Sierra Have Sierra games aged worse than LucasArts?

[Eirikur]

If I was going to replay a game like that right now, I'd go with either Quest for Glory 4 or Gabriel Knight 2 (both Sierra games). That being said, I think that LucasArts games collectively have aged much better.

 

[MRY]

So basically LucasArts was the original 'new shit' and arguably dumbed down the genre, which is why faggots who don't like challenging games are more fond of them?

I see the zealot has recovered his faith.

Ultimately, illogical puzzles and surprise deaths are not "challenge" in any meaningful sense,* any more than a game of Russian roulette is "challenging," any more than popamole combat with HP bloat is challening. The best Lucas puzzles were much more interesting and engaging than the best Sierra puzzles. Not even Sierra fans believe that the stereotypical Sierra kind of "challenge" was good: hence Codename: Iceman's being singled out for scorn. Nor do most Sierra fans prefer the parser games: it's the Lucas-chasing verb bar SCI games that most people remember fondly. In any case, I'm not sure why liking Monkey Island should preclude liking QFG, or vice versa. Both companies made some well-crafted adventures.

(* Incidentally, that doesn't mean that illogical puzzles and surprise deaths are purely negative. The deaths in SQ, for example, are a key part of the fun.)

 

[Alex]

I see the zealot has recovered his faith.

Ultimately, illogical puzzles and surprise deaths are not "challenge" in any meaningful sense,* any more than a game of Russian roulette is "challenging," any more than popamole combat with HP bloat is challening. The best Lucas puzzles were much more interesting and engaging than the best Sierra puzzles. Not even Sierra fans believe that the stereotypical Sierra kind of "challenge" was good: hence Codename: Iceman's being singled out for scorn. Nor do most Sierra fans prefer the parser games: it's the Lucas-chasing verb bar SCI games that most people remember fondly. In any case, I'm not sure why liking Monkey Island should preclude liking QFG, or vice versa. Both companies made some well-crafted adventures.

(* Incidentally, that doesn't mean that illogical puzzles and surprise deaths are purely negative. The deaths in SQ, for example, are a key part of the fun.)

The issue with character death and being stuck in dead ends isn't so much about what these things bring to the game, but they are natural outgrowths of the view of the adventure game more like a toy to be messed around than a sequence of puzzles to be solved in order to view the story. For example, Zork or even, funnily enough, Maniac Mansion, are examples of exploratory adventure games. They have puzzles, but the puzzles aren't all just straightforward "do this to continue". In maniac mansion. These games are more like a little world you can explore.

To be fair, this wasn't much of Sierra's deal, at least as far as I played their games (I think it might have been Conquest of series' deal). But I think it was Lucas Arts' focus on getting a tale told that paved the way to companies like TellTale.

True, in an exploratory game like Deadline, you could end up in a dead end rather easily. But that was no biggie, just restart. Maybe keep track of what happens at what time. It was part of the fun. And, of course, you could get back to where you were in first place rather quickly, something you can't do if the game is full of animations, voices and dialogues that need to be played out.

 

[MRY]

I think it was Lucas Arts' focus on getting a tale told that paved the way to companies like TellTale.

I guess I have two qualms with this line of argument.

First, I don't really think it's accurate to say that the Lucas games were "focus[ed] on getting a tale told." You're right that they are somewhat less toy-like and experimental than Sierra games, but it's a difference of degree, not a difference in kind. None of the Lucas games until, I guess, Full Throttle felt to me primarily about telling a story. The stories were there to give context and drama to the puzzles, and it was the puzzles that constituted the overwhelming substance that the player consumed. To be sure, Lucas told better stories than Sierra did, and did a much better job of integrating puzzles into those stories. Since Lucas's puzzles were more often in service of the narrative than Sierra's, I suppose that might make them feel more story-oriented, but -- at least for my dollar -- no popular Lucas title is as long-winded and narratively self-important as Gabriel Knight (especially Gabriel Knight 2) or King's Quest VI. Maybe Grim Fandango, I suppose?

Second, one could just as easily say, "Sierra paved the way to companies like TellTale by introducing graphics, animation, and a third-person perspective into adventure games." But that is a little bit like saying, "By stealing fire for mankind, Prometheus paved the way to autos-da-fe." The way Lucas told stories is entirely different from how TellTale does it. TellTale has non-puzzling gameplay interruptions in the course of a wannabe-cinematic story. If anything, that reminds me more of GK2 than of Lucas games, though GK2's interruptions were more likely to slow down and frustrate the player than TellTale's. It could be that Lucas's ability to effectively weave stories into puzzle-based gameplay provided the germ of the idea of having stories choke out puzzles entirely, but it's silly to criticize Lucas for that. And I'm 100% sure people could've gotten to TellTale without Lucas games -- Dragon's Lair already had the idea, albeit without branching.

That said, I do love and miss the more experimental games -- both in interactive fiction and adventure games. (For whatever reason, I still really feel that Metamorphoses by Emily Short is the best, though even among her work probably Savoir Faire is objectively better.) I can understand why they don't get made, but I really wish there were a Vault Dweller out there making some gigantically reactive adventure game with five dozen different ways to get through each area.

 

[Telengard]

Don't discount the fact that Lucasarts existed as a company far later. That allows a company to expose its games to new audiences, since people will take a second look at any game from a company they trust. Sierra may have sold more in the day, but Lucasarts has had a much longer reach. That has been a factor in the memories of many companies.

But then, there's also the changing philosophy of games. All of the old adventure game companies - not just Sierra - made games with crazy death and screwable puzzles. Infocom's titles, for one, were loaded down with that stuff. It was part of the philosophy of making them games. When Lucasarts started doing its thing, there was a big debate about whether their titles were even games at all, since you couldn't lose them. And something you can't lose, how is it a game?

There were people who refused to even buy Lucasarts titles for that reason alone.

But times change. The great war of game versus not game was won by Lucasarts. These days, no fail state is an advantage. It's desired. Having to be careful, to be mindful of your environment, to pay attention to little clues, and to have backup saves - these are seen as bad things today. And not only that, those who were on the wrong side of the Lucasarts debate were mostly an older crew, and many of them just left the hobby when the other adventure game companies all died. So, they're not even around to see the revival.

 

[Alex]

Revival?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Don't discount the fact that Lucasarts existed as a company far later. That allows a company to expose its games to new audiences, since people will take a second look at any game from a company they trust.

Almost a good theory, except, you know, most of old Lucas Arts catalogue was basically abandonware for better part of last 15 years.

But then, there's also the changing philosophy of games. All of the old adventure game companies - not just Sierra - made games with crazy death and screwable puzzles. Infocom's titles, for one, were loaded down with that stuff. It was part of the philosophy of making them games. When Lucasarts started doing its thing, there was a big debate about whether their titles were even games at all, since you couldn't lose them. And something you can't lose, how is it a game?

There were people who refused to even buy Lucasarts titles for that reason alone.

But times change. The great war of game versus not game was won by Lucasarts.

That on the other hand, is a good theory. That's exactly what I meant, when I said that after first MI Sierra was left playing catchup. Sierra games may won the sales, but on the front of design philosophy, Sierra was annihilated. Lucas Arts, for better worse, created a template for entire genre which persists to this very day.

edit: I can't english.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

Don't discount the fact that Lucasarts existed as a company far later. That allows a company to expose its games to new audiences, since people will take a second look at any game from a company they trust. Sierra may have sold more in the day, but Lucasarts has had a much longer reach. That has been a factor in the memories of many companies.

But then, there's also the changing philosophy of games. All of the old adventure game companies - not just Sierra - made games with crazy death and screwable puzzles. Infocom's titles, for one, were loaded down with that stuff. It was part of the philosophy of making them games. When Lucasarts started doing its thing, there was a big debate about whether their titles were even games at all, since you couldn't lose them. And something you can't lose, how is it a game?

There were people who refused to even buy Lucasarts titles for that reason alone.

But times change. The great war of game versus not game was won by Lucasarts. These days, no fail state is an advantage. It's desired. Having to be careful, to be mindful of your environment, to pay attention to little clues, and to have backup saves - these are seen as bad things today. And not only that, those who were on the wrong side of the Lucasarts debate were mostly an older crew, and many of them just left the hobby when the other adventure game companies all died. So, they're not even around to see the revival.

LucasArts stopped making adventures in 2000, Sierra stopped making adventures in 1999. Their adventure game careers ended roughly the same time, and as far as companies go, Sierra existed until 2008 as an actual company. LucasArts until 2013. Not that big of a gap.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I see the zealot has recovered his faith.

Ultimately, illogical puzzles and surprise deaths are not "challenge" in any meaningful sense,* any more than a game of Russian roulette is "challenging," any more than popamole combat with HP bloat is challening. The best Lucas puzzles were much more interesting and engaging than the best Sierra puzzles. Not even Sierra fans believe that the stereotypical Sierra kind of "challenge" was good: hence Codename: Iceman's being singled out for scorn. Nor do most Sierra fans prefer the parser games: it's the Lucas-chasing verb bar SCI games that most people remember fondly. In any case, I'm not sure why liking Monkey Island should preclude liking QFG, or vice versa. Both companies made some well-crafted adventures.

(* Incidentally, that doesn't mean that illogical puzzles and surprise deaths are purely negative. The deaths in SQ, for example, are a key part of the fun.)

Thing is, the illogical nature of the puzzles in Sierra games is oversold. You got more out of the moon logic in KQ than in the other series. Surprise deaths add an element of both urgency and punishment to the gaming experience, and dead-ends (at least for me), helped to establish an eye for small details. A game which holds your hand, never punishes failure and is more focused on zany humor than anything else is...Not very fun. Even in the Sierra games with moon logic, being stumped is part of the fan. Wracking your brain is a good exercise, it makes the game much more interactive, rather than "oh the solution is right here."

Also, a big difference between Sierra and LA wherein Sierra was dominant was in their level of interactivity. In most games, nearly everything on the screen was interactive in some way - a great holdover from the text adventure games. In the more mature games, this allowed for a high level of detail; in Space Quest, it allowed for great visual gags and humor.

I've always looked at LucasArts as being the more accessible, family friendly Sierra. Safe games for safe people.

I'm not saying liking one precludes liking the other, but it's always been a bit of a competition. Also, LucasArts' design ideology is what's got us to where we are today with Telltale.

As to your point to a different person, I consider Loom to be "self important". Making epic games came easy to Sierra - even when they weren't trying to be so. I find Space Quest to be a much more invigorating space-themed adventure game than say Loom. And also, Sierra were very good at mocking themselves and their own design ideology (or even fellow designers) in their games. This level of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness I never found with LucasArts; the stories they told were zany and more like a cartoonized version of real life than anything else.

I mean, if I had to pick between "Alexander pulls out his magic map" and "You fight like a dairy farmer; how appropriate, you fight like a cow"--The games just had this childish sense of humor that wasn't so much tongue in cheek as it was just zany for zany's sake.

As far as the verb-bar in Sierra's SCI games being "LucasArts chasing", I've never seen it. Two radically different approaches to point and click.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

Almost a good theory, except, you know, most of old Lucas Arts catalogue was basically abandonware for better part of last 15 years.



That on the other hand, is a good theory. That's exactly what I meant, when I said that after first MI Sierra was left playing catchup. Sierra games may won the sales, but on the front of design philosophy, Sierra was annihilated. Lucas Arts, for better worse, created a template for entire genre which persists to this very day.

edit: I can't english.

A template which even adventure game fans complain about and ask themselves: Is that an adventure game or not? Sierra's approach was much more challenging. LucasArts paved the way for adventure games being a very non-serious, easy genre - We can thank LucasArts for TT's "Back to the Future"

Sierra always wanted to make their own games cinematic - without abandoning gameplay. LucasArts said "gameplay and challenge be damned, let's just do an interactive story." LucasArts' games are basically, in my opinion, Myst-type games with characters. No risk, no real reward.

 

[Telengard]

LucasArts stopped making adventures in 2000, Sierra stopped making adventures in 1999. Their adventure game careers ended roughly the same time, and as far as companies go, Sierra existed until 2008 as an actual company. LucasArts until 2013. Not that big of a gap.

Lucasarts existed as a company making games for all those years. Sierra lived on only in zombie mode after Chainsaw Monday.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

On thing lucas arts did amazingly well was the music, and it also helped that the music team was the same from the very beginning till the end. Speaking about team, all lucasarts games (not only the adventure ones) shared the personnel, and only the leading directors were diferent from time to time.

Monkey Island 4 is not that bad as a monkey island game, it was released in 2000, when adventure games were "dead", but it failed only in the ending department and 3d models, and the grim fandango engine was kind of clunky, but there were very ingenious puzzles, but they had exagerated in the nonsense. But at this time, sierra was releasing it's cartoon games. And to be honest, I actually liked QFG5, which could be the MI4 equivalent.

Sierra games were too primitive in the start, and very punishing, but so was maniac mansion, a LA game that you could find yourself in dead ends, but after monkey island, they stayed true to their adventure design philosophy, while sierra was trying to find a way to level themselves up. And they actually did, and there was a point one could appreciate both companies since their games styles got very similar (the VGA art style in early/mid 90's). It funny that sam and max interface is very similar to those of sierra post parser adventures, when LA tried to find a way to fill the whole screen with gameplay area. and KQ5/6 and GK 1 had VGA visuals that would fel like they were Lucasarts games.

One thing worth of notice is the consistency in Lucasarts frachises: there's not much diference between MI 1, 2 and 3 gameplay-wise, or indy last crusade, fate of atlantis and the dig, probably due to the same engine. But take KQ 1 through 8 and it will comprise different playstyles, the same with SQ and LSL. Even gabriel knight had three different kinds of games: A SCI one, a FMV one and a 3D one. Maybe QFG series is the most consistent of the bunch. And there's some people whom would want to play the series from the beginning and some people woudn't suffer through the old parser games.

Also, for the new crowd, an EGA graphics is probably very disgusting, and most sierra old games are EGA only. LA on the other hand has beautiful VGA graphics since it's 3rd adventure game, Indy 3: Last crusade, and VGA art is still appealing to this day (see wadjet eye games). And one may compare interface and UI from monkey 1 and, say, broken age/deponia, modern adventure games, and it's very familiar. This point is probably the main indication that lucasarts has aged better. The nature of the puzzles also remained the same, i believe that no dead ends helped with that.

Later sierra games ditched dead ends but you could still die, and you could miss a lot, which would give you reaplayability reason. Lucasarts had a similar thing with its indy games, which you could be killed (but no dead ends) and a IQ point system for different ways to solve many puzzles.

One last thing, the Lucas brand was very big in the 90's, even out of pcgaming scene: ILM was the top effects house in movie making. Indiana Jones was a big name, and having names like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas associated with lucasarts helped these games reach "normal" people that normally didn't play games, and the nostalgia effect also reach these people today. And as a company, the 90's tradition of Lucasarts was to make clones of poopular game genres and try to innovate: they made a doom clone, wing commander clones, even a simcity clone, and they aways tried to improve on the formula so it was not only a copy.

 

[Telengard]

Don't discount the fact that Lucasarts existed as a company far later. That allows a company to expose its games to new audiences, since people will take a second look at any game from a company they trust.

Almost a good theory, except, you know, most of old Lucas Arts catalogue was basically abandonware for better part of last 15 years.

This is one of those tricky things about fans and companies. A company can build up trust with its fanbase. Once that trust is there, when people see that logo, they will give that item a second look. Two games, both with dated graphics that are a turnoff to McModern Dude. But one has the logo. That one just got a second look. McModern still might not buy, because he is after all a McModern, but that second look is all-important for the potential to exist for a buy.

One sees this - and related things - happen a lot. Why does nobody even on the Codex know Connelly and Epyx games? They produced a bunch of crpgs starting in 1979, and had the first ever crpg hit. But they fell into the memory hole, they never had the long reach that their later contemporaries had. And that reach is vital for reaching multiple generations of gamers.

 

[MRY]

Also, a big difference between Sierra and LA wherein Sierra was dominant was in their level of interactivity. In most games, nearly everything on the screen was interactive in some way - a great holdover from the text adventure games. In the more mature games, this allowed for a high level of detail

Flashforward to KQ5, and almost all interaction with the environment is eliminated. No longer could you type the most zany things you could think of into the game; No, now your action was limited to four cursors which had a limited amount of responses to any given action - and in KQ5 in particular, clicking on many areas would result in a giant red X popping up, indicating the game wasn't interactive in this or that part of the screen; the game, while it didn't hold you by the hand, you were only able to do what the designers wanted for any given screen, and the list of available interactions for any given part of the screen was very limited.

And no, everything was NOT clickable in KQ5 or KQ6. A lot of irrelevant crap like bushes and trees were in KQ6. The only thing which stood out to me about KQ6 as far as clickableness was if you clicked on a character; you then got Alexander's POV of that character - that was cool. But I've always found a lot of the text in KQ6 both clinically written, and irrelevant. There's a reason KQ5 succeeds even without as much clickbait.

But maybe you're not including KQ in the "most games."

Thing is, the illogical nature of the puzzles in Sierra games is oversold. You got more out of the moon logic in KQ than in the other series.

The difference between Sierra puzzles and Lucas puzzles in my experience -- which is quite dated -- is that generally speaking the major part of Sierra puzzles was finding the items and avoiding death or walking-dead scenarios, whereas in Lucas games you had to figure out what you wanted to do, and observe the environment to figure out how to do that with the items you have. IMHO the best of these is the spitting puzzle in MI2, but there are plenty of them throughout the series. The lack of insta-death means that you can experiment to figure out what does what and how they interact, and with that information can work through the logic of the puzzles.

I can't really think of anything in any Sierra game that had that feel to it. I suppose the two outlandish GK puzzles (the voodoo code and the tape recorder splicing) could be squeezed into that, but they were way too precise in their demands and limited in their feedback.

Wracking your brain is a good exercise, it makes the game much more interactive, rather than "oh the solution is right here."

I'm not really sure what Lucas games you're thinking of in this regard. I don't remember finding Sierra games particularly more difficult than Lucas games -- if anything, I think I struggled more with the latter. It's just that the way I played Sierra games tended to involve constant saving and hotspot hoovering.

I've always looked at LucasArts as being the more accessible, family friendly Sierra. Safe games for safe people.

This is the kind of silly sloganeering that got you into trouble the last time. The notion that Sierra's games were somehow edgy, mature products compared to Lucas games is nonsensical. It's true that you had sophomoric stuff like LSL, but for the most part Sierra's games were incredibly adolescent in their humor and their drama. I mean, the pinnacle of Sierra's catalogue to most fanboys is KQ6, which manages to combine a yuk-yuk cross-dressing sequence with "a single tear." The best Sierra games are the ones least interested in the adolescent image of maturity: the Quest for Glory series.

I consider Loom to be "self important".

Well, you are entitled to consider the moon to be made of cheese, but I don't think you'd be right there, either. It's true that Loom has a couple dubious things ("Music by Tchaikovsky" struck me as pretentious even as a kid), but it's not even in the same ballpark as GK2. Honestly, I think you'd have to delve deep in jRPGs to find anything that could even brush up against GK2 in this regard.

I find Space Quest to be a much more invigorating space-themed adventure game than say Loom.

Well, since Loom isn't a "space-themed adventure game" . . . .

the stories they told were zany and more like a cartoonized version of real life than anything else

?

I have no idea what this even means. No Lucas games even remotely resemble real life except for, I guess, The Dig. (Incidentally, The Dig might be your best bet for self-importance in Lucas.) Certainly many of them are like cartoons, though.

I guess I just don't get the need for the fanboyism/zealotry. If your dedication to the cause makes it impossible for you to enjoy Lucas games, the only blows you're inflicting are on yourself.

--EDIT--

LucasArts' games are basically, in my opinion, Myst-type games with characters. No risk, no real reward.

Paging Crooked Bee

 

[SCO]

I see a lot of lucasarts lovers complaining about 'instant death' like it's the major sin sierra made.

No. I don't see it. You can't have, say, QFG without 'instant death', and all those funny jokes making fun of the player for being a dumbass being gone.
I think it's exactly that the problem. Putting the player on a pedestal so that his mistakes and idiocy is rewarded with a pat on the head and a joke is the anomalous design zeitgeist. No game that calls itself a game allows a player to be dumb and essentially rewarded for it. Sierra deaths are funny, sometimes further the story and are punishing (if you're a idiot that doesn't save after major puzzles anyway, or doesn't understand the story at all in cases like at the end of Laura Bows).

Even if the result of the two is essentially the same (if you save), the feel is different. I don't like the feel that the gameworld is accommodating the MC.

Also a lucasarts 'puzzle reset' joke can be fun (but usually isn't) but it will never show a 'long perspective' of what comes after your MC is gone, which i quite like in the Sierra deaths.

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I see a lot of lucasarts lovers complaining about 'instant death' like it's the major sin sierra made.

No. I don't see it. You can't have, say, QFG without 'instant death', and all those funny jokes making fun of the player for being a dumbass being gone.
I think it's exactly that the problem. Putting the player on a pedestal so that his mistakes and idiocy is rewarded with a pat on the head and a joke is the anomalous design zeitgeist. No game that calls itself a game allows a player to be dumb and essentially rewarded for it. Sierra deaths are funny, sometimes further the story and are punishing (if you're a idiot that doesn't save after major puzzles anyway).

Even if the result of the two is essentially the same (if you save), the feel is different. I don't like the feel that the gameworld is accommodating the MC.

Also a lucasarts 'puzzle reset' joke can be fun (but usually isn't) but it will never show a 'long perspective' of what comes after your MC is gone, which i quite like in the Sierra deaths.

Pretty much what I was trying to get across. I do not feel there is any urgency or risk involved in LucasArts' games. As noted above, idiocy is rewarded in LucasArts games, and the player is a special snowflake who shouldn't be criticized for doing something dumb.

 

[SCO]

I wouldn't go so far. Idiocy is rewarded in both. I actively seek deaths in sierra games. It's worthy content too. It's just a question of the gameworld logic really. Doing a sequence like the voodoo complex at the end of Gabriel Knight 1 without 'instant death' would feel absurd and stupid. Suddenly the game world would need to operate in cartoon logic for that to be believable, or Gabriel 'assuming control' and refusing to go out or 'escaping' back to the start when you fuck up (i think i remember some sequences like this in Indiana Jones and those games HAD deaths sometimes - i guess when the situation was too absurd to escape).
Monkey Island 1 and 2 end sequences works because both games are practically cartoons and Guybrush is constantly breaking the 4th wall and doing stuff by himself. GK1 is a pulp thriller.

Both designs are (more) fit for different genres, it's not like you can't use one or the other either (i think there are some inappropriate 'deaths' - gameovers - in ecoquest iirc). Rules are boring anyway - just announce your design intentions and start as you intend to continue.

Is it any coincidence that Lucasarts never made a horror adventure (even if games like say, the Dig have p gruesome sequences)?

 

[MRY]

I think adventure games almost always need some kind of distancing mechanism to remind players that they aren't simulations, and fun insta-deaths aren't so bad for that purpose. They have the downside of making you save constantly, which is a bad kind of distancing I think, and my experience is that they tended to result in somewhat simpler puzzle designs, but that might be coincidental. If insta-deaths are predictable or at least reasonably fair, I don't think they hurt much.

Really you can build an adventure game around any set of conventions as long as you respect the conventions when crafting the narrative and feel of the game, and as long as the conventions aren't things like ping-pong pseudo-puzzles or endless checklist dialogues. The problem arises when you don't respect the conventions -- you can't have no-death, a serious story, and mortal peril without some fancy footwork, for example. I remember a ridiculous scene in The Longest Journey where you're being chased by some monster around a platform, only it can't kill you, so the whole thing feels like, I dunno, a Buster Keaton scene or something, especially with the herky-jerky animation. The ending of Loom, which I think is generally pretty strong, suffers from a similar problem: if you solve all the puzzles quickly, it feels well-paced and powerful, but if you get stumped, suddenly it's ridiculous that Chaos just sits there cooling her heels. Similarly, I think Gabriel Knight's stories never were suited to Sierra-style adventure game design. I mean, I don't think the stories were great to begin with, but when you couple them with the ways in which you interact with the game, they come across as particularly silly. Broken Sword does a better job of taking a similar kind of story and fitting it to the conventions of the game. KQ6 I also think is too serious for the gameplay.

Generally, I think Lucas achieved a better harmony in this regard. But that might be one of the reason that their games are kind of same-y. Sierra tried a lot of different kinds of settings and stories, and most of them work poorly; because they work poorly, Sierra games often compare unfavorably, but they're definitely more differentiated. I do think they managed to nail it a few times, though. SQ4, QFG, KQ5. I don't love KQ5, but I think its gameplay foibles pair nicely with the fable/fairy-tale setting.

 

[SCO]

Brofisted and then unbrofisted for shitalking Gabriel Knight. You better put in a whole essay justifying why the whole series puzzles don't fit in with the narrative type if you want to be taken seriously in that assertion (besides cat mustache puzzle that obviously traumatized you).

Police quest... now there is a bad series, produced based on a bad idea of realism, painstakingly and lovingly detailed.
(Even at its own game, sadistic 'rogue' adventures like KGB spank it shamelessly and more entertainingly).

 

[Infinitron]

IMO people fixate too much on the deaths and "walking-dead" stuff when comparing LucasArts and Sierra.

If the LucasArts games were better, it was chiefly because they had superior world and puzzle design. Monkey Island 2's "open world of puzzle solving" structure is unparalleled, and their other games like the first Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle had the same kind of thing, albeit on a less epic scale. If you look at some of the most popular Sierra games, they tend to be the ones that most closely replicated that structure . King's Quest VI even has a similar "island hopping" structure. (I'm surprised that more people don't mention that similarity.)

Now, not all of the LucasArts game were like that. For example, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. But somehow that game ended up feeling like more like a "foil" to the classic design, like the exception that proves the rule, rather than overshadowing it (and it also had areas that cleaved more closely to traditional design like Atlantis, an area which in retrospect feels like a prelude to The Dig). But if all the LucasArts games had been like that, they would have been remembered quite differently.

P.S. If you're smart, you might be able to infer from this post that I think the King's Quest series as a whole is somewhat underrated.

 

[SCO]

Not a very convincing argument because many many games in both companies had 'open worlds' except for obvious plot critical areas, usually gated by plot progression.
The reason many later adventures gated their progression in ever smaller areas was to diminish combinations and even games like MI2 mostly depended on a gentleman's agreement that most of the critical puzzles could be solved only with access to the respective area, except for the final puzzle which requires all of them solved.


Frankly this simplified design is the spiritual predecessor of what is considered bad design in the codex of 'fetch 4 starmaps from 4 planets' in bioware.
Not that i'm saying it's bad, but i don't see anything that makes it automatically good. So if you get stuck you can go do something else. Good.... I guess? Not very exciting. Some Sierra games bait and switch in this regard by hinting at it with open maps while not really delivering in most situations i guess, by locking you into solving a puzzle once starting solving them like Conquests of the Longbow, but that's just obvious setting logic.

 

[Infinitron]

Not a very convincing argument because many many games in both companies had 'open worlds'

I'm sure they did. It is the traditional structure of adventure games going back to Zork, after all. But IMO LucasArts' catalog became identified with that structure in a way that Sierra's didn't. If you look at the chronology of the classic Sierra adventure games from a high level, what you see is the King's Quest games trying to cleave to the traditional "open world of puzzles" structure and then a bunch of offshoots going in various directions, often a narrower/more linear one, rather than trying to hone that classic design. The exceptions to this are some of Sierra's most popular games (QFG1, QFG4).

But yeah, this is my opinion. That feeling of a "happy hunting ground", a world full of things to interact with and puzzles to solve, is the essence of classic adventure games that I think all modern adventure games fail to replicate. Clearly, not all people agree with this since some people think Space Quest 4 is the best Space Quest and one of Sierra's best games.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Perhaps I'm misreading you Infini, but I seriously disagree with the comparison between KQVI and MI2. Superficially they're similar in navigation, but, as SCO touched on, MI2 is closer to hub-based design, whereas KQVI (and I fucking love that game to death and will gladly get in an internet war with MRY or any other detractor) is actually one of the most linear adventure games I've ever played (aside from the obvious branches for the endgame).

 

[Infinitron]

Perhaps that's true (I suspect "one of the most linear adventure games you've ever played" is a large exaggeration), but superficial similarities count for something too.

 

[SCO]

One argument that you could have made is that since Lucasarts thought of their puzzle failure states as non-terminal (never end in death even if they have to finagle some absurd cartoon reset) they were well positioned to cater for your preferred 'open world' design by being possible to interrupt a puzzle at any time even if it's some supposedly critical stuff.
While Sierra would likely lock you into solving the sequence if it didn't kill you outright for doing wrong, so if they have no incentive to have many alternate puzzles if the player is less likely to notice the point of decision and it's not useful to him if he gets stuck (can't go solve the other one without reloading).


This is a function of how the respective companies dealt with their settings. Sierra is much more narrative, in that time proceeds along how you'd expect (even if, it's you know, fake) and characters react as real people. If Robin captures a black monk robe today, he's gotta infiltrate the black monk fortress today, both because the monk was expected 'today' and because the monk will report the stolen robe when released 'tomorrow'.
In monkey island in a similar situation the monk would just give up and go the the pub drink his sorrows away or there would be another puzzle to deal with him later on, or he would be knocked out 'forever' in a eternal 'now' until, at least, the puzzle is solved.

IIRC in this situation in Conquests of the longbow, you could choose which one of the disguises you want to steal 'today' and thus which one of the places you want to infiltrate, so there is a choice, it's just set in stone after decision.

Different puzzle requirements affect narrative freedom and tone substantially i think. A hard requirement like 'no player deaths' is already implying certain things about it, much less 'any puzzle can be left half-way through'. I'm not saying that these effects are bad or good.
But i think it's not a coincidence that Lucasarts preferred comical settings and even when making a game like Fate of Atlantis, played fast and loose with time to the point stuff looked cartoonish when it really shouldn't (like Indiana making multiple voyages to iceland/açores for example).