¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not sure what about my calling two of your points strawmen led you to believe this is a life or death struggle.
My belief arose from the method of your posts, which was to throw random accusations of dishonesty while avoiding substantive engagement on any point that could yield fruitful discussion but would not advance your almost-literally-quixotic anti-tree quest. Obviously it's the Codex, but the Codex tends to have two parallel tracks, one in which design ideas are discussed seriously and substantively in the hope of improving the art form, the other in which people mock and provoke each other for the lulz. I had assumed we were on the first track. Was I wrong?
But if you really crave a response, who am I to say no to one of Primordia's great promoters?
Let me start with what I think is the root of the debate. I can't tell if there is genuine miscommunication here, or bad-faith arguing on your side. I'll assume the former.
The way a player "experiences" a game includes many things that are non-mechanical. These include, without limitation: (1) quality of art (provided the art meets a baseline at which objects can be seen and "read"); (2) quality of writing (provided the writing meets a baseline at which mechanically necessary information is no easier or harder to understand); (3) music (except in rare circumstances where there is a musical puzzle); (4) voice acting and most sound effects; (5) many aspects of the interface; and (6) humor.
Thus, you could have a demake of Monkey Island 2 in which unanimated CGA sprites glided around the environment, all text was purely functional, there was no music or sound, and you had to use an XBox controller. The only things changed would be "experiential." But unless you have a rare worldview, you wouldn't say, "That proves that the art, sound, text, and humor of Monkey Island was all superfluous. All the game needed were verbs and objects and gamespace."
It seems like my statement that changing the dialogue method would change the game's "feel" is, to you, a concession of the argument, enough to prompt a victory dance akin to my admitting I just want walking simulators. But, as I hope the above discussion makes clear, "feel" or "experience" is as much a part of what makes a particular game
that particular game as the mechanics. Games with very similiar mechanics can be very different because of the wrapping around those mechanics. You may be part of a tiny percentage of gamers for whom the wrapping is irrelevant, but you can't generalize from that to the idea that wrapping is "superfluous."
In adventure games, dialogue trees have a lot to do with experiential gameplay (what kind of dialogue can be used, the rhythm of the dialogue, and the player's connection to the dialogue) and a little bit to do with mechanical gameplay (some examples have been given, like insult sword fighting or interrogations). To the extent your point is that dialogue trees are mostly superfluous to
mechanical gameplay, then I agree with you. But that can't have been what you meant, because you wrote:
f Ron Gilbert doesn't want to spend his time on something superfluous like that, the more power to him. The game won't stand or fall in virtue of having or not having dialogue trees -- but solely in virtue of being or not being a good adventure game, with good atmosphere, puzzles, and writing.
Except in very rare circumstances, "good atmosphere" and "writing" are also "superfluous" to mechanical gameplay. So presumably you mean something broader about superfluity.
Now, maybe what you mean is, "You can have a great adventure game without dialogue trees, but you cannot have a great adventure game without good writing." But that doesn't seem to me to be true. Dropsy has no "writing" at all, yet I suspect it will be quite good.
You next said:
[D]ialogue trees are superfluous for this subgenre unless you are a 90s dialogue tree fetishist.
From this, I understand you to mean "superfluous" not in a clinical sense (
i.e., "not essential to excellence"), but in a more pejorative sense (
i.e., "pointless"). In fact, that is the sense that I had picked up on earlier on, and to which I was responding.
In trying to figure out if that was what you meant, I gave other examples of mechanics that are not essential to excellence: inventories (
see Loom) and point-and-click controls (
see GF). I asked whether you would say that therefore inventories and point-and-click controls are superfulous to golden-age-style adventure games. Your response is a non-response: you call the question disingenuous, trivial, etc. From this, I conclude that you are not willing to call those elements "superfluous," which means either you don't think Loom and GF are good games (?) or you are using "superfluous" in a pejorative way.
If
that is your meaning (
i.e., that dialogue trees are stupid and worthless), I think you are quite wrong. Dialogue trees permit lengthy inter-character dialogues without stopping the player's interaction. You may think it is entirely coincidental that almost every adventure game (and RPG?) with memorable characters had dialogue trees (obviously, there are a handful of exceptions), but that would be a tremendous coincidence. My position is that it is not coincidental; that dialogue trees are the best alternative to cutscenes for interesting character interactions, and since endless cutscenes are intolerable for most people who are not jRPG fans, dialogue trees are the only way to write such interactions in a good adventure game.
As for who bears the burden of persuasion, I subscribe to the Burkean/Chestertonian view that when you come across a fence in a meadow, you don't tear it down because you can't see a reason for its being there; rather, you need a good reason for its
not being there. Almost every really good golden age adventure game had dialogue trees. You say, "So what, take them out." I say, "Don't take them out unless you are confident that it will not deprive the games of their essential character." That character is not purely mechanical; indeed, I would say that it is
primarily experiential. While players do remember a few puzzles from golden age adventure games, they remember the characters, music, imagery, etc., vividly. Other than the stupid Road Rash segment, I can't remember
any puzzle from Full Throttle, but I can picture the whole game almost start-to-finish. That's not because puzzles are superfluous -- puzzles are the framework on which the whole thing hangs. But the wrapping on that framework is very important.
Finally:
You want dialogue trees because those are more . . . enjoyable to you.
Isn't that what everything boils down to in the end? Are there actually aspects of a game that you want despite them having no impact on your enjoyment of the game? I would think those aspects are
truly superfluous.
Anyway, it's not that dialogue trees in-and-of themselves are enjoyable -- I actually dislike them because I am the kind of player who feels obliged to mine them of everything, which is usually boring and annoying. I like dialogue trees because they facilitate the kinds of stories that I enjoy filled with the kinds of characters I enjoy. Since you yourself said that a "good story" is a
sine qua non of a good adventure game, it seems we're in the same place.
