Why can't I haggle price?", "Why can't I talk to that suspicious looking guy in the corner, or the hot blonde in the back?" "Why can't I go to the bathroom, or ask for the bathroom key?" It opens up a can of worms. Superfluous interactivity should be limited -- strictly in Adventure Games -- so as to not distract from the story, or cause distaste for the game. What you're talking about, insane_cobra, is not an Adventure Game-- it is a non-violent RPG. It's Grand Theft Auto without the Theft or the Guns. Mark my words-- to solve numerous puzzles that belong to different numerous adventures, or none at all, would be tedious, overly difficult (or simple), and boring. Like everyday life. |
For now, I pass. I'm curious to see how insane_cobra deals with this one.
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And I can never help but think, "Who would play that? It's gotta be the most boring thing on earth!" |
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I just wanted to reply quickly to JHousequake because you quoted me. I might've misinterpreted you're meanign of "Runaway probably isn't as good as I think," but if I didn't: I don't think it was good at all. I think it was a huge piece of crap. It opened with fairly poor animation of the protagonist sitting in that chair, with painfully bad dialogue- not only in form and interest, but in that there was some really, really unrealistic stuff in there. (I may be biased as a New Yorker.) I don't mean unrealistic literally, games are naturally "unreal," but unrealistic within the game's own world even. Also, in that particular game, I had no drive to go on because the story was stupid and didn't draw me in from that opening cut scene. I've realized, for me at least, the story has to capture my interest in the first couple minutes or why play. As far as comedy- I agree that most new adventures lack comedy, and I tried a few of them since this thread, and again, wasn't amusing by any of them. Couldn't hold my attention for five minutes even. For me, I like comedy, I think games should be funny and clever, for the most part, especially adventure games- so the stories in something like Syberia would never have drawn me to a movie theatre or book. I think that a good, comedic game would have a larger audience draw in that untapped market. At least that was the gist of my comments. The - hard to fund a game aimed at over 50 market- it wouldn't really be aimed at them, ideally it would have the unique potential of appealing to them as well as the younger audience. Family Guy- the pop culture references and such are the key elements of its humor, and the non-sequitors, "Remember the time I.../cut to a short" things were a fairly original approach to format that made it a winner. Going off topic more, but also games like Syberia do suffer from feeling technically dated. The idea that it seems newer by being 3D is not working. Plus, it's not even really 3D, so it's a waste. Simply put, even on the newest computers, the best of the best real time 3D can't hold a candle to pre-rendered 3D. So why have a real time 3D character on pre-rendered backgrounds? The only thing that 3D can offer to an adventure is real time camera moves, and if you have pre-rendered backgrounds your 3D character just looks out of place. End rant. |
Cripes, I was really hoping I wouldn't have to write another word in this thread... :crazy:
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There's a time and place for everything, a time for listening to/reading/watching stories and a time for taking a part in them. And believe it or not, that's what you're doing every time you play a game, you're taking a part in a story. It's not even limited to games with narrative, the player's story is always there, even if the game itself has absolutely no plot. Thus your campfire analogy is fundamentally broken - if there's no interaction, it's not a game. Quote:
Sorry, couldn't resist. :) I never said games should be ultrarealistic. It's common sense that every well designed game will leave the boring bits out, nobody wants to tie shoelaces in a game (unless it's a game about tying shoelaces, of course :)). It doesn't mean that games should necessarily focus just on the fun aspects of life, but interaction should be economic, it always has to serve some higher purpose. A game about Holocaust probably wouldn't be "fun", but it could still be a gripping experience. Quote:
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Also, I believe the reasons you listed are wrong. How many times did you play a game with a fence you couldn't simply climb over? No, you'd have to walk all the way to the entrance or find some clever way to get to the other side. What about the locked doors? Like in Silent Hill games, you're a walking arsenal, but you can't break through a locked door? Come on! You just have to accept that. It's not that the story is not compelling or that the doors are glamorously depicted, you just expect certain functionality from certain objects. When designing a game, you can either avoid using such objects, which often doesn't leave you much to work with, add interactivity to everything, which is impossible and which, by the way, I never suggested you should do, or compromise. Another way is to limit the player's time so he has to focus on the most important things. Fahrenheit does it. Some older games do that, too, but Fahrenheit often leaves you enough room to decide for yourself what those important things are and the story adapts according to your choices. That's what I'm professing, choice. Quote:
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