Presentation in Adventure Games

[maximusfink]

I've been thinking about different ways adventure games present the world to the player. Seems like most allow the player to navigate an avatar through the world and that movement is key to manipulating the environment. others, like text adventures force you to imagine what's going on as you cause things to happen in the room, but there's no visual representation. When you're told you're in a room with a lamp, and you say "turn on the lamp" it's implied that you walked over to it, but that isn't depicted, and after you're done turning on the lamp, the character's 'location' is still just 'the room with the lamp'.

Puzzle agent kind of treads the line, it has rooms but Nelson doesn't actually move through these rooms. When you click on a door or an object, there's a brief close up cut scene of him approaching that spot, or looking at it, when he's done with it though, and we revert to the original room, he's still in that same position. In the case of puzzle agent it's not necessary to control nelson walking around the scene, but it's also not a game that focuses heavily on exploration, but still, I could see this kind of presentation working with a game like grim fandango. What do we gain by having Manny traverse the environment with a terrible control scheme?

tl;dr
Anyway, the actual QUESTION that I wanted to ask: Can anybody name some games that present themselves/control in the same way that Puzzle Agent does? (where the player character is unable to be moved around in the background) Because as far as adventure games go, I can't think of any.

[Ghost]

I bet there are, and there are many games where at least some actions don't require the player to walk. Kyrandia 2 for example leaves Zanthia in place when clicking on items that are merely picked up.

I also don't think that "movement is key". Showing the player character moving is part of making the game more believable, and there may be puzzles where the game checks if an object can be "reached". But adventure games are notorious for allowing the player to try every action(verb) on everything, often without the avatar ever complaining. You're mostly able to try out everything (and often have the character cross the full screen before stating that "This doesn't work" )

What do we gain from having a character walk around, you ask. I'd say an illusion of watching actions unfold, creating immersion, and a chance to tie puzzles to where a player stands, and the feeling that we are controlling a character instead of looking at still scenes AND the potential for everyone to complain about the walkspeed

The trick is to have characters traverse the environment using a GOOD control sheme.

[maximusfink]

Hey thanks for your reply. I'd say the most important advantage of 'movement' is the feeling that the player is controlling the character. For me at least, I don't feel much more immersed when I click on an object and then watch the character stumble over and flail at it with a pre-canned animation. But I think being able to navigate an avatar through an environment automatically makes the player more engaged in that environment and in exploring it. Kyrandia 2 seems like an interesting middle ground, I don't think I can get it to work on my computer but I'll watch some youtube videos of it haha. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Anian]

Do you even need a character if you're not moving it? Then you might go the next step and you have a hidden object type of game with no protagonist on screen. I just recently played Puzzle agent games and animation, movement and interaction options seem very limited but if you consider the actual puzzle gameplay it all makes everything fit nicely,

Old school JRPG style games don't move their characters, in fights for example, they kind of move a bit but usually there's no fight animation per say.

[Billbis]

Can anybody name some games that present themselves/control in the same way that Puzzle Agent does?

Basically all 2D first person adventure games.

[Crimson Wizard]

Can anybody name some games that present themselves/control in the same way that Puzzle Agent does? (where the player character is unable to be moved around in the background)

There's a whole subset of first-person-view adventure games like "Shadowgate", where you just switch between rooms by clicking on exits and manipulate with objects without seeing player character at all.

Hey thanks for your reply. I'd say the most important advantage of 'movement' is the feeling that the player is controlling the character.

Immersion really varies depending on view (camera angles) and other factors. In my opinion, "Cat Lady" has one of the best examples of how camera & controls create immersion. Since you control character by keyboard, you "feel" her every step.

[Gribbler]

Puzzle agent kind of treads the line, it has rooms but Nelson doesn't actually move through these rooms. When you click on a door or an object, there's a brief close up cut scene of him approaching that spot, or looking at it, when he's done with it though, and we revert to the original room, he's still in that same position.

If I'm not mistaken there was something like that in Phantasmagoria.

[Stupot]

There are a lot of good first person horror game like barrow hill, dark fall. I love these games. Check em out

[maximusfink]

Oh yeah! Phantasmagoria is exactly what I'm talking about, you couldn't actively move around but clicking on hotspots would trigger little scenes and change the position of the character or bring her to a new room. I think that lends itself to creating a cinematic vibe/pacing but you for sure lose that sense of control or inhabiting the character.

I had Shadowgate for the gameboy way back. I'll have to check out cat lady, I've debated keyboard controls vs. point and click in my head many times. keyboard definitely gives you that immediate response but without clicking it really changes the logisitics of how you design the game. Unless you just did both I guess.

[Igor Hardy]

GK2 and Phantasmagoria 2 as well.

To be honest I hate not having any direct control over the character and I never had any problems with GF's control scheme.

[Armageddon]

The Pajama Sam and Spy Fox games are like Puzzle Agent, you can't actually click on spots to walk around at, just use objects with one click interface and a small cutscene plays where the character walks to it, usually with a custom animation for that one interaction, and then walks back to the center of the room.

[Trapezoid]

Are there any games that use realtime FPS movement with traditional adventure game puzzle mechanics? All I can think of are either Myst-likes with static prerendered BGs, or first-person action games with simple/neutered puzzle elements.

[maximusfink]

The only thing that comes to mind is realmyst or myst V which was essentially an fps puzzle solver.