Adventure Gamers - Forums

See this topic wasn’t quite so straight-forward, was it?

I think many of the suggests here are accurate, yet doesn’t really capture the ESSENCE of the games,
for example most people would know what you’re talking about if you say “Point-&-Click Adventure Games”, but is that really the essence of the genre? does that mean that Grim Fandango is of no interest to you because it HAS to be Point-&-Click?

And as Blah pointed out a Puzzle Game can be just Tetris, and you could even slap a story onto a tetris clone (your brother was killed and now you have to revenge his death by winning in a tetris tournament) and call it a “Puzzle-game with story”.

Personally I’m leaning towards something like ‘Exploration Game’ or ‘Exploration Puzzle Game’, because for me adventure games aren’t just about being presented with a defined puzzle, but to first EXPLORE a location before you’ve even figured out what the puzzles are.

rtrooney - 02 October 2012 11:40 PM

I am curious what the source is.

Last time it was a RL friend showing of his PS3 games-collection, so my first question was obviously “Do you have any adventure games?”.

diego - 04 October 2012 07:18 AM

Niber - 04 October 2012 06:47 AM

And as Blah pointed out a Puzzle Game can be just Tetris, and you could even slap a story onto a tetris clone (your brother was killed and now you have to revenge his death by winning in a tetris tournament) and call it a “Puzzle-game with story”.

You could, but that would be “lying” because the story is featured only at the beginning, and probably at the end with: “You have revenged your brother.”

You don’t see the tetris game as part of the story? Technically it is - everything that happens while you’re playing tetris is in the context of the story. You’re trying to fit the blocks properly to revenge your brother, not just because it’s a tetris game.

diego - 04 October 2012 09:02 AM

but the fact that an adventure game is the only genre where the story itself the mechanic who pushes the game forward.

But then you have RPGs, which can have far more story and more player-participation in the story than your average adventure game…

diego - 04 October 2012 10:30 AM

What I’m trying to imply is that puzzle - story combination is the only one that works together making the story - interactive, without derailing in a “non-story-based” game. (unless it’s a Myst which exploits the puzzle section)

That doesn’t make sense to me. There’s nothing intrinsically good for story-telling about adventure-style puzzles. Let’s take three examples:

1) Action game. Your family has been destroyed by a dark plot and you’ve been branded a criminal. You take up your father’s mantel as an assassin and set out to find out and kill the members of the secret organisation responsible for your family’s problems. The gameplay consists in evading detection in large cities, gathering information through spying and threatening, and discreetly assassinating your enemies.

2) Role-playing game. You’re one of the last Jedi knights and the Sith are after you. Counselled by a morally-ambiguous old woman, you gather companions and look for the last Jedi masters so that you can save the galaxy. Or maybe take over it. The gameplay has you exploring varied locations, deciding how to deal with people and your companions, and fighting your way through when necessary.

3) Adventure game. An art student with too much time on your hands, you’re told by a weird old guy that you’re supposed to restore the balance between twin worlds. The gameplay consists in talking for three hours with every stranger you meet and getting through some fairly artificial obstacles by combining random items together, such as a clamp and a rubber ducky.

Explain to me how the adventure game is the one example where the gameplay services and enhances the story-telling whereas it doesn’t in the other two cases. Because I’m honestly not seeing it.

diego - 04 October 2012 11:37 AM

In all 3 cases, you’re “solving puzzles” - whether that puzzle is jumping at the right time, hitting the enemy, or using the right inventory item.

Right, and you can say that the moon is “a star”, except the kind of star that’s made of rock instead of hydrogen in fusion. I’m not sure how that’s going to make things clearer, though.

That’s why “peaceful” puzzles in an adventure game serve more like a “neutral element” - they do 2 things: make the game interactive, and by doing that, do not jeopardize the story as the main driving force.

I’m sorry diego, but that’s rubbish—there’s no other way to say it. When the story grinds to a halt while the player is solving a chain of obtuse inventory puzzles, that’s not a “neutral element”. Maybe you don’t see it as a hindrance because you enjoy adventure-style gameplay (so do I), but it doesn’t change the fact that, in many (most?) adventure games, just like in most other games that try to have a strong story, gameplay and story-telling are at odds.

There are cases where they work hand in hand and complement one another, such as investigative adventure-style gameplay and detective stories, or stealth/action gameplay in Assassin’s Creed. But you can’t shoehorn any type of gameplay into any type of story and expect them to combine perfectly—and adventure-style puzzles are absolutely not intrinsically-different than other types of gameplay in that respect. Most of the time, people are OK with that. They can play the game solely for the gameplay (who really gives a damn about the plot in Mario, Torchlight—or King’s Quest?). Or maybe solely for the story (that’s what easy/casual modes in action-oriented games are for). Or they’re able to enjoy gameplay and story separately, without minding that they tend to interrupt each other regularly rather than work together. And that’s OK.

But games that have strong story-telling and strong gameplay, and in which the two work together to create a unique interactive experience are few and far between, and adventure games fare no better in that respect than other genres.

(I’m afraid we’re deviating a bit from the original topic. Sorry…  )

Kurufinwe - 04 October 2012 12:54 PM

(I’m afraid we’re deviating a bit from the original topic. Sorry…  )

Not at all, I find it very interesting.

Here’s a different perspective to story:
When they first invented the video-camera they went around filming exciting stuff like people fighting or having sex,
but then the audience got bored of watching fights without knowing the motivations behind the fighting,
so then they added story around these elements, so an action-movie is pretty much a story that aims to enhance the fighting scenes by providing motivation, and the story for a porno is one that makes the sex feel naughtier by providing back-story.

My point is (kind of like Kuru), isn’t adventure games the same?
Isn’t it a game with puzzles, and the story aims to enhance the motivation & payoff for them?

And therefore there’s no specific connection between ‘adventure games’-mechanics and story per se.
Sure chances are a random adventure game story will be deeper than the story for a random action-game, but there’s no specific connection?

I would like to think there’s more to it than that (especially since I’m not a huge fan of puzzles), but I’m not sure I understand Diego’s logic here.

So from this perspective, ‘adventure games’ are just ‘puzzle games’ whether or not they have story,
after all, we give ‘action games’ it’s name whether or not it has a story,
some people will only play an action game if it has a good story (I liked the story for Warrior Within so I played it to the end), but that doesn’t mean that it’s a different genre.

However I guess with ‘puzzles’ the contrast between story/no-story is a bit extreme, since with action games there’s ALWAYS a story (even asteroids implies that the triangle is a spacecraft), but ‘puzzle games’ can sometimes be completely abstract from real-world for example a cross-word puzzle, so perhaps those should in theory just be another genre of ‘abstract puzzle games’.