Why did adventure games die?

[Dexter]

The paragraph about Daedalic might be out of date now.

Anything in particular happened to them while I wasn't looking other than being majority-acquired by Bastei Lübbe?

I haven't played some of their late games, but afaik they recently released a game that looks pretty much like an "old-school" Adventure:


And they were also working on Silence: The Whispered World 2, which while the art style is somewhat miserable in comparison to the Original still seems very Adventure-y:


And they're apparently also working on this:

 

[Infinitron]

Dexter See the last chapter here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10070

 

[Dexter]

Dexter See the last chapter here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10070

Eh, that sounds a lot like , but as long as they are producing 2-3 other normal Adventures we'll have to wait and see. So far it doesn't seem to be the sign that they're already going full retard.

By the way, I have a thread idea stemming from a long rant on the Double Fine forums a while back, what would the basic Eras of "Adventure games" be that you'd divide them in e.g.:

- Text Adventures - mid 70s/early 80s (Zork)
- AGI-style early CGA (160x200) - late 80s (King's Quest, Space Quest)
- EGA Adventures (300x200) - late 80s (Maniac Mansion, Space Quest III)
- QVGA Adventures (320x200) - early 90s (Secret of Monkey Island, King's Quest V)
- Improved QVGA Adventures (320x200) - Mid 90s (Sam&Max: Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, Discworld)
- VGA/Animated Adventures (640x480) - Late 90s (Curse of Monkey Island, Discworld II, Toonstruck)
- Early 3D Adventures - Around the 00s to Mid 00s (Grim Fandango, Discworld Noir, Escape from Monkey Island)
- Hand-painted 2D Adventure games - Early 00s - Today (Tony Tough, Runaway, The Whispered World, Deponia)
- Late 3D Adventure games - Early 00s - Today (Syberia, Largo Winch, Frogware Sherlock Holmes, Telltale Sam & Max)
- Reinvented AGS Pixel Adventure games - Late 00s - Today (Gemini Rue, Primordia)

Special Needs tier:
- 3D First Person/Puzzle Games - throughout 90s (Myst, Riven, Uru)
- FMV / Interactive movie games - Mid 90s (Phantasmagoria, 7th Guest)
- QTE-fest Interactive movies - 10s-Today (The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones)

And while we're at it, this is a good series about the History of Adventure games, although I disagree with a lot of the late commentary:

 

[GrainWetski]

Eh, that sounds a lot like , but as long as they are producing 2-3 other normal Adventures we'll have to wait and see. So far it doesn't seem to be the sign that they're already going full retard.

2 out of 4 of their upcoming games are Telltale trash(Modern Adventure is what they call them) and 1 is "Exploration Adventure", whatever that is supposed to be. The latter looks like a 3rd person platformer or something.

There's also still plenty of time for them to turn The Devil's Men into a "Modern Adventure" if they haven't done so already.

 

[Sceptic]

Eh, that sounds a lot like , but as long as they are producing 2-3 other normal Adventures we'll have to wait and see. So far it doesn't seem to be the sign that they're already going full retard.

They've been awfully quiet about Devil's Men since last year's Gamescon, which makes me wonder if it's been quietly killed or being "rearranged" into something more next-gen. The rest of the stuff they're working on seems mostly Telltale-style garbage.

By the way, I have a thread idea stemming from a long rant on the Double Fine forums a while back, what would the basic Eras of "Adventure games" be that you'd divide them in e.g.:

I think you've got some of the timing wrong (AGI was more early and mid-80s, in 1988 Sierra started using SCI, same time that Lucas started making SCUMM games), but I don't feel terribly comfortable with the splitting because there's a lot of overlap. AGI adventures and text adventures coexisted for almost a decade, and even when "EGA adventures" came in Infocom were still making text adventures, and then Legend took over and produced some of the finest games in the genre up to the early 90s. Also, the division here is entirely graphical - for all intents and purposes Tony Tough is a "VGA/animated adventure", whether in style, design or even graphic resolution. Not sure what you refer to as "hand painted" either, since that's how almost every single one of the VGA adventures (both "early" and "improved" in your classification) used hand-painted backgrounds.

Still there's definitely a trend in terms of how games moved from text or graphic with parser to point and click graphic to 3D, and how the reaction to the 3D gameplay specifically made those games keep the 3D visuals but go back to a more traditional point and click, at the same time that text adventures experienced a massive indie revival (early 2000s), as did "pixel" adventures (5 Days a Stranger and so on), while even bigger companies went back to producing 2D background point and clicks (Wadget Eye, Daedalic, etc).

Of course all of this then channels back into TWD-style "interactive" movies, ie the return of FMV (not-)gameplay, except with everything in 3D.

 

[Dexter]

I think you've got some of the timing wrong (AGI was more early and mid-80s, in 1988 Sierra started using SCI, same time that Lucas started making SCUMM games), but I don't feel terribly comfortable with the splitting because there's a lot of overlap. AGI adventures and text adventures coexisted for almost a decade, and even when "EGA adventures" came in Infocom were still making text adventures, and then Legend took over and produced some of the finest games in the genre up to the early 90s. Also, the division here is entirely graphical - for all intents and purposes Tony Tough is a "VGA/animated adventure", whether in style, design or even graphic resolution. Not sure what you refer to as "hand painted" either, since that's how almost every single one of the VGA adventures (both "early" and "improved" in your classification) used hand-painted backgrounds.

Still there's definitely a trend in terms of how games moved from text or graphic with parser to point and click graphic to 3D, and how the reaction to the 3D gameplay specifically made those games keep the 3D visuals but go back to a more traditional point and click, at the same time that text adventures experienced a massive indie revival (early 2000s), as did "pixel" adventures (5 Days a Stranger and so on), while even bigger companies went back to producing 2D background point and clicks (Wadget Eye, Daedalic, etc).

Of course all of this then channels back into TWD-style "interactive" movies, ie the return of FMV (not-)gameplay, except with everything in 3D.

Yeah, some of the split is a bit arbitrary (although I feel there is a clear and noticeable difference in mechanics and technology between the likes of pure Text Adventures, early text parser AGI in CGA, then Point & Click EGA to put them into different categories), but I'd like to differentiate some of the others from early "Animated" Adventure games held in 640x480 and "limited" due to display technology like Curse of Monkey Island or Discworld II to the "High Definition" handpainted Adventure games that came after mostly from Europe like Runaway, Deponia, Memoria, The Whispered World etc.

I'd like to make a topic with a Poll, basically laying out the different categories and letting people vote on what they think the best period of "Adventure games" was and what they'd like to see more of and I think there's enough of a technological/qualitative and thematic split between the kinds.

Here's the rant I was talking about and what I have to work with, there's probably quite a bunch of mistakes and inaccuracies in it yet (like the one with Tony Tough, that was a bad on my part, it indeed fits with its 640x480 VGA brethren and came out in about that time period, I must've misremembered what it was since I played it quite a long time ago):

Spoiler

This didn’t get my vote because I reject the very notion that something like Broken Age is an “evolution” of the Adventure game genre, when it is pretty clear that it is an offshoot instead of “the norm” and was discussed at length in other topics like here: http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/12483/


There was also a thread with a documentary regarding the history of Adventure games in this thread over here and while it is not entirely accurate in the latter parts it did get a lot of things right early on: http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/6621/

See also: http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/10/gaming-evolution/5/

Here is also a very helpful chronological list of graphical Adventure games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_graphic_adventure_games


Basically the genre started off with Text Adventures during the mid-70s and early 80s like Zork:

Then the term “Adventure” and the legacy was pretty much coined with the AGI style games rendered in 160x200 and early CGA era graphics starting with King’s Quest in 1984 which mostly still relied on text parsers though they had a graphical representation of what was happening:

Then continued the EGA style Adventures in 320x200 and with them improved colors and clickable interfaces/verbs with Maniac Mansion (1987), Zak McKracken (1988) and Space Quest III (1989) that also supported mouse movement:

Various other influential titles from these eras: King’s Quest I-IV (1984-1988), Space Quest I-III (1986-1989), Shadowgate (1987), Police Quest 1-2 (1987/1989), Leisure Suit Larry 1-3 (1987-1989), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Quest for Glory 1-2 (1989/1990), Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail (1990)


And finally early QVGA Adventures in 320x200 and beyond like The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), King’s Quest V (1990), Leisure Suit Larry 5-6 (1991/1993) or the Re-release of Loom (1991):

Various other influential titles from this era: King’s Quest V-VI (1990/1992), Space Quest IV-V (1991/1993), Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood (1991), Gobliins 1-3 (1991-1993), Lure of the Temptress (1992), Star Trek: 25th Anniversary/Judgment Rites (1992/1993), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992), Quest for Glory 3-4 (1992/1993)


Other titles like Sam&Max;: Hit the Road (1993), Day of the Tentacle (1993), Simon the Sorcerer (1993), Full Throttle (1995) or Discworld (1995) largely stayed at these low pixel resolutions but improved and refined the art and drawing style, as well as the interface a lot:

Various other influential titles from this era: The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel (1992), Gabriel Knight (1993), Beneath a Steel Sky (1994), Death Gate (1994), Legend of Kyrandia 3: Malcolm’s Revenge (Pre-Rendered 3D) (1994), Simon the Sorcerer II (1995), The Dig (1995), Flight of the Amazon Queen (1995), Kingdom O’Magic (Pre-Rendered 3D) (1996), Chewy: Escape from F5 (1997)


Then there was the sub-genre of 3D First Person Adventure/Puzzle games that Myst created in 1993 and was continued with titles like Riven (1997) and Uru (2003), which had a lot of clones over the years and is especially getting a resurgence nowadays with a lot of Indie titles like Dream, Homesick, Montague’s Mount, Obduction, Ether One, Cradle, Kairo, The Witness, XING and so on but I’m not sure I would effectively call a part of the “Graphic Adventure” game genre.


And there was the Mid-90s obsession with FMV (Full Movie Video) or Interactive movie games sparked by the popularity of the CD-ROM that had been bubbling since the early 80s on laserdiscs with titles like Dragon’s Lair or Space Ace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interactive_movies with titles like 7th Guest , Rebel Assault, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within or Urban Runner usually running at common 640x480 VGA resolution and kind of dying off in the late 90s, although I guess titles like Fahrenheit or the late Heavy Rain/Beyond: Two Souls could be counted as a 3D continuation of the particular sub-genre.


Later titles like Discworld II (1996), Toonstruck (1996) or Curse of Monkey Island (1997) kept a more detailed painterly/comic drawing style at VGA resolution (640x480):

Various other influential titles from this era: Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth (1994), King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994), Torin’s Passage (1995), Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier (1995), The Next Generation – A Final Unity (1995), I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (1995), Beavis and Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity (1995), Shannara (1995), Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! (1996), The Neverhood (Claymation) (1996), The Gene Machine (1996), Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (1996), Ace Ventura (1996), Orion Burger (1996), Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997), Tony Tough (1997), The Last Express (1997), The Feeble Files (1997), Jack Orlando (1997), Blade Runner (1997), Sanitarium (1998), The Longest Journey (Pre-Rendered 3D) (1999), Gilbert Goodmate (2001)


Finally we had the largely dreaded early 3D Adventure game era largely driven by the success of the PlayStation and later PlayStation 2 and the subsequent death of the Adventure genre in the “Mainstream” with a few titles managing to pull it off relatively well aside from the controls like Grim Fandango (1998) or Discworld Noir (1999):

And others not so much like Quest for Glory V (1998), Escape from Monkey Island (2000), Simon the Sorcerer 3D (2002) and so on that were merely a pale imitation of what people loved about them in the first place.

Various other influential titles from this era: King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity (1998), Gabriel Knight 3 (1999), Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2001), Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (2003), Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (2004), Fahrenheit (2005), Broken Sword: The Angel of Death (2006)


And here’s where we diverge in opinion, because during this time there were largely still European companies continuing to produce mediocre/moderate to high-quality hand-painted 2D Adventure games: Runaway 1-3 (2001-2009), Clever & Smart – A Movie Adventure (2004), Secret Files Tunguska 1-3 (2006-2012), A Vampyre Story (2008), So Blonde (2008), Edna bricht aus (2008), Machinarium (2009), Emerald City Confidential (2009), The Whispered World (2009), Hector: Badge of Carnage (2010), A New Beginning (2010), Gray Matter (2010), Jolly Rover (2010), The Next Big Thing (2011), Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav (2011), Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle (2012), Deponia 1-3 (2012-2013), Yesterday (2012), Broken Sword 5 (2013), The Night of the Rabbit (2013), Memoria (2013)


As well as 3D Adventure games: Syberia 1-2 (2001/2004), Largo Winch (2002), Sherlock Holmes Series by Frogwares (2002-2014), Black Mirror 1-2 (2003/2009), Still Life 1-2 (2005/2009), Ankh 1-3 (2005-2007), Dreamfall (2006), Tony Tough 2 (2006), Sam & Max Seasons by Telltale (2006-2010), Jack Keane 1-2 (2007-2013), Ceville (2009), Wallace and Gromit Adventures by Telltale (2008), Tales of Monkey Island by Telltale (2009), Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island (2009), The Book of Unwritten Tales (2009), Back to the Future by Telltale (2010), Haunted (2012), The Raven – Legacy of a Master Thief (2013)


The main difference of the first two categories that most of the late ones have so far been produced with High Definition in mind.


But there are even new Pixel Adventures: 5 Days a Stranger/7 Days a Skeptic/Trillby’s Notes/6 Days a Sacrifice (2003-2007), The Blackwell Series (2006-2014), The Shivah (2006/2013), Ben There Dan That (2008), Gemini Rue (2011), Resonance (2012), Primordia (2012)


With many other KickStarter Adventures incoming, for instance I’ve been playing the Quest for Glory I QVGA Remake from 1991 for the first time since I missed the series when it came out and am currently playing the fan made AGD Remake of Quest for Glory II from 2008 and planning to continue with at least III and IV which were QVGA 320x200 when they were released (and still look relatively great today) in order to play some of the new Quest for Glory-likes that are being released and have something to compare them to.


For instance Heroine’s Quest, which was released not too long ago and is free: http://www.crystalshard.net/hq.htm

And when they come out Quest for Infamy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8HmIJpHudo&hd=1

And Mage’s Initiation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WswY9nmN_gY&hd=1


It’s very presumptuous to assume that just because many of the bigger US publishers and developers haven’t been very interested in the genre for a while it stood still and I see Broken Age more as a dead end than an “evolution” even if that might not be the most popular opinion around here.

I would pick any one of these directions as an "evolution" rather than "Broken Age" style games, of which there aren't very many around.

Especially unsure for instance if folding these two together isn't a better choice, since the differentiation is a bit arbitrary and mostly up to style and graphics refinement, some of them still using extended verb menus at the bottom and others folding everything into a right-click interface menu to display the game in FullScreen like Full Throttle seems like a more pertinent difference:
- QVGA Adventures (320x200) - early 90s (Secret of Monkey Island, King's Quest V)
- Improved QVGA Adventures (320x200) - Mid 90s (Sam&Max: Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, Discworld)

 

[rado907]

I think the adventure genre fell victim mostly to advancing technologies. Especially in terms of graphics, complexity, and responsiveness. The best you could do in terms of graphics in the early 1990s was something along the lines of relatively few sprites floating around a nice background. That worked well for adventure games and side-scrollers. Computing power and ram were limited, and you couldn't do too many calculations in real-time. Before CDs became the norm, physical space was also an issue. I remember installing Doom 2 and Mortal Kombat from multiple floppy discs...

After 1995, 3D became a thing, processors and ram became powerful/bountiful enough to be able to handle relatively sophisticated real-time action, and entire new genres arrived at the scene. The Internet arrived in full force and allowed people to compete online.

So In 1992 the best you could play was Monkey Island or Indiana Jones or Prince of Peria or w/e. Around 1998 you had Fallout, Quake, Starcraft, Halflife, HoMM, Tomb Raider, Fifa, Baldur's Gate, Commandos, GTA1, Championship Manager, and so on.

I liked point-and-clickers well enough, and beat a lot of them. But they are more cartoons than games. They lack the brutal competitiveness of Dota or CS, the grinding of the online RPGs, the exploration of the hiking sims, or the AAA Holywood-level production values of modern shooters. Nowadays point-and-click adventures are at best a niche genre for enthusiasts.

Since adventure games are, essentially, interactive movies, it's possible that 3D shooters and action-adventure titles - like Halflife and Tomb Raider - sort of took over. But that's just speculation on my part.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Every time someone describes adventure games as "interactive movies" God kills a puppy.

Why do you hate puppies so much?

 

[Blackthorne]

Seriously, I feel like most self-proclaimed "adventure game fans" today are just puppy killers.


Bt

 

[Korgoth of Barbaria]

I think Ken and Roberta started that trend. You have Roberta talking back in 1992 how to her an adventure game is a movie where you're the star, the director, and the audience all in one.

 

[hpstg]

I think Ken and Roberta started that trend. You have Roberta talking back in 1992 how to her an adventure game is a movie where you're the star, the director, and the audience all in one.

Only she is the writer and the director, and you have to figure out what she intended.

 

[Archibald]

I think Ken and Roberta started that trend. You have Roberta talking back in 1992 how to her an adventure game is a movie where you're the star, the director, and the audience all in one.

That sounds more elaborate than QTEs that we currently have.

 

[BishopOfBattle]

I'd say that adventure games also died because of the galactic rise of the consoles and the shift in how gameplay works. Stuff like Revolutions "In Cold Blood" were supposed to give the genre the entry in the console market, but almost all adventures of that era did not work out that well and probably - no data available - did also not sell well. I think the classic adventure has problems with providing enough flow for the mainstream players. Constantly having to listen to dialogues and the slow flow of adventure games were slowing getting behind times and were considered a relic. Telltale modernized the Genre with "The Walking Dead" which fixes a lot of problems i've stated before. It has a much better flow than classic adventure games, coming closer to the "interactive movie" (sorry i like puppies...) motive the adventure game companies like sierra postulated in the nineties. I like Telltales games for what they are, but i am still a sucker for Daedalics and Wadjet Eyes Adventure games. Those two companies use exactly the two artstyles of adventure games which i like most, so my taste currently is absolutely met.

 

[Great Deceiver]

 

[Alex]

Being a genre effectively devoid of mechanics adventure games effectively killed themselves by refusing to adapt and grow some, imeaning that:

• They didn't gain anything from new tech, if anything it put them at a huge disadvantage (much more content creation effort, no smart shortcuts possible)
• They didn't expand from their initial near-nil replayability.

A game without mechanics, that relies entirely on canned solutions to canned problems is pretty much dead on arrival. It takes atmosphere/story/humour/art direction of truly titanic proportions merely to make such a game merely salvageable.
With improved tech and expectations for more elaborate or advanced content the combinatorial explosion nips any attempts at more freeform approach in the bud shortly before it gets at the main puzzles-strung-along-story backbone itself.

Which is a damn fucking shame as I would definitely appreciate some games focusing on atmosphere and non-repetitive gameplay, but to really accomplish that and reestablish themselves adventures must embrace the notion of mechanics and think long and hard about how to make one that can actually support gameplay driven by diverse solutions to diverse problems, and yes, it will be hard.
They must also embrace player figuring out different potential solutions rather than trying to win the guess-the-script game.

I think a neat if primitive prototype of such a nu-adventure was AzT, shame it got wrecked as far as sales are concerned when it collided with Quake.

I think you are missing the point on this one DraQ. If I understand you correctly, by mechanics you mean that the game should use some kind of calculation or simulation to create the puzzle and to check for answers, rather than simply checking if a series of pre-determined steps have been taken. For instance, rather than having a room where the player blows up if he enters with an open flame, have some kind of system to simulate the presence of gas, so that the player can try any action that would affect the gas in a room, or could even use the gas to avoid enemies by flooding a room between himself and the enemies with gas. And I think this kind of mechanics could be very good for adventure games. Maybe might even save them from the most common mistakes. But this isn't essential. I think the real problem is that what adventure games are, in themselves, has become muddled, and this has gotten in the way of a whole lot of the games made, in fact, I think it has been getting in the way since before the 90s!

Now, the answer as to why adventure games have died as a commercial genre has been addressed by a lot of other posters. I think the simple economic factors are enough to explain why adventure games, which once were a heavyweight, practically disappeared from the public eye. In fact, game companies themselves changed a lot and I think people don't even see games as they used to see. However, even if they would have low production values, we should still be seeing a few good games come out from smaller companies and independent developers.

I don't want to be unfair, or to sound overly critic. We do get a few nice games every once in a while. Wadjet Eye games released some of the best adventure games I've played that were made in the last decade. And Heroine's Quest was truly great! But all adventure games I've played made in the last 15 years seem to have the same problems: the let their plot and story get in the way of the basic adventure game-play. Despite your claims that adventure games are "dead on arrival", there is a simple but effective gameplay core that is, or was, present in every adventure game, even the Colossal Cave Adventure. In these games, you are always exploring and then using that exploration to solve kind of obstacle. As you explore, the different pieces of the game (items, rooms, npcs, etc) begin to fall together and the solutions to bigger problems begin to become clear.

In a way, every adventure game is a bit of a detective game. A few good examples of this are: the Zork series (and the Spellcaster series as well), the first Tex Murphy game, the Neuromancer game, Deadline from Infocom, Maniac Mansion among many others. This isn't a simple question of solving puzzles. You could get puzzles in a crosswords magazine, or in a math book. The explorative aspect is vital. For instance, in Deadline, it pays to keep track of when certain events happen, so you will be ready for them. Sure, it is meta-knowledge, but it is fun to see how the events develop, to keep track of them, and then to exploit them. In a way, this kind of gameplay was what made tabletop RPGs tick in the early 80s, though to be sure in those games you had a lot more freedom.

The problem is that, in order to fit these games into the role of story games, this gameplay core has been mauled again and again. Today, I finished the first Gabriel Knight game (not the first time I did that, but I played it a few years ago, so most of the experience was fresh). And what I realized is that the day system and the way the game is trying to tell its story keep getting in the way. The need to finish certain tasks, even if you know nothing about them, before certain days end cam make you really lost, and really hampers the exploration aspect. With the story getting in the way of the exploration, it is harder to make it all seem to fit in a big picture. It makes the game feel disjoint. It helps if you keep in mind that everything has a use in game and most stuff isn't there "by chance". But even so in the end you keep solving puzzles only to take Gabriel to the next story part. And that is what I think might be the root of everything. Namely, your in-game actions and the story actions of your character aren't the same thing, and sometimes aren't even related. In Neuromancer, on the other hand, every "story" action was caused directly by the player. Sure, it is a bit disorienting at first, but when you get used to it, it is actually a lot more sensible than most "story" games.

And that is what I think keeps adventure games from a great independent revival. Adventure game fans are way too concerned with the "story" aspect of the game, and the resulting gameplay ends up tending to be too easy and uninspired. In fact, if we look at text adventure games, there is a constant inflow of these every year. But a lot of them focus on storytelling, and they are even called "Interactive Fiction" these days. Games with no gameplay at all frequently claim descendancy from adventure games as well.

 

[SCO]

Just ignore Draq when he spergs about mechanics. He has resting-bitchface about any genre that can't be made 'simulationist' (although it's not true that adventures can't be so and he's very much aware of it, he just considers 'puzzles' not so).

 

[Alex]

Just ignore Draq when he spergs about mechanics. He has resting-bitchface about any genre that can't be made 'simulationist' (although it's not true that adventures can't be so and he's very much aware of it, he just considers 'puzzles' not so).

Well, I think in this case he might have a point. I think that having puzzles with some kind of robust mechanic underneath is one way to help making them part of the exploration and not just logic puzzles. Of course, there are plenty of games out there that have sub-systems that are only used in the shallowest way possible, but still, at least it would make it more obvious what the problem was.

 

[SCO]

I'm still going to prefer a good adventure game without a 'robust mechanic' to one with it. What people like Draq consider 'reading the designer mind' is actually exactly the point of traditional adventures, putting yourself in someone else insane-clownshoes mind.

That's exactly the point of playing a game like Discworld, unfettered freedom of narrative and plot (and puzzles).

Traditional adventures actually tend to have local minimums of fun when they introduce a ill-advised 'standard mechanics' into solitary puzzles (we usually call them mazes or sliding puzzles). If the whole game is designed around the mechanic (like say, ghost trick, or a physics puzzle game), then they can be fine games, but obviously a very different experience than a traditional adventure to the point i wouldn't call them that.

 

[Lord Azlan]

Colossal Cave and Zork

Fate of Atlantis and Monkey Island (just bloody amazing games designed by genius)

Day of the Tentacle - answer me - do you think any young person of today could understand the concepts in this one?

Graphics + consoles = retards

TV + console - easy option for bad parents. PC games of that era required thinking and educating. Above all - thinking time.

Consoles = Megabucks.

I have all of these golden games - except the "Quest" ones - never liked those.

Instant gratification - it is the mantra of our times.