Adventure Gamers - Forums

is it by:
1.Long dialogues and and cinematics such as with 15 Days…
2.or, intense puzzles and backtracking as with Vampyre Story..
3.or, huge areas and locations as with Dreamfall: Chapters....
or .. what?

it just sadden me, how short adventures had become the main trend.

Many of the old adventures are actually pretty short, their perceived lenght was often caused by unfair puzzle design than anything else. Like the first three Space Quest games for an example can be played through in an half an hour or hour after you know what you do (which is my case at least).

Also the thing that in this day and age the speed which people can find a solution to a puzzle online also eats the theoretical length of adventure games. And that’s what the puzzle based lenght of adventure games is: theoretical, mainly because people see puzzles differently. My difficult puzzles are not difficult for someone else and theirs might not be difficult for me, so adding a load of puzzles to lenghten a game adds only theroetical lenght, as that can’t be accurately calculated.

The only ways to add calculatable lenght is either to use a lot of cinematics and conversations as well as big game worlds. But they really aren’t solutions that fit for every game.

So in conclusion, every game should be as long as the creators see necessary. What the actual gameplay time is debends on who’s playing.

I certainly like epic tales and exploration and some tough puzzles too but they never should be forced anywhere. I’ve played games that last for 30 mins and are awesome. I don’t really know if every story or setting has enough things to flesh out for 10+ hours of experience. I’d rather get all the artistic visions out there.

Not absolutely accurate with the 3 parts of SQ and this half an hour or an hour length, Tommit, even if you are on your fourth replay to the trilogy! The three parts have some very frustrating actions hardly can be done from the 1st approach (if not impossible), if you know the game(s) by heart that are still like 3-5 chances of deaths (each) and to reload a saved game, i would say 2.5 or 3 hours at least!!

but for the theoretical and calculable length i almost agree, but only have to mention that most ag players after a certain experience stand at the same distance of those ‘theoretical’ length (puzzles).

I actually did a speed run of SQ1 some time ago, I don’t recall the exact time, but it was around 45 minuts. It helps a lot that I don’t have to read any of the texts and I do remember all the commands pretty much by heart. SQ2 is a bit longer, and has a couple of more difficult environmental puzzles, but that as well can be done in less than 2 hours. And SQ3 should go well under 3 hours.

If you do Youtube search for SQ speedruns, you actually do stumble on a couple of vids. People are clocking less than 20 minutes for SQ3, 14 minutes and 10 seconds to be exact.

well i get your point, but you missed the point, or just wanted to show this fun video of crayjay, its really fun, thanks, but see, he is mastering the game, he didn’t visit monolith burger at all, missed 100s of the games score..etc, and thats why i think its irrelevant to the real circumstance of playing any new ag, because this video was all like an Easter egg, and btw happy Easter everyone .

No, I didn’t miss your point, as you seem the think that short adventures are a new thing. They aren’t. Games have always came in great variation in lenght and most of the things that create lenght are abstractions.

As said above, getting stuck due to puzzles can make a game seem longer and sometimes a shorter experience is better for the story (and vice versa). I think I’m in the same boat as giom mind. When I was a kid, I had the time to sit and play games for hours etc, but now that isn’t the case - even when I do have the time, it doesn’t mean I’m just going to want to play games either.

Take the White Night for example. I’ve recently finished that and although I enjoyed it, it could of easily (and should) have been shorter. By the last chapter, it was obvious they had ran out of story to tell and they ended up making the ending less effective because of it.

Tad - 13 April 2015 06:40 PM

Take the White Night for example. I’ve recently finished that and although I enjoyed it, it could of easily (and should) have been shorter. By the last chapter, it was obvious they had ran out of story to tell and they ended up making the ending less effective because of it.

Well I recently played The Samaritan Paradox, and one thing that struck me about that game, was that it was way too short for the story it was trying to tell! It was like the developer had actually planned for a much larger game, and then just gave up 1/3 of the way through and decided to just end the story there.

My point is the the length of the game has to match the story you are telling. You can’t tell a big epic story in a 4-6 hour game, you need a 20+ hour game for those stories, nor should you artificially pad a game to increase the length, if it is really only a small story that could have been told in a 4-6 hour game.

Personally I like big epic stories, so I think the decrease in length is a problem. Not so much because of the actual playtime, but because there aren’t room to tell those grand stories.

Advie - 13 April 2015 01:19 PM

is it by:
1.Long dialogues and and cinematics such as with 15 Days…
2.or, intense puzzles and backtracking as with Vampyre Story..
3.or, huge areas and locations as with Dreamfall: Chapters....
or .. what?

The most important thing is that it fits naturally into the game and is not just artificial padding.

1) Cutscenes should imo be held to a minimum, and only used where there is not other way to tell that part of the story. Small well done cutscenes spread out through the game can add to the experience, but it is very easy to overdo.

Dialogues shouldn’t be long just for the sake of being long, but be exactly the length they need to be to tell the story.

2) I love big and difficult puzzles, and there is nothing wrong with a bit of backtracking, but again backtracking can also be overdone.

3) If you want to make a large game, then I don’t think there are any other way than to have large locations that we have to explore on our own!

If it is all one room locations with quick travel between them, especially if the game is also on rails, pointing you to exactly where you need to go next, then there is a limit to how large you can make the game before it starts to fell artificial.

Advie - 13 April 2015 01:19 PM

is it by:
1.Long dialogues and and cinematics such as with 15 Days…
2.or, intense puzzles and backtracking as with Vampyre Story..
3.or, huge areas and locations as with Dreamfall: Chapters....
or .. what?

it just sadden me, how short adventures had become the main trend.

I’ll just echo some of the points that have already been made in the thread:

1. Long dialogues are only good if the dialogue is naturally going to be long. Making them longer just for the sake of extending the length of the game is not a good thing. Often, brevity is even the better approach.
I like cinematics a lot, but don’t overdo them. The final couple of hours of Dreamfall for instance were all cinematics with little to no gameplay inbetween. That’s not necessarily a good thing. Lots of shorter cinematics (2-3 minutes at most) spread all over the game (as ‘reward’ for solving puzzles) is my preferred approach. 20+ minutes of cutscene each time (like in the Metal Gear games or Final Fantasy games) is overdoing it, imo. It’s a game, not a movie.

2. Both can work, if used sparingly. The puzzles are going to be subjective, though. What’s an intense and difficult puzzle for you might be easy for me, and vice versa. Backtracking isn’t necessarily bad, just as long as it doesn’t happen ALL the time. Adding both just for the sake of extending the length, though, is ‘padding’ and should be avoided at all costs.

3. Huge areas and locations can give a game an epic feel. But be careful: if the areas are too empty or lead to too much backtracking, then you’re spending too much time just walking around (which is not a good thing). Then you’re entering ‘padding’ territory again…

Basically, a game’s length should be what the story allows. Extending that artificially is just padding, and that’s never a good thing. Especially since most padding also feels like padding, and always hurts the final result.

If the game’s story means the game will only be half an hour long, then the game should only be half an hour long. If the story is epic, leading to a 30-hour game, then the game should be 30 hours long, imo…