[Bastich]

This has been brought up in many other threads here, so...why do people have such a problem with items that can't be picked up until you need them?

Personally, I find that it adds realism to the game. If I'm walking through a parking lot in real life and see a coat hanger on the ground, there is no chance in Hell that I am going to pick it up. If, however, I get to my car and I find out I locked my keys in it, then and only then will I go pick up the hanger, as I now have use for it.

Likewise, why should a game character pick up an item he has no use for, until he discovers a need for it?

In one review I read, the reviewer even went so far as to call that unrealistic. As if walking around picking up everything that isn't nailed down has any basis in reality...

In real life, the puzzles come first, and the search for materials with which to solve them comes second. Why exactly is this a problem in a game?

Some of the games to do this (Black Mirror and Nibiru for instance) even go out of their way to make it obvious what you will need to come back to. I guess I don't see what the fuss is about...

[Maquisard]

At the very least, I would make those objects pickupable, but without an interaction hotspot until the character is actually aware he'll need them. BTW, some people really do pick things up from the middle of the street, you know? They're like "Oooh, discarded spark-plugs, I'm gonna need those!"

[Henke]

But the thing is that the player should be able to pick things up when ever he wants. If I want to pick up a coat hanger I should be able to do so and not wait for the game to say "all right, now I let you pick it up". One of the reasons many games don't let you do this is of course a way for the developer to control in what order the player solves the puzzles (if that is necessary). But letting the player have more freedom is a good thing (until a certain point).

[Maquisard]

Another way to do it is to make fun of an adventure gamer's tendency to pick up everything in sight, by having useless objects with comical description lying around, which you can carry in your inventory for no apparent reason. But then that can lead to the "try everything with everything" syndrome.

[Melanie68]

It doesn't really bother me. I see things that look like they are usable and I just tuck that piece of info away until the time comes in the game when you need it. Some games do let you pick up things you never use but go along with your character (the picture of April and her friends in TLJ comes to mind).

[lumi]

Originally Posted by Mares

Another way to do it is to make fun of an adventure gamer's tendency to pick up everything in sight, by having useless object with comical description lying around, which you can carry in your inventory for no apparent reason. But then that can lead to the "try everything with everything" syndrome.

I was thinking it would help you stop the "try everything with everything" syndrome. Because the more items you have the longer it would take to try everything, so you'd give up on that idea.

[Maquisard]

"Try everything with everything" becomes what it is because you have way too many items to begin with. If you've got useless items on top of that, it only makes it worse. I think you're underestimating the desperation that some agers run into.

[nikoniko]

Usually I don't find this annoying until I replay a game. It can be frustrating when you already know what you will need those cotton swabs for, but the game won't let you get them until you talk to someone first, forcing you to backtrack for no good reason. I especially hate when they program the character to respond, "Why would I need THAT?" when you try to pick up an item ahead of its trigger event, when you know EXACTLY why you will need it.

Cheers,
doroposo

[Kurufinwe]

I'm not overly fond of this. Runaway kept doing it, and I hated it. But I think the problem was more related to the fact that the game didn't even tell you what the item was; I mean, Brian looks inside a bag, and just says 'no, nothing interesting there', and then, later, if you look again, he suddenly finds something he decides can be interesting. This reduces the gameplay to randomly revisiting every screen each time you discover a new puzzle, in search for the required item, instead of making you think. I hate that.

Now, in The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes (esp. the second one), it often works much better: Holmes will only pick up an item (or interact with it in a particular way) once he has a good reason for it; but you know what the item is, so it's logical to try to interact with it again when the time is right. Furthermore, the item and the trigger that allow you to interact with it are often in the same room, which means that there isn't much backtracking. A downside is that I sometimes understand what I need to do with the item before the game allows me to; it can then be rather painful to have to try and find what the game expects you do to to be allowed to.

Finally, the 'realism' argument is not often a good one. I'm not against more realism for puzzles, but then don't claim to be realistic for one thing (not being able to pick up items before you know why) and be completely unrealistic for everything else (such as having to look for matches in a ridiculous place when you could easily ask the friendly people of the town for some --- another example from Runaway).

At the end of the day, I prefer considering adventure games as, well, games, with rules, which are not always realistic (as is the case for about all other types of games), but which are set rules that I know and within which I agree to play --- and being able to pick up every item has been one of these rules for a very long time, and one I'm fine with. Once again, I can accept replacing it with a 'realism' rule, but then it must be applied everywhere --- and, at the end of the day, can inventory puzzles, with their complex solutions to simple problems, bottomless pockets, etc., really be realistic?

[2GooD]

I agree with doroposo:

One issue I come to think of is when I have figured out something that the character I'm playing hasn't, and can't do something I'm quite sure is the correct action, just because something in the game hasn't been "unlocked". This is particularly annoying when I can't pick up something I think I will need without first doing something that will make the character discover the need for the item.

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by 2GooD

I agree with doroposo:

One issue I come to think of is when I have figured out something that the character I'm playing hasn't, and can't do something I'm quite sure is the correct action, just because something in the game hasn't been "unlocked". This is particularly annoying when I can't pick up something I think I will need without first doing something that will make the character discover the need for the item.

Ditto for me. So often the actual thing that I want to do is painfully obvious but I can't do it because the character has, apparently at random, decided that now is not yet the time, or that he doesn't realise that it will help him (despite the fact that I know it will and can think of plot reasons for doing it). This happened constantly in Runaway. There's also a particularly mean example of it in Hauntings of Mystery Manor, in which you actually have to solve a completely redundant puzzle just so that your character will "realise" that there's an item that's worth using that you've until that point not been allowed to pick up .

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by Mares

At the very least, I would make those objects pickupable, but without an interaction hotspot until the character is actually aware he'll need them.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, NO.

This annoys me even more, because I now have to pixel hunt every location every time I solve a puzzle on the off chance that something has now become a hotspot. The Moment of Silence does this at one point, I believe, and it annoyed the hell out of me.

[Ninth]

As others said, even though it could be argued that not being able to pick objects before they're needed is more realistic, it often leads to gameplay problems. Like backtracking, pixel-hunting (Runaway), and whatnot.

[davez82]

i dont think it matters, knowing most adv games instead of a coat hanger as a solution it will be a lead pipe , metal cutter, and a wrench to bend the metal into a coat hanger as the solution. Some puzzles just lack logic solutions in some games, might as well have the game on an alien planet made up of materials and objects we've never seen before.

[Maquisard]

I think the whole purpose of using a coat hanger to open a car you've been locked out of is to pull the hanger open, and use it like a wire. So you might as well have a puzzle intended to make a wire, not a coat hanger...Just a thought.

[aBoyinPERIL]

It seems that what the game makers can forget or find difficult to remain consistency in is the fact that you are now in the mind of the character when you make your "do I pick this up/ can I use it now or later" decision.

Personally I lean towards attempting to randomly pick up available objects and having great pleasure in the character telling me that it is of no use to them just now. Although this can fall flat on its face when you feel that the object is a perfectly reasonable item to use but it tells you it's not. Classic mistake.

Another mistake, I feel is when there are an array of interesting items all about but about 95% of these are simply decorative and never meant to be of any use but to add to the ambience. I feel there should be a series of dialogue recorded for simply telling the gamer that the character feels it is not of use, relevant at all or even have clue hot spots for every x amount of incorrect clicks. This is all currently available programming to the makers and would only marginally increase the length of time it took to make the game if incorporated right from the start and built in as the game's creation progressed.

At the end of the day, if I want to play an investigator and his flat is available to me I want to use the stuff in it. How cool would it be to have an array of things in your flat like a drinks cabinet or dartboard and some you could carry about with you to use like your lockpicks - to break into a monestary, although you could have got the key by talking to the correct friar - sound too easy...well its not because the game runs day and night and if your breaking in you'd have to do it at night, if you had the key and the friar's permission - you could have walked right in...

There are clues and indications in Still Life, BS3 and Syberia 2 that once again the adventure game is adapting to involve the gamer even more than before in their choice, but still I feel it is restricted. I think we have to break away from the more linear method of play where 100% of the items to pick up are planted. To allow all objects would, of course, be chaos but to perhaps allow for a few puzzles and situations to be solved by a range of available decisions would be a very clever move. We have to get in the head of the character.

What do you think?

[Bastich]

I appreciate everyone's responses. Thanks.

In reality, I'm rather apathetic about the whole thing and only asked out of idle curiosity because it seems to crop up a lot lately in discussions.

It does seem, however, that the arguments against it aren't so much against the very idea itself, but of the method of implementation, or because it exposes other weaknesses in a game.

For example, backtracking is obviously not an annoyance if the game allows you to travel to anywhere you've been really quickly. If the game doesn't allow that, that doesn't mean puzzles that require backtracking are bad, but that the game has a very poor and tedious method of traveling between places. Hence, blaming the puzzle is putting the blame in the wrong place if you ask me.

I also feel that knowing the answer to a puzzle before the character you are controlling is irrelevant. The character isn't you and doesn't think like you. Your job as player is to try and get THEM to figure it out, not just figure it out for yourself.

Anyway, I'm a bit short on free time this week, so pardon me if I don't get too involved in this discussion...

[Maquisard]

About traveling quickly between locations. You know how you can give a code number to a group of units in an RTS by going Ctrl + 1 and so on (up to ten groups, I think)? I was always of the oppinion that AGs should have that same quick link for coding locations. Press one, and boom, you're there!

[lumi]

Originally Posted by Mares

About traveling quickly between locations. You know how you can give a code number to a group of units in an RTS by going Ctrl + 1 and so on (up to ten groups, I think)? I was always of the oppinion that AGs should have that same quick link for coding locations. Press one, and boom, you're there!

That could be a good idea. I know I hate running back and forth. I just hope I wouldn't get to the last scene and then press the key linked to the beginning.

Shouldn't be too hard to implement well, though. The only problem is if something new pops up in one screen that you keep skipping.

[Maquisard]

Originally Posted by Spider Crusoe

That could be a good idea. I know I hate running back and forth. I just hope I wouldn't get to the last scene and then press the key linked to the beginning.

Shouldn't be too hard to implement well, though. The only problem is if something new pops up in one screen that you keep skipping.

Well, I'd think of those screens as hubs from which you can explore the surrounding ones...And if you keep missing something on a screen which is on a path you frequently cross (but don't actually see) in your skipping about, the game should just have you show up there, as a clue that you're missing something...