Adventures have definatly been a thriving world in the independant markets, as can definatly be seen here by the many members of the AGS community. I was wondering though what types of contributions have we had to advance the adventure gaming world to give the players a very unique experience. I am curious to hear what everyone has had in mind and what they have brought to the table.
I personally am going to spend my time focusing on description and ideas. I feel that one thing that many adventure games have missed was study. I loved games like the Gabriel KNight series because it definatly did it's research and had a very thriving real-life aspect to it. Another Adventure/puzzle game I really admired was the Myst series, not because of it's puzzles, but because I enjoyed the atmosphere the books you read. They really added to the world. My personal contribution will be those types of additions. Giving a feeling of a bonus to the game. Instead of just having a goal, and using items to achieve that goal, I want to focus a lot more on the story behind the characters, their motives and reasons.
In the game I am producing now (which is too early in the works to show much of worth) Books are going to play heavily in just creating a backstory and providing entertainment to any who want to read them. They are not necessary, but they can be found enjoyable to some I hope. Anyways, I am ranting
Eh, I don't like finding books in games. You don't have to read them, but you miss poart of the story if you don't. But after a while it can become boring.
Although I agree with you in principle, games with a backstory (and perhaps several coincidential stories in the background) sound gorgeous. Just try and vary it.
For example, when a character finds a book, you could show an animated cutscene of the event that was written about, to make it more interesting to the player.
Well the books are just one of the easier examples to set up a mood. For suspense wise I always found finding books to add to the intensity (like in the resident evil games and in 5 days) another great one is videos, something that keeps the character seperate from the event that is being discussed, yet still keeping that event active in the situation (if that makes sense)
I really like it if in a game, you can read a book or a diary and it fills you in on some extra background, not anything that actually affect the gameplay or change the story dramatically, but so you can find out about the characters. or you can find an explanation for a previous action and you can go "ooh, thats why he did it"