I've been a lurker here for some time, but I've been visiting the forums and AGS site for many years. I was recently thinking about the type of game play that existed back in the early 90's, and how that type of game play may be perceived today. Now don't get me wrong, we're all here because we enjoy classic pixel perfect adventure games, but what if our favorite games were released in 2009.
What would a modern Quest for Glory look like? High res 3D Antwerp?
How would good ol' Lucasarts alter a linear (but fantastic) game like Loom?
Or, how would they bring to life the text based Wishbringer?
Rather than hash over every game, I'd like to hear a few people discuss their favorite classics, and what they could imagine a 2009 edition of it would be like. Enhancements, voicetracks, all that nonsense.
I think it would be an amusing topic. My example is below.
-------
One of my choices:
GAME:
Legend of Kyrandia
ADDITIONS:
Perhaps additional Magic Stone powers, a World Map, and a lot more detailed back story on the World of Kyrandia.
Yes, my suggestions are lame, but it was just to give an example. If this topic dies, oh well. But maybe some people will have some fun with it. :) Thanks for reading.
The sad thing is that the expectations of people have gotten so ridiculous that old games released today would be far from blockbuster material. Sierra games in particular, if they were just coming out, would be seen as medieval torture devices for killing the player repeatedly and having difficult to ridiculous puzzles. We live in a time where the gaming medium is focused more on visual than mental satisfaction, unfortunately, and I don't think an upgrade to 3d would be enough to make these games sell like they once did.
It is an interesting question....aside from improvements in graphics (3D), what advancements have been made in Video Games in the past few years? I suppose more memory allows for a more advanced AI (but do any recent games really take advantage of this?).
A larger gameworld would probably be possible, too, but I'd be worried about the 'genericness' of all the areas and levels (as opposed to the uniqueness and different atmosphere in each and every screen/area of Kyrandia, for example).
"If a classic Sierra\Lucasarts games were made today..."
Sounds like the ultimate MAGS topic to me... hey february winner whoever that may be.. use it please!
Well, if LucasArts would make Loom today, I'm pretty sure Bobbin would be a Padawan and the Elders would be Jedi Masters. The game would be consoletype action adventure.
Interestingly enough zabnat, LA did do a remake of The Secret of Monkey Islandâ,,¢. They stayed very true to the original storyline. It was kept very low-key and never officially released, but you can read more about the project here (http://tinyurl.com/3yl3hd).
:=
Well, I imagine Broken Sword would become 3D and have crate pushing puzzles and boring ledge climbing sections in it, and he'd ditch the lovely Nico in favour of some bitch.
Hey! You can see this for real with the new Sam & Max! Its 3D.
I dont played it yet.
I Leisure Suit Larry was made today, it would look cartoony with cell-shaded boobs, have no real sex in it and felt like a stupid piece of kiddie trash.
Oh wait--
A new lesuire suit larry (box something) is beign made right now.
Dear gods I hated LSL: Summa Cum Laude...it wasn't even an adventure game, just a marketing trick using a popular character to sell you a bunch of mini-games you have to play over and over and over.
I personally want to see Uninvited tranformed to 3D. They did it with Shadowgate, why not Uninvited? I'd pay to see how it would turn out cuz Uninvited is one of my favs of all time. Probly never gonna happen but good concept though.
Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Fri 06/02/2009 07:10:56
Interestingly enough zabnat, LA did do a remake of The Secret of Monkey Islandâ,,¢. They stayed very true to the original storyline. It was kept very low-key and never officially released, but you can read more about the project here (http://tinyurl.com/3yl3hd).
:=
I can't seem to find it, the only interesting thing I see is the new Indie game.
I also could not find that remake, Monkey!
But then I thought it was a joke that I wasn't getting it's meaning and didn't care.
Hmm...now I can't seem to find the page on it either. That's strange. It wasn't anything you could find directly on their homepage...but the link I had for it seems to not be working....
Spoiler
I intentionally linked to the page for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That was the joke. Wannabe pirate, wannabe Jedi...same difference!
8)
Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Sat 07/02/2009 20:04:18
Spoiler
I intentionally linked to the page for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That was the joke. Wannabe pirate, wannabe Jedi...same difference!
lol!
BASTARD!
Now call me hyper-optimistic, but especially text adventures could easily be made today. There is no graphic aspect, and the writing of several Infocom games was outstanding, so there is no "aging of graphics"/graphics comparison. You could just wrap it up in a nice middle-to-low standard game engine (the one they used for Zanzarah comes to mind).
And they were complex enough in their own rights too, so hey, Wishbringer 2009?
Easy! Easy!! You hear me?? EASY!
Spoiler
The hardest part would be to fit the glowing plastic stone into a jewel case.
Quote from: Strange Visitor on Sat 07/02/2009 04:51:13
Dear gods I hated LSL: Summa Cum Laude...it wasn't even an adventure game, just a marketing trick using a popular character to sell you a bunch of mini-games you have to play over and over and over.
Agreed, it was more then horrible, almost insulting even! The sad part is I know many a male, that loved the newish LSL game. Memories............
Jedi? Pirate? Er...
Ahh!!!! :D
miguel finally gets the joke and giggles
lol miguel, don't be too hard on yourself! The 'joke' was a difficult one to get haha ;)
I like the idea that LSL: Box office Bust will be a sandbox game. They even have hired a writer. Like I mean a Proper writer... well sort of... So hopefully it will be funny.
I think adventure games would work as sandbox games, as there is a lot of potential for a more fluid and less linear puzzle system, although I guess a mission based structure could remove some of the exploratory adventureness.
As I haven't read the whole thread I'm not really sure how relevant my post is, but hey!
Hasnt that new LSL game fell into production hell now?
And did you see what Larry's new image looked like? Argh!!
I did like the ps2 LSL game Im afraid. It was funny! But I did wish it had puzzles and not mini-games, thats for sure.
*look at plant*
Larry: "What? It's a plant."
*look at plant*
Larry: "it's still a plant!"
*look at plant*
Larry: "Stop making me look at the plant already!"
*look at plant*
Larry: "Make me look at that damn plant one more time..."
*look at plant*
Larry: "Argh!!"
Well it was something like that, made me chuckle. (reminds me of that Sam N Max joke)
Due to the Activision/Blizzard merger, they had to find a new publisher (apparantly), and I think Codemasters are now publishing it. But yes, it was due to be released last year, and still yet to be seen.
I'm glad this got some response. And while I know AGS is also quite graphical, I'm wondering if there any people still interesting in Text based (like Wishbringer, not text-parser). There is a significant amount of creativity here on this board and in the community, and I wonder if the demand is still there and if people have tried to use AGS for this, and with any success.
Thoughts?
I think the Elder Scrolls series is excellent for adventure gamers. They're extremely open ended, and you can roleplay any character type you want. But also, it's not the same type of puzzles over and over (although Oblivion was a bit too FPSy)
Also, I think Text adventures have potential on cell phones. Granted, cell phone graphics and memory are getting bigger and better, but it has a freakin' keyboard already attached to the device. Besides, youth of today (including myself) are fast enough at texting/typing on their cell phones, so you wouldn't have to bother with a full QWERTY keyboard. You'd just need to recognize txtSP34K in the parser...
~Trent
In the new LSL game
- Al Lowe is not involved
- There is no nudity
- The player is Larry Lovage (from Magna Cum Laude) not Larry Laffer
Therefore it's hopeless
I'm probably derailing the thread a bit here ::), but I've been toying with the idea of making games with features that are common today (3d, physics) and placing them within the stylistic confines and hardware constraints (as in video, audio. not processing power) of the 90s; in particular, the old Sierra SCI games <3<3<3. Kind of the reverse of what this thread is about.
I've even uploaded a video of one such game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmZSZBEzPqE&fmt=22), which I originally had much loftier goals for (including adding adventure game elements and using AdPlug for adlib emulation, rather than it just being a sidescroller with barely a whole screen of a level). It's more or less just a tech demo atm.
Here's a pic of it, if you can't be bothered watching the youtube :)
(http://surftown.metapathy.com/5egame4-2.png)
If anybody's feeling particularly adventurous (this is very alpha code and I'm not sure the installer managed to pick up on all the dependencies), here's a download link (http://surftown.metapathy.com/5egame4.msi) (~14mb) so you can try it out. And here's PhysX (http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.0203_whql.html) (~40mb), if you don't already have that.
Ironically, it has rather heavy system requirements; I'm running a pretty beefy quadcore here (yeah, it's "kinda" multithreaded) and only end up optimizing code when it runs awful on my system. ;)
Quote from: Nostradamus on Fri 13/02/2009 06:49:01
- There is no nudity
Therefore it's hopeless
Yeah, 3D rendered breasts really excite me in the loins as well...
PERVERT
The nude women in LSL:MCL were awful. Somewhere in between the realism of a $2 blow up doll and a realdoll. And since realdolls have the face of death on them, it wasn't titillating, it was zombiefying.
If my classic Lucasarts games were made today...
Maniac Mansion
It's now a first person perspective game with olny 1 player character (probably Jeff). All the puzzles get removed exept the one inolving keys. All cutscenes are 30 minutes long and feature FMV previously rips from the movie Saw III. Good news : The chainsaw now have gaz and the very dulled knifes can be taken.
Zak McKraken
After you use the Bob E. Pinz sign in order to backstab a terrorist in the plane, your flight drop you to Irak. Annie is still there, but she wears leather and do sidekicks with her 5 inches high-heels. She's playable after Elvis tried to rape her. Leslie and Melissa are not feature in the game anymore and all animals are removed in fear of a PETA online petition.
Monkey Island I and II
- Guybrush is now called 'Mike' and you can create your own ship with 100 different styles and 500 colours (you can buy 400 others on the Lucasarts Site). The spitting contest is removed under the pressure of some Arkansas parental board who find this unapropriate for kids - even if the insult fights are switched for real fights with 10 possible bloody endings.
The Dig
Any references to a scientific expedition are removed. The extra-terrestrial beings are not giving clue anymore and are clearly hostile. All the team came from the same country and - anyway - the action is set somewhere in Africa. You can now drive the 'balls' (trams?) yourself but olny after you find the plastic to explode the doors in the nexus.
Full Throttle
They added a lot of old ladies trying to cross the road everywhere. Ben can now kicks that dog statue made of aluminium.
Monkey Island 4
No apparent change at all.
I think Dan just about summed it up.
Quote from: Layabout on Sun 15/02/2009 04:59:22
Quote from: Nostradamus on Fri 13/02/2009 06:49:01
- There is no nudity
Therefore it's hopeless
Yeah, 3D rendered breasts really excite me in the loins as well...
PERVERT
The nude women in LSL:MCL were awful. Somewhere in between the realism of a $2 blow up doll and a realdoll. And since realdolls have the face of death on them, it wasn't titillating, it was zombiefying.
I'm just saying, the nudity (which was mostly censored in LDL games until LSL7) was so bad that it was entertaining and besides that's one of the main features that LSL series is identified with so it should be in any new LSL Game, not for satisifiying the horny needs of anyone, but because it's LSL tradition.
Your bringing MCL is irrelevant to me since I don't count it as a LSL Game. since it also does not involve Al or Larry Laffer, it's not even an adventure game. I'm comparing the the real Larry games.