i think one of the main challenges is preserving the look and feel of the original games. Obviously using pixelated graphics from kings quest 1 isn't going to work, neither is using VGA graphics from kings quest 5. I'm guessing telltale will be using a 3d approach, although this worked for monkey island, I'd urge caution in the way it's implemented in kings quest.When i used to play Kings Quest, it always felt like i was interacting with a detailed painting, it has a unique charm about how things were drawn.
Whenever a new game is announced there is always someone who says it needs to look more realistic than any other game Telltale have done before, but King's Quest? Really? King's Quest VII was a freaking cartoon! I don't think the King's Quest licence is limited to a single, set artistic direction.
Yeah, King's Quest wasn't exactly a franchise with a huge amount of continuity in style or vision--hell, there wasn't even very much recurring music. I think most of us KQ fans just want it to look and feel like whichever one of the games was our favorite. :P
Whenever a new game is announced there is always someone who says it needs to look more realistic than any other game Telltale have done before, but King's Quest? Really? King's Quest VII was a freaking cartoon! I don't think the King's Quest licence is limited to a single, set artistic direction.
Yes, really.
As you know, King's Quest VII was the only game in the entire official series that was done in full cartoon style. In my view it would be disappointing (to say the least) if the new game was done in identical style to that of Tales of Monkey Island. I like it fine with ToMI - but do you mean you feel it would be equally suited to King's Quest?
I think it also matters in terms of setting a precedent for the other Sierra properties. Surely the crucial task of finding the best possible style for the Sierra games (which I feel need to be distinct from earlier Telltale games) should be tackled now, with the first game.
The rest of the "season" will obviously follow the same style, and it might carry over to the other properties. I like what Telltale have done with their earlier games, but there is no way the exact same approach will work for Sierra.
Whenever a new game is announced there is always someone who says it needs to look more realistic than any other game Telltale have done before, but King's Quest? Really? King's Quest VII was a freaking cartoon! I don't think the King's Quest licence is limited to a single, set artistic direction.
I do not think the term cartoon necessarily applies to all... KQ7 was certainly a Don Bluth like toon.... but the rest I think are more like classic story book art come to life especially 5 and 6 and those are the games I think define the series.
I wonder how the art direction would be. I hope it looks better than the Silver Lining, no offense. The fangame looks nice, but it reminds me too much of the Sims or one of those Barbie CGI movies
I didn't play much of it either... I played a little bit of it and got ticked that it was so different from the other games.... I still have it though.
I wonder how the art direction would be. I hope it looks better than the Silver Lining, no offense. The fangame looks nice, but it reminds me too much of the Sims or one of those Barbie CGI movies
That is what I thought too... Its a great fan game... but if it was sold at retail it would make me laugh.
Whenever a new game is announced there is always someone who says it needs to look more realistic than any other game Telltale have done before, but King's Quest? Really? King's Quest VII was a freaking cartoon! I don't think the King's Quest licence is limited to a single, set artistic direction.
KQ7 being a Disney cartoon is a detriment to its style for quite a lot of fans. I think everyone can agree that the style of KQ5 and KQ6 was the best. With cartoon (but quite realistically proportioned) characters, and in the case of KQ6, captured live actors.
The logo used by Telltale thus far (on their blog, for example) is in fact the King's Quest VII version.
Well, not necessarily. All the collections released since the Vivendo 2006 release all use the same logo. And that font has been used on King's Quest boxes since the King's Quest 1 Sierra remake.
It's not that bad. I enjoy playing it. Still have yet to complete it, however. As a King's Quest game it was a disappointment to a lot of narrow-minded fans, in my opinion. Though I understand their feelings. It definitely was more action-oriented than adventure. But that doesn't mean it was bad. It was actually quite good.
Well, not necessarily. All the collections released since the Vivendo 2006 release all use the same logo. And that font has been used on King's Quest boxes since the King's Quest 1 Sierra remake.
The KQI Sierra remake logo uses lowercase except for the initials, whereas the KQVII one has everything in capitals. And since KQVI had a different logo and so did Mask of Eternity, I think it is accurate to call it the KQVII logo...
Not saying it necessarily means anything. You are right that some of the collections use this logo, but not all of them. For example, the GOG collections use the KQI remake logo.
They're close enough to be the same thing. Upon first glace one would say they look the exactly same. It's just a method to make it recognizable. Nothing more.
I don't really agree with this for the same reasons I explained elsewhere. Dead ends to me are just another challenge. Not a mark of bad game design.
Problems with dead ends:
1) The player needs to know they're in one. If you are not told that the solution to the nature of how you're stuck is *outside* the range of options available to you at the time, it becomes frustrating as you try everything in sight looking for an answer but nothing comes to light.
2) The player should be given reasonable opportunity to save prior to entering the dead-end state - with appropriate cluing. From Telltale's standpoint, that would either require a redesign of the checkpointing system that currently underpins their games (since it takes the responsibility for saving *away* from the player), or never checkpoint within a dead-end (which means they would have to be small-scale dead-ends; no "didn't feed the dog the sandwich in the first act" here).
[As a quick aside: With appropriate use of checkpointing, I'd be fine with death. Ultimately, all those 'comedy deaths' meant in Sierra games was having to load a previous save prior to the death. However, if there wasn't a previous save recent enough, you'd lose some quantity of recent play. What the game should *never* do is encourage the player to be reliant on metacommands in order to feel safe experimenting. Expecting the player to save prior to every action is completely unreasonable and very irritating to the player. However, if the saving is handled intelligently by the game, no problem!]
3) One I particularly dislike is the rickety bridge in KQ2, which actively discourages you from *exploring*. Meaning you can't explore beyond the bridge without making the game unwinnable, unless you're lucky enough to already have everything you need to do in that one trip. Exploration definitely shouldn't trigger a dead-end state.
4) Approximately related to #3: A player should never feel they *have* to gather information from a dead-end in order to successfully proceed. Going back to the KQ2 bridge - and it's been a long time since I played it so feel free to correct me! - there is no way to know what sort of state you need the game to be in to cross without entering a dead end as a result.
5) I *think* - although it's been some time since I read the requirements for console titles - Sony explicitly *forbids* you from creating a game which can be saved in an unwinnable state. So you'd also be reducing the number of potential platforms you could release it on unless you were very careful with design. The same may be true of the other hardware manufacturers, too.
Ultimately, I think dead ends may have too many negatives to be worth aiming for. As a designer, what do you gain from them?
1) Scope. A player cannot guarantee that the solution to the puzzle you're in is limited to the options you have available at the time, making the puzzles harder as a result.
2) ... I genuinely cannot think of a #2. Any of the dead-end proponents able to help me out?
Graham Nelson's essay, "The Craft of Adventure" ( http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt ) makes a number of extremely good points about death and unwinnability. He's not opposed to it, as long as it plays fair. I'd strongly recommend the "Bill of Player's Rights" section; it's mainly focussed on text adventure design, but a number of the tropes apply across the board (and indeed, in many cases, beyond adventures!)
Maybe, ultimately, what the game needs is a 'fair/unfair' toggle. Unfair gives total control of saves to the player; it's your responsibility how you use them. Fair would have the smart checkpointing, and additional defences to prevent you from going past point X without picking up the Haddock Of Ultimate Power.
They're close enough to be the same thing. Upon first glace one would say they look the exactly same. It's just a method to make it recognizable. Nothing more.
Well, sorry, but I disagree. This and this just aren't the same logo. Here is the Telltale one. If they have different letters, that makes it a different logo... Even the initials are not identical. See the squiggle in Q, for example.
But not a biggie, I'm not going to argue about it any more.
Like I said, they're close enough. The font may have evolved over time, I'm just saying that using the latest iteration doesn't necessarily mean it'll have KQ7's style. But we already agree on that.
I can understand Back to the Future and Jurassic park being more casual and mainstream due to the licenses, but King's Quest needs to be a classic point and click with tough puzzles. It just needs to.
Difficulty seems to be the only proponent for dead-ends. And even as a veteran adventure gamer who's survived everything from "Gold Rush" to "Codename: Iceman," I really don't want to see a return to them unless that level of difficulty was optional. For me, it's like beating "God of War" on "Titan Mode." Sure, it's possible - and satisfying when I actually do it - but why would I ever subject myself to that torture again?
Adventure games seem to have four basic difficulty levels.
Easy: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, and practically every puzzle solution is practically handed to you on a silver platter (i.e. Back to the Future, Mixed-Up Mother Goose)
Medium: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, but the puzzles are plentiful and keep you exploring and thinking (i.e. most Telltale and LEC games, and some later Sierra games)
Hard: No dead ends, but deaths now exist and you have to rely on common sense to stay on your toes and save your games wisely (i.e. Gabriel Knight, Fate of Atlantis.)
Expert: Here's where Al Lowe's old adage comes into play: "Save early, save often." You'll die, you'll get stuck, and more often than not, even common sense won't save you (i.e. most old Sierra games prior to 1994.)
So oddly enough, most adventure fans grew up on "Expert" mode. Not that the new KQ should follow that tradition, of course. I'd rather they keep it on medium setting, but keep deaths in to provide the illusion of consequence. Or at least create a special check-point system that can help a player identify when they're in a dead-end and send them back to an appropriate point so they can correct their mistakes. Complicated as heck, I know - but they had something similar in "The Last Express" which I found to be really handy.
because back to the future is NOT a classic point and click adventure game.
I guess I don't know what people are talking about anymore when they say "point-and-click." If we're talking about the interface, then yes, it is still point-and-click; you still interact with the world through pointing and clicking. If the phrase "point-and-click" is being used as some kind of synecdoche for a game's underlying puzzle design philosophy, then BttF is pretty different from the classics. I guess I always just assumed that when people said "point-and-click," they meant the interface. There were text/parser adventure games, and then there were point-and-click adventure games.
I guess I don't know what people are talking about anymore when they say "point-and-click." If we're talking about the interface, then yes, it is still point-and-click; you still interact with the world through pointing and clicking. If the phrase "point-and-click" is being used as some kind of synecdoche for a game's underlying puzzle design philosophy, then BttF is pretty different from the classics. I guess I always just assumed that when people said "point-and-click," they meant the interface. There were text/parser adventure games, and then there were point-and-click adventure games.
Some people are very annoyed at having to move the character around with WASD or by dragging the mouse... they seem to think this makes the game no longer point and click, which is silly.
He might be referring to how easy Back to the Future is, but I doubt it.
Well, sorry, but I disagree. This and this just aren't the same logo.
I don't think they put any thought into what logo they used. The rights holders probably gave them the most optimized-for-web-promotion logo they had on hand and they used it, or something like that. They probably weren't even aware of the differences in the first place, let alone used them to make a logical decision based on the intended direction of the final product.
Right, so it works. Another alternative is a "I Figuratively Lack a Spine of Any Sort, Mommy Please Help Me"/"Actual Adventure Game Fan" toggle.
You know, the debate would probably be helped if you cut down on the ad hominems a bit. I wouldn't mind hearing a direct response to my points from post 219, rather than just skipping to the end. In particular, as a fan, I'd like to hear your observations as to the *benefits* of dead ends from a game design standpoint.
You know, the debate would probably be helped if you cut down on the ad hominems a bit. I wouldn't mind hearing a direct response to my points from post 219, rather than just skipping to the end.
"Unfair" was an attack that presumed something about the design philosophy that is inherently untrue. The idea that the very existence of death and consequence is "unfair" is patently ridiculous. Furthermore, player-insulting difficulty sliders are not foreign to games. The lowest difficulty of Wolfenstein 3D was "Can I play, Daddy?" and its icon featured the hero in a baby bonnet with a pacifier. Doom featured "I'm too young to die", Duke Nukem: Time to Kill featured "Wussy", Crusader featured a Mama's Boy setting, R-Type Final featured Baby and Kid, Serious Sam had a difficulty called "Tourist"(you're there to see the sights, but you're not really playing), Rise of the Triad had "Will of Iron, Knees of Jell-O (TM).", Marathon has a Kindergarten setting, et cetera et cetera. It is a great way to "taunt" the player into going for the full experience and reward them for taking on extra challenge in a psychological way, rather than insulting the very idea of a hardcore mode or allowing capable players to "wuss out" by using nondescript difficulty settings.
Dashing is right, you aren't getting a game's full experience unless you play it on hard. To say a game is fair on easy and unfair on hard (even a sierra game) is doing yourself a grave disservice as a gamer. Sometimes it is all about the challenge.
Why couldn't they just have a EASY/NORMAL mode selection (as in MI2?) ? Where easy would basically have no possible deaths, dumbed-down puzzles (or in some instances, puzzles that wouldn't be there anymore), really obvious hints, and a different ending that would invite you to play the normal mode if you wanna see the full ending ---- while a normal mode would have deaths, all puzzles harder (with subtler hints), and the full ending?
Easy: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, and practically every puzzle solution is practically handed to you on a silver platter (i.e. Back to the Future, Mixed-Up Mother Goose)
Yeah.. Not exactly good when a game is compared in difficulty with a game I played when I was 2.
Difficulty seems to be the only proponent for dead-ends. And even as a veteran adventure gamer who's survived everything from "Gold Rush" to "Codename: Iceman," I really don't want to see a return to them unless that level of difficulty was optional. For me, it's like beating "God of War" on "Titan Mode." Sure, it's possible - and satisfying when I actually do it - but why would I ever subject myself to that torture again?
Adventure games seem to have four basic difficulty levels.
Easy: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, and practically every puzzle solution is practically handed to you on a silver platter (i.e. Back to the Future, Mixed-Up Mother Goose)
Medium: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, but the puzzles are plentiful and keep you exploring and thinking (i.e. most Telltale and LEC games, and some later Sierra games)
Hard: No dead ends, but deaths now exist and you have to rely on common sense to stay on your toes and save your games wisely (i.e. Gabriel Knight, Fate of Atlantis.)
Expert: Here's where Al Lowe's old adage comes into play: "Save early, save often." You'll die, you'll get stuck, and more often than not, even common sense won't save you (i.e. most old Sierra games prior to 1994.)
So oddly enough, most adventure fans grew up on "Expert" mode. Not that the new KQ should follow that tradition, of course. I'd rather they keep it on medium setting, but keep deaths in to provide the illusion of consequence. Or at least create a special check-point system that can help a player identify when they're in a dead-end and send them back to an appropriate point so they can correct their mistakes. Complicated as heck, I know - but they had something similar in "The Last Express" which I found to be really handy.
The worst part about dead ends is that they are almost never logical, nor apparent. You have no way of knowing what you missed or did wrong, so you are basically being punished without being told why.
"Unfair" was an attack that presumed something about the design philosophy that is inherently untrue. The idea that the very existence of death and consequence is "unfair" is patently ridiculous.
It was not actually an attack, so much as an acknowledged observation in the amateur text adventure design community; Andrew Plotkin put those observations into words: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale .
One key point that isn't being recognised here: Difficulty is *independent* from cruelty. Difficulty is how difficult it is to work out what to do. Cruelty is how badly you're punished when you fail to. Grim Fandango, if I remember right, is "Merciful" on that scale, but I wouldn't call it particularly easy. Space Quest is Cruel, but I'd argue that it's easier than Grim Fandango.
I've said several times that I am bang alongside the idea of fair death. I could be persuaded about fair deadends, but they're a little more questionable. I'm explicitly talking about unfair death and deadends, and I gave several examples in the lengthy post of the latter. Do you not think the bridge issue in KQ2 is unfair? If not, can you indicate to me how you gain the information you need to know *when* it's a good time to use one of your limited crossings? It's quite possible it is all adequately clued, and if so I apologise; my younger self wasn't smart enough to spot them.
As an aside, one of Andrew Plotkin's own adventure games (A Change in the Weather) is *extremely* unfair. He completely acknowledges it; he classifies it as "cruel" in his own ranking. Having said that, the cruelty is alleviated by the fact that it's extremely short.
Another game - Fail-Safe - is both short and not particularly cruel, but it did another unusual thing; it forbade you from saving. Again, it's short enough to be trivially replayable (more on that later), but there was minor uproar in the community at the time.
One further problem with cruel adventures in modern times is the fact that modern adventures are very *slow*. You might not think that, what with all the times you're in a place very briefly before being dragged off to a different location, time period, or part of Max's body, but they are. Part of this is due to the voice acting and animation. When everything important was conveyed in text, the speed at things which occurred was based on the speed that you're reading at, and skipping through things you've already seen was rapid. That's not the case in Telltale's titles; there's plentiful voice acting (which, I believe, is always skippable?), lots of animations (which... I'm not sure. Are they?) - and, critically, lots of disc accesses, those irritating little pauses of just a couple of seconds while it loads in the next scene.
While those pauses are tolerable first time around, on a repeat run, I'm pretty sure you'll be sick of them.
As an aside, to demonstrate this, I'm curious how long it takes to complete, say, King's Quest... 3 (that's a bit after the period when they were *really* short, right?) when you know exactly what to do and make no mistakes, skipping through all text, when compared with how long it takes to play through ToMI under the same rules. I suspect they'll be comparable, or even with ToMI taking longer; not because ToMI is harder - it certainly isn't - but because it is so much *slower*.
Then imagine that slowness applied to a game that forces you to restart.
Anyhow, in short:
Telltale's games are 'Merciful', by Plotkin's scale. You are advocating 'Cruel'. I'm saying that there's a whole lot of space for a middle ground there to challenge without irritating
As an addendum to that previous post, a little aside that sprung to mind.
I indicated earlier that console manufacturers explicitly forbid you from being able to save a game that has become unwinnable (assuming that the requirements haven't changed recently, at least). This is an issue with the idea of dead ends in games that may even be insurmountable, independent of all the other arguments for and against - assuming Telltale are planning to release on consoles, and I suspect they don't want to limit their audience.
I thought further about this, and I recalled that they're absolutely fine about allowing you to save games that are still 'winnable', but aren't able to get *everything*. I can think of a pickuppables in a number of action games which can easily become ungettable, and the console manufacturers are fine with that as long as the player can still soldier on to a conclusion.
Translating that to the adventure game world, what if dead-ends don't prevent you from *completing* the game, but they do restrict you from the *best ending*? That may be enough fudging of the issue to appease the console manufacturers - a bit of research on Telltale's part could show them some games that follow similar themes which they could use to argue their case.
Comments
As you know, King's Quest VII was the only game in the entire official series that was done in full cartoon style. In my view it would be disappointing (to say the least) if the new game was done in identical style to that of Tales of Monkey Island. I like it fine with ToMI - but do you mean you feel it would be equally suited to King's Quest?
I think it also matters in terms of setting a precedent for the other Sierra properties. Surely the crucial task of finding the best possible style for the Sierra games (which I feel need to be distinct from earlier Telltale games) should be tackled now, with the first game.
The rest of the "season" will obviously follow the same style, and it might carry over to the other properties. I like what Telltale have done with their earlier games, but there is no way the exact same approach will work for Sierra.
I do not think the term cartoon necessarily applies to all... KQ7 was certainly a Don Bluth like toon.... but the rest I think are more like classic story book art come to life especially 5 and 6 and those are the games I think define the series.
What Mask of Eternity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ-wvAPox8I#t=1m18s
That is what I thought too... Its a great fan game... but if it was sold at retail it would make me laugh.
KQ7 being a Disney cartoon is a detriment to its style for quite a lot of fans. I think everyone can agree that the style of KQ5 and KQ6 was the best. With cartoon (but quite realistically proportioned) characters, and in the case of KQ6, captured live actors.
Well, I liked KQ8 myself. And even though I dislike KQ7, you can't really discount it.
Well, not necessarily. All the collections released since the Vivendo 2006 release all use the same logo. And that font has been used on King's Quest boxes since the King's Quest 1 Sierra remake.
It's not that bad. I enjoy playing it. Still have yet to complete it, however. As a King's Quest game it was a disappointment to a lot of narrow-minded fans, in my opinion. Though I understand their feelings. It definitely was more action-oriented than adventure. But that doesn't mean it was bad. It was actually quite good.
Not saying it necessarily means anything. You are right that some of the collections use this logo, but not all of them. For example, the GOG collections use the KQI remake logo.
Problems with dead ends:
1) The player needs to know they're in one. If you are not told that the solution to the nature of how you're stuck is *outside* the range of options available to you at the time, it becomes frustrating as you try everything in sight looking for an answer but nothing comes to light.
2) The player should be given reasonable opportunity to save prior to entering the dead-end state - with appropriate cluing. From Telltale's standpoint, that would either require a redesign of the checkpointing system that currently underpins their games (since it takes the responsibility for saving *away* from the player), or never checkpoint within a dead-end (which means they would have to be small-scale dead-ends; no "didn't feed the dog the sandwich in the first act" here).
[As a quick aside: With appropriate use of checkpointing, I'd be fine with death. Ultimately, all those 'comedy deaths' meant in Sierra games was having to load a previous save prior to the death. However, if there wasn't a previous save recent enough, you'd lose some quantity of recent play. What the game should *never* do is encourage the player to be reliant on metacommands in order to feel safe experimenting. Expecting the player to save prior to every action is completely unreasonable and very irritating to the player. However, if the saving is handled intelligently by the game, no problem!]
3) One I particularly dislike is the rickety bridge in KQ2, which actively discourages you from *exploring*. Meaning you can't explore beyond the bridge without making the game unwinnable, unless you're lucky enough to already have everything you need to do in that one trip. Exploration definitely shouldn't trigger a dead-end state.
4) Approximately related to #3: A player should never feel they *have* to gather information from a dead-end in order to successfully proceed. Going back to the KQ2 bridge - and it's been a long time since I played it so feel free to correct me! - there is no way to know what sort of state you need the game to be in to cross without entering a dead end as a result.
5) I *think* - although it's been some time since I read the requirements for console titles - Sony explicitly *forbids* you from creating a game which can be saved in an unwinnable state. So you'd also be reducing the number of potential platforms you could release it on unless you were very careful with design. The same may be true of the other hardware manufacturers, too.
Ultimately, I think dead ends may have too many negatives to be worth aiming for. As a designer, what do you gain from them?
1) Scope. A player cannot guarantee that the solution to the puzzle you're in is limited to the options you have available at the time, making the puzzles harder as a result.
2) ... I genuinely cannot think of a #2. Any of the dead-end proponents able to help me out?
Graham Nelson's essay, "The Craft of Adventure" ( http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt ) makes a number of extremely good points about death and unwinnability. He's not opposed to it, as long as it plays fair. I'd strongly recommend the "Bill of Player's Rights" section; it's mainly focussed on text adventure design, but a number of the tropes apply across the board (and indeed, in many cases, beyond adventures!)
Maybe, ultimately, what the game needs is a 'fair/unfair' toggle. Unfair gives total control of saves to the player; it's your responsibility how you use them. Fair would have the smart checkpointing, and additional defences to prevent you from going past point X without picking up the Haddock Of Ultimate Power.
But not a biggie, I'm not going to argue about it any more.
Why do people keep saying things like that? I'm pretty sure I've been doing a heck of a lot of pointing and clicking in Back to the Future.
Adventure games seem to have four basic difficulty levels.
Easy: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, and practically every puzzle solution is practically handed to you on a silver platter (i.e. Back to the Future, Mixed-Up Mother Goose)
Medium: No dead ends, no irreversible deaths, but the puzzles are plentiful and keep you exploring and thinking (i.e. most Telltale and LEC games, and some later Sierra games)
Hard: No dead ends, but deaths now exist and you have to rely on common sense to stay on your toes and save your games wisely (i.e. Gabriel Knight, Fate of Atlantis.)
Expert: Here's where Al Lowe's old adage comes into play: "Save early, save often." You'll die, you'll get stuck, and more often than not, even common sense won't save you (i.e. most old Sierra games prior to 1994.)
So oddly enough, most adventure fans grew up on "Expert" mode. Not that the new KQ should follow that tradition, of course. I'd rather they keep it on medium setting, but keep deaths in to provide the illusion of consequence. Or at least create a special check-point system that can help a player identify when they're in a dead-end and send them back to an appropriate point so they can correct their mistakes. Complicated as heck, I know - but they had something similar in "The Last Express" which I found to be really handy.
I guess I don't know what people are talking about anymore when they say "point-and-click." If we're talking about the interface, then yes, it is still point-and-click; you still interact with the world through pointing and clicking. If the phrase "point-and-click" is being used as some kind of synecdoche for a game's underlying puzzle design philosophy, then BttF is pretty different from the classics. I guess I always just assumed that when people said "point-and-click," they meant the interface. There were text/parser adventure games, and then there were point-and-click adventure games.
Some people are very annoyed at having to move the character around with WASD or by dragging the mouse... they seem to think this makes the game no longer point and click, which is silly.
He might be referring to how easy Back to the Future is, but I doubt it.
I don't think they put any thought into what logo they used. The rights holders probably gave them the most optimized-for-web-promotion logo they had on hand and they used it, or something like that. They probably weren't even aware of the differences in the first place, let alone used them to make a logical decision based on the intended direction of the final product.
Oh, I don't think cats are that fond of unfair games, either.
You know, the debate would probably be helped if you cut down on the ad hominems a bit. I wouldn't mind hearing a direct response to my points from post 219, rather than just skipping to the end. In particular, as a fan, I'd like to hear your observations as to the *benefits* of dead ends from a game design standpoint.
Yeah.. Not exactly good when a game is compared in difficulty with a game I played when I was 2.
Easier than said than applied. Maybe if Telltale wasn't on the work schedule it's on.
Excellently well put.
+10!
It was not actually an attack, so much as an acknowledged observation in the amateur text adventure design community; Andrew Plotkin put those observations into words: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Cruelty_scale .
One key point that isn't being recognised here: Difficulty is *independent* from cruelty. Difficulty is how difficult it is to work out what to do. Cruelty is how badly you're punished when you fail to. Grim Fandango, if I remember right, is "Merciful" on that scale, but I wouldn't call it particularly easy. Space Quest is Cruel, but I'd argue that it's easier than Grim Fandango.
I've said several times that I am bang alongside the idea of fair death. I could be persuaded about fair deadends, but they're a little more questionable. I'm explicitly talking about unfair death and deadends, and I gave several examples in the lengthy post of the latter. Do you not think the bridge issue in KQ2 is unfair? If not, can you indicate to me how you gain the information you need to know *when* it's a good time to use one of your limited crossings? It's quite possible it is all adequately clued, and if so I apologise; my younger self wasn't smart enough to spot them.
As an aside, one of Andrew Plotkin's own adventure games (A Change in the Weather) is *extremely* unfair. He completely acknowledges it; he classifies it as "cruel" in his own ranking. Having said that, the cruelty is alleviated by the fact that it's extremely short.
Another game - Fail-Safe - is both short and not particularly cruel, but it did another unusual thing; it forbade you from saving. Again, it's short enough to be trivially replayable (more on that later), but there was minor uproar in the community at the time.
One further problem with cruel adventures in modern times is the fact that modern adventures are very *slow*. You might not think that, what with all the times you're in a place very briefly before being dragged off to a different location, time period, or part of Max's body, but they are. Part of this is due to the voice acting and animation. When everything important was conveyed in text, the speed at things which occurred was based on the speed that you're reading at, and skipping through things you've already seen was rapid. That's not the case in Telltale's titles; there's plentiful voice acting (which, I believe, is always skippable?), lots of animations (which... I'm not sure. Are they?) - and, critically, lots of disc accesses, those irritating little pauses of just a couple of seconds while it loads in the next scene.
While those pauses are tolerable first time around, on a repeat run, I'm pretty sure you'll be sick of them.
As an aside, to demonstrate this, I'm curious how long it takes to complete, say, King's Quest... 3 (that's a bit after the period when they were *really* short, right?) when you know exactly what to do and make no mistakes, skipping through all text, when compared with how long it takes to play through ToMI under the same rules. I suspect they'll be comparable, or even with ToMI taking longer; not because ToMI is harder - it certainly isn't - but because it is so much *slower*.
Then imagine that slowness applied to a game that forces you to restart.
Anyhow, in short:
Telltale's games are 'Merciful', by Plotkin's scale. You are advocating 'Cruel'. I'm saying that there's a whole lot of space for a middle ground there to challenge without irritating
I indicated earlier that console manufacturers explicitly forbid you from being able to save a game that has become unwinnable (assuming that the requirements haven't changed recently, at least). This is an issue with the idea of dead ends in games that may even be insurmountable, independent of all the other arguments for and against - assuming Telltale are planning to release on consoles, and I suspect they don't want to limit their audience.
I thought further about this, and I recalled that they're absolutely fine about allowing you to save games that are still 'winnable', but aren't able to get *everything*. I can think of a pickuppables in a number of action games which can easily become ungettable, and the console manufacturers are fine with that as long as the player can still soldier on to a conclusion.
Translating that to the adventure game world, what if dead-ends don't prevent you from *completing* the game, but they do restrict you from the *best ending*? That may be enough fudging of the issue to appease the console manufacturers - a bit of research on Telltale's part could show them some games that follow similar themes which they could use to argue their case.