Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

sea · Feb 11, 2014

Infinitron said:
The bit about player agency is something that people who look at design from a utilitarian "mechanics-centric" RPG perspective don't really get. To wit:

I wonder if J.E. Sawyer would say something similar.

I never said player agency is a bad thing in an adventure game. Rather what I said was that interface complexity and depth of mechanics facilitating player agency are not the same thing.

Moreover, I have played few to no adventure games that actually made good use of the old verb interfaces. Often it would lead to, confusingly, situations where two similar verbs would produce different results despite both intuitively being expected to do the same thing. It's a nice thing to have "in theory" but I have seen so few games take advantage of it in interesting ways. At best it tends to be employed up for humour ("pick up cat, push cat on trombone" etc.), and the valid choices are the most obvious ones.

Infinitron · Feb 11, 2014

You still don't get it.

The "use" of them is really about their form, not their functionality. I don't WANT to click on things. I want to _push_ them. I want to play a game that gives me that precision.

What you're saying is equivalent to saying that third person and first person perspectives are equally good for stealth games because you can almost always lean in first person games without being seen when you want to see what's around a corner.

OK, yes, maybe that's true, but I wanted to lean goddammit.

Sceptic · Feb 11, 2014

Infinitron said:
The "use" of them is really about their form, not their functionality. I don't WANT to click something and guess what will happen. I want to _push_ something. I want to be able to tell the game that that was what I wanted.

And this is why parsers are awesome :smug:

No really. Well, good ones at least (see later Infocom and Legend for the best ones). If it's a button you push it, if it's a wheel you turn it, if it's a card you swipe it, if it's a rope you attach it... I said this much earlier in this thread, that having to tell the game what you want to do makes you think about the problem and how to solve it. Of course this requires good parser/verbs/whatever, and I think this is why both developers and some users don't like it: it's a lot more work for the devs, and if it's not done well you get a shitty and obtuse interface that gets in your way and makes you get stumped even though you know what you want to do, but the interface is limited and doesn't understand it.

When done well though, it's a hell of a lot more satisfying than simply clicking on everything.

sea · Feb 11, 2014

Infinitron said:
You still don't get it.

The "use" of them is really about their form, not their functionality. I don't WANT to click on things. I want to _push_ them. I want to play a game that gives me that precision.

Okay, got it. Problem is most adventure games are point-and-click.

Infinitron said:
What you're saying is equivalent to saying that third person and first person perspectives are equally good for stealth games because you can almost always lean in first person games without being seen when you want to see what's around a corner.

No it's not.

Darth Roxor · Feb 11, 2014

sea said:
Infinitron said:

What you're saying is equivalent to saying that third person and first person perspectives are equally good for stealth games because you can almost always lean in first person games without being seen when you want to see what's around a corner.

Click to expand...

No it's not.

Yes it is.

sea · Feb 11, 2014

Darth Roxor said:
Yes it is.

Darth Roxor · Feb 11, 2014

Good morning!

I can't continue this argument unless you brofist me.

hiver · Feb 13, 2014

Overall score on RPS:

it’s been funded by adventure game hardcore types but its eyes are apparently on the massively mainstream mega-cashpot.

- sounds familiar.

Infinitron · Feb 13, 2014

RPS review: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/12/broken-age-part-1-review/

John: Yeah.

So then, we’re agreed, 10/10, the greatest adventure game since the last time we remember playing an adventure game which was in about 1998 maybe! Wait, no, sorry, I was thinking of ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE ELSE.

Alec: But yes, on budget, it’s almost impossible to shake off concerns that they switched course to pursue a crossplatform megahit rather than simply meet the expectations of their original backers. Perhaps that’s fine; perhaps if it works it will help open the door to more structurally ambitious adventures for a wider audience.

It’s a hard game to judge until it is complete, and until its repercussions are known. It feels a lot like watching the pilot episode of a new TV show with promise and not yet feeling like you’ve clicked with the cast, but feeling a dim compulsion for more.

John: Yeah. I really hope I can tear up a lot of my negative impressions by the time we see the full game. Unfortunately, for now, this is all we’ve got.

Alec: Yes, essentially it feels like a pulled punch. Though I do have affection for the fact that someone is trying to throw that punch at this level. Which is not the same as giving it a free pass because of who’s making it – it’s just giving them a little more patience because they are trying to make this genre feel different without abandoning its roots. Just got to hope they’re planning to push players harder in the latter stages

John: I don’t think I agree. I think there are plenty of adventure games about at the moment, and what I wanted from the man who’s the best at them in the world was another game to love as much as DOTT or Psychonauts.

Alec: I mean in terms of making people want to play because it looks beautiful and strange, rather than because it’s an adventure game. Unfortunately the latter creates huge expectations, an albatross they hung around their own neck.

John: See, I think the issue is there are other beautiful adventure games, and this one really has abandoned the genre’s roots. I think that gets to the nub of my issue.

Alec: I suppose one does have to wonder if they’ve looked at the Telltale games doing well commercially and decided they need to be emulating them more than they do early Lucasarts,

John: Who knows.

AND THAT WILL DO.

Alec: 10/10

Cyberarmy · Feb 13, 2014

Infinitron · Feb 13, 2014

Cyberarmy said:
10/10
....
......
........
Purple really need to take over the world...

...they're being tongue-in-cheek. RPS doesn't give out scores.

Cyberarmy · Feb 13, 2014

Infinitron said:
Cyberarmy said:

10/10
....
......
........
Purple really need to take over the world...

Click to expand...

...they're being tongue-in-cheek. RPS doesn't give out scores.

Oh, wow. Derp.
That happens when you try to read with tons of work in your hands.

Infinitron · Feb 13, 2014

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/12/broken-age-part-1-review/#comment-1469905

fupjack says:

The whole “there needs to be a to-look-at action” and “The puzzles were too easy” sort of attitude confuses me. Harder puzzles just means lots more people don’t finish the game. That’s a crazy problem to give yourself when it’s a 2-part game and you want people to pick up the sequel.

That was one of the problems with adventure games – people get stumped and give up. Grim Fandango is really neat but I’ve never been able to make it to the end. It seems a sort of false goal to aspire to, as in it means less people see the story – which is the point of it, not the puzzle exercises.

Reply

12/02/2014 at 22:52lautalocos says:

i too also prefer easier adventure games. i tried many times with the genre, but almost always i was drawn away by trying every obeject against every object against every item in my inventory.

with broken age i didnt have that problem. but still, i really didn´t find anything particularly good in the game.

again, im not someone that likes this genre a lot, so my opinions is different that most people.

Reply

13/02/2014 at 03:28malkav11 says:

I heartily agree with you, and since I found Broken Age’s world(s) lovely and intelligent and very worth exploring and the story nuanced and surprising, I was pleased to see that the puzzles were largely gentle, flowing affairs where exploration and poking at things naturally revealed the appropriate courses of action. This is and always has been how I enjoy adventure game puzzles. Puzzles where I am flat out stumped for any length of time and have to put things down or go elsewhere are moodbreakers and roadblocks to fun, imho.

That’s not to say I dislike puzzles, only that I don’t think adventure games benefit from really brain-burning puzzles, especially given that it’s far more common for me to get stuck on them because of missing a clickable pixel or explorable area or failing to grok all my options because of strange and/or illogical interactions than it is for them to be legitimately challenging. I’d much rather get my puzzles in the form of a straight up puzzle game that’s got each puzzle laid out all at once and has clear cut rules that I have to master, like in games like the DROD series or Picross. (Also, fuck real-time puzzles, not that that’s particularly common in adventure games. Just saying.)

That said, the peach puzzle was the one place I was stuck in Broken Age, and it’s because it’s possible to get the peach long before you have any idea what to do with it and then dispose of it equally well in advance. I eventually figured that they must have left the ability to return to the clouds for a reason and poked around until I hit the peaches again, but, ugh.

Reply

13/02/2014 at 07:27Lars Westergren says:

Well written. I agree completely with everything you said.

FeelTheRads · Feb 13, 2014

Harder puzzles just means lots more people don’t finish the game.

Games. You don't play games, they play you.

J_C · Feb 13, 2014

This was a good read. I can agree with most of the things they said.

Eyeball · Feb 13, 2014

How about a compromise on game difficulty: Make the puzzles reasonably challenging but add an in-game hint system that can nudge you in the right direction. The 3rd Runaway game had something like this and it worked pretty well. It could also have multiple layers of hinting. If, for instance, you needed to use a crowbar on a locked chest, the game would initially tell you "wow, I wish I had something to pry that chest open with" and finally leading up to "use the crowbar on the chest, retard!"

suejak · Feb 13, 2014

So what does the Codex do when everybody agrees with them?

Curious_Tongue · Feb 13, 2014

Eyeball said:
How about a compromise on game difficulty: Make the puzzles reasonably challenging but add an in-game hint system that can nudge you in the right direction. The 3rd Runaway game had something like this and it worked pretty well. It could also have multiple layers of hinting. If, for instance, you needed to use a crowbar on a locked chest, the game would initially tell you "wow, I wish I had something to pry that chest open with" and finally leading up to "use the crowbar on the chest, retard!"

As long as it was an "opt in" feature.

suejak · Feb 15, 2014

#62 and dropping...

I think what really killed the game was its lack of a "cool" factor. They went mainstream gameplay but didn’t go mainstream content. The game is built to be played by anybody, but it’s not the kind of game that kids or even adults will tell each other about, like Full Throttle or Grim or even Psychonauts. It doesn't have an exciting hook concept, and it's not that funny.

I'm not sure if that's "non-mainstream," "not cool," or just plain... "boring". It's unspectacular in almost every way, and I can't see myself recommending it to anyone who isn't an adventure fan.

It’s 100%, “Hey, did you try that new Tim Schafer game?” It’s never, “Hey, did you try this cool and hilarious new game?”

Metro · Feb 19, 2014

Derple Fine already handing out coupons for this abomination. Got two 25% off ones in my Steam inventory just know. I guess for owning Costume Quest and Psychonauts or something.