Great Story, Bad Game

[axcho]

I just found this nice article from the What Games Are blog:
http://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/09/great-story-bad-game-should-the-walking-dead-be-nodal.html

Basically, it talks about why adventure games are boring, and how you really need either dynamic gameplay (like RPGs) to carry it along, or get rid of the game-y busywork entirely (like notgames).

Good stuff.

In playing The Walking Dead, I want the experience to be nodal. I don’t particularly care about finding a spark plug to shatter a window, or having lots of checking-in conversations with characters that go nowhere. I don’t want to have to solve the puzzle of getting Kenny to leave his chair so that I can get at a map. That’s just noise. I want the experience to only be about the big choices, and for those choices to make sense. I want to feel as though there is a way to find the true course, and for every conversation to be important.

Even if that makes it shorter, it would be a far better experience. I feel that the next phase of interactive fiction needs to go this way.

[shredingskin]

Pretty much all that he said could be written as "I dont find graphic adventure games fun", Im a big fan of old graphic adventure games, the fun of it was how the game actually plays in your head rather than on screen. Yes, there are bad examples of puzzles, bad pacing, and times were its plain obvious that the game is "a game" that makes you do X thing to continue, but its a problem of design and not mechanics.

I can say "shooting things is stale and boring", and its just an opinion, like this:

Unlike the adventure game, roleplaying games usually have a fascinating game engine of levels, powers and resources to keep the play brain occupied. While the mid-game of The Walking Dead might involve searching a train carriage for a bottle of whiskey, the mid-game of Diablo is hitting things and using spells. It’s simply more active.

It almost enrages me, grinding is one of the worst stuff I can think in videogames, but hey, everyone has their own tastes.

Most of the people think like this guy, and thats why adventure games are not as appealing as killing 200 guys with a gun or run around doing chores for a little reward in most Wrpgs. One thing is a poorly done puzzle, another thing is saying that killing random stuff is "better" because it has more action. If you dont like turn based combats, you wont like most of the jrpgs.

Look at a game like The Last Express, its great storytelling, replayability, and dynamic enviroment, then look at grim fandango, both great games with a different approach to puzzle solving.

http://grumpygamer.com/2152210

Thats a good article about adventure games and their flaws, written by one of the big fathers of the genre.

[Jeroen D. Stout]

I noticed this article as well; but I took it as the typical example of someone using the noun 'players' as a mouthpiece for his own tastes.

Not that I really want to come to the defence of the 'use X on Y' variety of puzzles; but 'hitting things and using spells' always gives me the 'I have to fight again? I'll just quit and go do something useful' itch.

[axcho]

I have to say, the reason I shared this (and I think the reason the author posted this) was not to promote RPG gameplay, but to promote the idea of removing game mechanics entirely from story games. Both adventure puzzle gameplay and hack'n'slash gameplay are diversions from the story, and (as I see from your responses) are often unappealing to some portion of the potential audience. So get rid of it entirely.

Here's that quote again:

In playing The Walking Dead, I want the experience to be nodal. I don’t particularly care about finding a spark plug to shatter a window, or having lots of checking-in conversations with characters that go nowhere. I don’t want to have to solve the puzzle of getting Kenny to leave his chair so that I can get at a map. That’s just noise. I want the experience to only be about the big choices, and for those choices to make sense. I want to feel as though there is a way to find the true course, and for every conversation to be important.

[shredingskin]

promote the idea of removing game mechanics entirely from story games

The thing is that adventure games are not "story games" adventure games are adventure games. People that play graphic adventure is because they are expecting that, and there are memorable puzzles in these kind of games.

I agree that sometimes it's just too much, putting puzzles just to stretch things out, puzzles that don't make sense or make you progress, but it's the kind of flaws that Ron Gilbert says. Puzzles should be part of the story and make you feel like you are the guy actually experiencing things, of course moving a chair to pick something that is higher isn't a good puzzle and should be avoided.

I guess Shenmue is an example of a adventure game without puzzles or classic adventure mechanics (well, more like a Jrpg with QTE, and 3d beat them up), or Blade Runner.

The problem is that the guy pretty much says "inventory and/or classic puzzles are boring, needs more action like a RPG or just skip everything", and that is just a matter of opinion: If I don't like FPS it's valid to say "Half Life has too much action, it should be like Dear Esther" ??, and so on, I can say that to any genre, like "LA noir should be a graphic novel" "The Path should be a hack N slash" etc etc. For example (like he talks about jrpg) I LOVED FFXIII visuals and atmosphere, I just didn't want to spend 40/50 hours of my life with turn based "filling" combat just to see a couple of minutes of CGI.

And it's a touchy subject because "story games" isn't anything, it's like saying "visuals game", you can also say that Dear Esther is a "story game" and it would be so much better in a movie format, but we like the interactive medium, some people would say that walking around and a narrator isn't good gameplay, but you can enjoy it or not, same goes with classic adventure mechanics, if you think it suits the "point" of the game isn't an absolute quality and every person can have their opinion.

[Thomas]

Agree with shredingskin here. Tadgh Kelly has some points, like puzzles can get in the way. But like shredingskin says, removing them is not the way to go, because you are missing out a lot on the pacing and feeling of agency. Just choosing dialog options would not make the walking dead games what they are. What I think can be discussed is how to improve the puzzles as is, for instance by adding more solutions and give a more sense of free exploration.

Also have to mention that Tadgh has a very strong agenda here. Basically he think games are good as they are (well at least a subset of what we would call video games anyway), and that the way to move forward is to take these games apart and build up a design theory on how to best make these sort of games. He is the only one I know that thought the physical movement in Amnesia made the game worse and think that Dear Esther should be called "virtual promenade". He also thinks that stories are just plots with a very specific classical arch, and of course use this as an argument that games cannot tell storiews.

Tadgh is not an idiot though, he has some very smart things to say, and I find most of his stuff worth reading if I can just look aside his bias.

[axcho]

I guess I just read into it whatever I want to believe he's saying.

I interpreted it as "You have this existing story, The Walking Dead, and you want to make an interactive version of it. What do you choose? An adventure game? An RPG? Or something else?". The idea that there is something else is inspiring to me.

[Michaël Samyn]

He also thinks that stories are just plots with a very specific classical arch, and of course use this as an argument that games cannot tell storiews.

Which is ironic given how similar the victory arc in a game is to the conventional plot arc in a story.

[Michaël Samyn]

I have only played the first episode of The Walking Dead. I liked it. Except for when it asks us to make Big Choices. Those moments felt incongruous with the entertaining atmosphere of comic strip pulp. But other than that, I think it does a great job at being a story that you play, rather than read or watch. Puzzles and problems occur naturally in many stories. Part of the fun of reading is wondering "how will the hero solve that?" So there's no reason to exclude such elements from a story-game.

[axcho]

I have only played the first episode of The Walking Dead. I liked it. Except for when it asks us to make Big Choices. Those moments felt incongruous with the entertaining atmosphere of comic strip pulp. But other than that, I think it does a great job at being a story that you play, rather than read or watch. Puzzles and problems occur naturally in many stories. Part of the fun of reading is wondering "how will the hero solve that?" So there's no reason to exclude such elements from a story-game.

Hmm, interesting. Maybe I should actually play some of these games instead of just reading about them...

It's been a while since I've really played a game.