[ragnar]

Originally Posted by James

2. Deus Ex: Invisible War does not lose narrative cohesion. I have played it through 4 times attempting different choices and factions. If anything, the story is better than that of the original; technically the game is flawed however, supportin my Radeon card only nominally.

The story of DX: IW is pretty good in the first two towns you visit (Seattle and Cairo), after that it just gets plain boring and becoming similar to the first game. And as I said, the game has way too high demands on the computer in comparison to how much it is actually used to really improve the graphics. I was quite disappointed with the graphics when comparing to what it demands of the computer.

[Marek]

The way that Facade works under the hood is well documented, but I haven't read all of it. As I understand the story develops depends on the AI, but it's not like it's random or just waiting for you to do something. Facade's story is chunked into beats. Whatever you do, there will always be two major climaxes in the story. The tention will always rise in approximately the same way, but how that tention is manifested depends on what you did in the game. I look forward a lot to the discussions we'll have on Facade once it's been released publicly.

As for Deus Ex: IW (nice conversational sidetrack there), I thought the game was absolutely brilliant in terms of structure, scope and ambition, but the whole concept was held back enormously by the bad characters and the lack of real dramatic tention. Everyone keeps talking about the amazing range of choices offered by IW, but personally I don't find them interesting if I'm not given the idea that my choices matter. (This can be completely an illusion, of course.) The choices in IW are never offered when you're with your back against a wall in a really hightened situation. It always felt more like "okay, what flavor of icecream do you want now?". It would have been nice to see more roads getting closed off because you made a certain decision, or to see Alex D. rewarded in certain areas for choosing a certain specialization. I also thought perhaps too much energy was spent on gimmicks and not enough on actual asset creation. The world of IW often feels too empty. This all sort of breaks the illusion, despite the fact that the underlying ideas are solid.

[James]

Rags, I thought the graphics were a great improvement in terms of style from the original. They weren't up at the level seen in Doom3 or Far Cry, but there are few games that are.

Marek, in terms of decisive player choice, surely the endings alone warrant sufficient climax and player choice?

[jjacob]

Originally Posted by James

Rags, I thought the graphics were a great improvement in terms of style from the original. They weren't up at the level seen in Doom3 or Far Cry, but there are few games that are.

Marek, in terms of decisive player choice, surely the endings alone warrant sufficient climax and player choice?

Indeed, although it did have some high sysreqs (my 2.8ghz and radeon9700pro did extremely well, I didn't have any of the ATi compatibility issues I experienced with Deus Ex 1), the game had immense atmosphere IMO! I would have liked some more NPCs and more 'sidequests', but especially ones that are well-integrated within the story. In Deus Ex 1, it were mostly the sidequests that gave away information about the gameworld, always hinting towards the 'conspiracies' and so on, I loved this! This was definately the missing element in DX2. Ofcourse most choices are perhaps an illusion but they fooled me! I can't give any examples without a spoiler tag, but suffice to say one choice (nowhere near the end) took me about an hour to decide. I'd say that pretty much shows how well the 'illusion' of choice is implemented. But that aside, choosing which faction to trust has gameplay consequences earlier on in the game, it means certain people will or will not trust you, I think. (Disclaimer: as I said they fooled me before, perhaps this is also an illusion, even after playing it twice )

[Moron Lite]

Originally Posted by Marek

As for Deus Ex: IW (nice conversational sidetrack there), ... the whole concept was held back enormously by the bad characters and the lack of real dramatic tention. Everyone keeps talking about the amazing range of choices offered by IW, but personally I don't find them interesting if I'm not given the idea that my choices matter. (This can be completely an illusion, of course.) The choices in IW are never offered when you're with your back against a wall in a really hightened situation. It always felt more like "okay, what flavor of icecream do you want now?". It would have been nice to see more roads getting closed off because you made a certain decision, or to see Alex D. rewarded in certain areas for choosing a certain specialization. I also thought perhaps too much energy was spent on gimmicks and not enough on actual asset creation. The world of IW often feels too empty. This all sort of breaks the illusion, despite the fact that the underlying ideas are solid.

My thoughts exactly.

I think there's a good point buried in the dual discussions of Facade and Deus Ex: IW. I'll try to come up with it later, hopefully as a Ludonauts article.

[Jayel]

judging from the demo, Warren Spector has a wrong idea of what "accessibility" means. In IW, a lot of the simplications came at the expense of gameplay.
For example, omission of skill upgrade, no leaning (for those who like stealth), no headshot kills, no different ammo types, carrying heavy stuff has no affect on movement rate, etc.... it just feels like a half of a game instead of a whole.

What I didn't like most about the demo is that the physics system had nothing whatsoever with the gameplay. What a waste of cpu cycles. Ion Storm had a chance to do something new and innovative and they blew it.

[James]

Jayel, get the full game and patch it. Then make assertions.

[ragnar]

Originally Posted by James

Rags, I thought the graphics were a great improvement in terms of style from the original.

There might have been some error in my monitor, but that's not the impression I got. On the other hand it can have something to do with that I played Syberia II just before and got spoilt with the graphics there.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

MUUAAAHAHAHAHAHA!! The dead threads come back to haunt you!! :eek:

Um, I thought I'd resurrect this one to see what new folks think of it, especially in light of games like Fahrenheit and Dreamfall coming up.

[After a brisk nap]

I think it's time they released Façade.

I also think The Matrix is about as bad an example as you could choose to represent innovation.

Beyond that... I have some thoughts, which will follow later.

[EasilyConfused]

Originally Posted by Trep

The authorship remains with the game's designer and writer and the player becomes in essence a kind of pawn, an instrument to unlock whatever the author had in mind. . . . I certainly felt so playing The Longest Journey and Syberia, and any 'exploration' on any level the game promised was merely superficial, ultimately breached. All I did was run from one side of the screen to the other, in service of the story, and there never existed the possibility of ownership of the experience, my emotional responses to the narrative content was what the designer wanted.

If you went into any university literature department in the 1980s, you would have heard armies of academics droning on about the "Death of the Author" and dropping names of French critics and philosophers left, right, and center. The author or game designer (or game design team--but let's keep it simple) does not control your experience of TLJ or Syberia. At most, he (again, to keep it simple) allows one way of solving the game to progress to a single ending, and even that isn't really true. (You can get one item before getting another, etc., as anyone who's messed with a (gasp!) walkthrough will easily discover. )

Much more importantly, however, any one player's experience of a game, the emotional response to it, is not identical to that of another player's, and does not necessarily replicate what Benoit Sokal or Ragnar Tornquist might have wanted the player to experience. :eek: Some of us LOVED TLJ and Syberia; some of us hated it. I've had long conversations with people on this forum about those games and those characters. I know for example that Bastich's views on Kate Walker's character are entirely different from mine; that Jake had a pretty different experience of the dialogue in TLJ than I did; that FGM and I tend to agree on these games; that Emily was bored in some places in Syberia II that I was and bored in other places I was not. Each of us brings our own experience to games, books, movies, all of art, and all of life--in that way, we already DO have an interactive role, and it's not just a case of an author imposing a vision upon us.

That said, there is difference between the linearity of something like film for instance and the greater nonlinearity of games (or potential nonlinearity). But if you go to the next level, the deeper level of what the nonlinearity offers you, (and here I feel myself starting to not make sense), I'm wondering how much difference there really is. Take what Marek said about Facade--and I agree, we'll all have lots more to say about this when the game comes out:

Originally Posted by Marek

The way that Facade works under the hood is well documented, but I haven't read all of it. As I understand the story develops depends on the AI, but it's not like it's random or just waiting for you to do something. Facade's story is chunked into beats. Whatever you do, there will always be two major climaxes in the story. The tention will always rise in approximately the same way, but how that tention is manifested depends on what you did in the game. I look forward a lot to the discussions we'll have on Facade once it's been released publicly.

If you end up with really two stories, with lots of frilly icing coating of dissimilarity on top, repeated play will show you that. Yes, on the first couple (or ten, or whatever) playthroughs, perhaps you will be AMAZED that you can drink yourself into a stupor while the couple argues themselves into either breakup or reconciliation. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Marek's awesome preview. 8-) ) On repeated playthroughs, though, it's possible that the architecture of the game, the "under the hood" part, will become as visible to you as what seems to be "on the surface" in a more tradition medium. That is, the creator of Facade presumably has a vision of what life is like as well, and is conveying that via the game. You have some role--but you did when you were playing Syberia too! When you were playing Syberia, you got to react and feel and hate or love or laugh or whatever. Your GAMEPLAY was different, but your emotional or intellectual response to the game was still your business. With a game that gives you multiple paths, the same is also true. You get to make choices, but the choices are still constrained by the author, or if not the author (as in--a script), then by the assumptions of the AI.

Perhaps I'm wording all this too badly for it to make any sense, and it may be too abstract, or it may be that I've simply not played enough of this type of thing to understand the qualitative differences. I don't want to collapse all the differences between linearity and non-linearity in story. I think non-linearity in AGs is an idea whose time has MORE than come (which doesn't mean that I don't think more linear AGs shouldn't also survive--I hate it when I'm lost and have no idea what I might do next.) But I just want to take a whack at the notion that suggests that in one case the game is controlling me, and in the other case I'm controlling the game, because this of course is also an oversimplification.

[Fairygdmther]

EC - I agree - there is a limit to the degree of non-linearity a game can offer due to programming constraints and the extent of the story as delineated by the writer. And I agree that each of us takes a different perception of the game with us. And even if the writers give us 5 beginnings, 3 middles, and 4 endings, there will be a limited amount of experiences that can be achieved, by replaying all of these. There will come a point where there is no "story" but merely options for completion of the game, a game that may have lost its claim to being an adventure. I feel that the spectrum of linearity/non-linearity is overemphasized in critiques of adventure games. Perhaps with more originality in story, this process would be a non-issue.

And EC - please stop doubting yourself - your essays are well-thought out, and well-presented. You always make your points clear, you needn't fear misunderstanding. Have some confidence, woman, you rock!

FGM

[After a brisk nap]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

The authorship remains with the game's designer and writer and the player becomes in essence a kind of pawn, an instrument to unlock whatever the author had in mind. Now, as that player I would feel very constrained in this awareness, but in the proximity to what other genres are up to in how they engage the player. I certainly felt so playing The Longest Journey and Syberia, and any 'exploration' on any level the game promised was merely superficial, ultimately breached. All I did was run from one side of the screen to the other, in service of the story, and there never existed the possibility of ownership of the experience, my emotional responses to the narrative content was what the designer wanted.

Personalization of experience, I realized, has never been at the forefront of the adventure game. I may have teared up at the end of Syberia, but it really was no different from any other person's response who played it, this again has to do with ownership staying with the game's designer.

I agree with EC that just because the story is predefined by a designer (the "author" of the game), that doesn't mean that your experience is not personal. It certainly doesn't mean that your reactions are interchangeable with everyone (or anyone) else's.

Books and films tell stories that are completely fixed, superficially identical for anyone who reads or watches them. Yet reading a novel can be one of the most personal and individual experiences there is. Ownership of the experience? There's no question about it.

Movies are slightly less personal, at one level of remove because they have to pass through our senses (books pass through our vision, admittedly, but I consider reading to be a low-bandwidth method of streaming ideas straight into our brains). Games, by placing us in the skin of a character, could potentially be a more intimate experience than movies, even if they can't get quite as close as books.

There is obviously a problem with fixed, predefined stories in computer games, but I think it comes from a conflict with interactivity, not from making a personal experience impossible. Interactivity must mean the freedom to perform actions, and actions are meaningless without consequences. The more rich and complex the available options in a game become, the more contrived a story that cannot be affected by your choices becomes.

Edit: The problem of combining interactivity and linear storytelling has been recognized for a long time. One of the oldest ways to deal with it is known as the "lakes and rivers" model. The metaphor is of players traveling on a boat. On a lake they can go in any direction they like, but won't get farther than to the edge of the lake. On a river they can travel far, but only in the direction the river is going. Obviously, the lakes are periods of lots of interactivity and freedom, but very little story progression, while the rivers are periods of linear storytelling with very little freedom. This model is to blame for the puzzle, cut-scene, puzzle, cut-scene rhythm of many traditional adventure games, but it's far from unique to the genre.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I think ulitimately authorship - of the narrative - is inevitably with the game's writer/designer as limited by his imagination and current technology. But the process of moving through that narrative is very possible in organically constructed ways for the player. On one level the 'meta-author' retains the overarching blueprint for the narrative, while on another level the player is a kind of interlocutor or even conspirator to how the narrative develops. In this sense the player 'writes' in the details of the story - when events happen, who, what, where, why. There could be an expanse of freedom to move within the larger narrative construct, and freedom granted for a much more personalized player experience, not just emotionally, but spacially, contextually, narratively.

I find that this is what's mainly missing in many adventure games coming out today - a roaming freedom granted the player to explore the narrative instead of just connecting dot A to dot B.

[Stalker]

YES! More freedom, and give the player more choices. It's okay if some of them end the game (even better if there's an "Undo"-Option afterwards) prematurely, but leave me the choice... at least the really important ones.

I mean, in generic game X, you learn that you - yes, YOU! - are the only one who can save planet Y. In basically ALL games, you don't even have the choice to run away instead. Either, it's something like a conversation tree repeated over and over until you finally agree, or it happens automatically in a cutscene.

The one game where it was different that I can remember was Shannara.

Spoiler:

At one point, your girlfriend gets mortally wounded. You can use the Elfstones to save her, but if you do, they will be destroyed and your quest is over. But the point is - you can do it. If you do, the game ends with a short epilogue, so the choice that drives the story onwards is of course to opt against using the Elfstones.

Even more. Since you're all cursed, your soul will be trapped if you die unless a ritual is performed in the moment of death. The problem is that your party is under assault, and she won't die "naturally" before you're defeated and taken prisoner. Again, you have the choice to kill her yourself (she actually asks you to do it) and perform the ritual in the remaining time or opt against it. This leads to a slight change in the story afterwards... if you don't save her, her ghost attacks you near the end of the game and you have to fight her.

Or in The Dig, though the choice IS rather minuscule.

Spoiler:

Yeah, I'm talking about Maggie asking you not to revive her if she dies.

I'm sure that in most "true" adventure games now, those choices would either not be possible at all - you could only do the "good" thing, all other tries would be rewarded with a "I don't wanna do it" response. Same thing with multiple solutions which have fallen out of favour for some reason... something like being able to fill a bottle with water at different places is pretty much the best "multiple solution" we can expect now.

Yeah, those details were way easier to implement in what was basically interactive fiction with a graphic interface - all you had to add are a few lines of text as opposed to an elaborate cutscene. But they are able to do it in RPGs (like KoTOR), and it's those small details that matter.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Stalker

YES! More freedom, and give the player more choices. It's okay if some of them end the game (even better if there's an "Undo"-Option afterwards) prematurely, but leave me the choice... at least the really important ones.

Can you say: Fahrenheit*?








*Or the more mundane title The Indigo Prophecy?

[Stalker]

I'm really interested how that one will turn out... if a game is in production for a long time, it either turns out superb or rather disappointing. And as I said in another thread, after Fable I'm a bit weary about getting hyped up on previews.

However, if they can really follow through with their promises (and get some good marketing), I'm sure the game will be a huge success. There's actually a good chance it would start another "sub-genre" of adventures just like Myst did a decade ago.

[After a brisk nap]

Let me first state that I think strong stories in games is a Good Thing. This being an adventure gamers' forum, I don't expect much disagreement on that point.

It's worth keeping in mind that almost all games except for the purely abstract (Tetris) have stories, even if they're incredibly basic. Just look at the fan outcry to news that the DOOM film wouldn't be about legions of Hell invading Mars. Or the insanely complicated soap opera (or tragic saga) people have projected onto the characters of Super Mario Bros.

I'd like to make a distinction between two types of story in a game. You have the story you're told as you're playing the game through cut-scenes, scripted events, and pre-recorded dialog. Let's call it scripted story. There's also another kind of story, about situations that arise while playing the game. It can be the story of being down to 10 in health, and finishing off the boss monster with your final clip. Of launching a raid on your enemy's supply lines, then attacking their base with their own ammo. Whatever the gameplay is, that's the material for the story. Let's call it emergent story.

It should be clear that while the game designers are the authors of the scripted story, the player is arguably the author of the emergent story. It's not quite that simple, since good game designers have a great deal of influence over the emergent story through things like level design, but it will do as a first approximation. The scripted and emergent stories are usually tightly intertwined. Scripted bits are triggered by what's going on in the emergent story. Reversely, scripted events can change the parameters of the gameplay (e.g. spawning new enemies), and thereby manipulate the emergent story.

In traditional adventure games, everything that happens to you is scripted. Very few games allow enough freedom and variation for interesting emergent stories. The best stories you can tell about the actual gameplay in an AG is something like "I had walked by that screen dozens of times, but never noticed that hotspot before," or "Then I realized I could combine the remote-controlled car with the furry hat and use it to scare the elephant".

Unscripted gameplay in AGs is trivial (walking across screens, attempting actions that have no effect), or goes on inside the player's head. It does not support emergent storytelling.

Perhaps more freedom will facilitate emergent stories. I think some of Trep's suggestions (challenges rather than puzzles) might make emergent stories a bigger element of AGs. My problem is that I don't see how you could do this without making something that isn't an adventure game. You could create great games, perhaps, but I think they would offer something very different from what many of us are looking for in our adventure games.

Maybe there is some way to make players more active collaborators in the scripted story, instead...

[LauraMac]

Snarky....

Really interesting points.

I was thinking about a game that I really liked The Legend of the Assassin and the Prophet and one reason is because of the way the inventory is saved over, you don't just shove items into your pants or a bag.

Anyway, one of my favorite parts which fits into that "emergent" story formation you speak of is where if you grab this ladder too early - your poor character has to drag it around. And the developers thought about this because your poor alter ego makes these "uhng gasp uhngh" sounds as you hear *scrape - drag - scrape* I really started getting tired dragging this around and was sad I was so dense as to get the ladder so soon.

So it is possible in adventure games. Maybe one way is it takes a realistic inventory management scheme to make this happen.

[EasilyConfused]

Laura--interesting post yourself. I'm trying to understand the gameplay in the game you're describing and how it could be applied in other situations. I also agree that incorporating more "challenges" as we've talked about in other threads and fewer overt "puzzles" could be interesting. Introducing the type of problems one faces in real life can bring some creativity to AGs . . . (or, it could make them just lifelike and a drag. I don't want to have to play a game about navigating a grocery store and "solving" the "challenges" I face there, since I do it often enough anyway!) But challenges where you have to economize on inventory items over the course of a game, or use real-life skills to solve puzzles, and so on, might open up "emergent" game areas if multiple solutions are possible. (Here I am, banging the multiple solution drum again. Actually this always makes me nervous in real games, because I feel like I'm getting the solution wrong. )