Adventure Gamers - Forums

inm8#2 - 17 March 2013 08:30 PM

This is the best time for adventure gaming since the early 90s “golden era”. There are so many different games being developed. If you don’t like Telltale’s games, certainly you can find others that suit your playing style.

I kind of agree, if you don’t like Telltales games don’t buy them, I don’t (anymore) and I won’t (from now on). But it still makes me sad that Telltale has abandoned the kind of games i love.

@Fov - I’m glad that Telltale don’t think they have found the holy grail with TWD, and will continue to experiment. Who knows one day in the future, they might once again make a kind of game i like.

A few things off the top of my head, because I haven’t written on this topic in some time (seems like once it was all I ever wrote about here):

1) Interactive Movies may indeed be a means to attract non-gamers to the whole Interactive Storytelling paradigm many of us have been advocating for over the years. No classic gamer wants to see an end to the game factor in Adventure Games, but many who might otherwise enjoy an Interactive Story (note the difference in terms) are stymied by the sometimes incredibly abstract thinking that goes into puzzle design and problem solving scenarios. The more abstract the better, some Puzzle Gamers would argue, and I refuse to take Puzzle Gaming away from them, because there are plenty of people who enjoy puzzles, even if they have no idea how AGs work. However, stories are perhaps the oldest means by which we communicate, and devoting some energy into innovating the storytelling ability of AGs would not go amiss.

2) Gameplay would be improved immensely if Devs figured out ways to make their UIs more like the UIs of the regular computing experience. For instance, putting inventory icons in a tool bar, and even offering the option of making the tool bar drop out of sight when not in use, and adding functionality like the scroll wheel of most modern mouses for zooming in and out, could work hand in hand with 3D environments, the way HTML5 sites and Google Maps work. This sort of functionality is needed in PC/Mac gaming just to capitalize on the very fact that they are computer—as opposed to console—games.

3) Immersion is still key, here. I mean, that’s what the Holy Grail of Interactive Storytelling is really all about, you know. I’d like to see more implementation of simple things like immersive hint systems that work the way UHS did (before they basically stopped updating the site), which would make it possible to stay within the game environment and only use the keyboard for the features it offers that we’re already good at using.

4) Controls should really be updated a bit more. Dreamfall tried to do this with their Focus Field device, but it was too hard to operate effectively, which made us too aware of the mechanics to get properly immersed in the story. As I said above, we need controls that utilize the functionality that’s already familiar to computer users. Direction Keys and/or WASD seem to be fairly ubiquitous now, so most of us are okay with Direct Control now, where fifteen years ago there was a lot of resistance when they first tried introducing this stuff in Broken Sword III and Gabriel Knight III (and Tex Murphy, but I haven’t played those games… I know, I know… still got a huge backlog to get through). But companies like Tell Tale Games have done a lot to keep Point & Click gaming alive and fresh, even if they’re still evolving.

I prefer a game that offers options on what kind of control scheme you’re most comfortable with. Dreamfall and Myst V achieved this fairly admirably, so I’d like to see that come back, which is a thing most of these low budget AG companies haven’t been able to build on because they’ve gone back to 2.5D gaming… but that is another topic.
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Okay, that’s a lot of info, and some of it may seem Off Topic, but I think that about covers where I am philosophically on the issue of Interactive Storytelling these days. If anyone wants to pick up that particular topic and discuss it with me at greater length, we should probably start a new thread (or go revive an old one on the subject, if one remains on the site), so as not to hijack this one, which is mainly about TTG and their current direction.