GTD: What's wrong with adventure games?

[lo_res_man]

Seriusly ADVENTURES are and will be THE only games for us.

er... LJUBI, i hope your been silly or somthing, cuz that post left me cold. ( i always get cold when someone says somthing with such ...erm.. religious.. ummm.. FERVER)
plz, follow that golden forum rule, "think before you post"
thanx

ps: i am not trying to be a moderator, just trying to do my part to help

[otter]

Most of the time it's a bog-standard Monkey Island clone/stop the evil scientist/game set in the future/detective game.

I know you said this a long time ago, but I gotta chime in to back you up.  Here's a specific list of game settings that I think are played out:

Games set on an island, especially if the name of the island figures in the name of the game.  I think this extends beyond simple MI fannishness: islands are natural settings for adventure games -- sparsely populated, interesting scenery, easy to traverse in a short amount of time.  Still.  No more islands.

Games where you wake up in a strange place, not knowing who you are.  I think this is a variation on the

"white room" beginning.  (Incidentally, the link in question is a wonderful list of sci-fi cliches, geared at writers but also valuable for adventure gamers.)

Games set in sanitariums or mental institutions.  I can't put my finger on why this is so popular, but there sure seem to be a lot of them.  This might just be a channeling of a popular horror movie framework, I guess.


[/list]

[RocketGirl]

Games set on an island, especially if the name of the island figures in the name of the game.Ã, 

...

Games where you wake up in a strange place, not knowing who you are.Ã, 

...

Games set in sanitariums or mental institutions.Ã, 

I think I can explain some of this: It requires very little set-up/exposition.

I mean, let's face it, if your game is set in a complex world that has its own rules, cultures, and history, it can be a weapons-grade pain in the butt to explain it all to the player...and wouldn't most of us feel lost if we'd been thrown in the worlds of, say, Star Wars or Narnia if we hadn't already seen the movies or read the books?

But if you set you game on an island, in a looney bin, or start the character with no memories, then the player learns the rules of the world they're in right along with the protagonist.
And if the world your game is set in happens to be one of your own devising that needs this kind of explanation, then it can be very important that the player understand your world before being thrown completely in the thick of things. Hence such adventure game tropes as islands, sanitariums, and amnesia.

[esper]

I love you, RocketGirl. You ganked my answer, and thus you must be a godess.

[otter]

Rocketgirl and esper: totally agree.  (Dunno if anyone followed the "white room" link, but apparently one psychological reason for that particular cop-out is because the writer is staring at a blank, white page, i.e. the protagonist's setting is blank because the writer hasn't written it yet.  Cute use of psychology...)

Anyway, having lots of backstory has its own problems, as you said, but exposition can definitely be done gracefully.  There are some great examples of this -- I'm thinking in particular of Trinity, whose opening lines follow:

Sharp words between the superpowers. Tanks in East Berlin. And now, reports the BBC, rumors of a satellite blackout. It's enough to spoil your continental breakfast.

But the world will have to wait. This is the last day of your $599 London Getaway Package, and you're determined to soak up as much of that authentic English ambience as you can. So you've left the tour bus behind, ditched the camera and escaped to Hyde Park for a contemplative stroll through the Kensington Gardens.

I robbed this from The Craft Of Adventure, which is a really interesting read for anyone into game creation (although its intended audience is mostly for writers of interactive fiction, as you might have guessed).  Anyway, this is text, of course, but it would work easily well as a cut-scene or a few screens of dialog, and right away it establishes who you are (a middle-class tourist), what your motivation is (sightseeing) and what's going on (the beginning of World War III).

Narnia and Star Wars are good examples of complex worlds, but it's also true that all of us at one point were ignorant of anything about these universes, and they still managed to draw us in.  To be an active, rather than passive, participant, I think you need to know a little bit more about how things work -- however, you can also make the puzzles and the game aspect work for you, by letting the player explore the world a little, conversing with people and interacting with objects, to let her/him see how it differs from our own before things really get moving.

Thoughts?

[esper]

Well, it's like Star Trek: the 25th Anniversary point n' click adventure game by Interplay... You could know everything there is to know about the Star Trek universe (I do NOT put myself in this category, in case you were wondering), however, you couldn't use that knowledge to solve the alien puzzles in the game. Also, much of the fun in Out of This World (Another World, also by Interplay/Delphine) was not knowing what was going on. I still love hearing the guard at the beginning yell "HAGUSTA!" at me which, I'm sure, is alien for "Hey, asshole, stop rocking your cage!"

I think the best thing you can do for an adventure game is to put the player in completely unknown territory. Even in King's Quest, which used a standard fantasy realm (Daventry) littered with mythological and faerie-tale references, Roberta still managed to make it new and exciting. You might have seen Alice in Wonderland a hundred times, but winding up in the queen's garden and not knowing what the crap was going on was much of the fun.

Read the first book in C.S. Lewis' space trilogy sometime. I forget which one it is (of Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength... I think it's the second)... The character in the book was put in completely unknown, savage conditions on a distant planet, faced with strange aliens that didn't speak his language and with which he could in no way communicate with, and surrounded by starnge alien artifacts that he had no clue how to operate. The entire fun of that book was seeing how he managed to figure the use of the items, how to communicate with the aliens, how to survive completely alone and forsaken on this completely new frontier...

Unfortunately, "There's nothing new under the sun." Everything spawns from something else nowadays, and there is no "newness" to it. Every good story, puzzle, character, etc. for adventure games has been done and redone. The problem with adventure games, thus, is that there is not enough "adventure." We are delving into places we have already been, multiple times.

But I've lost track of where this all was going. What were we having "Thoughts?" on again?

[otter]

Yeah, I think we're on the same page here -- part of the advantage of the adventure game setting is that the player can work out a lot of the backstory on her/his own.  But I don't think that means that we've exhausted the genre -- if anything, this should work to our advantage as designers.  After all, you should be able to get away with setting a game just about anywhere, as long as you give the player a rich environment to fool around in and discover things at her/his own pace (by implementing good descriptions for objects, giving NPCs convincing dialogue and motivations, etc.).

I'm probably rambling.  Does this make sense?  (maybe I shouldn't ask... haha)

[RocketGirl]

Well, one thing I've never really seen done with the adventure game genre is a huge story arc that takes several games to tell with a gigantic backstory that unfolds as the game does.

Imagine Babylon 5 for adventure games.

Because, sure, there have been adventure games with sequels, and sometimes characters come back, but you know they never intended that from the beginning. Most games are entirely self-contained adventures, no previous experience necessary to play.

I think maybe this would help re-energize the genre, make people really want to play the next installment.

[ManicMatt]

Ah, kind of like that .netHack RPG I've never played.

That would be nice, but I seem to recall a game doing that before, leaving me with a cliffhanger at the end, and they never made any sequels.

Then there are games that tack a cliffhanger on to the end, like in Primal, and Kya i think.

[RocketGirl]

Well, it needn't be a cliffhanger, necessarily. Just...loose ends that become important later. It's much harder to write that way, of course, but if something that seemed significant and over turns out to be a small piece of a much larger picture...

[Kweepa]

"HAGUSTA!"

Wachendera... enufna!

[En garde!]

I remember reading an aricle (sadly, can't remember who wrote it or where I read it) linking the decline of adventure games to the popularization of internet (and thus, of walkthroughs for games)

The idea the guy had (and I found myself agreeing even aginst my will) was that this thing we hate so much, getting stuck at puzzles, were exactly the main point of Adventure Games.

Sure, it was frustrating. What the hell do I need to make this machine work? Will I have to pixel-chase again every single room? This is a door, I have a sledgehammer... why can't I just hit open the stupid door? I'll try it again! Just in case I clicked it wrong the first eighty times!

And we quit. And promised ourselves we were throwing away the stupid game first thing tomorrow. But we didn't. We kept on loading again the game because, hey! Somebody has to save Zork from that mean Inquisitor! The destiny of mankind was on our shoulders.

And then, sooner or later, we found the stupid hidden stone, or used the jar on the truck for no aparent reason, and... it... worked! All that tension acumulated, all that hatred against the game designers, all released thanks to our perseverance or intelligence. And then we were rewarded with some more story.

I'm not, of course, saying that this was the only appeal of Adventure Games. But hell, it was a big one. Nowadays, I find myself looking for a walkthrough even when I haven't explored every single room. Who's got time for walking around empty rooms in a game, anyway?

Maybe games are better now, but with walkthroughs? Less addictive.

[Snarky]

Quoting myself:

The Internet dealt three blows against adventures. First, it provided multiplayer options to games in the FPS, RTS and RPG (and many other) genres. No one has yet figured out how to make a successful multiplayer adventure game. Second, it made hints and walkthroughs easily available. And when they're available, people use them. Few people have the discipline to suffer frustration for day or weeks when the solution is just a click or two away. However, this reduced the gameplay time and value of adventure games enormously. At the same time it made them less enjoyable. It's more fun when you solve the puzzles yourself. Finally, it made services like "The Sierra Hotline" that offered hints for a fee outdated, and thus removed one source of revenue (the value of which I have no idea of) for adventure developers and publishers.

The other major reason I would give is the rise of 3D games, which adventures were never able to take advantage of in a successful way.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

No one has yet figured out how to make a successful multiplayer adventure game.

Lies!  Club Caribe (Habitat)!  I remember when my friend lost his head and could never find it again.  Good times.

[Afflict]

Lies!  Club Caribe (Habitat)!  I remember when my friend lost his head and could never find it again.  Good times.

wikipedia calls it an RPG heh

[an AGS rookie]

Getting stuck.

Most of the gamers I know have probably played about 2% of a point 'n click at some point in their lives, got stuck, frustratedly spent 15 mins randomly clicking all over the screen and given up.  People want to be entertained 100% of the time

I think all good games, both adventure and any other genre, must be at least a little frustrating at some points to be truly entertaining. If you never had to worry about being stuck for more than 15 minutes in any adventure-game it would be quite boring. It wouldn,t allow developers to think out funny and original puzzles which is what have made adventure-games popular (at least as popular as they were in the golden days of adventure-games.)  After all, what fun would for example an FPS be, if you never had to worry about dying, and could race through any level under 15 minutes? Sure, a light-hearted, easy adventure or a mindless platform-shooter can sometimes be fun and also good. (Broken Sword is a good example.) but in the long end it,s challenge players want in games (along with other important stuff such as a good story, memorable characters etc.) Getting that proud and rewarding feeling when you finally solve that seemingly impossible-to-solve-puzzle or finally defeat that nasty, three-headed mutant which guards the secret lab or whatever, is one of the most important reasons why we play games!   

[droneforever]

I'm pretty sure I'm in the vast minority with this opinion (given the way that both commercial and non-commercial games have been made lately) but what often bothers me is...

...way too much dialogue.

Don't get me wrong.  I like good dialogue (The Longest Journey is an example).  But I don't like what seems to be the standard approach: An endless dialogue-tree which must be clicked completely through, forcing you to listen/read for an extended period of time, in order to advance the game.

I'd rather games focus more on things happening than on conversation.  Many games, even ones I enjoy greatly, are basically just backdrops for you to wander around having conversations and occasionally using items.  They feel a little bit too "relaxed".  I'd like to see games in which sudden radical changes in the environment are possible and unexpected.

I don't know if it's been tried in a game yet, but I think a neat trick to avoid having a puzzle be "timed" (in that one must react at just the right time) yet still be tense (in that one feels one has very little time to resolve a situation) would be to, essentially, have the game "pause", with the result that every further action you take increments the clock (basically, a graphical version of how text-based adventures work).  No idea how difficult this would be with AGS or any other homebrew engine, but obviously commercial games could do it.

[Anym]

For me, I have to agree, too much linearity seems to be the biggest problem of adventure games. Being stuck is a result of this. The game won't progress until you've solved a certain "bottleneck" puzzle, which usually has exactly one solution. Often, you won't be able to do anything at all until you do solve it.

Often bad puzzle design increases this problem. People often complain that a problem with parser in old interactive fiction was that you had to "guess the verb". While point-and-click interfaces did away with this problem, the problem to "read the mind" of the developer may still remain if there is only one single way to solve a puzzle and while it might have seemed obvious to the developer, if the player doesn't get it, he just doesn't get it. Now, I have to admit that the feeling of finally "getting it" (especially if the solution is completely logical, but not very obvious) is one of the most rewarding in computer games and almost exclusive to adventure games. On the other hand, of course, not getting it, and not being able to do anything until you do, is just as frustrating. So, I partly agree that getting stuck can be fun, once you're over it, but most of the time, my patience wears thin before that. My computer playing time is limited and I'd rather spend and fifty minutes shooting aliens than being stuck.

Having more than one solution to puzzles is therefore very desirable, but also very hard to do. Subtle context sensitive hints would also be a good remedy, but is also quite hard to do well. Of course, those two suggestions can only reduce the problem and not eliminate it entirely, but reducing it might be enough. Being stuck for fifteen minutes might be acceptable, being stuck for fifty probably isn't. As a designer can't think of everything himself, good beta testing is essential, to get an idea, where people are more likely to get stuck and what should work as a solution, but currently doesn't.

Another possibility, altough more for commercial projects, rather than for amateur ones, at least at the moment, would be the use of a powerful physics engine (basically requiring 3D graphics as well) as the foundation of the adventure game and most of its puzzles, so that the players are limited by their own imagination rather than the developer's. If it's something would be possible in the real world, it should be possible in the game as well, even if the developer didn't explicitly though of and implemented it.

Another thing that bugs me and ties into the linearity aspect is that you can almost always only do things that have relevance to the plot. This intensifies the problem of being stuck insofar that it puts you in a situation where you aren't just stuck on a single puzzle, but stuck in the entire game, because there is absolutely nothing to do besides that puzzle at that moment. Sidequests might be an interesting addition, if you can find a proper reward for the player and if you can make it clear that it's only a side quest.

Unlike RPGs, adventure gamers have little need for experience points or gold pieces, at least mosft of the time, and supplying a character with an item is also problematic, if you want it to be useful, yet non-essential for the rest of the game, like a tricorder that provides interesting, possibly even useful, but strictly non-essential information. Other rewards could be a better ending, like in Fallout where the end seuence would not only tell you that you saved the wastelands, but would also revisit various locations and tell you how they would develop, partly as a result of your actions (or inactions), or a sub-plot, maybe a romantic one, or anything that fleshes out the game world, assuming that the writing and/or the graphics are good enough, otherwise, "more" might be a punishment rather than a reward.

It doesn't have to be sidequests, though. What about giving the player character do small things to do just to kill some time. Instead of running around wildly when stuck, your character could have lunch or going to the toilet, maybe even recapulating everything that has happened so far, in the hope of giving the player new ideas. Duke Nukem 3D let the player do lots of useless stuff. And people seem to enjoy watching The Sims do mundane things. Of course, if eating lunch, has no discernable effect, people might be tempted to see a puzzle where there is none and eat lunch repeatedly in order to figure out the puzzle hidden within the lunch, see below.

However, if there are sidequests, then they should be recognizable as sidequests, to avoid players being stuck and being frustrated in a completely optional part of the game. I don't know how to do this though. Especially as adventure players tend to try everything with everything, as they've been conditioned into that mindset. Did you ever notice how differently from other people adventure gamers play adventure games? Talking with everybody about everything even if there is no discernable reason to do so, taking everything that isn't nailed down, even stealing when necessary, knowing that there won't be any dire consequences for theft and that the fact, that you have to be smart enough to steal something, for example by distracting the owner, almost guarantees that the item will be needed later on, or trying to solve everything that looks like a puzzle, even if it isn't immediately clear how, if at all, this particular puzzle will tie in with your current goals.

The LucasArts philosophy of design helped this development. Nobody will kill you for touching their stuff and there are no dead ends, meaning that if something works, it will also be the correct thing to do. That's not to say that the LucasArts philosophy was a bad thing, quite the opposite. If you're stuck in a LucasArts game you at least know that the problem and the solution are somewhere right there in front of you, in other games, you might just as well be hopelessly stuck, because you forgot to pick up something earlier, but you have no way of knowing for sure, which makes a big difference, in how frustrating such a situation is.

This mindset could be hard to break and if you're actually making adventure games for adventure gamers rather than a general audience, you might not even want to. Still, you could try adding a large number of items that are plausible to exist (cups, spoons, books, stones,...), but have no real purpose, most of them being red herrings. Or you could try to let the player combine and dissemble items randomly. If you have a toothpick and a tomato, both might have their uses, but you could also combine them to a useless tomato-with-a-toothpick in it while making it possible to seperate the combination again to get the original items back. Or you could let them do things like eating which makes perfect sense for a person to do, but has no in-game effect. Or people could get angry if you steal too much, maybe even putting you in a get-out-of-prison puzzle. Of course, they can never get so angry that you're stuck, so you might think, why bother being nice, but then, people you treat with respect rather than stealing from them might be much more willing to help you.

And now for something completely different:

want to know a funny piece of trivia? the actor who did BRinks voice was  Robert PAtrick. This was heavly touted by lucas arts, because he had been in termanator 2. but what charactor you ask? the shape-shifter robot! and he NEVER said a WORD! So your voice actor is a guy whos most famos role has NO lines. weird world huh?

Robert Patrick actually voiced Boston Low and I think his T-1000 had more lines than Schwarzeneger's T-800 had in the first movie.

[Polecat]

After skimming through the topic, I've noticed several points that came back repeatedly:

Story Originality [or lack thereof]
  The White Room
  I enjoyed the posts on the overabundance of the white room conundrum that strikes so many adventure games. Simply put, the white room is used to create an instant hook for the player to wonder who exactly are they playing and what happened? It leaves for all sorts of plot twists and a "safety" area for the writers to delve in to explain away why the player doesn't naturally know how to use certain items/machinery that be encountered during the adventure. And I have to admit that initially, I found this to be a rather enticing hook. Pulled off correctly, it was a great incentive and kept me going to figure out just who the hell "I" was.

But then again, when was the last time we've seen it pulled off correctly? As it became more used, the "truth" never seemed to justify the suspense and soon stories all seemed to be written by Michael Crichton: great buildup and disappointing end.

And thats where the originality seems to be gone. I, personally, have no objections to playing yet another amnesia struck individual but if thats the way things are going to go... There better be a greaaaaaaat explanation for it.

  The Cliche
  Another post that I had to agree wholeheartedly is the overuse of certain settings, characters, and goals to the point of being cliche. Islands, Asylums, Haunted Mansions/Hotels, Islands Again, Private Investigator, Police Detective, Bumbling Idiot, MYST, etc.. etc..

These cliches aren't just the source of the "oh boy another [cliche] story.." thoughts but seem almost like a bandwagon that everyone is in a hurry to climb onto. It is a crutch that storywriters and puzzle-designers lean upon too heavily. Its easy to make a detective story because y'know what comes with it: crime scene puzzles [and I have to admit that I draw pleasure from solving any crime scene]. Its easy to write about a haunted mansion because there are, of course, ghosts about [or for a Scooby-Doo twist, people pretending to be ghosts].

I think that Cliches should be used as templates and hopefully evolve into something else. If not, well.. just don't half-ass it: if you're going to follow a cliche to the end, better make it gold all the way through.

  The Cures
     The White Room
     I've come to the conclusion that the white room conundrum has a surprisingly easy solution: The Intro Cutscene/Movie and accompanying manual. My favorite examples are Beneath a Steel Sky, Full Throttle, Five Days a Stranger, LOOM, and The Dig. The short introductionary cutscene for Five Days a Stranger turned the haunted house-theme on its ear and had me hooked before I even started! It can give a backdrop and suggest a richness of the story that is awaiting to unfold.

LOOM is a particularly great example because the story wasn't that great [nor lengthy] but the manual, the audio play, the small narrative voice over and cutscene at the beginning; all that put a tapestry of story behind the story [so to speak] which left you wanting more. [Which may have been the most disappointing part of LOOM: not fully exploring such a world].

     The Cliche
     Unfortunately, the cliche cure isn't that simple, mainly because as fans and adventure gamers we wish to emulate the games that we enjoyed the most and that is a crucial hurdle to pass.

One of my favorite quotes is taken from William Gibson's blog:

Influences are things to have, and then to get over. The latter being a lot harder than the former. (I, for example, couldn't even begin to write until I got over J.G. Ballard.)

Even if you cannot completely ignore your influences, it is possible to at least evolve and alter the idea:
Instead of a private/police investigator, how about an insurance investigator? Instead of a patient in an hospital, how about a doctor helping patients? [just imagine surgerical puzzles!]
A murder mystery in modern day? Why not changing it to a murder mystery in the 11th Century. [I'd love to see an adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.
A good protaganist stopping an evil religious order from destroying society can become an evil man infiltrating a good religious order in an attempt to subvert society. 
Stranded on a desert island could be come lost in the Underground of London [ala Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere].

Throw insignificant subplots in there to add flavor! [Syberia's phone conversations anyone?] Its absolutely incredible how a small play on words can change something entirely.

Presentation
I suppose this part is Story Originality: Cures Part 2, because nothing can enhance an already entrancing game [or save an overused plot device] than absolutely terrific presentation. This can be broken down into parts: Graphics, Audio, and Ambience.

  Graphical presentation
  This really broken down to backgrounds, characters and character animation. And these are rather self explanatory; how great a game will look depends on the art designers, good descriptions by the writers/director, and how far of an extra mile everyone is willing to go. Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth and the Legend of the Lost Lagoon are obvious showcases of going that extra mile to present trully gorgeous games. Character animation during dialogue or cutscenes would add so much more life to characters as well.

However! I find that graphics aren't nearly as important as as Audio, which in turn has a great deal in creating Ambience. [Example: Pleurghburg. Terrific audio]

  Audio
  Nice segue, eh? Audio is one of the two things I consider the most important in a story [the other being story]. In my opinion, there should almost always[/b] be some sort of audio being played in the duration of the game. It adds that finishing touch to immersion that nothing else can really do.

A silent house where you only hear the character's footsteps can be creepy, but add creeking wood, howling wind, squealing doors, spooky almost-voices whispering; and you've got something that raises the bar quite abit.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge fixed what I had thought was the biggest problem of Secret of Monkey Island: the great music score was rarely heard! Suddenly LeChuck's Revenge, everywhere you heard a great light-toned music and the great yacky game became that much better.

It might be an rather long and industrious extra mile to go for [specially in AGS games] but for those looking to make something with real quality, I think its a mile well worth tredding.

Debates: Dialouge and Voice Acting
droneforever brought up a good point about dialouge [ironic, considering his name ]. I'd have to agree to some of this, specially when another character is telling a story or explaining about something that may go on for while. What came to mind immediately was Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he's telling Indy that he should be careful about pursuing the Ark: while Marcus was talking, an epic and mysterious sounding orchestral piece was played in the background which added that extra emphasis to what he was saying. Perfect for some dialogue in games, although that doesn't entirely fix the problem.

Voice acting seems to be a rather controversial subject matter for AGS gamers and I side with those who vote that games should have voice acting but only if its high quality. If I hear a whiney sounding kid, well it better be playing a whiney kid. Or have an AUDIO OFF option

  Ambience
  This is just a combination of absolutely everything: witty one-liners, epic music, sound effects, beautifully drawn backgrounds. But most importantly is how they all mesh together. Its not the parts that are important as much as the sum of the parts.

Interface
I actually found the debates on what a good interface is to be great! Some complained of the interaction button doing everything for you, which brings up the underlying question:

How much control should the player have?

To this I have no real answer and have almost come to decide that it depends entirely on the game.

The Dig had a incredibly simplistic interface: Left click did all interactions [talking, looking, pushing] with an object/people. Right click brought up the inventory. That was it. So breathtakingly simple that I came away not filled with frustration about how to interact with objects but instead I was able to fully immerse myself into the game and experience the wonder of being on an alien world and the desperation of going home.

Now thats just talking The Dig, had the same control scheme been applied to say.. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, it wouldn't have worked.

It all depends on the context of game, but in my opinion: the more innovative the better. I'd love to see something like LOOM's distaff drafts again.

Puzzle design
Having once been part of an ARG Development Team, I thoroughly understand how difficult this really is. Your audience is coming to you for a story that pulls them in and hooks them til the very end, keeping them on the edge of their seat and up late at nights trying to figure out what is going to happen next. But at the same time, they're looking to be challenged and thats the key word: challenged.

The most difficult part of puzzle design is not only finding a puzzle that will fit in the context of the story but also making it challenging to the players. And those are the important parts to puzzle design: Do not sacrifice story for the sake of puzzles and puzzles should be challenging as well as intuitive. And for extra credit: multiple solutions to puzzles.

This a rule I think should be followed for most adventure games. However sometimes there comes along an idea of how to go about puzzles so innovative that the game is built entirely for it instead. And in those cases... I suppose it depends. But hell, I'll say it. Innovation rocks my socks off.

Bringing up a game up again: LOOM had amazingly simplistic puzzles. Did it matter? Not to me, I just loved playing with the distaff. Another game that looks like it'll an incredibly innovative puzzle system is the up and coming PS2 action-adventure Okami. Those playing will be able to switch from a regular viewpoint to using a celestial brush to draw in bridges or defeat enemies.

I'd love to see an AGS game in which the character's inventory was made up of different brushes and paints with which combinations caused different things to happen! [An almost impossible dream I know as the parser for images would be incredibly difficult to create].

Linear gameplay [or lack of replayability]
This is a much harped upon subject as well and one in which I agree with the harpers.I don't particularly care for multiple endings but being able to solve a puzzle multiple ways would just be terrific. And if solving a puzzle differently causes the story to change, ah hell, I won't complain. Promise.

EDIT: Upon rereading the topic, I'd say that some sidequests and just meaningless things to do would be interesting but the problem would be where to draw the line. [But if you had to go that route.. Oblivion, Morrowind, and Shemue all make great examples to follow].


Whew. This turned to be much longer than I anticipated but I hope I've brought up some good ideas! Enjoy!

[Radisshu]

I haven't read any previous replies, so pardon me if I accidently repeat someone's point of view, but what bothers me the most about the point and click-style adventure games (or "cinematic" style, as they feature other titles than just point and click, such as Grim Fandango) is that they're good on the first run-through, but they rarely offer any replay value.

The first time I played Broken Sword, for example, I had a great time withÃ,  figuring out all the various puzzles (which also took quite a long time) and uncovering the next parts of the plot. On the second run through, it was out of pure nostalgia. Sure, I enjoyed it, but I easily completed the game in a few hours and it didn't give me anything. The same can be applied to Grim Fandango, Monkey Island 1/2/3/4, LOOM (except from the fact that the songs vary, but that's only a small change of you carry a notebook), and many AGS titles.

I suppose that this is why I consider roleplaying games to be the more able "successor" to these type of adventure games (even if the genre still exist), as later CRPGs were able to give the great graphics and cinematic feel with full story AND an open-ended way of solving various things (even though they often involve fighting) that give a new experience with each play through, rather than just the same old story. A lot of the old point and click-games, though, are some of the most atmospheric games I've played.


And improvements, well.. Adventure games with more open-ended storylines. There's usually just the "YOU FAIL!" or "YOU SUCCEED!" outcomes of your actions, whilst I think it would be a lot more fun (AND immersive) if you could affect the plot by your actions, sort of like in a CRPG. It still wouldn't have to stop being an adventure game, and you'd have more fun playing it through several times.