Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’ve seen people say that modern takes on the adventure genre, such as TT’s games, or Trine, or the new King’s Quest game, aren’t real adventure games. That altering the formula makes the genre a different one. The question is, then, what would you offer? What defines an adventure game for you, and what are the limits? Where would YOU take the adventure genre in order to keep it relevant and modernize it?

I can accept things like The Walking Dead or even walking simulators like Gone Home being called adventure games, but Trine? What? Are we just calling games with any sort of puzzle element an adventure now? In that case my favorite adventure game is Uncharted, you know, because it has those garbage puzzle sections that you get guided through like a baby.

Anyway, I think we’re living in a great time period where there’s both more experimental and more traditional adventures, and various takes on the genre has gems. What defines an adventure for me personally is hard to pin-point, but it definitely means little to no combat.

There is no single answer because adventure games are not a science but an art, but I would go back to the basics. The essence of the adventure game is interacting with a fictional world, and the interactions are defined by a range of basic verbs and interactive objects. The player is engaged through the imagined possibilities for progressing the story, and this is always limited by the interactions. So when the only interactions are “run” and “jump”, and the only things to interact with are gaps to jump over, you are limiting the possibilities and the player’s imagination. The player already knows what to do and simply performs actions, either well or badly. Which is why a platformer is not an adventure. That has been the formula since Colossal Cave Adventure and it’s broad enough to have lasted for 30 years with massive innovations. It doesn’t need to change. We don’t ask whether the novel format needs to change because we know it’s the content that counts.

I don’t even know what modernize means here - what for? To what end? Improving graphics and sound is a no-brainer. If modernizing adventure games means to remove interactivity for no reason except to cater to players who are used to choosing between “shoot” and “run”, then I’m heading back to the caves.

I’m loving the side-scrolling adventures of recent times (The Cave, Valiant Hearts, Stick it to the Man), I’m loving the combat-free platformers/adventures (Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Contrast, Rain) and I’m seeing some real, not-quite-realized potential in 3D adventure offerings like Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishment and Murdered: Soul Suspect. I actually think those two games are closer to my ideal 3D adventure than the much more highly-fancied Dreamfall Chapters, but I digress.

I don’t mind Telltale’s stuff if it’s really well-done ala Borderlands, but in terms of gameplay I generally prefer Heavy Rain’s take on the choice/consequence system even if the writing is nowhere near on par with TT. But I’m okay with more games using this method, and I’ll be interested to see where the upcoming Until Dawn goes with it.

Also keen to see how Life Is Strange will turn out. And in fact, the more I think about it, Kings Quest. If it’s a bit like The Cave but with conversations and only one character to control (and no back-tracking), I’d be pretty happy.

I just want more of everything. They’re all adventures in my book. Some more puzzly than others, some more story-focused. But pretty much all minus combat as a significant aspect of the gameplay.

For all of that, in 2015, I suspect Broken Age and Book of Unwritten Tales 2 will both be fairly splendid examples of adventure games that don’t need to “take it to a place where it’s modernized and relevant” to be goddamn awesome.

A.A - 15 December 2014 03:23 AM

I just want more of everything.

Seconded!!

I’ll take QTE over combat any day of the week for adventures.

Just thinking about Dreamfall makes me shudder…

^ This for me - I love your description Arif!

Can somebody please tell me what QTE stands for?

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”  - Potter Stewart, on Pornography.

Adventure Games are like that.  I know ‘em when I see ‘em.

Bt

Everyone has their own lines, id definitely draw mine at trine… i cant consider that an adventure game… too many rpg and action elements… i wouldnt consider platformers adventures just because they have puzzles.

I think for me an adventure has to combine puzzles, story and exploration in a way that emphasizes problem solving in a narrative. Thats broad enough to include a lot of games.. but if the main objective is collecting points, beating up swarms of bad-guys, and perfecting jumping moves… thats probably outside of adventure for me.