Do adventure games look like you're in a theater?

[miguel]

Hi guys,

I have a question for you that I consider pertinent regarding the common "look" of the typical AGS game. Developers here follow the way Lucas Arts did their classics. And its understandable, we grew with them and loved it.
But I think that those games belong to an era that can be compared to "silent" movies. There's a scenario, normally having 2 exits West and East and the characters "act" inside. It all looks very theatrical to me. Literally.
It was fantastic to see Guybrush pixels walking around but because it was new. Even hi-res characters were a delight to look on later games but again, it was new and only some games really did it well.
To the point that I wonder if there's any need at all to have characters on screen to involve the player, I mean, it's just a character walking around and picking stuff and even the games I loved to play had me waiting for the "action" to finish. The Longest Journey had me waiting too much although I loved it and it is considered one of the best adventure games ever.
If you've played Heavy Rain you'll know that the graphics were stunning, sometimes even near reality. Yes, it was a good experience but at most of the time it was something similar to AGS Trilby's.
Maybe it's me. But my brain reacts much quicker than what is given to me and even the most detailed animation has me waiting. Too much.
Recently I played some games made by Pastel Games. There's no characters wondering around. Only the author vision of some world. The games are considered casual but my brain gets the same rewards than when playing expensive productions. I do miss the voice work...sometimes. For example, the girl on Gray Matter describing items was hysterical and really annoying to me. I don't need every god damn item do be described, unless it's Dominic Armato.

Are we amateur game makers fighting some Quixotic battle? Can we ever make a walk-cycle good enough to compete with teams of professional animators? Is it really worth the hundreds of hours? Can't we tell the same story using a different approach?
This guy Mateusz Skutnik from Pastel games manages to tell some really cool stories with a minimalistic take on adventuring. When I play his games I see a lot of room to improve and bring together the best of 2 worlds. You get Covert Front that deals with espionage, Submachine games that reshaped the scape the room games and my favourite: Daymare Town, where the author takes you to something that could be part of a Hugo Pratt novel.
And guess what? All easily done with the AGS engine. The mind is the horizon here.

Tell me what you think, please.

[WHAM]

Well, to me at least, games are primarily a way to tell an interesting story while allowing the player to interact with it.
Thus, to me, it makes perfect sense that I have to wait and see what happens, I watch as the story unfolds. We also usually have human beings as the characters of our games, and as art mimics real life, game characters do things at a realistic pace for a human being, thus creating an illusion of time, interactivity and continuity.

I enjoy the slow pace of many games, it gives the player time to think things through, examine details, immerse in the game. While I agree that experimenting is always good, for me, adventure games are just nice as they are now, as playes that unfold before me, allowing me to interact and affect them as they do.

[miguel]

Yes, I understand what you're saying. But I somehow feel the need for change. Most of the time the waiting and character animations feel repetitive to me. Hi-Res games make it worse in that aspect. I loved to watch Lara Croft when it came out but every female character now looks like a copy to me. And I don't feel attached to the characters since Gabriel 3, witch was a bunch of polygons anyway...

[Victor6]

I don't think we're bound to the classic 'stage' format at all. There's first person adventure games and GAK stuff for example.

However, the on screen player character, and it's animations are important ways to build its personality. It's a lot tougher to make people love \ hate a character that only appears as a name in a text window. 1 good animation can be worth 100 pages of back story text.

A simple solution is to include a speed option (or a 'Get on with it!' skip button). However you'd still need to draw everything....

[Rissa]

There are not just a few 1st person games out there.
Look at this German blog: http://1stpersonblog.blogspot.de/
Even if you don't understand the language you can still see that there are quite some 1st person games available, new and old.

In my opinion not all settings or plots are suitable for a 1st person game. I'd have a hard time imagining The longest Journey without April and as a 1st person adventure instead. Or I can't imagine "me" (female, 28) wanting to become a pirate, lusting after several women or saving the world from Baphomet. Having other characters doing these things is a whole different story.
But Horror games for example can be far more shocking if the player is directly involved. Some mysteries (like Sherlock Holmes) work well as 1st and 3rd person adventures.

My personal choice are 3rd person games. I can't really explain it, maybe it's because a lot of 1st person adventures I played have been rather sterile.

[Stupot]

Some games have a single 'pick up' animation regardless of whether the item is on the floor, on a shelf, given to them, taken from someones pocket, etc. The character just kind of reaches out, and bang, the item is in your inventory.  I can live with that.  In fact, I can live without it too.  Of course, having a unique and realistic animation for every single item pick-up would be great, but not really necessary. When I click on an item, I don't really need an elaborate animation to explain how the character bent down or reached up or whatever, because I already know what the end result is going to be: a new item in my inventory.

As for first person games.  I love them.  Been a big fan of the Dark Fall/Barrow Hill type of games. I think this style works best when there are fewer NPCs, especially if the game is puzzle-heavy, like Myst.  If there are loads of NPCs to talk to then it seems more natural to be able to see the player character interacting with them.

[Andail]

I don't really think your "Quixotic battle" argument is valid, because, well, everything we do is retro. It's not like we would compete better with the huge modern game developers if we just removed the characters.
People that play - and sometimes buy - our games do it not because they want cutting edge technology, but because they like the adventure game retro-genre; the style, the old-fashioned aesthetics, the minimalistic animations, etc etc.

[m0ds]

That's a good point Andail. And for some reason it can still be a thrill to see a character pick up an object in three different two frame ways rather than one way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess! But yes, the AGS Awards Ceremony 2010 was definitely like being in a theater. A theater with no bloody seats!

[straydogstrut]

Of course, having a unique and realistic animation for every single item pick-up would be great, but not really necessary. When I click on an item, I don't really need an elaborate animation to explain how the character bent down or reached up or whatever, because I already know what the end result is going to be: a new item in my inventory.

Oh no, I love to see lots of animations! Err, not to the extent i'm watching a movie but still, as Mods said, seeing the character pick up objects in different ways is wonderful, developer-blood-sweat-and-tears, eye candy 

I haven't played many first person adventure games and to be honest i'm more inclined to play third person adventures just because there's scope for so much characterisation and expression when you're looking at them. I really enjoy convincing, well rounded characters with backstory details and relationships that I can explore. That's what I love about adventure games compared to every other genre out there: there's so much story in just a few graphics. It's a pleasure for me just wandering around interacting with things..

I designed a 2D adventure for the DS while at uni and it was intentionally first person so that the player wouldn't be restricted to a gender stereotype. I used cues like photographs and letters to hint at backstory but it was practically a blank slate for them to impress themselves on. The way you interacted with the other characters was intended to reveal more about your nature. I liked the idea but I find it easier to relate to a visible character. Straying into Action-Adventure territory, the Half Life games are great at the first person story delivery but I couldn't care less about Gordon Freeman. He's just an invisible grunt. On the other hand, a first person style can break the 'fourth wall' with great humour as in the Portal games.

[MiteWiseacreLives!]

Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom

[Ali]

You might be right about adventure games being the equivalent of silent movies, but I'm not sure I agree that silent movies or theatre are inferior to contemporary cinema. It's also worth noting that contemporary films draw inspiration from silent cinema in obvious ways (The Artist, Hugo, La Antena, Zelig, Most Tim Burton Films, Sky Captain and the world of This Was An Awful Film) and in less obvious ways relating to the construction of shots and scenes.

But yes, the AGS Awards Ceremony 2010 was definitely like being in a theater. A theater with no bloody seats!

And where bouncers kept kicking you out every five minutes. That place would go out of business.

[miguel]

It was a big surprise to see that this thread was started by me! Didn't remember that!
But picking your words, Ali, I agree that some film directors get their inspiration from the silent movies but it ends right there. You can only have a few minutes of stage-like frames in a modern movie.
It's fantastic that so many people still love the classic adventure looks on games and still produce games in that fashion but I believe that modern engines that fuel games like Uncharted and the likes could be used (LA NOIR) to produce adventure games. Imagine GK3 done with the Unreal engine.
Have you seen the new Epic Mickey trailers? It's looks are just amazing, imagine the same technology used with the great adventure games story tellers?
Hey, I'm not against classic adventure games, I still play them, I love them and I have done some crappy ones myself, but I wish that technology and story telling meet sometime soon.
And, forgive me if I'm being bold, but everything changes and there is always ways to improve, even the authors of those 90's master-pieces wish that they had better technology.

[Ali]

Whoops, I didn't notice this was an old thread!

I agree that cutting edge graphics and immersion techniques would be great in an adventure game, but it's just not economically viable. So rather than saying adventure games look old, it's probably more true to say they look low-budget. And it's not hard to find independent and art films which also break the conventions of mainstream cinema.

But I do look forward to modern engines becoming more manageable/affordable for small teams...

[Wyz]

Old topic, but still relevant

Well I think I agree with Miguel but also with Ali: Yes it is an old practice but still it works very well. The animations and the character walking around are a very powerful way to make immersive games. But I agree it is not the only way. I guess it takes a lot of though and outside the box thinking to make immersive adventure games that work. The last decade developers (mostly indy) have been playing around with new way some more successful then others. I guess it is only a matter of time before we start seeing different adventure game genres that have evolved from those experiments and we won't call casual any more. I've experimented with it myself and well there is still a lot of ground to cover there; we will see this in the AGS community too I'm sure.

But yes, the AGS Awards Ceremony 2010 was definitely like being in a theater. A theater with no bloody seats!

Do you know how expensive theatres with seats are to rent? Sorry but we simply don't have the budget for it. Besides, last year was much better then that old factory hall Duals rented before that. 

[Greg Squire]

I agree that most 2D point-n-click games look like a stage play.  The main reason for this is it's harder to create dramatic shots and cuts like we see commonplace in film today.  It's more costly to create those close ups shots or panning shots.  Close up shots and shots from other angles can require new sprites, animations, and backgrounds.  I've seen this done in 2D games before, but not often.  The early days of film used to suffer from this same static "theater on film" problem as well.  The techniques of stage story telling were all they knew then.  It was later when film makers started experimenting with moving the camera around that things started to change.

This old article makes the same case (http://www.adventuregamers.com/articles/view/17654) that adventure games look like they are on a stage.  That was nine years ago, so not much has changed.  He mentions that it's easier to do dramatic cinematography in a 3D adventure, as you have freedom to move the camera around.  He also claims that 3D adventures will be the future of Adventure Gaming for this reason.  I also agree that it's easier to do those type of shots in a 3D adventure, however there's a whole other set of problems to overcome in a 3D game.  I also don't like the "stiff" animations that are found in many 3D adventure games (or 3D games in general).  I'd much rather have animations with character in 2D, than robotic like motion in 3D.

[Secret Fawful]

Is Crime and Punishment too old-fashioned? Is The Art of War not relevant still? What about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Dracula? Are they so boring they should be replaced by movies? Not for me.

The adventure game started as a means to interact in a literary world, and the advent of graphics came about because people could and wanted to innovate. They wanted to walk around in a world and interact with it so that they could see it, but the more that advanced, the dumber the games got. The closest games ever got to being able to achieve literary significance was with text adventures, which is what most people consider the 'archaic' and non-innovative time in adventure games. In reality, more innovation came about in terms of new ways to play games in that time than any other in the history of adventure games, and now the biggest leap we get to see is a minor change in someone's engine. Give me a bloody break. First people want to take puzzles out of adventure games, now you want to take the characters out too? What the HELL is wrong with this generation of gamers and designers!? This generation is the reason truly innovative games like The Last Express tanked and shitty games playing on established brands like Back to the Future get a fanbase.

And Heavy Rain was a broken, glorified arcade game with a broken plot. If that's where the adventure game is meant to go, then I don't want anything to do with the genre anymore. I'll stick to the old style of design.