Excuse my ignorance
but why is Grand Theft Auto considered to be an adventure game but Morrowind does not seem to be. To me Morrowind has more in common with Advent (the original Crowther and Woods game) than GTA does. :confused:
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GTA is only considered an adventure by people who (A) don't know what they're talking about or (B) are really trying to stretch the definition of "adventure." Morrowind isn't really an adventure either, BTW. I recommend reading Adventure Gamers' article about the definition of adventure games. It's pretty good, and it should give you more of an idea of what people around here mean by "adventure," rather than people on those pop sites like GameSpot who classify stuff like Zelda and GTA as adventures.
mag |
Well I like the way that the inventory classifies adventure games.
There are 4 catagories, A) Pure adventure games, with no action, B) Adventure games with action elements thrown in, C) Action games with some adventure aspects, and D) Pure action games. I would consider Category A and B to be adventure games. Though some sites eg. gamespot like to classify section C as adventure games also. |
The answer is, in the console world, which grew up until very recently in a very separate place from the PC world, GTA3 is an adventure game. There's just sort of different nomenclature. Its really annoying. GTA on the PC for instance wasn't considered an adventure game. Of course, GTA 1 and 2 on the PC were a lot more action heavy and a lot less story heavy, but no PC magazine would even consider writing "Adventure" in the little info sidebar. Unless I'm mistaken, the first Zelda for NES was classified as "Adventure" on the box and thats sort of set the trend since. If it wasnt Zelda, it was another game of that type. (okay it wasn't zelda, but thats close kinda).
(following Trep's lead, I will now be adding a big old belated IMHO :)) |
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>kill Dragon What, with your bare hands? >y okay, you killed the dragon with your bare hands >_ Or maybe being eaten by a Gru. Discovery is the key word for "Adventure" games not mayhem. |
Interactive action and violence is not typically a primary aspect of an adventure game. But then my definition is a bit more flexible than most others here. I don't at all consider GTA3 or Vice City to be categorically an adventure game, although I do feel that ICO is. This is because action and violence are among the main features of GTA3, superceding any adventure elements like story, puzzles, or character development. There's proportionately waaaay too much of them, compared to, say, Gabriel Knight 3. Conversely, ICO very much leans on the unfolding story, the exploration, the puzzlework, and character interrelationships, supplanting the combat scenes and platforming. Whereas you remember almost nothing but your interactive violence and body count from GTA3, from ICO you most remember your discoveries of the various halls and rooms of the castle, solving the environmental puzzles while keeping an eye on Yorda, and the growing emotional ties between the two children.
And I sign this, IMHO :D |
Ha! GTA doesn't even carry adventure elements! Yeah sure it has a story binding all the objectives together but come on! I'm assuming that judgement was passed by some ignorant FOOL at gamespy or something.
I DO feel however, that Deus Ex 1&2, despite its action elements can be called an action/adventure, with heavy adventure elements. There is just so much dialogue and story (even if you'd want to guns blazin you'd die, you need to talk to people and gather information). You also need various items to get through the missions, like lockpicks, multitools (for disabling cameras, turrets, etc), cash, various weapon upgrades, bio upgrades etc. I'm not saying it's pure adventure but the story (or should I say stories?) was very intense (that goes for both DE1&2) and they did go a long way with adventure/puzzle elements. |
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I'm sorry, I don't buy this "adventure means something different in the console world." That is only true because people trying to market those games want people to think of them as adventures regardless of whether they are or not. An adventure is an adventure no matter what system it's on. Quote:
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I'll even agree that these genres are not totally distinct from one another, but rather points along a continuum. So certain games do indeed share features of multiple genres. But there are some games that are just obviously not adventure games. Grand Theft Auto is not an adventure game. Metal Gear Solid, as much as I love it, is not an adventure game. Legend of Zelda is not an adventure game. Quote:
mag |
Remember what the word 'adventure' means in the first place. In a lot of ways, the word is more applicable to GTA3 (maybe to 1 and 2) than it is to a lot of so called "adventure games". That's the problem with genre naming in the gaming world: you get people identifying something as belonging to this or that genre based on, say, interface, when the name of the genre is 'action' or 'adventure' (which both point to concepts that really aren't mutually exclusive).
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I said at the end of my post that Zelda wasnt the example I was looking for, but there are lots of early "epic" style 8-bit era console games that were classified as "adventure" by their publishers and by game magazines, which set the trend in the console world.
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One thing I think people should bear in mind is that if our definition of "adventure" was widely accepted, it wouldn't currently be worth even having that term exist. Can you imagine if GameSpot's entire Adventure section only covered the type of games covered on this site? Believe me, they're not going to spend their time covering a million identical TAC games (and practically nothing else) that the same people are going to buy anyway. The definition of "adventure" has simply come to mean a different thing than "graphic adventure", which is really what we mean when we talk about adventures. GTA might be an extreme example, but I do sort of understand the rationale. Like Jake says, the console definition of "adventure" has always been different from the PC definition--I'm sorry, but we really can't claim absolute ownership over the term. People have been describing Zelda games as adventures for a long time now.
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thats weird, my post got deleated! anyone know why?
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mag |
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gamespot.com sorts games ware they should'nt be. splinter cell and prince of persia were in there adventure catagory for a few weeks.
when i go to gaming stores, the employer usualy asks what i'm looking for, i say "old adventure games", he usualy walks away and comes back with a crash bandakute game or some other Action game that does'nt involve masive acts of violence. a lot of people think an adventure games are just games that involve no killing\violence |
GTA is a driving sim I tell ya! :P
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http://www.warrenrobinett.com/adventure/adv_box.jpg (Strongbad: GET THAT FREAKING DUCK AWAY FROM ME!) The main problem is what keep clinging on our own defintion and we forget that there is a non gaming definition of adventure... Quote:
You just have to remind that our definition of adventure is different than the rest of the world... Even for other gamers... Oh, yeah, and they don't get the 3-headed monkey jokes either... :rolleyes: |
So...every time a new sort of game comes out, we should take its name and apply that as a strict genre definition to every other game that comes out and is similar? Just because that first game was called "Adventure" doesn't mean its system of gameplay is the gospel for a genre of games that is the adventure genre. That's silly.
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Heh yes. There's no Mario (or I guess it would be "Pitfall") genre, but there are "Mario-style" "Platformers"...
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Most of the time when we need a word for something new, we don't just make up completely new words. We use words we already have. So now adventure has a definition in the context of gaming. Likewise, "mouse" just meant a rodent before computers came along. Now "mouse" is an input device. That was not a misuse of the word "mouse." It was simply adding on another definition. Now if I use the word "mouse" in a similar context but for something different, for instance if I use "mouse" to describe all input devices, that would be a misuse of the word. Quote:
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So, yes there are some limitations to our definitions of genres. They're not perfect. I don't think they were ever really meant to be. It's just a quick and easy way of categorizing games. But some people go overboard whenever they play a hybrid game and decide we need to get rid of all genres entirely. Just because they're imperfect is no reason to throw them away. The biggest grudge I have against mainstream gaming's attempt to redefine the adventure genre, though, is that it's really an attempt to muscle real adventure games to the side. You look at GameSpot's list of upcoming adventure games, and you wonder why people talk about the death of the adventure genre. It looks like it's going pretty good. After all, look at all the adventure games coming up. You've got Metal Gear Solid 3, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Silent Hill 4, Resident Evil Outbreak. We don't need any more adventure games. The thing is, words have power. They effect the way we think. Now we have a generation of gamers being brought up thinking of an adventure game as being any game with an adventurous element to it. Some of them have probably never even seen a real adventure game. So how are they supposed to say they want one if they don't even know what it is? Better yet, how are they supposed to say they want one if the word for it doesn't even exist? After all, an adventure game isn't a game like King's Quest or Monkey Island. It's just a game that's adventurous, like Zelda. And the classic definition of an adventure game just goes away because the new adventure genre is getting along just fine without it. Hmmm...now that I think about it, this could be a new article for me to write. Thanks, Moron Lite. mag |
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