BS4....Hmmm

[Oath]

Grim Fandango was keyboard-controlled not point'n'click.....

I don't think he was saying that Grim was point and click, instead making a counter-point by referencing this bit:

In some way people saying oh no point'n'click why oh why, aren't that different from people saying the opposite...

Thus making the point "Grim Fandango was good even though there wasn't any mouse-interaction". I might be reaching here, but that's my view.

[loonyboi]

Thus making the point "Grim Fandango was good even though there wasn't any mouse-interaction". I might be reaching here, but that's my view.

Grim Fandango was *basically* a 3D point n' click game. The different control scheme really didn't add or subtract from the game.

[vimes]

So... on what grounds do you consider BS3 not to be a point n click game?

[Oath]

Grim Fandango was *basically* a 3D point n' click game. The different control scheme really didn't add or subtract from the game.

That pretty much makes any adventure game point and click though. Grim was lacking the most base element, mouse input, for that. There can't be any pointing or clicking without that type of interaction, so I and many others would chose a more narrow definition and think of Grim as the standard for 3D adventure games instead.

[loonyboi]

So... on what grounds do you consider BS3 not to be a point n click game?

I'd say b/c of the action and stealth elements.

Even if the stealth was really, really minimal.

[vimes]

Isn't the qualification "point'n'click" entirely and solely related to GUI?

[Thrik]

Yeah, it is. Somebody is going insane.

Grim Fandango never has been and never will be a point 'n' click game.

[brkl]

I couldn't stand how uninterestic and generic Grim Fandango looked.

[vimes]

I couldn't stand how uninterestic and generic Grim Fandango looked.

I'll let everyone else react to that because it's too bolt to be ironic and too strange to be true.

Fire at will, I say.

[Thrik]

I couldn't stand how uninterestic and generic Grim Fandango looked.

lol

[Roderick]

It's uniqueness is inspiring.

[Thrik]

By the way, Rodi, that is not how you write per se. Or maybe you want to say that you don't dislike Persian 3D art?

[brkl]

"Perse" is ass in Finnish.

[netmonkey]

Fucking idiots. No wonder it's Revo-nada now.

If you take everything away down to the basics, an adventure game defined as focusing on four basic things:

1. exploration
   
2. problem-solving
   
3. interaction
   
4. narrative
   

Where in that list does it say it's point and click? or 3d? or pre-rendered and 3d chars? Or that problems can't be solved without clicking item a with b and looking at item c to get a clue to solve puzzle d? Or that you have to die once in a while for no reason because we've been thinking about whether it's point and click or 3d and forgot about creating a completely exciting gameplay experience?

Marek has already written something about this a while ago, so I'll shut up. I didn't buy BS3 and watch me not buy BS4 either.

[Roderick]

By the way, Rodi, that is not how you write per se. Or maybe you want to say that you don't dislike Persian 3D art?

I believe you can also say par se? Meh, I get confused with those things. Trifle matters.

[Marek]

Okay, Netmonkey's post made me post this.

A couple of years ago I wrote an article for AG that roughly defined the genre as focusing on three things:

1. Narrative exploration - by which I meant not spatial exploration, but exploration that leads to discovery that leads to story progression etc.
   
2. Non-competitive, non-threatening - today I would probably have tried to come up with a better term for this, but what I meant was that you're not playing for points, or that you should be worried about dying and starting over (true for any modern adventure game)
   
3. Designer-created, player-controlled protagonist- to seperate adventure games from RPGs, where the protagonist is also player-created.

These three loose rules are inclusive enough to make Myst and Monkey Island part of the same genre, but it nicely excludes action/adventures and RPGs.

Anyway, I agree that often way too much importance is put on the control method. Other than weird subgenres like rhythm games it seems very counterintuitive to define games by how they're controlled. It would put Wolfenstein in a different genre than Quake because it didn't use a mouse.

[Oath]

I agree with your points Marek, but I have no idea where this whole argument came from. Only way up on the first page were people saying anything about what control method was the best, after that there were only comments on how it worked for BS3, as far as I could tell. Oh well...

Fucking idiots. No wonder it's Revo-nada now.

Perhaps a bit passive-agressive?

[miffy495]

Good guidelines for what makes an adventure, Marek, but they may be a bit too broad in scope. There are some games that are not about points and in which you could die in which I was never afraid of dying. These games would not normally be considered adventure. Contrast that to the frequency of death in, say, Sierra's old games and these games may actually fit the definition better.

Example: I died far more often playing the King's Quest games than playing the Metal Gear Solid games, but KQ is adventure and MGS is not. Your first and third points explain why I love the MGS games, and the second fits just fine with the amount of difficulty I've had with them. Now that I think about it, maybe Metal Gear really is an adventure series and I just never noticed before. I need to think this one through.

'Bout the whole control method thing though, I'm totally on board. Adventures are about the story more than anything else, and what the hell does the input method have to do with that? I didn't play BS3 because I heard a whole lot of bad about it, not because it was direct-controlled.

[Roderick]

Well, all three points are excellent in describing the adventure genre, but everything may be overruled by that one aspect that you can't grasp in rules: the feeling. To me, an adventuregame is one because it feels like one.

[Oath]

I didn't play BS3 because I heard a whole lot of bad about it, not because it was direct-controlled.

You should pick it up, since you could probably find it for very little nowadays. You might have some objections to features in it, I know I did, but in the end many still find it to be enjoyable. At times it reminded me very much of why I loved Broken Sword in the first place, other times... not so much. Still, give it a shot.

Well, all three points are excellent in describing the adventure genre, but everything may be overruled by that one aspect that you can't grasp in rules: the feeling. To me, an adventuregame is one because it feels like one.

I'd attribute that to the pacing in the storytelling, which is neatly placable in Marek's second point about the non-competetive design which runs throughout the genre. At least that's what I would say gives me that "adventure" feeling.

[Marek]

I know the "you shouldn't be afraid of dying" thing is a bit of a cop-out, because it isn't true for early 90ies Sierra adventures. But I can't think of any adventure games after 1997 or-so that kept that convention, so as a non-backwards compatible definition of the genre it works.

[Roderick]

I'd attribute that to the pacing in the storytelling, which is neatly placable in Marek's second point about the non-competetive design which runs throughout the genre. At least that's what I would say gives me that "adventure" feeling.

No! You can't put it in rules!

[Oath]

No! You can't put it in rules!

Right, sorry, forgot about that rule.

I know the "you shouldn't be afraid of dying" thing is a bit of a cop-out, because it isn't true for early 90ies Sierra adventures. But I can't think of any adventure games after 1997 or-so that kept that convention, so as a non-backwards compatible definition of the genre it works.

Well, uh, you've been able to die in the series this thread is about. It's not like you can't load a save a few seconds later, but you can still die.

[loonyboi]

I know the "you shouldn't be afraid of dying" thing is a bit of a cop-out, because it isn't true for early 90ies Sierra adventures. But I can't think of any adventure games after 1997 or-so that kept that convention, so as a non-backwards compatible definition of the genre it works.

You could die in pretty much every Sierra game, from King's Quest up through Phantasmagoria. I'm pretty sure you could die in Gabriel Knight, too.

Also as for points, again, Sierra games had points, as did Infocom's games.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to let you say that IF isn't adventure gaming.

[DanJW]

I haven't played those games, but I assume that death is the result of a poor choice, rather than from not having t3h l33t sk1llz. Right?