[Twizman]

I was watching the making of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers on youtube, and there was a common focus among the developers and voice actors about how far the interactive adventure could develop as an entertainment medium. For example, Jane Jensen is talking about how you can go down dialogue paths and sidequests that have no relevance to the main path, but give you information on history or characterization, enrichening the experience. Hamill and Curry emphasize the potential impact of their work as a new entertainment medium.

At one point during the video, one of the developers emphasizes how amazing the genre could be in 10 or 20 years from now. However, 16 years on from its release in 1993, adventures have fallen in popularity and are now a niche genre. In my opinion, the sales of Grim Fandango were a turning point coinciding with the rise of fps.

Most fans of the genre consider the early-mid 90s a high point for the best achievements in terms of creating works of art, with other classic titles such as Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max: Hit the Road released in the same year.

So my question is, do you think the medium ever reached its potential? We have seen excellent 'modern' adventures such as The Longest Journey and Syberia, yet I still find the classic titles such as King's Quest VI and Indiana Jones more enjoyable. I don't think we ever saw the full potential of adventure games in their pure form unfortunately. But there are still elements of the genre evident in a range of todays modern classics.

Also, is there a possibility for revival in the future? This seems to have occurred on a small scale largely via the work of: Telltale, ScummVM, and Steam.

[MoriartyL]

I've been pretty vocal about my opinion on the matter: I think adventures have barely started going after their potential, and they won't start until we get past all these silly puzzles and arbitrary gameplay, to interactivity which is more subtle and character-driven. As adventures exist today they are only suitable for mysteries, and nothing else.

[SuperFonzy]

Sounds like Jane Jensen was talking about an Adventure Game cross RPG experience... that would be cool. Would of helped tone down the linear nature of adventure games... In saying that, if adventure games never really went down this path then imo they didn't reach their full potential. (Although Im a sucker for games that run on rails)

Good topic

[Henke]

I generally think that everything can get better (including adventuregames) although far from everything new is better than what preceded it.

As more developer are starting to make more adventuregames and other genres are more and more trying to incorporate elements from adventuregames I think we are surely going to see far greater things in the (hopefully near) future.

[inm8#2]

I think storytelling reached its potential for each given phase of technology. But the technology ran away with the gaming industry and has since produced boatloads of action games.

[3rdFloor]

Interesting thread, Twizman. I know that making of very well, as I recall watching it numerous times on the original Sins of the Fathers CD-ROM. Good memories.

I'm really not hard to please when it comes to adventure games, and as such, after completing classics like The Beast Within and The Curse of Monkey Island more than a decade ago, I can safely say that this genre did reach its potential in the 90s. Of course I realize most gamers will expect things to evolve and mature over the years, but personally, I'm content with the genre's current state.

Actually, you'll usually find me complaining about "innovative" new ideas that tend to spoil what's drawing me to adventure games in the first place.

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by Henke

I generally think that everything can get better (including adventuregames) although far from everything new is better than what preceded it.

Ditto.

I don't think there is any reason to lament adventure games as getting stagnant or devolving. At the very least in terms of storytelling there are many exciting productions to look forward to.

[ozzie]

Adventure games did stop catching up with the latest technical innovations and therefore haven't reached their full potential at all, instead they focused on widely established conventions (one of them is apparently 2D gameplay) or cross-breeded with the casual genre. I don't think that genre blending is a way forward, though.

I agree that the adventure genre reached its potential in the early 90ies, but at the time severe technical limitations still existed: few pixels, few colors, 3D graphics were barely usable since they just didn't look good and objects were thus unrecognizable (though Under a Killing Moon showed already in 1994 that this wasn't really true anymore, even if many objects were still flat, 2D sprites).
I guess when I think of a perfect adventure game it's Day of the Tentacle. That really brought all those conventions that Monkey Island established to perfection. It's not like nothing happened since then in the genre, that would ignore some great and innovative titles (like Myst, The Pandora Directive, The Last Express), but with the exception of Myst none of them left an impression on the genre. The LucasArts school of design dominates to this day.

You know, Doom may have already been a perfectly designed game, but the shooter genre evolved nevertheless. But when I look at the latest and greatest examples of the adventure genre, like The Book of Unwritten Tales and The Whispered World, I can't help but feel disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I love these games, they're well designed, have their own identities, but all they do in terms of gameplay is embrace the nearly two decade old conventions.
The only "innovations" that modern titles offer are a "smart" cursor (personally, I find him rather dumb) and a "show me all the hotspots" key. The smart cursor robs me to a big part of the possibility to further explore and experiment with a game. Verbs are the weapons of the adventure genre. Reducing the possible interaction to one context sensitive verb is like releasing a Doom clone today with a pistol as your only weapon.
The smart cursor also aggravated problems that were already there with icon-based controls from the beginning: often enough I solved a puzzle just by clicking around and not because I knew what I should do.
Also the big, deep pockets are a ridiculous cliche and convention that most adventure gamers take simply for granted. It may be funny when Guybrush stuffes the hugest objects into his pockets, but it seems kinda weird in a more serious adventure game (like The Whispered World, for example).

Where was I going with this post? Eh, I forgot.
Anyway, I look forward to Heavy Rain. Not because it spices the game up with some action bits, but because it tries to innovate on the core aspects of the genre. Sure, the developers don't even consider it as an adventure, and that might help.

[Ariel Type]

While other genres experiment with time and space, adventures haven't even started to experiment with 3D. There's enough place for innovation, but little hope.
Heavy Rain seems to be the only game that might try something different, and it manage to hold interest of many gamers. Let's pray for it.

[orient]

In a medium based on ever-evolving technology, there will always be larger mountains to climb.

However, narrowing things down to a specific era like the early 90's or a particular console cycle (like the current one for example) helps to quantify the genre's success a little. Taking this into account, I think I'm with most other people on here; adventure games probably did reach their potential in the 90's, but haven't came close ever since, mostly due to monetary constraints put on developers by publishers due to the lack of interest in the genre. Of course, there's only a lack of interest in the genre because it hasn't evolved since the 90's, so it's a catch 22 situation we've been in for quite some time that hopefully, games like Heavy Rain will break.

[Periglo]

My point of view: I am not worried about the AG genre, as we know it, disappearing. The features that I like about them, which are the choices, dialogues, and stories, will carry over to other genres: action and RPGs. People will always like these, since we have been telling stories since language was developed. I dislike fighting, but then I tend to dislike puzzles too, so lately I have been playing RPGs, and I am happy.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Periglo

My point of view: I am not worried about the AG genre, as we know it, disappearing. The features that I like about them, which are the choices, dialogues, and stories, will carry over to other genres: action and RPGs. People will always like these, since we have been telling stories since language was developed. I dislike fighting, but then I tend to dislike puzzles too, so lately I have been playing RPGs, and I am happy.

Bingo. That is precisely why I walked away from the adventure game as it is made by companies like TAC who are too cowardly to invest some resources to go to the next level.

The essence of what makes adventure games adventure games has been lovingly re-invested into other kinds of games by progressive thinkers such as David Cage and Tim Schafer, and by developers like Bioware (Mass Effect, Dragon Age) and Rocksteady Studios (Batman: Arkham Asylum) so that they may explore the experience of story, exploration, discovery, challenges, and characters that your typical adventure game doesn't have the balls to explore.

[Sughly]

Ok, this thread caught my eye and I registered just to reply.

I'll say that there's much I agree with, but some I don't. This whole idea of technology is what tainted the genre to begin with. The attempt to go 3D at a time that it was still very sketchy killed the adventuring audience of the time. And yes, I am a Grim Fandango fan, but still wonder what greatness it could have held with the artistic polish of a Curse of Monkey Island.

The genre continues to be unaware of this issue. I was so disheartened to see Monkey Island Tales go back to the terrible look of MI4 (albeit, better than before).

The most exciting thing going from what I can see is from Daedalic Entertainment - some of the most amazing 2D work I've seen in a long, long time. This is where the genre flourishes. The key here is immersion, something 3D has a long way to go in achieving similar results.

That said, I excuse examples such as Syberia and Myst, but that involves a whole new argument in story/atmosphere/character and its effect on the game's look...

[tastebud]

i'm glad i'm not the only person here thinking about heavy rain. i haven't done a lot of research on the game itself, but from playing fahrenheit/indigo prophecy and hearing a thing here or there about it i think "heavy rain" has that potential.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by tastebud

i'm glad i'm not the only person here thinking about heavy rain. i haven't done a lot of research on the game itself, but from playing fahrenheit/indigo prophecy and hearing a thing here or there about it i think "heavy rain" has that potential.

http://adventuregamers.com/forums/sh...775#post522775

[ozzie]

Originally Posted by Sughly

Ok, this thread caught my eye and I registered just to reply.

I'll say that there's much I agree with, but some I don't. This whole idea of technology is what tainted the genre to begin with. The attempt to go 3D at a time that it was still very sketchy killed the adventuring audience of the time. And yes, I am a Grim Fandango fan, but still wonder what greatness it could have held with the artistic polish of a Curse of Monkey Island.

The genre continues to be unaware of this issue. I was so disheartened to see Monkey Island Tales go back to the terrible look of MI4 (albeit, better than before).

The most exciting thing going from what I can see is from Daedalic Entertainment - some of the most amazing 2D work I've seen in a long, long time. This is where the genre flourishes. The key here is immersion, something 3D has a long way to go in achieving similar results.

That said, I excuse examples such as Syberia and Myst, but that involves a whole new argument in story/atmosphere/character and its effect on the game's look...

Other genres made the jump into third dimension much earlier. Flight simulators, shooters, racing games, role-playing games (The Elder Scrolls series for example), they all made a succesfull jump into the third dimension. Heck, even adventures did it with the Tex Murphy series, and these games were even quite commercially successful (except for the last one, but that has its own reasons...)
Grim Fandango introduced 3D characters and direct control, but the backgrounds were still prerendered, the perspective remained static, so gameplaywise it didn't change much from earlier LucasArts adventures.
The adventure genre didn't experiment much at all with the third dimension in the nineties, apart from the already mentioned Tex Murphy series and the not very well known Azrael's Tear. King's Quest turned into an action-adventure, that was Roberta Williams means to keep the genre alive (I will always fail to follow her logic). Gabriel Knight 3 was a pure adventure in full 3D, but not one of the most attractive games. Also, I always felt that I was more in control of the camera than of Gabriel, so that was also off-putting, for me at least.
There was no more experimentation with 3D before the fallout of the genre.

After both LucasArts and Sierra turned their backs on adventures the genre wasn't seen as lucrative anymore. Since 2002 there is a slight upwards trend, but adventures never catched up to the technological standards of other genres, with few, genre-blending exceptions (Dreamfall, Fahrenheit). It seems like it has eternally fallen behind.
By the way, Outcast without the shooting is one of the best adventures ever made, anyway.

[Roper Klacks]

Well, i think traditional adventures have indeed reached their potential a long time ago. Nowadays traditional adventures are using and re-using the same old technics and mechanics that have been developed decades ago. But thats fine, its a good... "system" and its dificult to move on.

However, i think the way adventure games will evolve, they must borrow from other genres, and in that way i think theres still a lot to be explored. Full 3D engines, cinematic visuals, higher production values, new controls, streamlined puzzles, etc will be key points in future adventures. Some AG are already doing this (Dreamfall, Farenheit, etc) but most developers are still afraid (and/or lack money) to try new things.

Anyway, i'm not saying traditional AG are going to disapear, i love them, and its those classic mechanics that differentiate so much this genre.

[Ascovel]

I don't get it how so many people claim to want innovations, but understand it as turning adventure games into interactive movies in cutting edge 3D.

Want real innovations or at least unique experiences? Then look into indie games. Both commercial and freeware.

[ozzie]

Well, I'm sure that innovation is still possible in 2D. Just played the demo of Machinarium and that is indeed a very unique game that does some things differently.
Indie games of various genres like World of Goo and Braid showed that there is still potential left in flat space. But adventures rarely even break conventions in 2D and since they only rarely move into the third dimension they just fell behind the other genres.
I don't think that Heavy Rain is the future of adventure games, I think it's one future for adventure games. And about it being an interactive movie: so was Full Throttle and Tex Murphy: Pandora Directive, and these were still very much games. I doubt this will be different for Heavy Rain.

[Sughly]

Originally Posted by ozzie

But adventures rarely even break conventions in 2D and since they only rarely move into the third dimension they just fell behind the other genres.

If you ask me, its been pressing to try and find new adventure games that WEREN'T 3D. Heck, even Vampire Story that got me so excited turned out to be 2.5D or whatever its called. But why? There's no need, and when people talk of adventure game companies being behind the 8-ball on technology then why not take a page from the indie book and focus on streaming ideas into a 2D world? With some of the animation that games like Machinarium and The Whispered World are beginning to show up with, what's this focus on 3D?

Free roaming camera or not, it is still behind in relation to other genres in 3D, and 9 times out of 10 it's gonna look like its struggling to catch up. Again, an exemption in Heavy Rain, but with Farenheit's story line? Let's just say I'm remaining a sceptic. And this notion of convention - the best thing adventure gaming has going for it is its ability to tell a great story, so why mess with that with all this "breaking convention"? I don't want an action/adventure, or quick reflex crud like Farenheit. I just want a bloody good story and a world I believe in to tell it. I think the old adventure game system was not at its full potential - the system works, it just needs new stories to tell and more developers to believe in it.