[Crapstorm]

Originally Posted by Endow

Story and original game worlds. There is so much potential in video game as a ways to deliver story. Where are all the creative possibilities you can find midway in the fantasy-scifi spectrum? Why does it have to be swords'n'elfs , lasers'n'robots or real-life scenarios?

Yeah, same problem in all areas of entertainment. Why are 90% of the TV dramas about cops, doctors or law firms? Why are 80% of the best-selling novels crime thrillers? Why are so many of the blockbuster movies about superheroes, explosions and contrived chase sequences?

Short answer: because it sells.

People are attracted to the familiar, and the industry caters to that fact. Creativity and originality are eliminated from all but the smallest independent "arthouse" markets, which rarely see the light of day.

[Merricat]

Agreed. I would add, as well, that the familiar, tried-and-true formulae are soothing to the suits who invest the money to make such entertainments. It's easier to pitch "It's 'Titanic' meets 'Alien'!" than "It's an original idea--it's never been done!" Originality makes most investors nervous.

[evil_chutney]

Well drawn charcters and backgrounds (I've always preferred 2D games for this reason) the early Lucas Arts and the first Broken Sword game come to mind as good examples. They looked lush and drew me into their world.

Well written dialogue - it's what makes the characters live. It doesn't matter how well animated they are if they talk like robots and have no back story. Syberia and The Longest Journey have well developed principle characters that are worth caring about and following through the story.

[misslilo]

A couple of days ago I played through Gabriel knight Sins of the Fathers.

I had totally forgotten how much dialog it contains, but it was set up in a way, so you didn't mind.
A long list of questions - no trees to click through.
It unfolded the story in a nice pace, and new lines of dialog was easily recognized and highlighted.

Also, I suddenly realized that the voice of Grace is Leah Remini from The King of Queens..
She did a marvelous job, I might add.

[Crapstorm]

Originally Posted by misslilo

A couple of days ago I played through Gabriel knight Sins of the Fathers.

I had totally forgotten how much dialog it contains, but it was set up in a way, so you didn't mind.
A long list of questions - no trees to click through.
It unfolded the story in a nice pace, and new lines of dialog was easily recognized and highlighted.

Oh, man, I cannot agree with that. I have bad memories of the dialog in that game. I remember having to ask the same question over an over again until the characters repeated themselves. You end up having to listen to the last line of dialog twice, which is pretty annoying.

[misslilo]

You end up having to listen to the last line of dialog twice, which is pretty annoying.

Well, it was easy to bypass by left or right clicking.

[Endow]

Originally Posted by Crapstorm

Yeah, same problem in all areas of entertainment. Why are 90% of the TV dramas about cops, doctors or law firms? Why are 80% of the best-selling novels crime thrillers? Why are so many of the blockbuster movies about superheroes, explosions and contrived chase sequences?

Yes, I agree it's the same with movies and books and tv.

Short answer: because it sells.

People are attracted to the familiar, and the industry caters to that fact. Creativity and originality are eliminated from all but the smallest independent "arthouse" markets, which rarely see the light of day.

Well unfortunately most of today's adventure game development is indie anyways so that's what I wanted to stress out.If money isn't a issue (seldomly do indie games aspire to sell big; not to mention the cliché selling formulas only apply when you are talking big marketing campaigns anyways) why don't people get more creative?

It's sort of a rhetorical question. And it's sort of personal for me. I've always been sad about how unoriginal most intellectual proprieties are.I guess that's why my favourite franchises (Panzer Dragoon, Myst, Legacy of Kain [to a lesser extent) are a bit off anyways.

[Merricat]

Another thing that I really love about the genre is that it attracts so many different sorts of people. Diversity is not always comfortable, but it does make things interesting.

[ShadeJackrabbit]

Hmm... which is easier? Thinking up an original idea that sounds plausible and easy to relate to, or a tried and tested idea that you could fiddle around with a bit.

When someone works on a story (I know this first-hand) it can be hard to do something completely original. There's always gonna be a cliche, and that's what allows it to be familiar. The key is to balance that with something original. Looking up ancient stories from the Greeks for example can bring up some really interesting god-mortal relations. The ancient Egyptian gods sometimes had animal heads, and using ideas like these which are still somewhat familiar, but seldom used, in a story can make it more "original."

In truth though, everything is unoriginal when broken down into its core ideas. You have to look for the good though, which is how I enjoyed games like "Nibiru" and "And Then There Were None," which weren't so highly scored. Games like Barrow Hill seem original at first, but if you start thinking when you play something "Is this original? Well... its in a creepy forest... done before. Ancient cursed ruins? Done before..." the list will keep going and its not original. But if you think: (note: this is all info I gathered from the demo.)

Spoiler:

"Cursed Barrow Mound in the middle of woods and a group of activists trying to prevent the dig up at the same time as a curse is happening?"

it's rather original. Only time a story like that comes to mind is the game itself.

Back onto the original question: I simply love how adventure games CAN be original. Since they can tell stories other genres can't. (Imagine "And Then There Were None" as a first-person shooter...)

[Lucien21]

So what do I like about adventure games?

Recently.....not a lot sadly.

For me the big themes have always been Story, Puzzles and Exploration.

Story - Settings can vary from Horror to humourous, Fantasy to Sci-fi but without a well set out story in a beliveable universe (i.e story fits the setting and has enough back info and attention to detail to pull you in and keep ypou hooked) i'm going to lose interest and stop playing. Please let it avoid the main cliches of Egypt/Atlantis/Templars/Crime.

Within the story we need a decent set of fleshed out characters, no cardboard cut out dark haired european female. Characters we can care about, characters we can remember 10 mins after we turn off the PC. Honestly who can name any of the leading characters from a game in the last 5 year? Where is our Guybrush's, our Glottis or Nico. Where are new George Stobbarts, Arthurs or April Ryan? Most of the characters i've seen recently are instantly forgetful.

Dialogue should be short and snappy with plently of options. Nobody likes speeches. Lots of dialogue is ok, but it should be in small chunks. The more time spent listening is less time spend playing.

Puzzles - I like variety in my puzzles. A nice mix of dialogue challanges, inventory and logic puzzles. Main point though is that they should be challenging or what's the point. Respect to getting new players hooked to adventure games, but include some kind of hint device for the newer players (The New Sam&Max does this quite well. Even though the puzzles hardly merit it's use) They should also fit seemlessly into the world/storyline. There is nothing worse than the random plonking of a puzzle in your path just for the sake of it. (Schizm 2 )

I also like it that the game is linear in the beginning but the majority of the game has a variety of puzzles that can be tackled in any order. Monkey Island etc was good at this. Stuck in one puzzle then tackle another one and come back to it. I think a lot of games at the moment are too linear for their own good. Once you are stuck in a linear game there is nothing else you can do.

Exploration - Lots of nice varied areas to search, meet new characters, carry on the storyline etc

Although limit the number of areas with nothing to do. Syberia games were bad at this, lots of lovely scenery nought to do but run through them. Every location should have some hotspots to interact with and have some point to the storyline, even if it is just some comments or clues to other locations.


Lastly for me is the interface. It should be simple to use and fully funtional. It should never really remind me that this is a game because i'm fighting the interface to do something. Essentials include: Hotspot indicator (shows interaction points and exits so no pixel hunting), Double click to jump to next screen (A map would be nice as well for large jumps to other areas), Can click past dialogue/cutscenes if I want to, Inventory descriptions, A notepad for notes (Duh!!) either filled in like a diary or you can enter your own so that you know what needs to be done and maybe even a camera for picturing clues if it is a 3d game.

[Endow]

Originally Posted by ShadeJackrabbit

When someone works on a story (I know this first-hand) it can be hard to do something completely original. There's always gonna be a cliche, and that's what allows it to be familiar. The key is to balance that with something original. Looking up ancient stories from the Greeks for example can bring up some really interesting god-mortal relations. The ancient Egyptian gods sometimes had animal heads, and using ideas like these which are still somewhat familiar, but seldom used, in a story can make it more "original."

By originality I meant more in terms of scenario and not the actual plot. Take Riven for example. Everything in it is pretty different. You got a full fledged entire culture in there. Not to mention the actual flora and fauna and the laws of the universe in itself (a programming metaphor but you can't trace Riven back to scifi...)

On the other hand in a game like Mass Effect parallels with Dune or Star Wars and very easy to make on almost every level.


And yes, in the end originality is subjective and nothing is truly original since we can only create using the building blocks that are our memories and experiences.

[jtoast]

Thinks I want in an adventure game:
I am another one who feels that "The Story" is a huge part of why I enjoy adventure games. If the story doesn't make me give a damn about what happens to the characters then I get bored and quit playing. Good story examples are Culpa Innata (which I just finished 20 minutes ago), most of the Lucas arts stuff, dreamfall, and the Gabrial Knight series.

Tied with the story for importance is the interface:
A great game with a great story is going to get uninstalled if playing it is an overly frustrating chore. A good example of this is "Next Life." I quit playing and uninstalled this game about halfway through (despite a somewhat interesting storyline) because I just got tired of wasting an hour trying to solve a puzzle only to find out the solution is to right click this time instead of left click on the object.

It was also difficult to find the exits and don't even get me started on the damn "climb" icon which was barely noticeable. I spent close to 2 hours pixel hunting thinking I had missed an object when what I had missed was the curser changing from a square inside a circle to a jagged line inside a circle when I moused over a 3 pixel area . At least give me some kind of text letting me know that there was something there.

The voice acting:
It amazes me, developers spend all that time and effort trying to make a great game and then blow it because they had the 2 guys from the mailroom and 3 ladies from accounting do all 27 voices in the game. Hire a professional voice actor...please!

Depth:
I love depth. I mean I really love it. Give me locations, tons of NPC's, side quests and multiple storylines to follow, I want it all. While not technically true adventure game in the purest sense, "The Witcher" is one of the best games I've ever played in regards to depth.

Next we come to the puzzles:
Puzzles need to be plausably integrated into the story line so that it makes sense. Good examples of this are things like the GK1 voodoo communications puzzle or the need to highlight text in documents to find clues in "Darkness Within." Bad puzzle examples are things like the "cut open the dead body and attach an electric wire from the lamp so that the body jumps" method of getting past the unlocked door in "Next Life."

Finally the Misc section:
1) Action sequences are usually annoying as hell no matter how well done they are. An exception to this rule is are action/adventure games like "The Witcher." If you MUST put an action sequence in, make it skippable.

2) If a puzzle requires some sort of a reference document to decode/translate, FOR GOD SAKES LET ME PICK IT UP AND USE IT DURING THE TRANSLATION! Don't make me run back and forth for 45 minutes while I complete 3 symbols at a time. The Nancy Drew series adventures are notorious for this.

3) Walk speed. I don't know what is is about most developers lately but it seems that they have an aversion to making characters run. The old Sierra games would let you adjust the characters walk speed up to the point they would literally cross the screen in just a second or 2. I miss that. Either speed up the characters or let me instaclick to the next location.

4) Loading Speed.
This is my only complaint regarding "The Witcher." It can take up to 45 seconds sometimes to load the next area (and thats playing it from a virtual drive.) There has got to be a better way.


Thats all for now. Will add more if I think of it.

[Lodgey]

Several reasons why I like adventure games. In no particular order:

1. Exploring the world.

This doesn't just mean just looking around at everything. I'm not the least bit interested in fancy graphics or sound. Exploring the world means working out how everything fits in with everything else. I like to be able to see what happens when I throw this thing at that one, or if I try to pull something else.

2. Puzzles

The puzzles I prefer go along with point 1. I'm not sure this is easy to describe. I remember playing the Tex Murphy games. Some of the puzzles were good, I felt that I was interacting with the world. Some were not so good, I remember the boxes that made me feel like I had stepped outside the game world into a completely different puzzle game.

Most importantly, however is that a game have puzzles. I have played some games where I felt like the game was walking me through the story by the hand. If you don't want to give the player a challenge to work through, then why are you writing a game and not a book or TV program or some such?

3. Goal

Note that I have called this section Goal and not Story. For me, any game needs a goal to make it a game. At first, simply working out what's going on and how the game world is put together is enough of a goal, but if something more isn't given early on the game tends to loose something. A good story is great, and is something that all genres of games are getting more of these days, but is not the be all and end all of gaming, provided that your world and the puzzles you have populated it with are enough to draw you in.

At this point I would like to mention an excellent article written by Graham Nelson called "The Craft of Adventure". It is very much written with text adventures in mind, but much of the content is equally applicable to all areas of the genre. I think that "A narrative at war with a crossword" is a great way of describing the problems faced by people trying to write adventure games.

http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt

[headbanger]

ok what i like the most is something i cant explain. Its a feeling of progression, a feeling of really knowing the place, a feeling that i have felt in gabriel knight 1, 3, grim fandango its like the place its alive.

For example in GBK1 when you go back the first night...something like this happens,,,you park your bike, go to bed, and have this weird nightmares, wake up, then a phonecall, get up in the middle of the night, pick up your bike go to your lovers house, then come back in the morning, to find out something else happens,then learn about voodoo in a weird house, then visit the square try to pick up some babes, then travel to germany...etc etc.ect...its like a movie that your living. Its like steeping into another life, fill with exciting things to do. the key fact for me PERSONALITY and dont be afraid to be original, and put some tone in your game, something from your way of seeing things and life.

When nothing unnespected happens, you just go doing things but with no drama in it, no emotions and the character its kind of "nothing" like the dude from "runaway", it doesnt work.

Of course its NOT the only way... games like day of the tentacle, sam and max or monkey island, have alot of soul, fine humour and entertaining stories and they also rule.

[Lycentia]

I really love the stories that draw you in. I've always enjoyed reading a good book and I think an adventure game should be like a good book that you actulaly get to see, touch, and be a part of.

I enjoy using inventory objects cretaively (this is the kind of puzzle I enjoy most), talking to characters in the game, examineing documents and objects, exploring beautiful areas and finding items that may be of use in my quest and anything else that makes me feel like I am really there discovering some great hidden story nobody has discovered. I want to read every document, explore every corner, touch every object and write down everything I find out to figure out the whole story in detail. I want the game to be one large puzzle and I'm hunting down all the clues to figure it out.

I love beautiful realistic graphics and enjoy full motion videos as long as they work properly.

I enjoy stories that are mysterious or fantasy-like. Anything that is undiscovered whether it be based on a real world tale/truth or completely made up from the developers mind. Basically I don't want a game I already know the ending to, I want something the end hasn't been discovered so I get to be the one to solve the mystery.

The biggest thing I want from an adventure game is to be completely drawn in to the story and to be able to figure everything out myself. I don't want to have to have Gamefaqs.com on alt tab all the time.

[crabapple]

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

One common theme at the moment seems to be the exploration of the game world. I know from personal experience that finding a new area to explore is just as interesting as solving the puzzles.

Same here.

This actually brings up another question - if you see too many screenshots in advance of playing a game, does it spoil your enjoyment when the "new" area you've just entered has been seen around the net for months previously?

I think recognizing places from the screenshots may actually enhance the experience -- as long as you don't show everything and leave a few surprises. It's kind of like the difference between seeing a picture of someplace and actually going there. When you go there, you can explore interesting-looking areas that are only suggested by the pictures. Hopefully in a game you can also explore and see more of the environment than you do in the screenshot.

What do you love about adventures that define the genre for you?

There's nothing that is unique to adventures that is not found in other genres -- except perhaps certain types of puzzles that are found in adventure games alone -- and the ability to explore without having enemies pounce on you. I can enjoy both story-heavy/puzzle-light adventures and puzzle-heavy/story-light adventures. But whatever the emphasis, that part of the game should be especially well done. For example, you don't want bad voice acting in a game where the characters are important. And you don't want ugly, mundane graphics in a game where exploring the gameworld is the prime attraction. In a game with puzzles as the main feature, the puzzles should be logical and well thought out. Of course it would be nice if everything were perfect, but if you have to focus on something, focus on what people are going to be playing your game for.

And try to avoid annoying voices if at all possible -- especially if the game requires that you hear them often.

[SamandMax]

An immersive atmosphere that pulls you in, good writing and characters and puzzles that challenge you and make you feel smart when you finally figure them out, not frustrated. Some of my favourites games of the genre have all these elements like Monkey Island 2, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father.

[Jatsie]

Hmm, let's see, what do I love about adventure games? Firstly a compelling story, my favourite games all have a good story that absorbs me and drives me to move the plot forward. Multiple interesting detailed distinct environments. One of the things I enjoy most is just running around exploring the game world, looking at everything and clicking on it, and feeling like I've been transported to an exciting new place. Inventive and difficult puzzles. I actually like to get stuck, but not for too long, that way when I finally solve the puzzle there's a wonderful sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Characters with personality and well written dialogue. In my favourite games I like conversing with the NPCs, and I always go through all the dialogue options because it's entertaining. I also like the option to choose my responses, and not just have one option that I'm forced to click. Length is important too, it can't be too short, if I'm really having fun playing I don't want it to abruptly end. It mustn't feel like there are bits which make it artificially long either. A relaxed feeling whilst playing. The adventures I like most don't contain timed sequences or the option of dying, so I can have a peaceful time playing. A lack of linearity is good, but not a necessity. It can be nice to have a few things to do at once, and the option to chose the order in which one does them.

Those are all the things I can presently come up with.

[Lucifiel]

Hmmm... I enjoy a good story with interesting and flowing dialogues. And also logical puzzles which don't require you to become a packrat, narration with some prose(ugh... I hate it when they go on and on and on. Show it, don't tell.), interesting sequences: where the predictable leads to the least expected outcome, etc.

I don't mind the main char dying but there has to be some sort of warning: as you walk down the bridge, it starts to sway and everything starts falling apart. And thus, you could choose to continue walking but the penalty would be death.

[Vina]

Humor and atmosphere. Yeah, I do think funniness is tied to the genre. Most of the funny games are AG's more often than not, and I'll rarely play an AG that doesn't involve some form of humor.