Tired of Adventure Game’s old Themes?
 

Have you noticed that the new adventure game developers use the same themes over and over again for their games? I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty bored by games themes dealing with: conspiracies, Atlantis (or other mystic ancient civilization), templar and aliens (and in many cases, all put together in one senseless story).
Don’t get me wrong, I have played and enjoyed new games with stories on those same lines, but I would really like to have the variety of games in the past. Like Sierra or Lucas Arts Games, and many others that had their own very original very interesting storylines.
Some great storylines that I remember are:
-guy trapped in a mental asylum with no memory of why he is there
-pirate wannabe trying to be a pirate and meet the love of her life
-renegade biker trying to clear his name
-dog and rabbit detectives trying to solve a circus crime
-man gets trapped in a book in a fantastic world that he wrote himself
-man destined to be a shadow hunter turns into werewolf and finds a forgotten Wagner Opera.
-newlywed couple lives in a house with a dark past that turns the husband into an evil murderer
-Girl travels between two parallel worlds of science and magic and discovers her true destiny
-A boy in a robe gets vanished from its tribe and when they are turned into swans he is the only one who can save them.

And so on… I really miss original stories…

I agree with your general point, but a lot of the examples of "very original very interesting" stories aren't that original either. The amnesia/asylum storyline is an old favorite. The newlywed couple story is just The Amityville Horror or The Shining. The girl travelling between worlds owes a lot to Lewis, Pullman, and Gaiman. And so on...

There is no "old" theme. There is bad story, bad gameplay, etc.

I read somewhere there were actually only 51 story plots, with a multitude of variants. Seems like too few, but they could be compressed down to that number. Might be fun naming them.

My submission:

Mixup - our hero is set to marry but mistakes someone else for his bride. (I suppose this culd be a subset of "Marriage Gone Wrong")

Transformation - a spell /a potion/a machine transforms our hero into a dog/a shrinking man/a cockroach

For some reason a lot of Shakespeare's plays come to mind. He must have covered quite a few.

I'm not really sure I care about originality so much as I do about variety.

I agree that fresh stories are harder to come by. Its a byproduct of the corporate culture pervading mainstream gaming. They have to go with whats worked and if you're lucky, they'll put a twist on it.

Maybe try more indie games? Go to the Underground section of this website and try some of the games there. You'll definitely find some original stories there. :D

It's not about the ingredients. It's how they are put together.

The Longest Journey (which is what AlejandroSV was talking about) came out a few years before Coraline, which is Gaiman's only major work dealing with the girl traveling between worlds theme.

Which game is this? It sounds interesting.

Myst.

But to stay on topic: I don't care about 'old' stories, as long as the story is told in an interesting and compelling way. I think the way the story is told is more important than the story itself.

Toonstruck. He didn't write the fantasy world though, he drew it.

I heard that What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed has a pretty unique story premise. In fact, I heard it had two of them.

*runs away into the shadows*

I don't know what you consider Gaiman's major works, but it's bloody well obvious that Ragnar Tørnquist read the Sandman comics. TLJ shares many similarities with the A Game of You storyline which was published around 1991-92.

The plot of The Longest Journey is straight from Michael Ende's novel The Neverending Story. Many would prefer to gloss over this because The Longest Journey was a good adventure game. This is sweeping things under the carpet.

Authors frequently copy plots of other authors. That's their choice. It would still be courteous to at least give a nod to their source of inspiration (let's say), especially if they're consistently congratulated on the supposed originality of their work.

Insactly, most of good stories travel around underground...
;)

...but i can't say that there are few unoriginal stories.

Yes. And many parts of the story aside from just the Stark/Arkadia part. April is a very Gaimanian protagonist, for instance. And Ragnar has named Sandman as one of his big influences, so there's nothing underhanded about that.

The Neverending Story is another good example of the "two worlds" idea. It is a very common idea, though, so I don't think it's fair to say that Ragnar "copied" the story and didn't acknowledge the source. TLJ is as close to Narnia as it is to Ende's book.

To each their own interpretation... Still, I encourage any admirer of TLJ to read The Neverending Story, whether they care about the similarities or not. It's a magnificent book and delves deeper into the themes than TLJ. There's no Buffytalk either.

Oh dear, I do look the ass. I always forget about the Sandman when I think of Gaiman; in my mind, I think of him as a novelist, so I always forget that he's done more work in graphic novels than in printed ones. I can't believe I didn't remember those even existed...wow. Forget what I said.

Now, this one I've read, so I feel safe enough disagreeing with you. I've read Ende's novel, and I really don't understand where you're coming from with this one. It does involve someone traveling between worlds, but that's where the major similarities end, as far as I can see.

Here is a site that has all 36 of Georges Polti's dramatic situations that were discussed earlier in this thread. Back in 1868, he stated that every tale fits into one of these dramatic situations. So HERE THEY ARE, laid out in detail. It is quite interesting if you can wade through it all.

Think of a movie or an adventure game plot and I bet you can fit it into one of these categories.

Cheers,
Stain

There are numerous similarities, but the major ones that come to mind right now include:

The title. The Neverending Story. The Longest Journey. They couldn't call it neverending, so they called it really long instead, and a journey rather than story (it is a quest game).

The twin worlds of Fantasia/Arcadia and harsh reality or science (called Stark in TLJ). What's happening to them and why. The big nothing or chaos (this really nails it for me) eating up the world of imagination.

The troubled father-child relationship. Dragons. The stories-within-stories theme.

It's the whole premise, not just the twin-worlds setting. But I'm okay with anyone disagreeing with me on this, so I won't press the point further. I would have no problem with any of this except that TLJ seems to have nothing to add on the subject.

Taking a brilliant concept (and this applies to the topic in general) in order to develop it that much further would be perfectly fine (standing on the shoulders of giants as they say), but just taking the concept and doing less with it than the original, well, strikes me as pointless.

It's as if Mr Tørnquist wanted to tell a story that had already been told and couldn't escape the original's orbit. (In case there is any doubt, I enjoy many aspects of TLJ.)

Simo Sakari Aaltonen
([email protected])

www.adventurecompanion.com

I'm not a big fan of The Neverending Story (I loved Momo and Jim Knopf as a kid, but always found TNS to be a bit forced, as if the author wasn't quite able to believe in his creation), so I have a hard time seeing it as a dazzlingly original masterpiece.

It occurs to me that the original "two worlds" story is of course Lewis Caroll's "Through the Looking Glass". It may not have been the first, but it exerted tremendous influence on everything that followed.

Or Ursula Le Guin's "The Farthest Shore". Arkadia is arguably more similar to Earthsea than to Fantasia, especially in Dreamfall.

I don't remember much of that from TLJ. Are you talking about Dreamfall as well? There doesn't seem to be a close parallel to The Balance in TNS.

Dragons? Seriously?

Again, maybe in Dreamfall, but not really a huge factor in TLJ (which uses only a simple framing device).

Well, I think his decision to move the "regular world" part into the future and science fiction was quite clever (not that combining science fiction with fantasy is a radically new idea). And the idea (in Dreamfall) that we are controlled by how we dream strikes me as a pretty strong metaphor in the age of FOX News.

The concept is so well-used that it seems unlikely there would be much to add to it. Ragnar Tørnquist isn't so much standing on the shoulders of giants as on a heap of writers that came before him. Ende among them, but maybe not at the very top.

The problem I can think of with the idea of "the nothingness" eating up the world of imagination, as you put it, is that in The Longest Journey it was simultaneously eating up the world of science; planes falling from the air, all sorts of deaths and maimings from sudden malfunctions, etc. It was on their news and everything. I only saw the film version of TNS, but the "regular" world was unphazed by the destruction of the world of imagination.

I didn't really have time to address the Neverending Story/Longest Journey issue earlier, but I'd like to do so in greater depth here. Spoilers abound here for both works.

Ende's novel didn't really emphasize the "twin worlds" concept as much as Longest Journey did; the real world wasn't "the world of science," nor was Fantasia/Fantastica (depending on the translation) "the world of magic" so much as it was the world of stories. Whereas in Longest Journey, Stark and Arcadia represented the worlds of logic and magic, only Fantasia represented a concept in Neverending Story, while the real world simply...was. Also, individuals from the real world could change the landscape of Fantasia but not vice-versa, while Stark and Arcadia were independently functioning (ie, something that happens in Stark doesn't have to happen in Arcadia). The overarcing theme of balance between worlds was also absent from Ende's novel.

Also, the Chaos Storm wasn't eating up Arcadia; it was certainly causing havoc, but it wasn't tearing Arcadia apart or causing it to stop existing. Nor was it a force of nothingness. It was the half of Gordon Halloway that belonged in Arcadia, the physical representation of an individual completely composed of the chaos that is emotionality. The half of him that belonged in Stark was the cold, emotionless represenation of a being composed entirely of logic. The storm wasn't indicative of a problem with Arcadia as was the Nothing in the Neverending Story, it was an individual creature created by splitting Gordon in half. What was happening in The Longest Journey was that the Balance between worlds was breaking down in the Guardian's absence, and both worlds were suffering equally because of it. However, the way the worlds suffered struck me as very different than the way Fantasia began disappearing in The Neverending Story.

In Ende's novel, Bastian and his father are emotionally distant from one another. In The Longest Journey, April's father physically abused her rather brutally. Bastian still loves his father in the Neverending Story, whereas April (for most of Longest Journey) despises and fears hers. Their relationship is much more than troubled.

Dragons have been featured in stories for ages, so I don't think they really hold up as evidence for The Longest Journey being based on Ende. Besides that, the dragons in the two have almost nothing in common besides the name "dragon."

I don't recall this featuring in The Longest Journey at all. Both worlds existed; they weren't stories, and the nature of stories and storytelling had nothing to do with The Longest Journey's themes as far as I remember.

I see The Longest Journey saying many independent things on the subject, personally. The fact that a fragile balance exists between logic and magic in the human mind, for instance, or the idea that destiny isn't predetermined, but chosen by a person's actions both strike me as valuable things that other world-jumping stories (Alice in Wonderland, The Neverending Story, The Talisman and Black House, for instance) haven't said.

I have not played Dreamfall yet so I only refer to the first game here. To me the science-versus-magic theme of the game is less intriguing than the physical reality-versus-imagination theme of the book because I do not see science and magic as complementary (or symbiotically opposing) forces the way I do reality and imagination.

I have also developed a dislike to stories about a One who will make everything all right. The One who will bring balance to the Force. Or The One who will bring Balance to the worlds. This is an adolescent vision of heroism compared to the more mature conception that it will take many to save the world. It's also the kind of thinking we see in Rambo or the policies of the current U.S. administration, where The One is without exception "this one": we or I. Ego, hubris, life as war, dialectics as state religion, theology sustaining the centrality of ego.

I notice I've strayed from the TLJ/TNS discussion (on which I'm happy to agree to disagree) into more general territory. What disappoints me most about games is their uniformity of world-view. It is very rare to come across an adventure game that really has a different take on things, the way the Dalai Lama has, or Paul Chadwick, or Pierre Estève, or Lovecraft.

What about a genuinely mature game where maturity does not equal violence or pessimism or exclude humour? Why is everything a murder mystery or thriller or conspiracy or war? What about the far more interesting mysteries of life at its starlit or sun-warmed best? The lapping of waves or the rustle of leaves as opposed to the dripping of blood or the sliding of blocks? Why not adventure predicated not on tension but vital enjoyment?

Simo Sakari Aaltonen
([email protected])

www.adventurecompanion.com

Once again, heavy Longest Journey spoilers ahead.

On the surface The Longest Journey's two worlds are divided along lines of science and magic, but thematically the division is along lines of logic and emotion. Stark is a world governed by the mind, while Arcadia is governed by the heart. When Gordon Halloway is split in two, the side that stays in Stark is his cold, rational self, untempered by emotions and thus unfeeling, while the side in Arcadia is his unpredictable and chaotic, the result of pure emotion without intellect or perception to guide it. This division to me is indicative of the nature of the Divide, and why the Balance is necessary. Either side, without the other to keep it in check, becomes dangerous.


I don't think The Longest Journey is about a single person who will make everything all right; I think it's actually pointing toward the opposite. For the entire game, April is heralded as the hero of different peoples, she proves herself to be a strong individual who shows compassion for others, and then at the end, she's...not the right person to save the worlds? The guy who's spent the entire time killing people is? And the one who's risked her neck the whole time so everyone wouldn't die doesn't get so much as a thank you? Various dialogues throughout the game indicate that this one-guardian-every-thousand-years strategy isn't cutting it, and that something needs to change. I don't want to ruin Dreamfall for you, but this theme that the guardian isn't the best solution continues into it; also, that game uses several different characters to tell its story, and none of them are "chosen ones."

A story, by definition, begins with conflict and ends with the resolution of that conflict (or at least the conflict's conclusion). If a story lacks some form of tension, no matter how small or ridiculous, it's not a story, it's an anecdote. You can't make an adventure game out of something like "Person basking in the moonlight with a loved one on the beach," where that concept is the entirety of the story.

A story, by definition, begins with conflict and ends with the resolution of that conflict (or at least the conflict's conclusion). If a story lacks some form of tension, no matter how small or ridiculous, it's not a story, it's an anecdote. You can't make an adventure game out of something like "Person basking in the moonlight with a loved one on the beach," where that concept is the entirety of the story.

Absolutely disagree with all of the above. The definition of story as requiring conflict, or drama as conflict, is nothing more than a western prejudice of very recent invention.

Conflict is not necessary, nor is resolution. Creating conflict is beating up a person in order to get them to pay protection money, a storyteller creating an artificial need for their services.

One could perfectly well make an absolutely delightful and life-enhacing adventure game from the scenario you mentioned. The first two Cryo Atlantis games gave clear evidence that exploring beautiful surroundings, surrounded by beautiful sounds, is enough.

Godfrey Reggio, Ron Fricke, and Philip Glass did a similar thing in film with Koyaanisqatsi and the results were spectacular, liberating. They did not trap the viewer in the ubiquitous tentacles of western psychodrama, whose basic aim is to increase the tension in the audience rather than release them of it.

Audiences actully think this is a good thing. They think being hooked is something desirable. It is an arbitrary and narrow-minded view, also in great part the reason the world is in deep trouble.

Simo Sakari Aaltonen
([email protected])

www.adventurecompanion.com

If it's so recent, where are all the pre-prejudice, conflict-less stories? From the very first stories we have preserved, such as the epic of Gilgamesh and so forth, conflict seems pretty much universal.

I'm reminded of Tolkien writing about how the times that are most pleasant to live through are the least interesting to hear about, and to tell about.

I have never seen Koyaanisqatsi in full (I often listen to the CD), but I've always been under the impression that the film was about different ways of life, and how our modern world is "out of balance" with nature. That's a conflict. I'm sure many people would say that the movie doesn't have a story, anyway.

I seem to remember a conspiracy against the queen as a main plot point in Atlantis. Atlantis 2 is trickier, because it hardly has a story (much like many would accuse Koyaanisqatsi of). However, incomprehensible as it is, player's objectives in each chapter still resolve around defeating some kind of adversarial characters or forces.

Just because exploring the surroundings made a bigger impression on you, doesn't mean the conflict(s) didn't exist in these two.

Exactly so and I never claimed otherwise. The games gave an indication of what could be done.

Conflict is conflict only if it is perceived as such. There are other, non-dualistic worldviews.

Simo Sakari Aaltonen
([email protected])

www.adventurecompanion.com

Never played those games, nor seen the movies you refer to, but I'd argue that the experience of exploration and discovery is not, in itself, a story at all. So it doesn't really go against that definition of a story; It only demonstrates that an adventure game can have a focus on world design rather than a focus on story and be very entertaining.

I also have trouble seeing how the emphasis on conflict in stories is "in great part the reason the world is in deep trouble". Are you implying that everyone in the world is simply imitating the entertainment they see, and without that entertainment there would be less conflict? And how is it "arbitrary and narrow-minded" to enjoy witnessing conflict? It seems to me that this is a natural predisposition, not something which has been cultivated by our media. The media is only taking advantage of the human truth that we enjoy conflict and resolution by using conflict and resolution to entertain us, which I don't see as a problem at all.

What he said. Myst is an excellent example. Many of the fans love it for a peaceful and slow-placed exploration it offers, but it also have a (back)story, and almost as violent and dramatic one as they get, if you think about it.

An adventure is by definition either a risk, or a series of events.
Unless there is a situation that must be resolved, or a task that must be fulfilled, a game becomes more of a strategy or simulation game.

I don't see that. Riven wasn't at its core a series of events, didn't pose any real risks, and certainly wasn't a strategy or simulation game. And to AFGNCAAP I'd point out that it could still have been very entertaining indeed even without its backstory. And I might seem to agree with Simo in that I think Riven would have been even more effective without the conflict and resolution added on top, but only because I do not agree that Riven is primarily telling a story.

Looks like we are beginning our inevitable descent into a futile argument about the definition of adventure game.

You're right- it's the wrong discussion. In order to stay away from there, let's limit the posts to come to games which focus more on story than exploration or puzzles, okay? That is, unless someone would like to broaden the topic to include other types of content which adventures are reusing too often.

Eh. The whole Riven game is about saving Catherine and as the story go on you eventually have to do more which I wont write her since it's a spoiler.

I'd love to argue about how to analyze Riven, but this isn't the place.

I can think of many non-western examples of conflict-oriented stories from long, long ago in the east, mid-east and Africa. The Japanese tale of Susanoo and the Eight-Forked Serpent, for instance, or the Persian tales of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu? What about the innumerable tales of Anansi? Look through almost any mythology in the world and you'll find conflict present in most tales. I'm not going to say it's present in ALL mythologies, because that's a blanket generalization that I can't possibly prove, but I can say with confidence that it's a major feature of many non-western myths.

And, assuming the concept WAS western in origin, why is that necessarily a negative thing?

If someone thinks being hooked is a desirable thing, then it's a desirable thing for that person. Maybe it's not desirable for you, but you're not everyone. Thinking that being hooked is desirable is neither arbitrary nor narrow-minded, it's a matter of taste; you can't say that enjoying the taste of peanuts is arbitrary and narrow-minded, can you? A person enjoys what they enjoy. If you believe it puts the world in trouble, that's your opinion, but I think that's a bit like arresting a gun for murder. People's tastes don't threaten the world, people's actions do. I don't think governments go to war because they read about it in a book.

Nemel, I am in awe of your wisdom.

he forgot to mention the conflicts of E. Honda and Chun-Li

I was still on topic.

One ingredient in Riven is a "Save the Lady" storyline, which is by topic an "old theme". But in my opinion, dissecting the ingredients of a story, movie or game will make you recognize patterns that allow you to call anything new as something old. It's only a difference between how people see the game/story/movie based on previous experiences.

Was there an old story in Riven? I say so.
Does it really matter? I do not think so, because the storyline is not Riven's strongest point.