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R16 Bracket 3 - The Big AG VS Tournament

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Grim Fandango (This one was a clear choice for me, Grim Fandango has been among my all time favorites since I first played it)


Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (Broken Sword is one of those few rare games that was able to capture the sense of mystery and exploration of the First Gabriel Knight. Even though it’s a less dark and more humorous.

     
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M1 - Grim Fandango
M2 - Syberia. I’m going back and forth in this one, but I’ll just forget the Syberia sequel and how much I liked the first time I played it.

     
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Sefir - 21 January 2015 03:48 AM

Extremely poor character development, especially when they get compared to Syberia’s Kate Walker in that department)

Can’t restrain from coming back on this. For me Kate Walker and her “character development” is the most fake and unbelieveable (in the true meaning of the word!)of such attempts I think I’ve seen in any adventure game. I liked Syberia as a whole (though hot spots were a bit lacking) but Kate Walker and her “change” from hot-shot lawyer into “caring” human being was really not the strong point for me. The difference between her and true character development as exemplified in The Longest Journey & Dreamfall (and GKs too) is for me immense.

George wasn’t the deepest character ever, and indeed character development was never an aim (as shown by recent Charles Cecil statements re ageing, comparing George & Nico to Tintin etc) but he always came over well as a likeable if slightly incompetent main character to me.

 

     
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1. Grim Fandango (haven’t played DW Noir but really should look into getting a copy, after the praise it received here)
2. Syberia (BS is a great adventure, but, as others have stated, George and Nico are dull characters)

     
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I agree and disagree with DaveyB. I don’t think Kate’s character development is really that rich and complex, but I definitely enjoyed the ending of the first game where she stepped into the new world. I myself have suffered (and most likely am currently suffering) from depression and how she chooses to change her life is really very appealing and touching. (Though one might also choose to think she’s just escaping reality and might actually have gone mad.) But really, apart from that climax moment I don’t really think the game is all about character development. Indeed the journeys in TLJ and Dreamfall are much more about that.

And George is a funny guy. I usually dislike very yankee characters but he’s done with a gentle touch and in every game they laugh about it too. And when I played the BS1 remaster I was actually very fond of Nico, she was very feminine and vain but still a driven professional and badass.

     

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1 - Grim Fandango
2 - Oh boy, it’s my all time most overrated games matchup!  I guess I liked Broken Sword more, so I’ll give my vote to that.

     
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Sefir - 21 January 2015 03:48 AM
subbi - 21 January 2015 03:39 AM

It seems to me this can only be the case if you played the game only in recent years for the first time. (correct me if I’m wrong).

I played it around 2000-2003 (the first 2 to be precise. I didn’t bother with the rest of the series).

I found the main characters really uninspired (Really? After the Gabriel/Grace and Guybrash/Elaine another blond man/brunnette woman stereotype? Runnaway continued this proud tradition later on… Tongue But the key thing is that both George and Nico’s characters were too one-dimentional imo. Extremely poor character development, especially when they get compared to Syberia’s Kate Walker in that department) and the story kind of lamish. The graphics were ok, but not something really worth mentioning and I cannot remember any of the music to judge it. It does have some good voice acting, especially for George (Nico’s accent was a bit off, but forgiven) and some puzzles were really good (I liked the famous goat puzzle). In general. I don’t count them as good as other games I like (Riven, Grim Fandango, The Whispered World, Machinarium, Callahan’s, The Longest Journey, etc).
The bottom line? Each to his own tastes I guess. Smile

Agreed with all of this (except I didn’t care much about Kate Walker either).

I played it only a few years after it came out, but it didn’t seem the least bit groundbreaking to me.  More like a new series trying to do what Gabriel Knight did (a conspiracy thriller type game), but with very bland characters that I didn’t care about.

I didn’t help that I had heard a lot of hype about it beforehand though.  If it were just some random game I played without hearing anything about it I probably would’ve looked upon the experience more favorably.  Instead I just found it kind of disappointing.

     
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M1: Discworld Noir
M2: Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

     

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Grim Fandango
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars

     
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1) Ehhh…

Okay this is the moment that I have been fearing, two of the games on my personal top 3 list up against each other Confused

In one corner we have Grim Fandango.
A game that managed to mix comedy with a serious and both thrilling and touching story, and have it all take place in a unique and exiting setting. At one moment you are laughing your ass of, the next you can feel a little tear in the corner of your eye, before you start biting your nails in suspense of what will happen next. And you are never sure what will happen next, or where the game will take you on this epic journey, and just as you think you have reached the end of the line and the game, then it turns out that you have to go back and resolve what was left unresolved.

The fact that it also had 3D controls never did bother me, in fact I thought that it added to the game, made it fell more unique and special, and even though the controls weren’t perfect, then I still believe that they worked perfectly for the game.

In the other corner we have Disckworld Noir.
A game that managed to mix comedy with a serious and both thrilling and touching story, and have it all take place in a unique and exiting setting. At one moment you are laughing your ass of, the next you can feel a little tear in the corner of your eye, before you start biting your nails in suspense of what will happen next. And you are never sure what will happen next, or where the game will take you on this epic journey, and just when you think that you have discovered everything there is to discover, and that the bad guys have been defeated, then it adds a new layer and a new villain to the story.

The fact that it also had an extra layer in the puzzle / conversation department, in the form of being able to ask about, or use notebook notes on items, added something unique and extra to the game that we really haven’t seen similar until the short/long term memory in Resonance.

Okay there are also some differences between the two games, where GF is a truly unique story that is only really inspired by The Day of the Dead in Mexico, then DN steals with arms and legs. It not only takes place in the well know Discworld universe, but is also heavily based on the classic Humphrey Bogart movies, but it does manges to mix it all together and create something that is also very unique.

So how do I decide between the two?
Well about a year ago I started replaying all of may favourite games, and where most lived up to my expectations or even surpassed them, then my replay of Grim Fandango was a bit of a disappointment Frown The moments that had almost brought a tear to my eye the first time, simply did touch me the same way, and the moments that originally had me laughing out loud, simply wasn’t as funny any more.

So my vote goes to Discworld Noir

(Stay put for my vote in the second match)

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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millenia - 21 January 2015 12:27 PM

I myself have suffered (and most likely am currently suffering) from depression and how she chooses to change her life is really very appealing and touching.

Yep, agreed Millenia, it is very well-handled - indeed I liked the endings of both Syberia 1 & 2. But I wasn’t thinking of that part, rather the regular phone calls from company, friend, mother etc etc. Good luck for yourself - just so you know, I always find your comments here very interesting and respect your opinions a lot. Probably helps that we seem to have similar taste Wink

millenia - 21 January 2015 12:27 PM

(Though one might also choose to think she’s just escaping reality and might actually have gone mad.)

There is that lol.

 

     
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2) Syberia

Where the other match in this bracket was between two very similar games, then you can’t find two games that are more different than Broken Sword and Syberia - still not an easy choice though as I find that both are excellent games.

Broken Sword in many ways represent the traditional point and click adventure, with a classic cartoonish visual style and a light-hearted thriller story with a lot of friendly banter between the two protagonists. It also contains a knight-templar plot and conspiracy that nowadays has been beaten to death in countless movies, books and games, so I can totally understand if many that has only played the game recently, find that there is nothing special about it - But this wasn’t the case when it was originally released!

When it now feels like something you have seen a million times before, then it is because it has been copied by countless other games, though no one else has managed to do it as well as it was done here. BS1 still stands out as the best game of this type and especially Nico has a special place in my heart, and even though I’m voting for Syberia, then I think it deserves some honourable mention.

Syberia is on the other hand nothing like a classic adventure game.
It is a much more artistic game, where the story is not only and in fact not even primarily told in the plot. Instead it is a story that is told much more in the visuals and in the places and people that Kate meets on her journey, it is a story with many different layers that are told in many different ways, and not all of those are easily accessible or spoon-feed to the player, instead you have interpret this yourself, and there are a thousand different ways to do that (just check the recent Community Playthrough).

Perhaps even more importantly, is that it takes you on a great journey, and it managed to induce some kind of special feeling in me that no other game has done before or after. Not a flawless game, and perhaps not everybody’s cup of tea, but imo a true masterpiece and that is why it gets my vote.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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DaveyB - 21 January 2015 11:47 AM

For me Kate Walker and her “character development” is the most fake and unbelieveable (in the true meaning of the word!)of such attempts I think I’ve seen in any adventure game. I liked Syberia as a whole (though hot spots were a bit lacking) but Kate Walker and her “change” from hot-shot lawyer into “caring” human being was really not the strong point for me. The difference between her and true character development as exemplified in The Longest Journey & Dreamfall (and GKs too) is for me immense.

An interesting comparison!
I agree that April Ryan and Zoë Castillo grows more as persons during their adventure than Kate Walker does, but it is also two very different cases. In the case of April and Zoë then they start out as pretty much normal young girls, but events force them to take action and because of that they also change and grows as persons.

In the case of Kate Walker then I see it as more of a case of metamorphose, but not something that actually happens in the game! She makes a conscious decision that she wants to change, that she is not happy in her current life and that she wants something else, but exactly what that is or how she will accomplish it is something she doesn’t know, so in the mean time and as part of the process she leaves everything behind and simply goes on an adventure of a lifetime. But how she will come out in the other end, what her life will be like when she returns, that is not something that is told in the series, at least not yet.

As for “her “change” from hot-shot lawyer into “caring” human being”, then I think that you have outright misunderstood that part!
She was no more or no less of a “caring” human being at the end of the game than she was at the beginning, pretty much everything she does in the game is for her own selfish reasons, even if her actions also happens to help Hans and others, but that is not why she does it. Nor is she a stone-cold hotshot lawyer without any compassion at the beginning of the game, it is simply not that black and white. In fact if anything she becomes more selfish during the game, she basically gives her boss, fiancée, mother and best friend the middlefinger, and says this is what I want and to hell with the rest.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Iznogood - 21 January 2015 03:45 PM

As for “her “change” from hot-shot lawyer into “caring” human being”, then I think that you have outright misunderstood that part!

I guess “no longer interested in materialism, career success or status” rather than “caring” would have been a better summary. Hence why she told boss, fiancé, mother to eff off by the end…though it took her some time. Thing is though, there was no explanation (that I remember anyway) for why she suddenly felt this way - to have become a “hot shot lawyer” requires a certain attitude and mentality. Syberia gave me no convincing explanation for why her attitude changed. And so the whole “Kate Walker character development” part of Syberia is exactly where I feel the game is weakest. I agree with a lot of what you wrote re its strengths.

Iznogood - 21 January 2015 03:45 PM

pretty much everything she does in the game is for her own selfish reasons, even if her actions also happens to help Hans and others

Is that true? Can you provide details to show why it’s just her being selfish as it’s not how I interpreted it. I’ll have to have a look at the Community Playthrough - could make interesting reading.

     
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millenia - 21 January 2015 12:27 PM

And when I played the BS1 remaster I was actually very fond of Nico, she was very feminine and vain but still a driven professional and badass.

So very true!
Female characters in games tend to be depicted quite superficially and authors artificially force them to be like some emotionless, soulless robots thinking that by doing that fight some imaginary stereotypes and by doing that they are in fact making just a different type of stereotype.
I would probably be called sexist, but for me women are much more interesting and beautiful sex (both physically and even more emotionally). And authors very often totally neglect that feminine well of emotions that is most humane of all human characteristics, so they can make some unreal action figures from them.

Nico, although still underdeveloped like the rest of Broken Sword characters, hits that “emotionally-sensual-badass” balance exceptionally well and that is why she is one of my favorite game characters.

     

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