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Aug 8 / Ozymandias

Potential for Wii to Reinvigorate Adventure Games?

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I’ve always been a huge adventure game fan. Heck, the simple fact that I can even type is thanks to Zork, Enchanter, and Planetfall from Infocom. Unfortunately, these sorts of “thinking man’s games” have pretty much disappeared over the years. You occasionally get a Dreamfall, or the fantastic (well, at least until the end) Indigo Prophecy, but generally it’s been slim pickings for us adventure gamers over the past decade.

This is all to say why I’m pointing you to this article from adventuregamers.com (with credit to Evil Avatar where I first saw the post). It’s a great read that really highlights some of the potential for interactivity and puzzle solving in an adventure game. Who knows if it’s really enough to spark a revival in the genre, but hey – we’re holding on to a slim thread now anyway, right? Why not try to grab the brass ring? Wink

P.S. I miss Infocom. RIP.

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  • http://tijirs.blogspot.com/ rijit

    Adventure gaming exists in MUDs. If you have never tried a MUD and like the text base adventure, you really should give it a try. Check mine out, if you are more interested at http://www.primaldarkness.com

    Anyhow, good article, thanks for sharing :)

  • http://tijirs.blogspot.com/ rijit

    See, sometimes I mis-read things. My earlier post is more about text based adventure games than click and play. Sorry for any confusion. Still a good article ;)

  • http://escaping_burger.1up.com/ Kevin C

    I haven’t read the article yet (I’m trying to get some work done before that Dead Rising signing), but you may be interested to know that text adventures are only dead in the commercial sense. There’s actually a rather vibrant community creating interactive fiction to this day, and they’ve taken the genre in some pretty fascinating directions. There’s a massive archive here: http://wurb.com/if/

  • Ozymandias

    Re: "I haven’t read the article yet (I’m trying to get some work done before that Dead Rising signing), but you may be interested to know that text adventures are only dead in the commercial sense. There’s actually a rather vibrant community creating interactive fiction to this day, and they’ve taken the genre in some pretty fascinating directions. There’s a massive archive here: http://wurb.com/if/"

    I’m actually pretty aware of the whole IF community, ZIL parsers, and the ilk. Very cool, and it’s great to see! I just wish adventure games were more popular in general. There are few games that you can really play *with* a group of friends and feel as though everyone is contributing and experiencing the story… adventures were one that I fondly remember.

    Now I’m imagining what Cyan might be able to do with a Wii Myst adventure – imagine exploring *that* world with a physical analog to the virtual world? Mmm… tasty!

  • WiNG

    Its a very interesting article on "chances" of the Wii on the old adventure genre, but I am very very distrustfull on the chances getting real on several titles at the end. Don’t get me wrong, I love adventure games, even those that are "just" point and click SCUMM, and if nintendo actually is able with its system to revitalize the genre I’ll go and buy one (even before I buy a 360), but I suspect that, at the end, who of the traditional adventure makers is going to release something for the Wii?

    LucasArts have lost the interest it seems (as well as the talent they once had), Sierra is dead (if I ever see GK4 I’ll gladly eat my words), and about smaller developers… Cryo collapsed by making 10 similar games with the same engine in 2 years (Dragon Lore and Ring were good, the rest could have been avoided), Revolution made quite a bad mistake on Broken Sword 3 with the 3d transiction, Quantic Dreams has made two titles only and they surely need to work on their game endings better (Farenheit/Indigo Prophecy is the most remarkable example of a real crap way to end a game) and The Adventure Company combines a few masterpieces with a more abundant mediocre games (Syberia is excellent, Still Life was avoidable for example). Now, if we look at who of them ever released to consoles the number radically decreases. As sad as I am affirming this, Adventure Genre, until someone is really able to re-invent it successfully, is:

    a) PC territory

    b) 2D still better than 3D, most of the games collapsed with the 3D transiction

    PS: I have not yet tried Dreamfall, it reached my country only a week ago and sadly on a bad month for me to get it (X3 reunion will arrive here in a week time and it goes first while I’d better start saving for NWN2…)

  • Knique

    I wasn’t super happy with Dreamfall. It tried to bring in more people to the adventure gaming work by adding action game elements, which were done so poorly, everytime I had to try to do the twitch action, I wanted to quit the game and go play some Oblivion.

    Ever since the games like Kings Quest and Grim Fandango stopped appearing, I filled their gap with really great RPGs. Also in newer RPGs, certian puzzle type aspects of Adventures have started to show up…aka Oblivion has some. And even in games like Half-Life 2, they have tried to get some of that puzzle feel into the game play.

    For me, the awesome stories and puzzles are what made the Adventrure games so great. These things CAN be found in other grenes…but were best in the adventures.

  • RealWeaponX

    I miss Origin and LookingGlass… Bioforge was excellent, as was System Shock. Hopefully BioShock will be good enough to be considered a true successor to the good old Origin adventure/RPG style.

  • Dennis

    Although it is not text based, I loved the Myst games. Great graphics, adventure, and thinking was required.   Loved those games.  Wish they would bring them to the 360.

  • Bryant H

    I’m bothered by the notion that adventure games, by definition, are simply point-and-click experiences. The article certainly advocates the use of the Wii remote to perform new interactions that are more engaging for users, but the examples presented can still be described as being fancier point-and-click interfaces. How does this leave any room for masterpieces like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus that break free from this PC-centric tradition? The author is using the capabilities of the Wii remote as an excuse to build adventure games around PC conventions, and while there have been success stories in the console domain (Indigo Prophecy is a great example), I fail to see the innovation in this approach. There is value in the embodied interactions that the Wii remote affords that goes beyond the functionality of a three-dimensional mouse pointer. I look forward to new gameplay experiences, and the adventure genre has gone stale because its conventions have not evolved as rapidly as other genres have. Mind you, this is coming from someone who thinks that Myst and its clones are ridiculously boring. I just hope developers will think outside the box and look at successful *console* adventure games for inspiration rather than their PC counterparts.