[LeftHandedGuitarist]

It amazed me the other day, I looked in a cupboard to find a stack of PC Format magazines from the 1990's. Flicking through them I saw that almost every issue focused on at least a couple of new big AAA adventure game release. Quite a different story from today's game charts. It got me wondering.

If adventure games had continued to sell well from the late 1990's onwards and companies such as LucasArts and Sierra had continued to make them, what sort of games do you think we'd be playing today?

Do you think the 3D style would have continued and evolved, or we would have gorgeous high-res 2D cartoon or photorealistic art styles? Do you think the genre would have evolved past "point & click" into something new? Would FMV interactive movies have become more popular and a lot of big name actors gotten involved?

Or do you think the current adventure games market is representative of what might have been? While it now makes use of modern computing technology, it is hardly cutting edge as it has no real need to be.

I bet we would have had a great Star Wars graphic adventure from LucasArts by now!

[Ascovel]

I think if LucasArts and Sierra didn't collapse, there would be many more adventure games in the style of what Telltale Games makes today. Nothing that different and groundbreaking.

However, I think there would also occasionally appear big budget experimental adventure games like The Last Express in 1998. And these would probably more often lose money than make some.

[Harald B]

Well LucasArts was already moving to 3D; see Escape From Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and the canceled Sam & Max: Freelance Police. It also seems that episodic delivery and new case dlc was being considered for Freelance Police, with management kind of vetoing that. So on that side things might not be that different from what Telltale is doing now, but with bigger budgets and probably leaning a bit more towards traditional length.