Story vs. Puzzles: Please chime in
 

The statement has been made, in a Site Feedback thread that I believe most people are overlooking, that "most true adventure gamers" would place a great deal of importance on puzzles. I quote "Puzzles are as integral to adventure games as weapons are to an FPS. Ya can't have one without the other..."

I myself stated in the same thread that I'm in vehement disagreement with the idea that puzzles should exist as anything other than a service to the development of the story and characters--and if puzzles are in the way of those, the game is weaker for it.

Now, since I've been informed that my statements do not represent those of "most true adventure gamers", I thought I'd actually pose the question. Should the story serve the puzzles? Or the other way around? What is truly the foundation of the adventure genre?

For what it's worth, I'll do my part to keep it civil and not participate in the discussion. But I am sincerely interested to see if we can arrive at any sort of consensus--and I promise to freely admit I am wrong if the numbers prove it to be so.

Might I suggest off the bat that to ask a group whose average age is 22 or so what the "foundation" of adventure games is will most definitely lead to a skewed result that may well vary widely from the adventure gaming public as a whole, including the views of the many people who come to Adventure Gamers home page for news and reviews but don't frequent the forums?

(In fact, I will almost guarantee it.)

You might. But I don't agree. We have a much more diverse forum makeup than any other adventure site, and I believe our forum, while still not being a large percentage of our total readers, provides a representative sample.

But settle down, will you, at least wait and see what the results are before calling the poll unfair.

Why don't you ask the same question on the JA and Gameboomer forums?

--Erwin

Sorry... I'm on a sugar high from Valentine's Day candy. hehehehehe

I don't know what is worse, Stinger who believes that there is some intrinsic virtue to democracy as a means of shutting Jim up, or Jim who thinks that since we wear bibs we are somehow not qualified to pass qualitative judgments.

I don't really participate on either forum, so I wouldn't feel like it was my place to pose the question. But I would certainly be interested to have the editors of those sites pose the question, and see how different the response is across the various forums.

Unfortunately, neither of their versions of UBB forum software allow for polls anyway.

AG iZ d4 l33t d00dz b04rd!!

(Also, I voted for story.)

Regardless, the early results show exactly how this poll is going to go. Therefore, by near-unanimous decree of the assembled, 1st-person slideshow puzzle-oriented games ("Myst-clones") are by their very nature an inferior species.


Fuck that.

For me this question is rather redundant. While I think stories should be the driving force behind adventure games you really can't do without either stories or puzzles. They live in a symbiosis that make up a nice whole. They wouldn't do well (at least as adventure games) without each other.

With that said, I don't think it is necessary for the puzzles to be hard to solve. Playing adventure games is more of experience a story for me than a challenge. Frankly, I would even go so long as to say as that no AG puzzles have been really intellectually challenging. They most often just follow standard patterns that you have to learn and then most of it is rather easy to solve. And if I want more of a challenge I would play a pure puzzle game, because then I wouldn't have a story in the way for the challenge.

They could do a question-response poll and track the results. I would really be curious to see the results.

I really hope you realize I'm not on a mission to prove my point or to shut you up. I honestly want to know if the beliefs of Marek and myself are consistent with the feelings of the adventure community. Getting feedback from other forums would only help me gather an answer to this.

At the least, if you're active on those forums you can encourage them to stop by here and let us know what they think.

- Evan

Well, since my statement caused the poll to be generated, here's my 2 cents worth. First, I voted for the "I can't decide", since there was nothing that matched my actual choice. Second, I truly laughed out loud at Kingzjester's comment, but actually, to make an analogy, what value would he place on an eight year olds' preferences, someone less than half his age? Not bib-wearing, perhaps, but also not widely experienced. That's how he and many others here seem to Jim and me. I'm not trying to start a flame-war, just trying to give a bit of perspective. Third, while I might be a tad more tactful than Jim, "Fuck that!", I'm not far from his viewpoint in fact, re usefullness of this poll.

FGM

Ultimately, I don't place one feature over the other. The operative word for me is 'balance', BUT with a slight tilt towards story. If an adventure game focused too much on puzzling, screw it, I'd just as well throw it out and load up a game of Tetris. If it leans too much on the story and neglects to engineer some clever challenges, I'd feel I was being shortchanged and simply just pick up an anthology of Katherine Anne Porter's short fiction. Puzzles should not supercede the story, but story shouldn't dilute the fun and banter of puzzles, either. They should almost complement each other.

To explain the emphasis on the word 'but' above, I argue that the adventure game is, in the final analysis, a game with a particular reward. As in any game, emphasis is placed on challenge, on such elements as thinking, strategizing, deductive reasoning, etc., contingent on the concept and theme of each game. Games have their respective motives, or prize, for beating them. Monopoly is self explanatory in its name, the object is to control all the properties on the board or as much of it as possible, or to have the largest amount of capital. Monopoly has no inclusive story, the goal is simply as I stated. Tetris awards the player with scores and a harder level with the challenge to accumulate more points. Tetris has no inclusive story, the goal is simply to score as high as possible per player. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon presents obstacles that, once surmounted, moves the player onward towards the next chapter of narrative. D'you see the difference? Not only does the adventure game reward the player with the satisfaction that s/he has solved a puzzle, but that solving it also rewards him/her with the next chapter of the story and the next environment to explore. That's the rub.

Placing puzzles over stories dilutes the importance of the 'particular allure' of adventure gaming, that is, its narrative and exploratory qualities the player wants to experience. But leaning too much on story takes away from the challenges inherent in an adventure game as a game, the results could be a humdrum romp, with the player led by the hand. Conversely, a bias towards puzzles shoves the story into the corner, and what's your reward then? The satisfaction of solving a puzzle and moving onto the next one? That's not an adventure game, that's playing a stint of Breakout, 3D Lemmings, or Icebreaker.

I voted for "I really can't decide; they're both equally important."

That was well put Intrepid, it is very much how I feel about the adventure game genre. I voted for story though.

The choices were awfully polarized, so I voted for what seemed closest to my point of view.

Therefore, Myst is a 1 star game because the story is literally "shoved in a corner," being presented solely in a collection of journals in the library.


I repeat: fuck that.

To put it simply, I'm interested in the story. Most puzzles, I've felt, are just obstacles keeping me from finishing the story too quickly.

But like has been said, I'd rather not have one and not the other because they're both important to a good game. :)

That, BJ, was one of my biggest gripes with the game. But, in stark contrast to you, I wouldn't rate it 1 star. My point wasn't even about scoring games according to such.

EDIT: You forget, though, that upon each solving of a puzzle your were presented with a big new Age to explore and yet another little chapter to the story. Elaborating on my gripe, it could have a more dynamic reward - how about flashbacks of scenes of arguments b/t Atrus's sons, for example, to add a bit of suspense? That's what I meant.

I can see your frustration from others not agreeing with you, but your profanity betrays your hypersensitivity. It's just a discussion, a civil one as Evan would prefer it to be.

In general, I think both are equally important, but there are always exceptions. Have very little story, and 9 gazillion puzzles, and you have a Myst-clone. Have a ton of filmed or animated sequences, and few puzzles, and you have a game you watch more than play, like Star Trek Borg or LSL5.

It's tough to find a game that walks a fine balance between the two, because breaking narrative flow to introduce a puzzle, or obstacle has to be done in such a way as to seem appropriate to the world that character is in. If I had to pick, I guess I'd rather have a strong story, as I'm pretty sick of encountering doors w/sliding tile puzzles, doors with control panels next to them, and doors with symbols that need to be both decoded and placed in any 1 of a zillion combos....

Upon further reflection, maybe I just hate doors.