[MoonBird]

Holy cow!! Those new screenshots banged me straight in the head! Outstanding artwork! Interface also looks perfectly nice!

[Kurufinwe]

Great preview, Marek. Thanks for it!

The thing that really struck me while reading it is how much it seems to embody a new tendency for adventure games. Over the past few years (the last decade, really -- ever since somebody decided that adventure games were "dead"), there have been two main tendencies. A "regressive" school, trying to recapture the magic of the "good old days", producing games that were quite content to be little more than clones (Monkey-Island-clones, Syberia-clones, Myst-clones, Broken-Sword-clones, etc.) in both settings and execution. And a "progressive" school, that considered that adventure games had to evolve, and that that meant trying to look as little like an adventure game as possible (all of this culminating in Dreamfall).

What's interesting with Mata Hari (and various other games we're currently hearing about) is that they seem to belong to a new school, both trying to explore fresh stories, themes, interfaces, etc., while not rejecting some characteristics of the older adventures (cf. the return of 2D settings, sometimes even hand-drawn, the return of the progress bar / scoring system is Gray Matter and Mata Hari, etc.). In short, games which try to do new things to the adventure genre, but which also picked up the baby that had been thrown out with the bath water. Games that try to be creative without being ashamed of being adventure games.

And that's an interesting development indeed.

[ATMachine]

Judging by the screenshots the developers need to hire a native English-speaking proofreader. Apostrophes are nonexistent, and there's random German-esque capitalization of nouns like "brother."

[Marek]

Johann: yeah, you are absolutely correct. It's an interesting development.

More fundamentally than the issue of action or no action, I would say that games like Mata Hari are -- or, for the moment, appear to be -- creatively succesful because they don't look back to past adventure games as much as other adventures perhaps do.

You get the sense that Barwood and Falstein really took the character of Mata Hari as the starting point. What does she do and why? What's the early 20th century like? Things like dancing, spying, traveling by train, and their associated gameplay, kind of spawn naturally from the theme. It really feels like it's a game about something first, and an adventure game second, which actually makes it more of a natural adventure game.

The same goes for Gray Matter, Phoenix Wright, A Vampyre Story, Overclocked, Sam & Max and perhaps A New Beginning. They're sort of designed inside out as opposed to outside in. Sokal's games I would also put in this category for the most part. Dreamfall took the same approach (working from the characters or world first), even though its action elements and puzzle design were controversial.

It's hard to explain but maybe a metaphor helps. Some projects kind of take 'primary colors' from their source material and mix them to create the tones they want, aware of but not distracted by other works. Whereas other projects (deliberately or not) take colors from previous games (the specific end products of their unique creative processes) and mix them again, creating ... something vaguely brown. Okay, maybe that metaphor is totally ridiculous and doesn't help. But I get the impression sometimes that some projects are indeed really clones, and what they emulate are just the elements, not the soul that made other games so great.

It reminds me of an old Jordan Mechner interview in which he said he never set out to make an adventure game with The Last Express. He wanted to make a game with a story set on the Orient Express, and an adventure game was just the logical form. You could tell this from the game, because The Last Express includes design elements that worked specifically for that game (for instance, enhancing the sense of being on an actual train that's going somewhere as time passes). If Mechner had only looked at Sierra or LucasArts games, that would never have been in the game.

Maybe this all sounds a bit whishy-washy but I really believe the designers of the above-mentioned games on some level know this. And having seen at least 15 adventure games at Games Convention (both games that 'get it' and games that fall short of their potential), it makes me think about this stuff again.

[Marek]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

Judging by the screenshots the developers need to hire a native English-speaking proofreader. Apostrophes are nonexistent, and there's random German-esque capitalization of nouns like "brother."

It's almost certainly placeholder. Barwood said they'd just begun writing the dialog.

[Ksandra]

This game is beginning to get my attention now. It looks great, and some of the new gameplay elements do sound quite interesting and original (can't say I'm particularly enthused about the dance mini-game, but there you go). Yes, the English in those screenshots is terrible, but I (fervently) hope that will have been corrected by the time the game is released.

[Marek]

I almost forgot: there is a particular adventure-gaming aspect to the dancing minigame. But... I gotta leave something for the upcoming interview.

[Siedler]

Oh, I'm excited.

[Musenik]

Gamers here can experience something similar to Mata Hari's user interface, right now. Although the genre is an interactive sit-com, and the storyline is targeted at middle aged women. Check out the free demo:

The Witch's Yarn

from: www.mousechief.com

It was first delivered to the public in 2005. In 2006 it was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival at the GDC.

[Terramax]

I know I'll get spammed for being so shallow, but the only thing I dislike about this it the graphics. Some of the screens on adventuregamers look pretty dated. They look as lifeless as 'And Then There Were None'.

However I do like the subject matter of this game. I loved Paul Verhoeven's Black Book so this is right up my street.

Hopefully this'll turn up the provocative level somewhat, as it's always fun to play a game that's 'mature' for its subject matter on morality rather than for shooting off alien heads.

Would I buy this.... yes... yes I think I might do so. 4 adventures to look forward to this year now.

[Lee in Limbo]

Ah, it's good to see this thread resurface. Mata Hari does indeed look like it's going to be an intelligent and gorgeous game. I look forward to getting my hands on it someday.

[kuze]

Gamershell has a new trailer. It is short, but I couldn't help but notice the horrible character animations.

[Melanie68]

I wonder if that's really what it's going to look like in game. They're going for the silent movie vibe in that trailer and the actors in those movies have jerky, quick movements. Just a thought.

[kuze]

Do they also rotate 180° on the spot without moving their legs (assuming their name isn't Michael Jackson)?

Unfortunately, this kind of animation is all too common in current adventure games, at least those I played. A shame really, because everything else looks gorgeous.

[Keregioz]

Originally Posted by kuze

Do they also rotate 180° on the spot without moving their legs (assuming their name isn't Michael Jackson)?

Where did you see that??

[kuze]

Originally Posted by Keregioz

Where did you see that??

At 00:37-00:38, the guy on the left. Jee, I sound like I already hate the game, which is totally not the case. I can't wait to play it, but small things like these do bug me.

[Keregioz]

Well it seems to me like you're nitpicking... Honestly, things like that never bother me too much in adventure games. It's the terrible dialog I hear in 99% of the games that drives me crazy.

[Lee in Limbo]

I think that's just the way they shot the clips to make it look 'period'. Film action in those days tended to look fast and herky jerky like that... or painfully slow. The standards we hold for film (and by extensions animation and game action) just weren't in place yet. It wasn't yet common knowledge how many frames you needed to show to make action look smooth and natural in film. Personally, I think they made the trailer look fantastic, though from the screenshots, it seems safe to assume that the scratchy black and white look is just for the trailer... although I wouldn't mind seeing some more stuff done with this effect. I think it looks great.

And I am still eagerly awaiting this game.

[Squinky]

I'd like to see the game actually HAVE the black-and-white silent movie look. That would at least give it style...

Also, my programmer art eyes thought the animation looked great.

[AFGNCAAP]

I think if they had gone for all the trouble of re-editing something specifically for the trailer, they would have opted for something less mundane than a main character walking across the room. So I have to believe that's an actual in-game scene, and an actual in-game animation. (It doesn't bother me, though!)

As a side note, I wanted to say that this:

Originally Posted by Lee in Limbo

Film action in those days tended to look fast and herky jerky like that... or painfully slow. The standards we hold for film (and by extensions animation and game action) just weren't in place yet. It wasn't yet common knowledge how many frames you needed to show to make action look smooth and natural in film.

...is a rather inconsiderate dismissal of the many excellently paced and edited silents. Is the clock scene in Safety Last! herky jerky or painfully slow?