Snooglebum

Is anybody a sad human like me, and have not played any LucasArts adventure games?

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I really hate the story of the first two Broken Swords games ...

I only played the first one on the iPhone and didn't notice this. But that may be because I was glad to play •any• ags on that device as not many better ones were available. In hindsight I think I agree. Georges motivation to travel so much to solve this "case" was pretty much unestablished.

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Syberia is awful. I wanted to give up so bad. I still can't believe all the hype and praise it got. All the puzzles were so half assed. Character design, story, backgrounds, and motivation were either completely missing or just incredibly bland.

My theory is a lot of adventure game males at the time just wanted to fuck the main character. That's all I've got. I really just don't understand one bit, even with the bleakness you use as the game's defining characteristic juv3nal. If there's one game that majorly made me feel a disconnect with the adventure game community and what was generally accepted as a great adventure game, Syberia was it. Longest Journey doesn't even come close.

I guess if I want to play an adventure game that makes me ask what am I doing here and what is all this shit, I would rather play The Neverhood.

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Syberia is awful. I wanted to give up so bad. I still can't believe all the hype and praise it got. All the puzzles were so half assed. Character design, story, backgrounds, and motivation were either completely missing or just incredibly bland.

I certainly can't defend any of the individual aspects of the game and even if I were willing to try, I doubt I could convince you, but I'll just share what I liked so much about Syberia: the way the story mapped onto a metaphor of the actual act of playing adventure games. Here is this thing you do, fiddling around with puzzles, that does you no good in real life and yet you go on doing it because you get to see some neat pictures and feel clever.

Which is exactly what the girl in Syberia does. She gets all these reminders by cell phone of the "real life" which exists, on hold, waiting for her to stop messing around and get back to work and by the end she's basically saying: Fuck that noise. Puzzles are cool. Woolly mammoths and automatons are cool.

It's not a complicated story or metaphor or anything, but it's just really cool in the way that it validates the time you've been spending sitting in front of the computer not getting anything productive done.

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Wow. I totally forgot about this thread. Then, I remember and check back and three pages appeared! :eek:

By the way, I have played a couple of adventure games, just not the LucasArts ones. I played The White Chamber, for instance. Everybody go play The White Chamber, it's good, and scary as all hell.

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I liked Syberia. Or at least, the animatronic world it took place in. The music was also nice. Don't remember how good it was puzzle and story wise.

As for the Broken Sword games. I didn't really enjoy playing the the first one. The second one wasn't much better. Solving the puzzles felt like a shore.

The third and forth game were much much interesting. The story was more compelling.

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I loved Broken Sword 1 (and 2 a little less). I guess for me, the lure of nicely rendered exotic locales, subtle music and good atmosphere was more than enough. I found the characters engaging enough to go along.

I see parallels between this and the Starcraft II discussion. In both cases, people say how awful the story is, while I didn't see it at all. Perhaps it's a case of where if the game can sell me the characters, I'm willing to go along. Perhaps I'm less demanding of games, because I still see story as something of a welcome extra? In any case, Broken Sword is great in my book.

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The directors cut has been released for PC in the past few weeks too.

http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/DD-BSSTDC/broken-sword-shadow-of-the-templars-directors-cut

Nice! I had no idea they released this on PC. I knew that Broken Sword director's cut finally made it's way to PC, but this was a nice surprise. BtSS is my favourite Revolution adventure game.

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Revolution's games are wonderfully solid in a way I can't think other adventure games are, plus they have a wonderful sense of humour that's a lot less "zany" and more part of the story than LucasArts. They're mature, without being pretentious. Funny, without sacrificing character or story. Logical without being "heavy".

LucasArt's attempt at something as mature as Revolution (The Dig) was just overly serious and turgid. I can't think of another adventure game that's managed to be as fantastical, and mature AND funny as Revolution's.

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Finally someone can express why Revolution's games are fantastic in meaningful terms. Thanks, Thunder!

Also, I'll have to get home and buy all these new special editions! I though they were mobile exclusive, and bought them on the iPhone, but I'd much rather want to play them on the big screen.

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Revolution's games are wonderfully solid in a way I can't think other adventure games are, plus they have a wonderful sense of humour that's a lot less "zany" and more part of the story than LucasArts. They're mature, without being pretentious. Funny, without sacrificing character or story. Logical without being "heavy".

LucasArt's attempt at something as mature as Revolution (The Dig) was just overly serious and turgid. I can't think of another adventure game that's managed to be as fantastical, and mature AND funny as Revolution's.

Yeah, ok. I don't agree with any of this, tho. Superficially perhaps they've succeeded at logic, humour, maturity, wonderfulness, etc. but the story was not all that well put together and the writing was awkward. They put a sheen of polish on a mediocre, half-thought-out skeleton. I can't really comment with more examples than the little that I remember, tho. I think a better and more honest comparison to Broken Sword would be Fate of Atlantis. The Dig was another beast altogether (and it came out before Broken Sword).

Wee! Adventure-game-themed pissing matches! I missed these! PUZZLES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN STORY! I PLAY AGS TO FEEL SUPERIOR TO MY FELLOW GAMER! 3D IS THE DEVIL! RANDY SLUGANSKI SELLS HIS BODY FOR CHEAP LIQUOR!

:tup::tup:

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:scary:randy.jpg:scary:

How come this never became an emoticon? He's kind of Harrison Ford type dashing. I remember one review he did where he was speaking about when he went to Europe. The women were all over this sexy American.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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I have to agree with Kingz. I'm sorry to poo poo on so many people's favourite adventure game, but Broken Sword's story is just terrible. It's reminiscent of japanese RPG where the good guys and bad guys are both race to collect treasure that grant them the ultimate power, but despite the fact that the good guys manage to get all the treasure, the bad guys inexplicably obtain the power anyway.

then quickly thwarted by explosives

At granular level, I had to keep guessing at the character's motivation and every time I thought I "got it", they reveal another piece of the puzzle that totally throws off my assumptions and there's no satisfying explanation that ties everything at the end. I was so confused and frustrated by the director's cut I went back and played the original game seeking answers but didn't fare better. The director's cut does a better job of explaining Nico's motivation but it also introduces other questions...

LEC adventures may have their share of plot holes but they do such a good job making the characters believable (subjectively speaking) I don't really notice them until somebody points them out.

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I have to agree with Kingz. I'm sorry to poo poo on so many people's favourite adventure game, but Broken Sword's story is just terrible. It's reminiscent of japanese RPG where the good guys and bad guys are both race to collect treasure that grant them the ultimate power.

I respectfully disagree.

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I absolute disagree that the Broken Sword were bad games. They belong to the better adventure games. I think the main reason I didn't like Broken Sword 1+2 that much is because I played them about 2 years ago. The games didn't have fancy features like skip walking and just exit the scene. This was really annoying when I was trying to figure out what to do. You are not really reminded what to do. So when you return to the games a week later is can be quite difficult.

If you want to play a bad adventure game you should play Dreamfall or something.

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If you want to play a bad adventure game you should play Dreamfall or something.

The only game ever I fell asleep playing. Does this qualify as some sort of irony?

I don't know what you people have been playing, Broken Sword's story doesn't hold water in important ways. It is artlessly avoids dealing with some fundamental issues, issues that could've been waved away with a few well-placed lines of dialogue. As it is, the craftsmanship of its narrative is blah. But whatever. Some people just love horrible, horrible things.

I kid. I kid. The game probably doesn't suck as much as I would like it to. Beneath a Steel Sky is the better game, for what that's worth.

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I agree completely with Thunderpeel.

The first two Broken Sword games are amongst my favourite adventure games, and Beneath a Steel Sky was also awesome. To me, they offered something different from the Lucasarts games whilst still keeping my hunger for adventure games satisfied. I liked the writing and I thought the game looked and played really nicely. It has been years since I've played them though.

Think I'm gonna have to go get the Directors Cut now. EDIT: Just watching the trailer for the DC has got me stupidly excited for this game again.

Oh and I know exactly what you mean about this:

(although the goat puzzle in BS1 is still the most evil adventure game puzzle of all time).

That puzzle nearly destroyed me and a friend.

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I might put it down to it being English, the Europeans like it and the Yanks don't ;).

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I might put it down to it being English, the Europeans like it and the Yanks don't ;).

I was born and raised in Belgrade. GENERALIZATION FAIL.

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I was born and raised in Belgrade. GENERALIZATION FAIL.

living for 4.13 weeks in the USA will undo that all

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I absolute disagree that the Broken Sword were bad games. They belong to the better adventure games. I think the main reason I didn't like Broken Sword 1+2 that much is because I played them about 2 years ago. The games didn't have fancy features like skip walking and just exit the scene. This was really annoying when I was trying to figure out what to do. You are not really reminded what to do. So when you return to the games a week later is can be quite difficult.

If you want to play a bad adventure game you should play Dreamfall or something.

Yeah, you might have enjoyed the director's cut then. It "modernized" it quite a bit and the puzzles weren't too frustrating (even the most illogical ones). Plus in the director's cut,

there's an added possibility that maybe Plantard was trying to meet with Nico to recruit her into the evil cult, which is deliciously sinister.

Anyway I won't say it's a bad game. It may be among my least favourites, but that's because I never played a bad adventure game (except HellCab). Obviously I cared enough to play through it twice - and I rarely do that, so it had some sort of hold on me.

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It's been quite some time since I last played Broken Sword 1, but I still have fond memories of it. I don't remember it because it had an incredible plot with believable character motivations, but rather for the individual scenes the presented an exceptionally well constructed adventure. There was just the right mixture of environment detail, puzzles, and character interactivity. I still remember wandering around the city in the desert, sneaking into the hospital, breaking into the museum at night, escaping the thugs at the hotel, and climbing the hay stack to get into the castle, to name a few. It is a quality, memorable adventure despite its weak overarching plot. I'm just a little confused as to why they keep remaking it. Does Revolution exist solely to re-release its old games?

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It's been quite some time since I last played Broken Sword 1, but I still have fond memories of it. I don't remember it because it had an incredible plot with believable character motivations, but rather for the individual scenes the presented an exceptionally well constructed adventure. There was just the right mixture of environment detail, puzzles, and character interactivity. I still remember wandering around the city in the desert, sneaking into the hospital, breaking into the museum at night, escaping the thugs at the hotel, and climbing the hay stack to get into the castle, to name a few. It is a quality, memorable adventure despite its weak overarching plot. I'm just a little confused as to why they keep remaking it. Does Revolution exist solely to re-release its old games?

I don't think anyone will pay them to make new games, as much as they'd like to be making them :(

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Also, they did the horrible, stupid thing that everyone does and went 3D. The last two sequels, both 3D, gained absolutely nothing from the extra dimension, but lost so much of what made the two first ones so great. I wonder if it they did it because they felt it was a good choice, if they felt they had to in order to get a publishing deal, or if it's cheaper to do the 3D assets than the fucking beautiful, slick 2D graphics from BS1 & 2.

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Wasn't Charles Cecil the guy who said adventure games are dead?

The last two Broken Swords were quite bad, I remember waiting for the 3rd to be released and then it was pile of turd that many adventure "fanatics" raved about being great. Or maybe I remember wrong, but that game was a big disappointment. The fourth was even more worse and I never played it, except for the demo?

Revolution was supposed to make a sequel to Beneath the Steel Sky, but after they lost their money because of weak Broken Sword sequels(?), they fired most of their staff if I remember correctly and put their aim in making smaller projects = remakes of earlier games.

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