I don't think it makes sense to try to "move to another graphics style." Because the graphics alone don't make a good adventure game. I'm sure all of us can attest to that. I don't like or dislike an adventure game if it's classic, or contemporary, on the contrary, I've played great and rotten of both styles.
What I like in an adventure game, and why I play them is.. get this... Adventure. Sounds crazy, I know. When I am able to immerse myself into a game and go to a place that is a completely different world, and even a different dimension, where things that are not possible are possible. A great adventure game that a lot of people liked, and a lot of people didn't, was "The Dig." Good game. Incredible combination of sound, music, and graphics made for a very immersive game. The plot was not stellar, rather cliche actually, but still interesting enough to provoke you into exploring and enjoying the experience. At least I did.
King's Quest 4 for instance, who can forget the graveyard section? Scared me to death as a kid, but still unforgetable for it's uniqueness and scary atmosphere. Space quest 6! Who can forget Polysorbate 60? Memorable! Exciting!
I guess what I'm saying is that a good adventure game is one that will take you in and make you forget other things. I mean, I don't like being stuck as much as the next guy, but it's so satisfying and fulfilling to be able to get past the obstacle without cheating. The best adventure games I've ever played were also the hardest. Riven? Hard? Hah! Yes. But very good, if you've got the insane patience for it. I like having a logical "stuck" part, like everybody, but it doesn't really bother me. I don't lose sleep over it (usually). I'm in it for the experience.
So, whatever tactics or methods a game uses to be interesting, provocative, immersive, or mind-bending, let them do it. 3-d? 2-d? 4-d? Who cares? I'm no purist. Sound, graphics, music, style, plot, characters, crucial aspects, and if they are just done well, or even a few of the areas done really well, it works.
My two cents,
Defiant1
How would YOU reinvent the adventure game genre?
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Brainiac
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By the way all, I've recently learned that the "And Then There Were None" game did indeed do well enough to lead to another famous Christie adaptation..."Murder on the Orient Express" is now being designed! The good news: from what I understand so far, the designers are adapting some of the elements of "The Last Express" for making the game. The bad news: as of right now, the playable character is NOT Hercule Poirot. Dows anyone else familiar with the little Belgian detective's (arguably) most famous case find that wrong?
Yeah, not being Poirot in a game of Murder on the Orient Express sounds a lot like a gyp to me.
I don't really think you can compare the replayability of an MMORPG, an RTS, or any other Action/RPG game to the replayability of an Adventure game. Like someone said, the adventure game is based around a really tight plot that takes you on all the emotional rollercoasters that a good book, comic book, movie, TV show, or play is supposed to take you through. The reason you can play Guild Wars for 600 hours a month is because there's always more bad guys to blow up and defenses to build and it's always going to be a new challenge. When you involve combat and the building of forces and resources as the key to advancing a story, you've dumped a huge X-Factor into the mix.
One day you may get lucky and fall upon a batch of resources that allows you to build up your army very quickly and decimate the enemy. The next day you could be starving to death and ambushed by the same enemy or a completely different one. You have no way to know how you'll fare because the same battle is always different. A puzzle doesn't stay hard after you've solved it, but beating people in battle will always be hard to do. In the case of MMORPGs, literally every time you fire the thing up you're facing a new game. Why do you think World of Warcraft is so time-consuming and life-sucking away for so many people? It certainly isn't because fighting the Alliance is easier the second time around.
People talk about replayability like it's the death-knell of adventure games. I seriously beg to differ. To bring out the movie analogy again, people buy movies to watch them over and over again and delight in the viewing. Twelve years after its initial release, people are still buying and watching Clerks. Forty years after its release, people still quote Cool Hand Luke. Why? Because they are great to watch.
JustLuke, you said that the puzzles are stupid and annoying and nobody remembers them. You said it's the plot alone that makes the game so memorable. Here's an extremely recent example to refute this theory of yours. Have you played Dreamfall yet? I have. The story is absolutely amazing. I laughed, I cried, I stared in awe at the visuals, and the acting was pretty damn good for a computer game. I was blown away by the scope of this story and delighted with its ups and downs.
However, there were NO puzzles in this game. None at all. Essentially, the game told you where to go and what to do. You were basically watching a movie without the benefit of being able to sit back, relax, and watch it progress because you had to keep constantly clicking to push it along. This all but ruined the game for me. Will I replay it? Yeah, but only because the story blew me away and I'll want to see it again. However, this is a below mediocre entry into the adventure gaming world because of its sheer lack of interactivity and puzzles, which is such a huge disappointment considering the game it's a sequel to.
The Longest Journey is a wonderful example of a modern adventure game. It took me two weeks to finish that game, and it wasn't because the puzzles were Myst-level impossible or I was busy that week, but because it really was a LONG ass journey through a world that grew more interesting by the second and made you want more with every new step. I never tired of that game and I still haven't. It swept me off my feet and took me on a rollercoaster ride of amazing, and at the same time managed to teach me and heavily influence me in the art of storytelling. And what the icing on the cake was? It made me WORK for it.
My appreciation and love of the world The Longest Journey created was cultivated in part by the solidly challenging puzzles that made me care for what was happening. The puzzles gave me a stake in the storytelling, almost making me part storyteller and part story. This game damn near changed my life, it was so good, not because it was a plotless MMORPG that I could play into infinity, but because it was a tightly-woven story with challenging puzzles that were incorporated seamlessly into the game, while at the same time posing the question, "Are you who you want to be? Are you afraid to take what lies ahead? Are you brave enough to claim the destiny you make for yourself?"
So no, I don't think a seemingly "low" replay value or the existence of puzzles is the hindrance to the adventure genre. These two were factors in adventure gaming since the beginning, and I know most people don't remember it, but there WERE RPGs and Action games and Shoot-em-ups and Sim games in the market fifteen years ago, and Adventure games still ruled. Why? Because they were GOOD. They impacted our lives and changed them forever. What we need is a storyteller that makes you want to play again and again for the story alone, like we do for these old adventures. The only thing the Adventure needs is a good coat of paint and to take life by the horns. That's it, Amen, I'm out!
PS
I think many of us oldies forget that the 2D hand-painted backgrounds of the 90's was state-of-the-art, realer-than-real graphics when they came out. To say that an Adventure can't survive in 3D is stupid and underestimates the Adventure's power. The Adventure game was the first game with graphics, the first game with a third-person character, the first game with color, the first game with sound, the first game with VGA, the first game with voice acting, the first game with point-and-click...like it or not, the Adventure's always been on the cutting edge of technology. To say it shouldn't evolve farther is to place limits on the unlimitable.
I don't really think you can compare the replayability of an MMORPG, an RTS, or any other Action/RPG game to the replayability of an Adventure game. Like someone said, the adventure game is based around a really tight plot that takes you on all the emotional rollercoasters that a good book, comic book, movie, TV show, or play is supposed to take you through. The reason you can play Guild Wars for 600 hours a month is because there's always more bad guys to blow up and defenses to build and it's always going to be a new challenge. When you involve combat and the building of forces and resources as the key to advancing a story, you've dumped a huge X-Factor into the mix.
One day you may get lucky and fall upon a batch of resources that allows you to build up your army very quickly and decimate the enemy. The next day you could be starving to death and ambushed by the same enemy or a completely different one. You have no way to know how you'll fare because the same battle is always different. A puzzle doesn't stay hard after you've solved it, but beating people in battle will always be hard to do. In the case of MMORPGs, literally every time you fire the thing up you're facing a new game. Why do you think World of Warcraft is so time-consuming and life-sucking away for so many people? It certainly isn't because fighting the Alliance is easier the second time around.
People talk about replayability like it's the death-knell of adventure games. I seriously beg to differ. To bring out the movie analogy again, people buy movies to watch them over and over again and delight in the viewing. Twelve years after its initial release, people are still buying and watching Clerks. Forty years after its release, people still quote Cool Hand Luke. Why? Because they are great to watch.
JustLuke, you said that the puzzles are stupid and annoying and nobody remembers them. You said it's the plot alone that makes the game so memorable. Here's an extremely recent example to refute this theory of yours. Have you played Dreamfall yet? I have. The story is absolutely amazing. I laughed, I cried, I stared in awe at the visuals, and the acting was pretty damn good for a computer game. I was blown away by the scope of this story and delighted with its ups and downs.
However, there were NO puzzles in this game. None at all. Essentially, the game told you where to go and what to do. You were basically watching a movie without the benefit of being able to sit back, relax, and watch it progress because you had to keep constantly clicking to push it along. This all but ruined the game for me. Will I replay it? Yeah, but only because the story blew me away and I'll want to see it again. However, this is a below mediocre entry into the adventure gaming world because of its sheer lack of interactivity and puzzles, which is such a huge disappointment considering the game it's a sequel to.
The Longest Journey is a wonderful example of a modern adventure game. It took me two weeks to finish that game, and it wasn't because the puzzles were Myst-level impossible or I was busy that week, but because it really was a LONG ass journey through a world that grew more interesting by the second and made you want more with every new step. I never tired of that game and I still haven't. It swept me off my feet and took me on a rollercoaster ride of amazing, and at the same time managed to teach me and heavily influence me in the art of storytelling. And what the icing on the cake was? It made me WORK for it.
My appreciation and love of the world The Longest Journey created was cultivated in part by the solidly challenging puzzles that made me care for what was happening. The puzzles gave me a stake in the storytelling, almost making me part storyteller and part story. This game damn near changed my life, it was so good, not because it was a plotless MMORPG that I could play into infinity, but because it was a tightly-woven story with challenging puzzles that were incorporated seamlessly into the game, while at the same time posing the question, "Are you who you want to be? Are you afraid to take what lies ahead? Are you brave enough to claim the destiny you make for yourself?"
So no, I don't think a seemingly "low" replay value or the existence of puzzles is the hindrance to the adventure genre. These two were factors in adventure gaming since the beginning, and I know most people don't remember it, but there WERE RPGs and Action games and Shoot-em-ups and Sim games in the market fifteen years ago, and Adventure games still ruled. Why? Because they were GOOD. They impacted our lives and changed them forever. What we need is a storyteller that makes you want to play again and again for the story alone, like we do for these old adventures. The only thing the Adventure needs is a good coat of paint and to take life by the horns. That's it, Amen, I'm out!
PS
I think many of us oldies forget that the 2D hand-painted backgrounds of the 90's was state-of-the-art, realer-than-real graphics when they came out. To say that an Adventure can't survive in 3D is stupid and underestimates the Adventure's power. The Adventure game was the first game with graphics, the first game with a third-person character, the first game with color, the first game with sound, the first game with VGA, the first game with voice acting, the first game with point-and-click...like it or not, the Adventure's always been on the cutting edge of technology. To say it shouldn't evolve farther is to place limits on the unlimitable.
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Brainiac
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Poirot
There has been an update on Murder on the Orient Express - despite whatever role he takes in the game, Hercule Poirot will at least sound like Hercule Poirot.
The game just got a few points higher on my intrigued-o-meter.
The game just got a few points higher on my intrigued-o-meter.
multiplayer adventure game
I would like to play an adventure game with a few other people. Not a massive number of people, just a few. The number should be similar to the that found in other fiction - Film and novels for example.
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Adventure_Knight
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