Adventure Gamers - Forums

First of all, the maidens know exactly why they’re there and all of them but Vella accept it. It’s not a metaphor, the monster is explained (although why it prefers maidens is not yet, but we can theorize).

Frogacuda - 18 January 2014 01:54 PM

First of all, the maidens know exactly why they’re there and all of them but Vella accept it. It’s not a metaphor, the monster is explained (although why it prefers maidens is not yet, but we can theorize).

Why does something being explained in the story’s world prevent it from being a metaphor for something in our world?

Frogacuda - 18 January 2014 01:54 PM

First of all, the maidens know exactly why they’re there and all of them but Vella accept it. It’s not a metaphor, the monster is explained (although why it prefers maidens is not yet, but we can theorize).

If that’s the case, it’s a very stupid, silly, corny, and insulting topic for an adventure game.
Try thinking outside the game—about why Tim Schafer would decide to use this scenario if he didn’t mean it to have more relevance than face value. Or am I giving him too much credit because some of his previous games had more depth?

crabapple - 18 January 2014 02:09 PM

If that’s the case, it’s a very stupid, silly, corny, and insulting topic for an adventure game.

It’s more than it appears at first. Just play it.

There’s obviously a lot of dissonance between the two halves (as well as coming-of-age/rebellion parallel), that add coherence to the whole thing, but I wouldn’t call it metaphor per se. There’s also a degree of satire; the maiden’s willingness to go along with this awful ritual is obviously intended as a play on how the ills of society are tolerated by virtue of consensus and tradition.

In any event, the story is more surprising and clever than it initially appears. It does have depth, it just isn’t what you think it is.

Heh…I just came across these posted on another forum.  Hilarious. 

Frogacuda - 18 January 2014 02:51 PM

There’s obviously a lot of dissonance between the two halves (as well as coming-of-age/rebellion parallel), that add coherence to the whole thing, but I wouldn’t call it metaphor per se.

Well, a metaphor is to use one thing to express something about another thing. And I think the monster and the Maiden’s Feast is obviously full of symbolic significance:

It pretty explicitly pokes fun at the idea that girls should just be passive, pretty “maidens” who sit around waiting for and dreaming about a guy to come and take them. (Including the underlying fear that despite how it’s dressed up, this could actually be a really scary, even horrifying thing.) Metaphor for sexual awakening.

It shows a town where everybody has convinced themselves that the monster is their friend, and that as long as they just do this little thing, it will protect them. The only person who thinks otherwise is a crazy old man. It’s a fantasy version of growing up and starting to question society’s child-friendly assurances that everything is fine, that everything from global warming to multiply drug-resistant disease agents is under control. Metaphor for our illusion of safety.

Similarly, it presents a horrible ritual human sacrifice that is grotesquely and transparently disguised as a pleasant feast and great honor for the victims. Vella’s skepticism represents a young person’s growing doubt about the justness of the established world order, whether it’s poverty (worldwide or local), factory farming and cruelty to animals, western imperialism, abortion (for those conservatively inclined), the “1%”, etc. etc. Metaphor for moral awakening.

Finally, what does the practice of sending the best of the town’s youths to be consumed by a horrible monster, and having this dressed up in notions of honor that have them eager to head to their death, remind you of? (This association is slightly weakened by gender, but after all women can join the military as well.) Metaphor for war.

These are just some of the most obvious ones; I’m sure there are many others. And I still haven’t had time to finish this part, so quite possibly the metaphorical resonance gets deepened further into the game.

Frogacuda - 18 January 2014 12:00 PM

I don’t think there’s any one reason to play games. Puzzles are certainly one, but humor and story are also reasons.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my challenging puzzles too, but they’re not the only thing I enjoy, in life or in games.

Yes i agree, there aint no one reason , but in this case , BA was meant to have “classic adventures” style that backers were promised. Its a good animated movie or Traditional PnC??? Guess i will find out soon.
PC world, Kotaku and some others had same issues, calling it shallow in gamedesign.

Jim Purcell - 18 January 2014 05:49 PM

Question for those who have played the game. Did you get the impression that the opening Shay puzzle was a commentary of current adventure game trends? With each of the presented scenarios all being one-click solutions (with exaggerated payoffs), and the puzzle objective to break out of the monotony?

I might have been reading into it too much.

As Karlok suggested, I think that reading would only really work if the following puzzles were much more complicated, but they’re all fairly similar - if marginally less obvious than opening “Mission” scenarios - throughout the game.

I just recently finished playing Act 1, and I really enjoyed it! Beyond the lovely production, excellent writing and interesting story, I liked the small touches and attention to detail sprinkled throughout the game. I liked how there were few generic “I can’t use these items together” responses when using inventory items on the environment, and I liked how using inventory items with characters usually resulted in unique responses, similar to the Broken Sword games.

I also liked the non-interactive background monologues, which I remember being used in the old Monkey Island games to great effect (ie, in MI2, after stealing Wally’s manacle he mutters to himself while you are free to wander around his room or leave the scene). Some of my favorite lines in Broken Age occur in similar fashion, for example I loved hearing the spoon’s excited chatter while waiting for you to pick it up in Shay’s first breakfast scene.

In terms of the interface, I did miss the more specific verb options (especially a separate “look” option), instead of the streamlined one-click interface that they went with. However, interacting with the world is certainly very intuitive and efficient. I liked that clicking on objects or destinations far away from your character made Shay/Vella move faster, whereas clicking on items nearby made them move more slowly. So, there was never any frustration caused by waiting for the character to move from scene to scene (a big annoyance I often have in many AGs).

I do agree with the criticisms that the game is too easy. I know from one of the early documentaries that Tim really liked Machinarium, so I wonder if that was an inspiration for him in designing Broken Age’s puzzles. Inventory items were very easy to come by (often just handed to you), and I think too many hints were given. For example, in Vella’s riddle puzzle when you show the fruit to different characters, almost all of them comment on how the fruit has a pit in it, which made solving the riddle very easy when I finally came to it and heard the word “pit” in the riddle. I wonder if they would be able to increase the game’s difficulty by removing some of these hints before the game’s general release. Anyways, the easy puzzle design isn’t a deal-breaker for me, and I still enjoyed playing the game.

If I were to place the game with Tim’s previous works, I would say that, for me, it doesn’t reach the same heights as Grim Fandango, but easily sits with DOTT and Full Throttle. I’m really looking forward to Act 2, and more 2-Player production documentaries.