And Then There Were None - Pros and Cons

[Ethan D]

I know a lot of people on these forums aren't liking the adventure games which are coming out but me personally I loved playing And then there were none.  I played it on the Wii, so that may have helped some things and hurt others.

For instance I loved how when opening doors you had to press the button and turn the wii-mote as if you were actually turning a doorknob which felt cool.  On the other hand there's a bit in the game where you have to open a safe and the sensitivity of the Wii-mote turning made it almost impossible to get the numbers in right, which made it more of a game of skill than intelligence.

Then there's the issue of having to walk about 6 miles to get between the two farthest areas with no shortcuts, and the fact that at one point I'm sure that I had at least 50 inventory items with me, which makes things hopelessly confusing.... (Not to mention that a lot of the items had no use except to give things to certain people and they say something that doesn't help in the least.  Without a clue that your supposed to give the item to them.)

I felt like the immersion was great but only so long as I wasn't doing some sort of puzzle that didn't make sense.  For instance pouring milk on a bunch of thorny vines and having a goat miraculously eat all of them. (about 4 feet high of thorns.....)  If however, I was doing a puzzle that to me made some sense in the context of the game then immersion was great.

Anyway, I was wondering what all of your opinions are on the game.
What worked, what didn't, if you even could finish it. 

[Intense Degree]

I am a big Agatha Christie fan and "And then there were none" is probably my favourite book of hers, so I was definitely looking forward to it.

My first impressions were on the whole good, I really enjoyed being "on the scene" of such a good book, and this meant I wasn't too fussed with the annoyances, of which there were quite a few. Obviously they have messed around with the story and characters quite a bit, which I was prepared for, and I found it really interesting to compare them to those in the book and note how they had adapted the story for an adventure game. The alternate endings were also interesting.

However, I tried to play it again a couple of months ago and found it nigh on unplayable. The puzzles are almost entirely arbitrary, most not serving the story at all, and as you say the ridiculous number of inventory items, the purpose of most of which was entirely unclear, and long distances between locations are a serious problem. It does look quite good and the soundtrack was quite nice in an understated sort of way.

Probably foremost in my complaints is the protagonist (forget his name) who is in no way likeable or memorable and the general feeling of not knowing what to do next or why. In terms of gameplay I think this game fails fairly badly and second time through I gave up after about an hour, not being able to force myself through it again! Nothing in the game is anywhere near interesting enough to justify a second playthrough.

Also i'm more than capable of suspending my disbelief when it comes to the size of adventure game protagonist's pockets but a massive ladder? Really?

Having said that I would still recommend it for anyone who likes the book, but otherwise stay away!

[GarageGothic]

Milk on the thorns? Is that another case of Nintendo censorship? In the PC version it was cider (which also made zero sense). The game didn't make much of an impression on me to be honest. I can barely remember the puzzles except for a few that really annoyed me, and I'm pretty sure I consulted a walkthrough more than once.

The Colonel's Bequest did the whole Agatha Christie thing much better so many years before - Cruise for a Corpse too despite its design flaws. It's remarkable that I still remember pretty much every NPC of those two games, and even have a pretty good understanding of their individual relationships, whereas trying to do the same with And Then There Were None all I recall is a lady getting stung by bees.

My main peeve against ATTWN and most modern mystery games though is that they totally fail in turning detective work into unique and enjoyable gameplay - or simply put, they don't make me feel like a detective. Yeah, I suppose finding clues through pixel hunting is somewhat realistic, but its not very satisfying nor much different from any other subgenre of adventure games. What you do with those clues, how you interpret and cross-reference them should be at the core, and instead we're feeding goats and logic puzzling our way past the world's most impractical and insecure locking devices.

Among recent games (including Still Life - that much loved yarn about an FBI profiler who's too busy running through alleyways and assembling slider puzzles to ever get around to doing any actual profiling), the one detective game that came close to getting its priorities straight was Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper with its focus on crime scene recreation, establishing time lines based on witness statements etc. - but of course not without an unhealthy dose of fetch quests and arbitrary logic puzzles.
Come to think of it, I might very well write an article on this topic. It's been bothering me for ages that current adventure developers consistently choose cool and original occupations for their player characters and then never lets them actually perform their job - usually something that would have been an interesting role for the player to take on and made for innovative puzzles.

[Jared]

Discworld Noir, IMHO, did a great job of making you feel like a detective.

[Radiant]

The Colonel's Bequest did the whole Agatha Christie thing much better so many years before

Hm, the impression I got from TCB is wondering why I should care about all these people with their convoluted relations considering pretty much all of them die and there's nothing you can do about that...

X is blackmailing Y, but then they get killed for unrelated reasons. A has a secret relationship with B, but now they're both dead. That doesn't really make the characters feel relevant, to me.

[GarageGothic]

The thing about TCB is that all the characters are stereotypes, and intentionally so - most of the names are either puns on old movie stars or on fictional characters. But that IS pretty much Agatha Christie for you right there. A bunch of cardboard cutouts that get killed off one by one.

I'm not arguing this is good literature, but in a genre where it's vital to understand the characters' motives it's pretty damn helpful to understand their personalities, shallow as they may be, and also to be able to easily tell them apart. Especially if you have a cast of 10+ characters, most of who will be killed off within a couple of hours.

Would I prefer more sophisticated character development? Yeah, perhaps. I thought GK3 and The Last Express found a nice middle ground between stereotype and individual, allowing for some neat character twists. But in terms of "the whole Agatha Christie thing" I do think both TCB and Cruise for a Corpse get it mostly right, if in a somewhat pastiche Cluedo/Clue kind of way.

[Pandaramaster]

I think using literature as the sole basis for source material on a game is asking for all sorts of headaches. First of all, you would have to condense the majority of character development simply because it wouldn't be cost effective to include every single minute detail of every character. Then you would have to butcher up the flow and pace of the story by sticking on events that doesn't appear in the book and doesn't add anything to the story other than to make the game longer - so there's this mish mash hallowness to the experience. And perhaps my biggest gripe is, I know the ending to the story already so any twists and shocking revelations will have zero impact on me.

What I do like, mind you, is Frogwares' approach of taking literature characters and putting them into new stories and situations. Their Sherlock Holmes games, while not masterpieces, were great entertainment and felt very much in the vain of its source material. While they're not on par with Conan Doyle's seminal work, at least the respect and feel is there.

I don't have any positive feelings towards the Agatha Christie games because I've read all of her books (well, her Poirot books at least) and there's nothing new to gleam from them.

[PhantomNorik]

I actually rather liked the three Agatha Christe adventure games, this one in particular. They're not perfect, but I really enjoyed them. ATTWN the book revolved around the occupants eventually turning on each other. It wasn't really about finding out who did it and wasn't exactly a detective story. For the game, they tried to rewrite it so that it was a solvable detective story and I think they did fairly well with what they had. The plot as it was in the book wouldn't have really worked as a game, as the game needed to preserve the idea of all of the ten occupants possibly being the murderer, so another character was needed. It's not perfect, but rather interesting with a nice atmosphere.

[Ethan D]

I honestly don't think that And Then were none was about the mystery.  I'm speaking of course about the game and not the book.  I don't recall actually solving anything in the game, although I really was trying to figure out who it was.  The clues for who was doing everything seemed pretty arbitrary, and I feel that they should have just kept with the original story.  At least then the twist made sense and was chillingly cool.

I agree about the one dimensional characters (At most 2-dimensional) though, but then how do you make a character with depth who's going to die soon anyway?  And is there really much reason to?

[discordance]

but then how do you make a character with depth who's going to die soon anyway?  And is there really much reason to?

Yes, very much. If a flat character dies I don't care. If they have even a tiny bit of depth I will care a bit more and may actually be interested in the plot.