Tim Schafer says Graphics Killed Adventure Games

[Jake]

Though I don't entirely agree with Tim, I also can see where he's coming from. Tim or one of those guys (some Lucasite) once remarked in an interview that if you wanted to drastically rewrite the ending of your text adventure game so an army of millions invades on the town, all it takes is a half hour at the keypad, but the second graphics appeared, things like that were totally out since someone had to actually draw it. That difficulty is compounded again when you add voice actors, prerendered cutscenes, realtime 3d sets, etc etc.

 

I think one of the things a lot of the earlier adventure makers liked was that the process of making the games was very organic and spontaneous - like for instance the rumor that all the dialogue in the 3 trials part of Monkey Island 1 was written as humorous banter between Schafer and Grossman, but then ended up being what really went into the game. They just wrote what they thought would be good, and fiddled around with it until everyone thought it worked, then out it went into the hands of gamers.

 

You can't do that anymore, I think that style of gamemaking was important to Tim, and text adventures were the purest form of that type of game development. So his remarks make sense, even if he was probably being extreme about it.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I think I agree with this...

 

The Adventure Game Is Dead…. Long Live The Adventure Game!

 

I’m sure many of us have been wondering what’s happened to our favourite genre lately. Was LucasArts right to cancel Sam N Max 2 a few months from competition? Would it not have sold well? Is the adventure game really a dead fish in today’s gaming water?

 

Well the answer is a definitive yes… and no.

 

While ‘traditional’ adventures like The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam N Max and Grim Fandango, are would undoubtedly sink without a trace in today’s gaming world, the elements that made them so fun to play, live on.

 

Huh?

 

What is an adventure game when you strip it down to its core elements? Trying to piece together a story by talking to people, solving puzzles and exploring locations? I can think of plenty of hugely popular console games that have done that, and have done for years. What was Zelda or Final Fantasy is not a slightly more advanced adventure game under the guise ‘RPG’?

 

The traditional, computer based adventure game is dead because it’s old fashioned, out-dated and well, boring and poorly designed, by today’s gaming standards. What fun is a game that just stops when you get stuck? What fun is a game that’s supposed to be a ‘tense, dangerous, atmospheric thriller’ when you can get stuck in one location for days because you haven’t given one odd item to one character somewhere. It’s no longer tense, there’s no sense of danger and the atmosphere goes out the window!

 

Today’s gamers are no more likely to want to walk around endless, uninteractive locations with only a few items to interact with, getting stuck on a puzzle, not being able to move forwards (which in short simply stops the gameplay itself!) than they our likely to want ten minutes for a chance to guide Miner Willy through his poorly rendered caves.

 

The adventure game as we knew it, is dead. It had to be. But it’s elements live on in modern games: Knights of the Old Republic, for example, is one of the best examples of an adventure game I’ve ever played. There’s amazing characterization, brilliant dialogue, puzzles, great locations, superb atmosphere and genuine sense that you’re part of a living breathing story. And yet I never got bored, I never got ‘stuck’, and I never felt frustrated with an illogical puzzle.

 

The adventure elements lived on…

 

In Conclusion…

 

While most of today’s games see characters, storyline and plot as a hindrance, they will eventually evolve into something more cohesive and complete. For adventure fans their favourite genre still lives on in modern gaming, but in a more evolved, generally better, state. As gamers continue to be more picky and demanding in certain ways, the gaming world will continue to evolve into more and more advanced games. The gameplay of just ‘blowing things up’ will continue to live on for a quick, satisfying game, but the for those with more time on their hands, or those who want something more cerebral, the adventure game will live on in new, better incarnations.

 

The Adventure Game Is Dead… Long Live The Adventure Game!

[Jake]

Er, what's that from?

[Alien426]

From justadventure.com.

 

Everybody check out Return To Mysterious Island. I've played it through and even though it's a bit short I liked it a lot.

[Joshi]

The last adventue game I played that was inspired by Jules Verne was Journey to the centre of the earth and, graphically, it looked the same. Now I'm not one to judge a book by it's cover, there are plenty of point n click adventures that look like that, I'm sure Dreamfall will (be it a point n click adventure or other), but JTTCOTE was simply a bad game. Granted I didn't give it much of a chance, I only played it for about an hour or two, but I really didn't like it for a whole host of reasons I'm not going to go into. That said Return to Mysterious island is probably not at all like that, but I'm in no way inclined to buy it.

[Alien426]

Originally posted by Joshi

I'm in no way inclined to buy it.

Then try the demo. That's what got me to buy the game.

[Joshi]

I actually considered that, but I'm running a 300K connection (or so my dad say, I actually have no idea) and it's a 200+ mb file. I'll wait till I get back to uni to download it (uni's got a faster connection)