[Marek]

I would normally leave this for Heidi to say, but since she's not that closely involved in AG at the moment, I'll just jump to her defense. You see, it's ironic that this discussion is sparked by one of her reviews. We originally brought Heidi on board as the resident "hardcore Myst fan". Myst-style and FMV games are really her thing, so even without having played Obsidian I can safely say that there was no bias against Myst clones in her mind whatsoever. Heidi was selected for this review because she is an expert in the style of this particular game. I can't really speak about the contents of the game, or whether the review is fair or accurate, but I can tell you that we'd never let someone review a game of a type he/she doesn't like by default.

Anyway, moving on to the bigger issue...

Evan and I have the same basic philosophy on adventure games. However, the little quote from the "What are adventure games?" article that constantly gets mentioned is not representative of the nuances of my opinion. I think you need to read the chapter about defining the genre from "The future of adventure games" to better understand where I'm coming from. I should probably edit the former article so that it links to the expanded story.

Adventure games really are a mix of different things, and putting people into two different camps would be an injustice to the many different elements that make an adventure game what it is. I think some of you might have gotten the impression that we don't like puzzles, or something crazy like that. I can speak for myself: I do like puzzles. I love them very much. But it's not puzzles in their pure form that adventure games are about. If they were, we'd all be playing non-representational puzzle games all day.

Adventure games offer something else, and that's a narrative that motivates the player to continue playing and puzzle-solving. This motivation comes in many different shapes and sizes, but it's always there in some form, and it's what fundamentally seperates adventure games from puzzle games. But to really see this, you need to zoom out for a second and stop talking about whether Myst has characters, and things like that. That's a really narrow vision of what a story is.

Okay, fine, let's take Myst as an example. No matter how you look at it, when someone plays Myst, all the elements combined (puzzles included) give the player an emotional and intellectual experience. Now here's a little shocker: Myst is a story-based game. You're on an island, alone, you don't know what's going on, and you want to find out. There's riddles and puzzles everywhere, so the game becomes a mystery to be solved. In a way you get obsessed with this world, which drives you to complete puzzle after puzzle after puzzle. It's like something you want to unlock and experience. This is not something you get from Tetris or Sokoban!! Anyone who says you can strip Myst of its atmosphere and its visual style and all its implied narrative and still have an adventure game left should seriously reconsider his/her definition of adventure games. Myst relies very heavily on its story, even though it's not told through dialog. I mean, if the story wasn't the cornerstone of Myst, how else could a series of books have been based on it? And how could be all these D'ni sites be explained?

All of this isn't a dismissal of puzzles, even though I fear it will once again be interpreted that way. Puzzles are a major part of the adventure game, but if we really think about why we are playing adventure games, it's not the puzzles in their bare nakedness, but it's the puzzles in this whole context that's created around them. And because we like the relation between those puzzles and their context so much, we're saying that that's really what the most important foundation of adventure games are. Take away the story, and this link is broken, and you're left with something that isn't an adventure game. This is how we view adventure games, this is what we think adventure games are about, and it's from this position that we review them.

[Marek]

P.S. The Tim Schafer interview that was recently linked to also describes some of the things I've just said, and probably in a better way too.

[BacardiJim]

Welllllllll........ I might agree with this, if you tack on the caveat that "exploration" can serve as its own "narrative framework." That would include games like Myst and Zork that have little in the way of plots but still have a "story," That story being exploration to find out what the hell you are doing in the setting.

Regardless, we're still left with characters being slightly less important than story and puzzles a "distant third" according to the Adventure Gamers' Gospel According to Evan. Somehow, I don't think that this is what you are saying, Marek.

[EDIT: I also am sick of people saying, "If you want puzzles, play Tetris." First, Tetris requires dexterity. Second, the whole point of the original text adventures and then the graphic adventures that followed them were to present a totally new kind of logic puzzles. Something that simply couldn't exist before the PC. Not all puzzles are adventure game puzzles, and people should stop implying that they are in their rhetoric.]

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Kingzjester

3) Reason is not important for Evan. If no one else does it, it is just not worth doing according to him. It has not been time-tested, you see. If the world were full of Evans we would have no change, ever.

Wouldn't that be same result with a world of BJs?

[Marek]

Right, I don't think characters are a requirement, but story is. I agree with your film theory sort of division between plot and story. Yes, exploration is definitely part of the story, which is what I tried to say somewhere in my big article.

I apologize for the use of Tetris, but it's hard to come with examples that everyone knows. I guess the best example I can think of is The Incredible Machine, where you had an inventory of objects that you had to use to solve a puzzle. That's a game that has puzzles very similar to the ones in most adventure games... except it has no story and its representational aspects are no more relevant than, say, chess pieces resembling characters from the middle ages.

[Kingzjester]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Wouldn't that be same result with a world of BJs?

Oh, I don't know anything about that. I am only a young-un incapable of having opinions other than those of unearned awe and blind respect towards people older than my wee self.

[Wormsie]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Wouldn't that be same result with a world of BJs?

Zork forever.

[Fairygdmther]

Originally Posted by Kingzjester

Oh, I don't know anything about that. I am only a young-un incapable of having opinions other than those of unearned awe and blind respect towards people older than my wee self.

And don't ya never forgit that, young-un!

FGM

[Nellie]

Computer games are interactive entertainment. It is the interaction that distinguishes the medium and this means, surely, that interaction (whether through puzzles or otherwise) is the most important part of that medium? After all, you couldn't just make a film, release it as a game, and then expect everybody to say what a great game it was. They'd all point out that it wasn't a game at all.

So I have to say I shudder slightly at this idea:

...adventure games exist in order to tell a compelling story, and if there are barely any challenging puzzles along the way it's a shame, but not a point of horrendous failure.

I would say it clearly is a big failure to choose the medium of interactive entertainment to tell your story, and then reduce that interactivity to a bunch of easy-to-figure-out tasks for the player to do to progress the story. That isn't good quality interactivity - if the game doesn't challenge you to progress the story, then what exactly are you, as the player, bringing to the game that is so essential? It's certainly not your intellect and imagination - you just have to keep doing fairly obvious things and then sit back and watch the outcome. It's reduced to little more than a film that you happen to be walking through rather than sitting back and watching.

(Of course, a game can still have plenty of interaction that doesn't take the form of puzzles - as in puzzleless IF - but as we're talking about Obsidian, and neither Evan nor BJ brought up non-puzzling interaction in their posts, I assume we're talking about the importance of puzzles in games such as Monkey Island and Myst, rather than in games like The Last Express and Blade Runner.)


-------
veering slightly off-topic

There seems to be a lot of popular support for games that excel in the passive areas of entertainment, but are not so good in the interactive areas. For example, Gabriel Knight 2 tells a superb story in a visually compelling manner, but has interaction and puzzles that are clearly inferior to those in Gabriel Knight 1. Yet ask which is the better game of the two on adventure forums, and most people will answer 'GK2'. The passive areas of story, music and visuals are given more weight by players than the interactive areas of puzzles and gameworld interaction. And this is in the medium of interactive entertainment! Syberia is probably the uber-example of a game which excelled in the passive areas of the game, was mediocre in the interactive areas of the game, but is still considered a superb game by many.

I find that quite scary.

[Marek]

We're talking about games, so it is automatically assumed that they're interactive. I mean, when I say "story is really important" I obviously mean "INTERACTIVE story is really important", but apparently that's not so obvious. Games are interactive by definition. Don't mistake what I wrote earlier for something totally different. I for one hate 'interactive movies'. I hate cutscenes that take away from the game for too long. etc. etc. etc.

[Nellie]

Of course a game is automatically interactive, but I'm talking about the importance of that interaction being good, rather than just being around for the sake of it.

Evan's comments imply that if a game doesn't feature strong interaction, then it's no big deal. I'm arguing that in the medium of interactive entertainment, one of the most important things to do is to ensure strong interaction. I'm just confused why the interactive element of the game isn't valued equally highly as the passive element?

If somebody released a game that had strong passive elements but weak interactive elements, would it be lauded as a great game? It seems it would. But... if somebody released a game that had strong interactive elements but weak passive elements, then it would be seen as a much more mediocre game. In the realm of interactive entertainment, these priorities just seem arse-backwards to me.

Hence my objection.