[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

Usually both.

Well, based on things I've read from Gary Winnick, I'd say the reason the game features teens is to mock/honor old horror B-movies that featured teenagers doing obviously stupid things (like entering house with a sign outside promising mutilation to intruders), not to aim at some particular demographic.

Originally Posted by Udvarnoky

Don't you think you're dumbing down the story just a tad?

Yes, a tad. But not more than a tad.

It's like you're ignoring the fact that a lot of the game's puzzles themselves are important story elements,

Define story. Unrelated incidents and people is more like it. Which it has in common with a modern game like Syberia. I'm not critizing DOTT and I'm no fan of Syberia, but the claim that all these older adventures were story-driven or whatever term was used, is false. IMO. Let's not forget to add IMO.

or that the "take care of the water" part is merely what's supposed to happen at the end.

Well, isn't it?

It's just as easy to summarize BM or MOS in an equally silly way

No, you couldn't. Not without leaving out too many *relevant* stuff.

You also mention the original game as having not much of a story. Maniac Mansion was a about an Evil Purple Meteor that crashed into the front lawn of a weird family, causing the father/husband, a mad scientist, to become brainwashed and to try to take over the world by sucking out the brains of teenagers, individually by use of a machine called the Zomb-B-Matic in his basement laboratory. When Sandy Pantz is kidnapped by Dr. Fred it's up to Sandy's boyfriend Dave Miller and the rest of his college buddies to break into the house, rescue Sandy, free Dr. Fred of his possession, and save the world.

That is a nice summary of the INTRO. Guys, lets rescue poor Sandy, and off they go.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Fienepien

Let's not forget to add IMO.

What about the smiley?

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Ninth

Yeah, yeah, I enjoyed the story too, so what? It's over-simple, full of cliches, yet funny and clever, and it's anything but deep. I think that recent games on the whole have better stories, unless you're considering atmosphere and dialogs as part of the story.

Urg. Gilbert Goodmate, Tony Tough, and maybe Runaway are the 3 "recent" games that I could even consider most directly relating to DOTT story-wise, and all 3 of them have really idiotic unappealing stories that don't remotely interest. I don't really know where you're getting the comparison to modern games?

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Just his own personal taste, Jake.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by Ninth

But if I'm asked to pick the better story, then I'd pick Syberia, Black Mirror, Darkfall, NiBiRu, Moment of Silence, or even BS3 over DOTT.

I still say the complexity or value of a story is being confused with elements like seriousness and emotion here. MM/DOTT don't have the same kind of depth as those games, but I don't think writing their stories off as simple is the right way to handle what I believe is simply a different kind of direction.

Also, I disagree with the notion that the technical confinements of the older games limited the complexity or worth of a their stories. How can you possibly back something like that up?

But I'm pretty sure we don't have the same definition of "story" anyway, so this is kind of pointless.

You're probably right.

Originally Posted by Ninth

What about the smiley?

What?! Another smiley??
Well, if you insist.
Where would you like me to put it?

I'm invisible again.... oh well. By the time I'd finished typing there were 11 NEW posts.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Jake

Urg. Gilbert Goodmate, Tony Tough, and maybe Runaway are the 3 "recent" games that I could even consider most directly relating to DOTT story-wise, and all 3 of them have really idiotic unappealing stories that don't remotely interest. I don't really know where you're getting the comparison to modern games?

I'm just saying that DOTT's story is not its most impressive feature.
And you'll notice that I didn't use the games you cited as examples because I only played Runaway and it's story was idiotic and unappealing indeed.
Ultimately, my point is that good stories is not what recent games lack. And that's not what drove me to adventure games in the first place either.

Originally Posted by Jake

Urg. Gilbert Goodmate, Tony Tough, and maybe Runaway are the 3 "recent" games that I could even consider most directly relating to DOTT story-wise, and all 3 of them have really idiotic unappealing stories that don't remotely interest. I don't really know where you're getting the comparison to modern games?

I don't see any relation at all, storywise. They're all (supposed to be) humorous games, that's all as far as I'm concerned.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by Fienepien

Define story. Unrelated incidents and people is more like it. Which it has in common with a modern game like Syberia.

Unrelated, eh?

I'm not critizing DOTT and I'm no fan of Syberia, but the claim that all these older adventures were story-driven or whatever term was used, is false. IMO. Let's not forget to add IMO.

Good thing, too, because you're totally wrong. IMO.

If Maniac Mansion isn't a story-driven game I don't know what is. What is it you think that drives it, or any other of the older LucasArts games?

Well, isn't it?

Yes, which means you're pretty much summarizing the entire story by saying they have to fix the water.

That is a nice summary of the INTRO. Guys, lets rescue poor Sandy, and off they go.

But you FIND OUT a lot of the stuff I typed as the game progresses. The INTRO is a meteor crashing and three kids on a driveway. What does that explain to someone who just loaded this thing for the first time? You have to PLAY THE GAME to discover everything else.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by Ninth

Ultimately, my point is that good stories is not what recent games lack.

Fine. Then my point is that the old games didn't lack them either.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Udvarnoky

I still say the complexity or value of a story is being confused with elements like seriousness and emotion here. MM/DOTT don't have the same kind of depth as those games, but I don't think writing their stories off as simple is the right way to handle what I believe is simply a different kind of direction.

Also, I disagree with the notion that the technical confinements of the older games limited the complexity or worth of a their stories. How can you possibly back something like that up?

If you're not able to represent (graphically speaking) what you want in a game, you have to make the story simpler and reduce your ambition in this regard, and play with other elements to make the game still fun to play. Which means you have to have a special care for details, for small animations, funny remarks, and all that makes DOTT such a great game.
Of course, the opposite is true, and more often than not when developpers have the means to actually turn the story the had in mind into a game, they seem to think the details are unimportant.

[fov]

Also, I disagree with the notion that the technical confinements of the older games limited the complexity or worth of a their stories. How can you possibly back something like that up?

You can't tell a story of the same scope in a game crammed onto one 5.25" floppy that you can in a game on a CD, for one thing.

I'm sure there are other examples, but not having worked in game development myself, I'd only be speculating.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Udvarnoky

Fine. Then my point is that the old games didn't lack them either.

No (well, some older games had bad stories, of course, as some newer ones).
But let me amend my point:
The stories in AGs didn't get worse, they're as good as they ever were.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Ninth

But if I'm asked to pick the better story, then I'd pick Syberia, Black Mirror, Darkfall, NiBiRu, Moment of Silence, or even BS3 over DOTT.

I think from a pure story standpoint you're really comparing apples and oranges. That's like saying "I'd pick Chinatown's story over Back to the Future's any day!" or something.

forget it.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Like I said, Jake, it's just his personal taste.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by Ninth

If you're not able to represent (graphically speaking) what you want in a game, you have to make the story simpler and reduce your ambition in this regard, and play with other elements to make the game still fun to play. Which means you have to have a special care for details, for small animations, funny remarks, and all that makes DOTT such a great game.

I think that is dangerously close to saying a good story is dependent upon graphics. I'm simply not getting how stories must be simplified just because technical aspects are! Also, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by not being able to graphically represent something in a game, and your DOTT example is more puzzling. Do you really think that the great animations, dialogue, and everything else not "technical" about DOTT was simply a last resort, only put there to make up for some technical gap? Would Schafer and Grossman have thrown out all the personality if they could have made the game in today's environment? Was their mentality, "Man, we can't made a hi-res 3D model of Bernard Bernouli, so let's stuff the game with humor and attention to detail in an effort to divert the player's attention!"

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Jake

I think from a pure story standpoint you're really comparing apples and oranges. That's like saying "I'd pick Chinatown over Back to the Future" or something.

You seem to be exclusively listing stories that are "deep" and "emotional" (quotes very intentional) or at best "dark" and what I'm inferring from that is that you're simply marking "deep" "emotional" and "dark" stories as "good," while marking lighthearted possibly silly ones as "lame" and "weak."

Not really. I really like Monkey Island's story, which is quite complex, even though it's really light, but DOTT's story felt non-important to me.
And since there aren't any recent light games worth mentioning (I hate the Westerner, and didn't like Runaway that much, I only picked dark titles because that's what they do nowadays. Of course, that in itself (that there are almost exclusively dark titles) is quite bad.
Oh, and irony aside, I do think that newer stories are deeper than older ones, on the whole, by which I mean more convoluted, more cinematic, more fun.

[Udvarnoky]

Originally Posted by fov

You can't tell a story of the same scope in a game crammed onto one 5.25" floppy that you can in a game on a CD, for one thing.

What's "scope" to you? The file size of the game's cutscenes?