From the E3 Show Floor: Part 3

I’m writing this from the depths of Los Angeles International Airport, awaiting my flight at the healthy hour of 5:30am. I have found new ways to not sleep this entire week. My body no longer seems to know which meal to expect, and often insists on trying to give meals back to me. I can barely stand up straight. And my neck still hurts.

But holy crap, I’ve had the greatest week of my life.

Every single day, I saw two or three games and talked to one or two people that just made me excited. They made me believe that the genre that I’ve been covering for over six years now is not an outdated relic of a more boring age of gaming, but rather a timeless telling of stories that many, many developers are very passionate about. For the first time in our site’s history of E3 coverage (this is our fourth year), there were actually more than ten games that I could look at as an adventure gamer and say “That looks good. I’m kind of excited about that.”

And there’s something for everyone too, as our Hype-O-Meter shows. Those who long for straightforward, old-school point & click pure adventure goodness have Still Life, The Westerner, The Moment of Silence, and Martin Mystere to look forward to in the next year. All four of these look like top-notch point & click titles.

For those who don’t want to be stuck in tradition, there’s Dreamfall and Fahrenheit, two games really trying to blow the boundaries of the genre open. This despite the tragic misclassification of these games as “action-adventure,” which we will address further in our full-length previews next week. And Jane Jensen’s Booby Trap may be the greatest single idea for an adventure in a long time.

And of course, there will always be many of us who prefer first-person exploration and puzzle-oriented games. All of us in that category, as well as many others, will find Myst IV to be not only visually enthralling (of course), but also a very healthy step for the series towards a better blend of story and character presentation. Aura: Fate of the Ages and Atlantis: Evolution from The Adventure Company are both looking very good—the latter actually caught many of us by surprise. The tenth in the Nancy Drew series, Secret of Shadow Ranch, has made some essential improvements to the standard series interface and will almost certainly be the strongest ND game yet. And both new Law & Order games, Justice is Served and Criminal Intent, are very exciting, largely because they are being designed and produced by sincere adventure game fans.

My list of “really great people” was extended on Friday. Josh Van Veld and Brian Bilicki of High Voltage Software, developers of Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude were the coolest, most patient guys, standing there and giving me all the time in the world for questions even while 50+ people were ogling at their game at any given moment. Pablo Martin and the Revistronic team (developers of The Westerner) actually came and found me on the floor before I even reported to their booth for our meeting, giddy with excitement that they had found a US publisher. Microids let us in to see Still Life right away even though we had not scheduled an appointment. And finally, the two Greatest Guys Ever are truly Aaron Conners and Chris Jones, the men behind the Tex Murphy series of adventures. They spent the last hour of E3 sitting down with Marek, Christina, and me talking about everything under the sun. They are funny, friendly, chatty guys who were so patient with what had to have sounded at times like fanboy mania, and discussed all kinds of gaming-related topics with us like we were old friends. I can’t say enough about my respect for them.

An interesting byproduct of our discussion with them was some further thoughts of mine on the seemingly imminent crash of the industry. The thought came up that it may be the release of the next three consoles that provides the impetus; we are all of a sudden, as a collective industry, going to just get really tired of technological one-upsmanship and regurgitation of ideas. Perhaps when Doom 3 comes out, we’ll all be so underwhelmed by the sheer nothingness of the non-technology aspects, that we’ll collectively turn our backs on hollow gaming, and look towards games like Fahrenheit which are innovating the art of story-telling as the future.

I thought all of that, and then figured I might be overreacting, until I saw the 1up.com E3 awards. The entire list, and I mean the entire list, is all sequels and follow-ups. Not an original idea to be found. Not one mention of The Movies, which I happen to think may be the Best Game Idea Ever. No, instead the Best in Show awards, by console, went to Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Final Fantasy XII, Paper Mario 2, and the new GBA Zelda game. Now, Halo aside, these are all great series and I don’t hate these games or anything, but are you telling me that there’s not a single new idea worthy of one of these awards? My only consolation is that none of the numerous, truly shameful Grand Theft Auto 3 clones got much love from the gaming press.

My Adventure Gamers brethren and I eased our post-E3 pain by, and this is not at all false, hooking up a laptop to our hotel television and playing Secret of Monkey Island. Six of us, staring at a hotel TV running a 1990 adventure game, laughing at all the dialogue like it’s the first time again—what geeks we are. But what a great reminder it is of why, in our hearts, we love adventures so much.

I, personally, am so excited about what I’ve seen and heard at this show about our genre…and I’m quietly anticipating the inevitable reversal of the current market state, and the shift towards unique storytelling. There is little doubt that Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude will be a very, very successful game—it is being brilliantly marketed—and however that makes you feel, who knows what doors it could open up.

As an often-burned, incredibly jaded editor, I can’t feel anything but excitement right now for adventure games. This has all been on a very personal (and very cheesy) note, but it’s what I’m feeling, and I slept two hours last night, and…what can I say, Los Angeles International Airport is just a hope-inspiring place.

My plane’s here. My laptop battery is dying. My neck still hurts. But my heart is singing the Monkey Island theme. I return to objective journalism Monday. Thanks for reading.