The RPG genre and Adventure genre according to some gameology histories originated both out of the Choose Your Own Adventure style of books. They have been influencing each other for years.
Quite a few hybrid RPG-ADventures out there. Beyond Zork was one of the earliest.
Quest for Glory was very popular. It's always been described as an adventure game series (except for QFG5). I suspect you haven't played it?
There are quite a few others.
The basic 'puzzle' in adventure games is the 'fetch quest' which is something RPGs tend to share as well.
Adventure games are and were third person.
Many are 'first person', Most of Roberta's earliest graphica adventures were first person. Think Wizard and the Princess. Later games like Myst share this.
The perspective is not something that defines an 'adventure game'.
You have to remember that many of the 3D action games of the period were not at all story driven. The action and 3D and killing came first; story second.
Even exploration was secondary back then in 3d action games for the most part.
Exploration was one of the core parts of 'adventure' gaming definition in the industry definition back then. Even if the offshoot 'action-adventures' were the only things keeping that aspect alive in later years.
@Chyron: It's your opinion that King's Quest should be a pure adventure game. Don't get me wrong, I share that opinion. And I wish MOE was marketed as a spin-off. Heck, I wish King's Quest had spinned off into multiple genres. But the suits (including Ken Williams, to appease Baggins here) wanted to capitalize on the brand name to get the most out of sales. Yeah, it was a dick move but I think Sierra was desperate at the time.
Anyway, I'm over it. I liked the idea of MOE and I wish it would have caught on. I also wish adventures would still be the reigning genres today, though.
Storywise I think it's the most ambitious. I don't know if I'd say it's the last great one, I think there have been great ones since then, but in terms of scope I never played anything else quite like it. It retained all the classical adventure puzzling, figuring out what combined with what to manipulate in your inventory and environment, but it always had a really robust storyline going on behind it that really didn't let up even to the last scene.
Then they may have struck the perfect balance between story and gameplayl what an adventure should be. Maybe it's the perfect example of the best kind of adventure game? I have yet to complete it so I'll get back to you on that.
But wait a minute. If the adventure genre was evolving throughout the life of and often as a result of the KQ series, why couldn't MoE be an adventure game?
It's not a parser/point-and-click/click-and-drag graphic adventure game.
And the camera for the previous KQ games was not a third-person over-the-shoulder tracking camera. The camera was fixed for each screen. Making the camera over-the-shoulder makes the interface completely different.
It also is comparatively combat-heavy, akin to Quest for Glory. Quest for Glory is a good game series, but it is not King's Quest. To say combat from previous KQ games is similar to MoE is like saying that LARPing is similar to WWE. It's not the same thing at all, and it doesn't even target the same type of consumer.
But the suits (including Ken Williams, to appease Baggins here) wanted to capitalize on the brand name to get the most out of sales
This appears to be incorrect.
The main suits, that butted in were Bob and Jan davidson and their team of managers. The Davidsons wanted to remove the violence and combat from the game. They actually wanted more 'edutainment' in Sierra, they came from a education game company. Roberta and Ken on the other hand wanted to keep the combat ('violence' is exaggerating really). Actually this would place many of the fans on the same side as the Suits. Thus may be a reason why, Roberta compared the fans who criticized her idea to include combat to 'Christian fundamentalists' who hated KQ3's dark magic in one of her comments!
So really the only Suit who wanted the violence to sell more games, is "Ken Williams". I don't know if you can consider Roberta a suit? The 'violence' in the game was an idea that was created by Roberta long before CUC bought Sierra. Ken promoted it.
And the camera for the previous KQ games was not a third-person over-the-shoulder tracking camera. The camera was fixed for each screen. Making the camera over-the-shoulder makes the interface completely different.
That's an issue with 3D not an issue with 'gameplay' really.
Gabriel Knight 3 does not have a fixed camera, for example. It actually has more of 3rd-person view, but exploration was kinda first person.
There are at least a handful of 3D third person adventure games out there that lack combat. I think one or two Sherlock Holmes games for example.
@Chyron: It's your opinion that King's Quest should be a pure adventure game. Don't get me wrong, I share that opinion. And I wish MOE was marketed as a spin-off. Heck, I wish King's Quest had spinned off into multiple genres. But the suits (including Ken Williams, to appease Baggins here) wanted to capitalize on the brand name to get the most out of sales. Yeah, it was a dick move but I think Sierra was desperate at the time.
Anyway, I'm over it. I liked the idea of MOE and I wish it would have caught on. I also wish adventures would still be the reigning genres today, though.
Then they may have struck the perfect balance between story and gameplayl what an adventure should be. Maybe it's the perfect example of the best kind of adventure game? I have yet to complete it so I'll get back to you on that.
Why would Sierra be desperate? All accounts point to KQ8 being a 3D game with combat being decided as early as '94, '95. It was pretty much certain by 1996. And Sierra in 1995-1996 had just had it's biggest hit ever with Phantas. Sierra also dominated the market share for PC gaming in the same period. I don't see how they would be so desperate.
And it seems it was Roberta, not any of "The Suits" who wanted Mask to be a 3D combat based game. She herself says she decided this as early as '94 or '95.
Ken in a '96 interview dismissed Doom and games like it as a fad up till around then--He said he thought they were just an overhyped fad but just now were realizing they weren't.
Ironically, Sierra came very close to buying id Software in 1992 after the founders of id showed Sierra a demo of Wolfenstein.
Ken was a fool to turn down Id. Man, just think what things would be lke if they had bought that company!
Who knows there might have been a glorious hybrid of Adventure and FPS long before Half-Life, if those minds got together!
I think it would be hilarious to patch KQ8 to remove all combat in the game, to get it closer to what the Davidsons and fans wanted! Give Connor invincibility for the final encounter with Lucreto.
It would be a very lonely, and barren world! Just connor walking around between the puzzles.
Many are 'first person', Most of Roberta's earliest graphica adventures were first person. Think Wizard and the Princess. Later games like Myst share this.
The perspective is not something that defines an 'adventure game'
No, but having a fixed third-person camera was a gameplay mechanic for 7 titles (ie. all previous) in the King's Quest series. This is long enough to be considered an important aspect of the gameplay.
I will bet you real money that if TTG makes an official King's Quest game with an exclusive over-the-shoulder camera, many gamers will be pissed. Certainly, many of TTG's games have cameras that track on-a-wire as the character moves across the screen, but it's not the same as an exclusive and persistent over-the-shoulder perspective where the camera can be rotated around the character at will. TSL doesn't count. It's an unofficial fan-made game. Besides, TSL's camera is one more reason I disliked the game.
We've also had plenty of discussions about the importance of death in KQ games, and how many people will be ticked at TTG if they remove death from the gameplay. At some point, a series has a certain feel to it. Various aspects have a certain familiarity. When you change too many of them too quickly, it causes uproar in the fanbase.
Further, the King's Quest series was not continued upon with MoE's gameplay mechanics in mind. MoE was the last in the KQ series for Sierra. As such, the changes they made weren't a trend or an improvement in the gameplay style. They were just woefully disparate from what the rest of the series was known for.
Maybe it would be a good idea to start using a seperate term for 'classic' adventure games, games such as the classic Sierra and Lucasfilm/Arts titles, and another one for just the generic pile of different games people like to classify as adventure games these days.
Could help with some of the confusion... it could simply be called the 'classic adventure game genre' or something like that, as opposed to just the 'adventure genre'.
There's no denying that classic adventure games share so much, and are so unlike most other genres, that in the very least they make up their own subgenre.
This has been done with other genres... for instance you have turn based strategy games and real time strategy games.
Both Civilization and Command & Conquer are both strategy games, but if the only label used was the "strategy" one, without adding any qualifiers like turn based vs real time... the strategy term would become quite meaningless as despite them both being strategy games, everyone knows they're completely different games.
You can't do 'fixed-camera' in full explorable 3D its impossible.
Telltale games are not 'full-explorable' 3D.
Actually the KQ8 camera isn't really fixed.
Nor is it a behind the shoulder camera. You aim it that way, but you can also aim to the front or the side of the character as well. If you aim it to the front, he walks towards the screen. If you aim it at the side he walks parallel to the screen. If you aim it behind, he walks away from the screen.
You can also zoom in and zoom out.
Further, the King's Quest series was not continued upon with MoE's gameplay mechanics in mind. MoE was the last in the KQ series for Sierra. As such, the changes they made weren't a trend or an improvement in the gameplay style. They were just woefully disparate from what the rest of the series was known for.
Not entirely true, KQ9 (2002) was going to be an action-adventure, more Zelda like (but definitely more in the vein of MOE). But it was cancelled.
The screenshots of old man Graham holding a hugeass 'master sword' are rather amusing even!
Maybe it would be a good idea to start using a seperate term for 'classic' adventure games, games such as the classic Sierra and Lucasfilm/Arts titles, and another one for just the generic pile of different games people like to classify as adventure games these days.
They were 2-d Graphic Adventures.
Although sierra used to call their early ones, 3-D Animated Adventure Games as a genre classification. Ironic really!
BTW, classic adventure games, would includ text-adventure games. Which are a different beast altogether. For a time there were purists that hated the oncoming of the graphic adventures!
More than likely QFG 1-4 or Beyond Zork would end up on that list of "classic adventure games"!
Then you have other hybrids like Fate of Atlantis or Last Crusade adventure games!
Have you ever played Inca? Adventure game/space simulator/shooter! Strange mix indeed.
Maybe it would be a good idea to start using a seperate term for 'classic' adventure games, games such as the classic Sierra and Lucasfilm/Arts titles, and another one for just the generic pile of different games people like to classify as adventure games these days.
Could help with some of the confusion... it could simply be called the 'classic adventure game genre' or something like that, as opposed to just the 'adventure genre'.
There's no denying that classic adventure games share so much, and are so unlike most other genres, that in the very least they make up their own subgenre.
Yes, bury the genre even more. Grab shovels, men, it looks like the adventure genre is on the rise again! We can't have that! We're purists, damn you, purists, and if it doesn't fit the style set in 1990, we want it killed dead!
If the choice is between having an at least reasonably well defined genre or watering the genre down so much that nearly everything will fit... then I'd say go with the former.
Even though the latter would surely mean there would be a lot more 'adventure' games, what's the point if the games that make it up are different enough to have very little in common?
Let's just call every game an adventure game and we'll never have to worry about adventure games dying ever again
Nor is it a behind the shoulder camera. You aim it that way, but you can also aim to the front or the side of the character as well. If you aim it to the front, he walks towards the screen. If you aim it at the side he walks parallel to the screen. If you aim it behind, he walks away from the screen.
Okay, if you want to play semantics, then I guess one would call it a character-oriented follow-shot camera view.
Previous KQ games generally used a remote fixed-angle camera view.
Either way you define it, it still changes an important aspect of the gameplay.
That's a difference between 2-d and 3-d... You really can't change the angle of view for a character in 2-d. In full exploratory 3-d you can.
Your arguement is that Roberta should have stayed 2-d it seems. Roberta on the other hand wanted 3-d since she believed it would add more exploration than 2-d was capable of.
Maybe it would be a good idea to start using a seperate term for 'classic' adventure games, games such as the classic Sierra and Lucasfilm/Arts titles, and another one for just the generic pile of different games people like to classify as adventure games these days.
Could help with some of the confusion... it could simply be called the 'classic adventure game genre' or something like that, as opposed to just the 'adventure genre'.
Yes, bury the genre even more. Grab shovels, men, it looks like the adventure genre is on the rise again! We can't have that! We're purists, damn you, purists, and if it doesn't fit the style set in 1990, we want it killed dead!
Actually, isn't the sub-genre already defined as "graphic adventure game" or "point-and-click adventure game"? Granted, the 'point-and-click' title is still confusingly inclusive of those with a parser and/or click-and-drag (thanks to TTG) as well.
Your arguement is that Roberta should have stayed 2-d it seems. Roberta on the other hand wanted 3-d since she believed it would add more exploration than 2-d was capable of.
Are you saying that Roberta is the goddess of King's Quest and can do no wrong by it?
To do so is like saying George Lucas can do no wrong by Star Wars, and that his intentions with the prequels were fully justified.
Why would it require fully explorable environments anyway? I prefer TTG's Sam & Max series to MoE any day of the week. There's nothing wrong with TTG's camera angles.
Actually, isn't the sub-genre already defined as "graphic adventure game" or "point-and-click adventure game"? Granted, the 'point-and-click' title is still confusingly inclusive of those with a parser and/or click-and-drag (thanks to TTG) as well.
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Point and Click Graphic Adventure.
That's how I'd categorize it, in terms of sub-genres.
The way I'd categorize KQ's 1-4 would be:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Parser Based Graphic Adventure
5-6:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Point and Click Adventure ---> Icon Based Point & Click Graphic Adventure
7:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Point and Click Adventure ---> Hot Spot based P&C Adventure
8:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> 3D Point and Click Adventure ---> Hot Spot based Adventure + Action elements.
Are you saying that Roberta is the goddess of King's Quest and can do no wrong by it?
To do so is like saying George Lucas can do no wrong by Star Wars, and that his intentions with the prequels were fully justified.
I'm just saying you would never have been happy, since what you wanted, and what Roberta wanted were two very different things.
You can read back in 1994, or so in Interaction. That Roberta had plans to make the next KQ 3D, and it wasn't going to be anything otherwise... Regardless of what fans may or may not wanted.
Actually most people were intrigued back then, before she showed any screen shots. Many were still interested, even after she showed the first screen shots. It was very anticipated.
Why you didn't bother to send letters in complaint back then, I have no idea! Because we knew it was going to happen for years!
Why would it require fully explorable environments anyway? I prefer TTG's Sam & Max series to MoE any day of the week. There's nothing wrong with TTG's camera angles
You may have missed this fact, but to fans of KQ, many believe exploration is an important aspect of KQ games. The latter games lost much of the exploration found in the earlier games. That was one aspect of the later games that was actually largely criticized by fans over the years.
There is no exploration in Sam & Max... It's the same bloody town used over and over again... With one or two new rooms occasionally..
(Quoting an unreferenced source) "Examples of the (puzzle-adventure) genre include Schizm, Atlantis: The Lost Tales, Riddle of the Sphinx, Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, and Myst, which pioneered this game style."
Which of these games have you solving puzzles outside of the gameworld on screens designed to look like pieces of paper?
Further response, also applicable to intervening posts concerning definition of adventure game:
An adventure game has a player-character progressing through a gameworld, overcoming obstacles designed into the gameworld, primarily through puzzle-solving gameplay. This progress naturally entails the revealing of a story that, at minimum, gives meaning to the gameworld and the character's motivations, objectives and activities, etc. (as it does in related, gameworld-oriented genres). The "amount" of narrative, NPC interaction, dialog and other forms of exposition can and do vary widely within the genre (as they do in related, gameworld-oriented genres) -- and, really, vary along a spectrum, precluding the neat division of the genre into subgenres based on such things. (Although I could accept a subdivision based on puzzle type, but see my next thought.)
I think it's important to remember that while games are divided into genres based on gameplay -- whether it's combat, platforming, puzzle-solving, role-playing -- most gameworld-oriented games are anywhere from slightly to hugely hybrid: shooters often have puzzles, adventures can have minigames, Sam and Max (the best ones!) have driving games, etc.
My personal gaming preference is, the more hybrid the better. I guess that's why I welcomed the transition of KQ8 into a different genre of gameplay (as I did with Indy). I really think I see the game along the same lines on which Roberta designed it, but she doesn't seem to acknowledge that the adventure genre had already influenced, evolved, spun off into, and hybridized with related genres.
At the same time, I'm sympathetic with folks who regarded KQ as an adventure game in a stricter sense (and they are entitled to so regard, for themselves, without giving a flying fuck what Roberta thought or said) and were disappointed when it changed. That has happened to me, too, under different circumstances, and it really sucks.
Are you saying that Roberta is the goddess of King's Quest and can do no wrong by it?
To do so is like saying George Lucas can do no wrong by Star Wars, and that his intentions with the prequels were fully justified.
Why would it require fully explorable environments anyway? I prefer TTG's Sam & Max series to MoE any day of the week. There's nothing wrong with TTG's camera angles.
She did create the series. That's not some little fact. If not for Roberta, we wouldn't even be having any discussion of any King's Quest series.
I think hating KQ8 is the popular option. It's cool to hate on KQ8 and gaming magazines were pushing that line of thought well before it's release--One of the magazines even admitted they were hypercritical of it before release and apologized and gave it a glowing review.
As I've said before, I don't think KQ fans would've been happy unless every sequel from 1992 onward was KQ6 Part II, Part III, Part IV, etc.
Why you didn't bother to send letters in complaint back then, I have no idea! Because we knew it was going to happen for years!
I was 16 in 1994, and back then the only magazine I really ever read was Nintendo Power. I believe the first information I personally saw for MoE did have screenshots, so I was unimpressed right from the outset.
Besides that, even if I had known earlier... I, a simple teenager--whose family and friends no longer played adventure games--get riled up early on enough to write a letter to Roberta Williams complaining about her upcoming KQ game?
Nah. I had other things going on at the time that were more diverting of my attention.
Actually, isn't the sub-genre already defined as "graphic adventure game" or "point-and-click adventure game"? Granted, the 'point-and-click' title is still confusingly inclusive of those with a parser and/or click-and-drag (thanks to TTG) as well.
True, maybe it would be better if people would use those subgenres more to avoid confusion and pointless arguments.
Thom I haven't played those games, that's just the definition given in Wikipedia, they do cite several books on the subject, where the definition originates (several 'game design' textbooks). You are welcome to read them for yourself.
I've come across similar definitions in industry journals and game magazines.
I have my own examples instead, ones that I have played. Seventh Guest or the first two Dr. Brains for example. I've played the Layton series, and first Puzzle Agent as well.
the 'point-and-click' title is still confusingly inclusive of those with a parser and/or click-and-drag (thanks to TTG) as well.
Diablo is a 'point-and-click' game as well, btw. Just not an 'adventure'!
I was 16 in 1994, and back then the only magazine I really ever read was Nintendo Power. I believe the first information I personally saw for MoE did have screenshots, so I was unimpressed right from the outset.
Besides that, even if I had known earlier... I, a simple teenager--whose family and friends no longer played adventure games--get riled up early on enough to write a letter to Roberta Williams complaining about her upcoming KQ game?
Nah. I had other things going on at the time that were more diverting of my attention.
Then you are simply too young to understand the era she was living thorugh then! ...or the direction of the industry at the time.
Classic adventure games actually lost money then, cost more than they made. Companies didn't want to risk them. They had to look at new directions to try to save the games or simple quit.
It was a very different time... BTW, thanks for making me feel old! Although I was a teenager at the time as well. But I was a huge PC gamer at the time, and followed Sierra's development.
BTW, I felt back then that adventure games were becoming tired, cliched, etc. Puzzles were being simplified, or else becoming too illogical, even the stories were becoming stale. Many of the same puzzle types were reused in many games... You can only take so many newspaper under door, knock key out of keyhole with pencil style puzzles before you start getting tired of the genre...
So even I was looking for something new back then, that would add interest back into the genre...
I was 16 in 1994, and back then the only magazine I really ever read was Nintendo Power. I believe the first information I personally saw for MoE did have screenshots, so I was unimpressed right from the outset.
Besides that, even if I had known earlier... I, a simple teenager--whose family and friends no longer played adventure games--get riled up early on enough to write a letter to Roberta Williams complaining about her upcoming KQ game?
Nah. I had other things going on at the time that were more diverting of my attention.
A question: Are you one of those who consider KQ6 the utter high point of the series?
As I've said before, I don't think KQ fans would've been happy unless every sequel from 1992 onward was KQ6 Part II, Part III, Part IV, etc.
I don't think that is the case at all - people might not think the new game was as good as KQ6, but I doubt anywhere near as many people would hate it if it was a quality Sierra game of the same kind as the older ones (and not a horribly failed experiement like KQ7 ).
I actually played Kings Quest 6 before I played Kings Quest 4 but I still enjoyed that one quite a bit... granted, I was aware it was an older game and played it as such so my opinion might have been different with regards to a new game... but I'm fairly sure I would have enjoyed a sequel even if it wasn't much like KQ6.
For instance, I loved Monkey Island 2 back when that game was released... despite it being quite different from the first game in many ways - darker theme, no insult fighting, much more open ended in that you had much bigger areas to explore much of the time, etc.
I happened to also enjoy Monkey Island 3 and I don't think anyone would argue that there aren't some rather major differences between MI2 and 3.
That's actually not a bad example, as Monkey Island 2 is by many considered the absolute masterpiece of the series, sort of similar to how KQ6 is regarded... and yet, even after playing through that, both myself and a lot of other people managed to really enjoy MI3.
You may have missed this fact, but to fans of KQ, many believe exploration is an important aspect of KQ games. The latter games lost much of the exploration found in the earlier games. That was one aspect of the later games that was actually largely criticized by fans over the years.
To use that logic, by rights then to by fully interactive, MoE should have included a parser.
It didn't hurt the genre to include point-and-click over parser. Why should it hinder MoE to have used a fixed-angle tracking shot instead of a camera that is character-oriented?
I didn't say anything about 'parser' = 'exploration.' I'm not sure how you consider that logical...
The earlier games just happened to have wider open-ended over worlds. Many screens connected, in all directions. You really have to explore to find things.
One can see KQ1 VGA remake by AGDI, maintains the exploration, but replaces the interface with point and click. The interface really has little to do with the 'exploration' factor.
Also I'd say KQ5 maintains much of the same exploration of the earlier games in the first area. Serenia, and the desert, and forest are pretty open-ended. Serenia acts as a kinda of central hub for the first half of the game.
Infact, I'd say your comparisons to camera's to parsers, makes little sense at all... That's like comparing apples to a sports car!
Roberta once said had she had the technology at the time she would have always made her games in 3D, to her it was always more immersive, and really improved the open-ended exploration aspect she loved to put in her games (from KQ to Mixed-Up Mother Goose).
That said, there have been purists that complained about the lack of parser, when KQ5 came out. They thought that game was not an adventure game, nor a KQ game because of the lack of 'interactivity'! But that's a totally different subject.
A question: Are you one of those who consider KQ6 the utter high point of the series?
Are you going to eat me alive if I say yes?
I have already been party to the discussion here on KQ6, and heard the complaints about Jane Jensen and other such arguements.
I do feel that KQ6 was my favorite in the series and that KQ5 was laughably bad. However, I did also enjoy the previous KQ games... of the first four, KQ3 is probably my favorite (turning Manannan into a cat was great). KQ7 is in there somewhere among my top choices, but I do recognize and agree with many of the arguements against it.
As an unrelated aside, at the risk of invoking the wrath of Rather Dashing, CMI is my favorite Monkey Island game.
As a wise person once said, once something reaches its 'highpoint' everything else is downhill!
Unless people give it a chance to rise again...
BTW, anyone remember those criticims over Zelda: Wind Waker and it's graphical style? Lots of fans saying it wasn't a true zelda game, and that style was wrong for Zelda? Just because of the cell shading, and no adult link?
About Kings Quest 6 vs the older ones - I think most of the Kings Quest games are great *fun*, but Kings Quest 6 is one of the very few I would call *really good*... especially if talking about the storyline.
Meh. People primarly said that sort of thing because of the tech demo footage of Link vs. Ganon that was released the year before. They were expecting Twilight Princess of a sort, and got Wind Waker instead.
I might have been taken aback at first, but Nintendo had never steered me wrong with any of their previous games, so I gave Wind Waker the benefit of the doubt.
When I heard about the cel-shading of Zelda:WW, I was unsure at first, but then I read Nintendo was saying that they had originally been working on a Zelda game that turned out to have fairly common well-established puzzles and gameplay, and if they wanted to try something new (which they often do) then they needed to go for a cartoon-animation style instead to get what they wanted out of the gameplay mechanincs they were looking to implement.
I could totally understand what they meant by it, and so was perfectly willing to go into the game with an open mind. Again, they had never done wrong by their first-party titles before.
I like Wind Waker. True, I like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time more but Wind Waker is still a favorite of mine.
You say, look at the context between the comments. I say there is no context between the two disparate comments made 4-5 years apart. That's just silly!
No, I didn't say that; I said you had to look deeper at each, meaning independently, to realize there's no relevance at all between Roberta's "interactive story" and Telltale's "interactive content". If you also don't think there's any shared context or relationship between the two, then why did you post Roberta's quotes on the matter immediately after I mentioned Telltale's "interactive content"?
Thom I haven't played those games, that's just the definition given in Wikipedia...
The point is, Puzzle Agent, which you claim is a puzzle-adventure, does not fit the description for puzzle-adventure that you cited. Moreover, your own description that appears immediately above it isn't really consistent with the Wikipedia one that follows or the example games it gives. Finally, the Wikipedia write-up contrasts "puzzle-solving" with "item gathering" and "item use" as if that isn't a form of puzzle-solving. Is that not what you were referring to when you said, "The basic 'puzzle' in adventure games is the 'fetch quest'..."?
That might have been, and might still be, the most common type of puzzle in adventure games, but I don't think it's in any way "basic" or fundamental to the genre. In fact, when the kind of puzzle Wikipedia cites as common in its puzzle-adventure subdivision of the adventure genre, "deciphering the proper use of complex mechanisms", was brought to the fore by Myst, I think it was an example of exactly the kind of thing you continually point out that Sierra and Roberta did: taking advantage of the latest technology to push the genre. Many of the puzzles in Myst-style games could not have been done in flat 2D. But they worked nicely in a gameworld represented by multiple fixed 2D views of a pre-rendered 3D environment.
I would also add that quite a few puzzles in Myst and games of its ilk were about finding information in one part of the gameworld and applying it in another -- a code, rather than reverse engineering, was the key to progression -- which is not terribly dissimilar from an inventory puzzle.
All of which is meant to re-enforce the idea that trying to subdivide the adventure genre based on puzzle type is a messy business at best. Most importantly though, just because a puzzle game happens to have puzzles of a type corresponding to an adventure-game subgenre, it doesn't make it an adventure; you can't put something in a subcategory if it doesn't first fit into the parent category.
I didn't say anything about 'parser' = 'exploration.' I'm not sure how you consider that logical...
The earlier games just happened to have wider open-ended over worlds. Many screens connected, in all directions. You really have to explore to find things.
One can see KQ1 VGA remake by AGDI, maintains the exploration, but replaces the interface with point and click. The interface really has little to do with the 'exploration' factor.
Also I'd say KQ5 maintains much of the same exploration of the earlier games in the first area. Serenia, and the desert, and forest are pretty open-ended. Serenia acts as a kinda of central hub for the first half of the game.
Infact, I'd say your comparisons to camera's to parsers, makes little sense at all... That's like comparing apples to a sports car!
Roberta once said had she had the technology at the time she would have always made her games in 3D, to her it was always more immersive, and really improved the open-ended exploration aspect she loved to put in her games (from KQ to Mixed-Up Mother Goose).
That said, there have been purists that complained about the lack of parser, when KQ5 came out. They thought that game was not an adventure game, nor a KQ game because of the lack of 'interactivity'! But that's a totally different subject.
You were saying using a character-oriented follow-shot camera view = fully explorable = better.
I was saying that by such logic it would be better to use a parser to interact with the game environment since parser obviously gives more options for interaction than a cursor does. I was being sarcastic, since more obviously does not always mean better--and it certainly does not always when comparing camera angles either.
Whether or not TTG's Sam & Max (since I already mentioned it) is better or worse overall is not the issue. Whether or not the camera angles are, is. You're saying that TTG's Sam & Max directly suffers because of the camera angles, since having a follow-shot camera view that follows Sam around (such as in MoE) should so obviously be better as it would allow for more exploration. I disagree.
Changing the camera angle from a fixed-angle tracking shot to a character-oriented follow-shot makes for a significant change in the gameplay style, and while I don't wholly discount the value of character-oriented camera views in general, it doesn't fit well in the context of a King's Quest game. There are 7 games previous to MoE that use fixed camera angles, do not suffer for it, and well establish a fixed-angle camera view as the perspective of choice for the King's Quest series.
You were saying using a character-oriented follow-shot camera view = fully explorable = better
Look, again. I never said that. I think Roberta may have. She mentions in one of the development meetings in one of the devolopment videos that she would like to be move around look into a window from the outside of a building, and then go into that building look around the room, and then look through the same window to the outside.
Actually GK3's or the later games in the Broken Sword series use full explorable 3D. I do think it is pretty cool (because secrets and puzzles can be hidden all around). It's also one of the things I liked in KQ8. It didn't take away from the game imo. Roberta has said even if she had decided not add combat (which she decided on when Sierra was owned by Sierra) to the game, it would still be fully explorable 3D.
However, I'm not saying one is better than another. Because personally both can be used effectively. It's not also something I define as a requirement for 'adventure games' to be stuck in one form of camera over another. I see a variety camera types as viable. Even 'first person' is viable, as Roberta has explained Wizard and the Princess is essentially KQ0, a prequel to KQ5. That game uses a first person perspective. Perspectives don't bother me, i'm open to any camera type.
Oh, and by the way 'control method'... Actually "point and click" or "parser", or Drag and click, are not the only methods of adventure game control. Quite a few were joystick, arrow keyes, or other form of keyboard control. Look at MI4 or Grim Fandango for games with pure keyboard control (no mouse/non parser). Designers can use really any interface imaginable... Some might be clunkier than others. Strangely sometimes the interface is the center of arguements between fans. Like for example those who hated KQ5 because they didn't like the interface and felt the parser gave them more options.
You know one interesting comparison between 2-d and 3-d adventure may be Myst vs. realMyst (the full-3d remake). Real Myst lets you see parts of the island, and angles, with environmental effects you couldn't see in the original Myst. It has more real-time feel rather than a series of static 'slide pictures'. It's less restrictive in ways.
Thom
Puzzle Adventures... Castle of Dr. Brain is a Puzzle Adventure. You asked are there other games that have 'pop-ups' with puzzles. Castle of Dr. Brain and Island of Dr. Brain do that. You click on objects in the environment, and then a box pops up with the game's puzzle. You navigate the game's story by solving these puzzles (which is the 'core definition' of puzzle adventure).
Do a google search of 'puzzle adventure' and you'll see quite a few games that the industry defines as 'puzzle adventure'. Quite a few of those 'hidden-item' games even are classified as 'puzzle adventures' or 'casual adventure games' by the industry.
Adventure games with strong accentuation on the solving of a variety of puzzles.
I don't suppose you have played Seventh Guest either? Many of the puzzles in that game were 'popups' once you discovered the location of the hidden puzzle in the environment. Although it the popups took the whole entire screen. You couldn't progress until you solved these puzzles. As I recall solving the puzzles weakened the evil forces in the house that prevented you from reach the upstairs or other rooms. Sometimes a puzzle might hide a key needed to progress as well.
Puzzle Agent might do it as 'bits of paper'. Layton switched to another screen whenever a hidden puzzle was found. The two early Dr. Brain's put up box overlay with the game's hidden puzzle on the screen. In many of these games, you solve a puzzle for the character to 'pick up' or find an item. You use these items later on to solve yet other puzzles... Sometimes the games automatically use the items for you, sometimes you have the ability to use the items from an 'inventory'.
It's been a while but Shivers/Shivers 2 may have had similar type of 'hidden puzzles' to progress style gameplay as well.
I think the whole problem here is simple video gaming evolution. Sierra as a company wanted to continue and advance with the times. That's just the way companies are. We may have wanted the same type of 2D graphic adventure game forever and ever but Roberta was always pushing the boundaries of what an adventure game could be because she's the one who continued to innovate it.
She created the 3rd person graphic adventure in KQ1, she enhanced (well, not her alone, but Sierra) it by adding mouse support for rudimentary P&C interfacing, she did away with the parser entirely completely changing the way players interact in adventure games (many rioted over this at this point, including Scott Murphy), voice actors and narrators were added changing the way the games were told in their dialogue (characters spoke for themselves instead of letting you be that character and the narrator describing everything), then the resolution was bumped up and the interface was dumbed down EVEN MORE to a single-icon interface that lit up on hotspots and the narrator was removed.
See a pattern here? With each advancement in the genre it changed the way you played and experienced the game. It was still very much what many consider "adventure" but that's because adventures were the best selling games at the time. By the time 3D came out there was no way that Sierra and Roberta wasn't going to take advantage of it. And if you're going to take advantage of 3D you're going to have to take advantage of everything it has to offer, namely, a full exploratory 3D world instead of fixed camera angles. Why would you keep the camera still in a 3D world when it can now move around anywhere you want? Remember, this was when 3D technology was new. Moving around the game world was something that wasn't possible before and the fad of the time (and even still today) is to move the camera around as much as possible as if you were actually there. Really show it off. This is why FPS's are so popular. You get to explore nearly every facet of the game world visible to the player. Why would players want to be stuck in one angle at a time? It's also possible that Sierra considered doing fixed angles but seeing how fans hated that in LucasArts' Grim Fandango and later Escape from Monkey Island maybe they thought to themselves that they shouldn't make the same mistakes.
I see the evolution of King's Quest into 3D as the natural next step Roberta had in mind to take advantage of the new technology available this time around. Only times were changing and adventures weren't the best-selling titles they once were. Everyone WANTED 3D action worlds. And when you look at MOE it still has more of the fundamental elements that make up an adventure game, albeit in a more modest supply. Puzzles, inventory, dialogues, etc. You could say it has more to do with RPGs than adventure, but I tend to disagree and also point out that RPG's are the close cousins of adventures that are still going strong today, and we should be thankful of that. I would be thrilled if King's Quest (or more appropriately, Quest For Glory) were still going today in the form of something like The Elder Scrolls. You could totally blend that style with some classic adventure style puzzles which would put control and interaction in a gaming world back to the parser where you could do almost anything you wanted you just had to type it in. But now you're seeing it in a full quality 3D world. That's really the only way to get the level of control we used to have from the parser days back. But instead of typing it in you're actually using game controls.
So to sum up, MOE could never be like the early King's Quest games...that's why they never made MOE a classic adventure. We really truly weren't a big enough market. It's not an insult it's the truth. You can hate on MOE for not being classic but you can't hate on Roberta or Sierra for doing what they did. Times change and so do games, sadly. I still can't stand the state of gaming today with its mindless 2-hour campaigns interspersed with cutscenes everywhere and not much interaction at all besides point and click (shoot). But that's just simple video gaming evolution. Indie games and fangames hold the most interest for me nowadays (and Skyrim). The odd time I'll find a AAA game that's appealing and I'll play it, but mostly I accept that I'm from an earlier time now and can only just hope that a video game age comes someday that's appealing to me again.
And it seems it was Roberta, not any of "The Suits" who wanted Mask to be a 3D combat based game. She herself says she decided this as early as '94 or '95.
I never said the suits wanted to make it 3D, I said they wanted to brand Mask of Eternity as another mainline King's Quest sequel.
KQ8 had the unfortunate fate of being released during a time when it was hard to produce 3D games. Sega Saturn that came out before N64 was geared to high level 2D games and even PS1 wasn't a great 3D game system. Mario 64 sort of changed the game when it came out as such a bold 3D game, and KQ8 came out only a year and a half after that. For a time when getting a strong grasp of 3D was a learning curve, I think it's not surprising that KQ8 failed to hit certain high points with a lot of people. A lot of the top games from 98 are variations of a first person perspective. Half Life, Unreal, Thief. 2D games like Abe's Odyssey and racing games are there as well. But 3D gaming, from a third person perspective? Developers still have a hard time making good games like that.
You asked are there other games that have 'pop-ups' with puzzles.
No, I asked which of the games Wikipedia cited as examples of puzzle-adventure had puzzles not incorporated into the gameworld, and the answer is none of them. Similarly, the "pop-up" puzzles in games like 7th Guest are close-ups of objects and scenes in the games' environments, shown in more detail so that the player can manipulate and solve them -- a fairly routine device used not only in "puzzle-adventures" but traditional adventure games as well. In contrast, the typical puzzle screen in Puzzle Agent is not a close-up or a representation of anything the player encounters in the environment, though they often have some implied relationship.
You can throw at me as many articles and subgenre descriptions as you want, but all they do is further demonstrate that there are no "core definitions" for any of these things. There is so much variation that they can't be put into neat little boxes, and efforts to do so not surprisingly turn out different from each other. I'm sure Just Adventure's list of categories (note that they did not use the term subgenre) is quite useful for the site's and its users' purposes, but neither it nor any other source's subcategory breakdowns are necessarily going to be universally applicable or widely used. Besides, I'm not denying the existence or usefulness of classification schemes in general, but they and your other references to broader classes of games are not really relevant to my original point about a single specific game.
Comments
Quite a few hybrid RPG-ADventures out there. Beyond Zork was one of the earliest.
Quest for Glory was very popular. It's always been described as an adventure game series (except for QFG5). I suspect you haven't played it?
There are quite a few others.
The basic 'puzzle' in adventure games is the 'fetch quest' which is something RPGs tend to share as well.
Many are 'first person', Most of Roberta's earliest graphica adventures were first person. Think Wizard and the Princess. Later games like Myst share this.
The perspective is not something that defines an 'adventure game'.
Even exploration was secondary back then in 3d action games for the most part.
Exploration was one of the core parts of 'adventure' gaming definition in the industry definition back then. Even if the offshoot 'action-adventures' were the only things keeping that aspect alive in later years.
Anyway, I'm over it. I liked the idea of MOE and I wish it would have caught on. I also wish adventures would still be the reigning genres today, though.
Then they may have struck the perfect balance between story and gameplayl what an adventure should be. Maybe it's the perfect example of the best kind of adventure game? I have yet to complete it so I'll get back to you on that.
It's not a parser/point-and-click/click-and-drag graphic adventure game.
And the camera for the previous KQ games was not a third-person over-the-shoulder tracking camera. The camera was fixed for each screen. Making the camera over-the-shoulder makes the interface completely different.
It also is comparatively combat-heavy, akin to Quest for Glory. Quest for Glory is a good game series, but it is not King's Quest. To say combat from previous KQ games is similar to MoE is like saying that LARPing is similar to WWE. It's not the same thing at all, and it doesn't even target the same type of consumer.
This appears to be incorrect.
The main suits, that butted in were Bob and Jan davidson and their team of managers. The Davidsons wanted to remove the violence and combat from the game. They actually wanted more 'edutainment' in Sierra, they came from a education game company. Roberta and Ken on the other hand wanted to keep the combat ('violence' is exaggerating really). Actually this would place many of the fans on the same side as the Suits. Thus may be a reason why, Roberta compared the fans who criticized her idea to include combat to 'Christian fundamentalists' who hated KQ3's dark magic in one of her comments!
So really the only Suit who wanted the violence to sell more games, is "Ken Williams". I don't know if you can consider Roberta a suit? The 'violence' in the game was an idea that was created by Roberta long before CUC bought Sierra. Ken promoted it.
That's an issue with 3D not an issue with 'gameplay' really.
Gabriel Knight 3 does not have a fixed camera, for example. It actually has more of 3rd-person view, but exploration was kinda first person.
There are at least a handful of 3D third person adventure games out there that lack combat. I think one or two Sherlock Holmes games for example.
Why would Sierra be desperate? All accounts point to KQ8 being a 3D game with combat being decided as early as '94, '95. It was pretty much certain by 1996. And Sierra in 1995-1996 had just had it's biggest hit ever with Phantas. Sierra also dominated the market share for PC gaming in the same period. I don't see how they would be so desperate.
And it seems it was Roberta, not any of "The Suits" who wanted Mask to be a 3D combat based game. She herself says she decided this as early as '94 or '95.
Ken in a '96 interview dismissed Doom and games like it as a fad up till around then--He said he thought they were just an overhyped fad but just now were realizing they weren't.
Ironically, Sierra came very close to buying id Software in 1992 after the founders of id showed Sierra a demo of Wolfenstein.
Who knows there might have been a glorious hybrid of Adventure and FPS long before Half-Life, if those minds got together!
I think it would be hilarious to patch KQ8 to remove all combat in the game, to get it closer to what the Davidsons and fans wanted! Give Connor invincibility for the final encounter with Lucreto.
It would be a very lonely, and barren world! Just connor walking around between the puzzles.
No, but having a fixed third-person camera was a gameplay mechanic for 7 titles (ie. all previous) in the King's Quest series. This is long enough to be considered an important aspect of the gameplay.
I will bet you real money that if TTG makes an official King's Quest game with an exclusive over-the-shoulder camera, many gamers will be pissed. Certainly, many of TTG's games have cameras that track on-a-wire as the character moves across the screen, but it's not the same as an exclusive and persistent over-the-shoulder perspective where the camera can be rotated around the character at will. TSL doesn't count. It's an unofficial fan-made game. Besides, TSL's camera is one more reason I disliked the game.
We've also had plenty of discussions about the importance of death in KQ games, and how many people will be ticked at TTG if they remove death from the gameplay. At some point, a series has a certain feel to it. Various aspects have a certain familiarity. When you change too many of them too quickly, it causes uproar in the fanbase.
Further, the King's Quest series was not continued upon with MoE's gameplay mechanics in mind. MoE was the last in the KQ series for Sierra. As such, the changes they made weren't a trend or an improvement in the gameplay style. They were just woefully disparate from what the rest of the series was known for.
Could help with some of the confusion... it could simply be called the 'classic adventure game genre' or something like that, as opposed to just the 'adventure genre'.
There's no denying that classic adventure games share so much, and are so unlike most other genres, that in the very least they make up their own subgenre.
This has been done with other genres... for instance you have turn based strategy games and real time strategy games.
Both Civilization and Command & Conquer are both strategy games, but if the only label used was the "strategy" one, without adding any qualifiers like turn based vs real time... the strategy term would become quite meaningless as despite them both being strategy games, everyone knows they're completely different games.
Telltale games are not 'full-explorable' 3D.
Actually the KQ8 camera isn't really fixed.
Nor is it a behind the shoulder camera. You aim it that way, but you can also aim to the front or the side of the character as well. If you aim it to the front, he walks towards the screen. If you aim it at the side he walks parallel to the screen. If you aim it behind, he walks away from the screen.
You can also zoom in and zoom out.
Not entirely true, KQ9 (2002) was going to be an action-adventure, more Zelda like (but definitely more in the vein of MOE). But it was cancelled.
The screenshots of old man Graham holding a hugeass 'master sword' are rather amusing even!
They were 2-d Graphic Adventures.
Although sierra used to call their early ones, 3-D Animated Adventure Games as a genre classification. Ironic really!
BTW, classic adventure games, would includ text-adventure games. Which are a different beast altogether. For a time there were purists that hated the oncoming of the graphic adventures!
More than likely QFG 1-4 or Beyond Zork would end up on that list of "classic adventure games"!
Then you have other hybrids like Fate of Atlantis or Last Crusade adventure games!
Have you ever played Inca? Adventure game/space simulator/shooter! Strange mix indeed.
Yes, bury the genre even more. Grab shovels, men, it looks like the adventure genre is on the rise again! We can't have that! We're purists, damn you, purists, and if it doesn't fit the style set in 1990, we want it killed dead!
Even though the latter would surely mean there would be a lot more 'adventure' games, what's the point if the games that make it up are different enough to have very little in common?
Let's just call every game an adventure game and we'll never have to worry about adventure games dying ever again
Inca, one of the strangest 'classic adventure games' of all time (1992). One of Sierra's best selling games even!
The music alone was played on Radio Stations back then!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHRoygY6HTA
Okay, if you want to play semantics, then I guess one would call it a character-oriented follow-shot camera view.
Previous KQ games generally used a remote fixed-angle camera view.
Either way you define it, it still changes an important aspect of the gameplay.
Your arguement is that Roberta should have stayed 2-d it seems. Roberta on the other hand wanted 3-d since she believed it would add more exploration than 2-d was capable of.
Actually, isn't the sub-genre already defined as "graphic adventure game" or "point-and-click adventure game"? Granted, the 'point-and-click' title is still confusingly inclusive of those with a parser and/or click-and-drag (thanks to TTG) as well.
Are you saying that Roberta is the goddess of King's Quest and can do no wrong by it?
To do so is like saying George Lucas can do no wrong by Star Wars, and that his intentions with the prequels were fully justified.
Why would it require fully explorable environments anyway? I prefer TTG's Sam & Max series to MoE any day of the week. There's nothing wrong with TTG's camera angles.
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Point and Click Graphic Adventure.
That's how I'd categorize it, in terms of sub-genres.
The way I'd categorize KQ's 1-4 would be:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Parser Based Graphic Adventure
5-6:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Point and Click Adventure ---> Icon Based Point & Click Graphic Adventure
7:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> Point and Click Adventure ---> Hot Spot based P&C Adventure
8:
Adventure ---> Graphic Adventure ---> 3D Point and Click Adventure ---> Hot Spot based Adventure + Action elements.
You can read back in 1994, or so in Interaction. That Roberta had plans to make the next KQ 3D, and it wasn't going to be anything otherwise... Regardless of what fans may or may not wanted.
Actually most people were intrigued back then, before she showed any screen shots. Many were still interested, even after she showed the first screen shots. It was very anticipated.
Why you didn't bother to send letters in complaint back then, I have no idea! Because we knew it was going to happen for years!
You may have missed this fact, but to fans of KQ, many believe exploration is an important aspect of KQ games. The latter games lost much of the exploration found in the earlier games. That was one aspect of the later games that was actually largely criticized by fans over the years.
There is no exploration in Sam & Max... It's the same bloody town used over and over again... With one or two new rooms occasionally..
Which of these games have you solving puzzles outside of the gameworld on screens designed to look like pieces of paper?
Further response, also applicable to intervening posts concerning definition of adventure game:
An adventure game has a player-character progressing through a gameworld, overcoming obstacles designed into the gameworld, primarily through puzzle-solving gameplay. This progress naturally entails the revealing of a story that, at minimum, gives meaning to the gameworld and the character's motivations, objectives and activities, etc. (as it does in related, gameworld-oriented genres). The "amount" of narrative, NPC interaction, dialog and other forms of exposition can and do vary widely within the genre (as they do in related, gameworld-oriented genres) -- and, really, vary along a spectrum, precluding the neat division of the genre into subgenres based on such things. (Although I could accept a subdivision based on puzzle type, but see my next thought.)
I think it's important to remember that while games are divided into genres based on gameplay -- whether it's combat, platforming, puzzle-solving, role-playing -- most gameworld-oriented games are anywhere from slightly to hugely hybrid: shooters often have puzzles, adventures can have minigames, Sam and Max (the best ones!) have driving games, etc.
My personal gaming preference is, the more hybrid the better. I guess that's why I welcomed the transition of KQ8 into a different genre of gameplay (as I did with Indy). I really think I see the game along the same lines on which Roberta designed it, but she doesn't seem to acknowledge that the adventure genre had already influenced, evolved, spun off into, and hybridized with related genres.
At the same time, I'm sympathetic with folks who regarded KQ as an adventure game in a stricter sense (and they are entitled to so regard, for themselves, without giving a flying fuck what Roberta thought or said) and were disappointed when it changed. That has happened to me, too, under different circumstances, and it really sucks.
She did create the series. That's not some little fact. If not for Roberta, we wouldn't even be having any discussion of any King's Quest series.
As I've said before, I don't think KQ fans would've been happy unless every sequel from 1992 onward was KQ6 Part II, Part III, Part IV, etc.
I was 16 in 1994, and back then the only magazine I really ever read was Nintendo Power. I believe the first information I personally saw for MoE did have screenshots, so I was unimpressed right from the outset.
Besides that, even if I had known earlier... I, a simple teenager--whose family and friends no longer played adventure games--get riled up early on enough to write a letter to Roberta Williams complaining about her upcoming KQ game?
Nah. I had other things going on at the time that were more diverting of my attention.
I've come across similar definitions in industry journals and game magazines.
I have my own examples instead, ones that I have played. Seventh Guest or the first two Dr. Brains for example. I've played the Layton series, and first Puzzle Agent as well.
Diablo is a 'point-and-click' game as well, btw. Just not an 'adventure'!
Then you are simply too young to understand the era she was living thorugh then! ...or the direction of the industry at the time.
Classic adventure games actually lost money then, cost more than they made. Companies didn't want to risk them. They had to look at new directions to try to save the games or simple quit.
It was a very different time... BTW, thanks for making me feel old! Although I was a teenager at the time as well. But I was a huge PC gamer at the time, and followed Sierra's development.
BTW, I felt back then that adventure games were becoming tired, cliched, etc. Puzzles were being simplified, or else becoming too illogical, even the stories were becoming stale. Many of the same puzzle types were reused in many games... You can only take so many newspaper under door, knock key out of keyhole with pencil style puzzles before you start getting tired of the genre...
So even I was looking for something new back then, that would add interest back into the genre...
A question: Are you one of those who consider KQ6 the utter high point of the series?
I actually played Kings Quest 6 before I played Kings Quest 4 but I still enjoyed that one quite a bit... granted, I was aware it was an older game and played it as such so my opinion might have been different with regards to a new game... but I'm fairly sure I would have enjoyed a sequel even if it wasn't much like KQ6.
For instance, I loved Monkey Island 2 back when that game was released... despite it being quite different from the first game in many ways - darker theme, no insult fighting, much more open ended in that you had much bigger areas to explore much of the time, etc.
I happened to also enjoy Monkey Island 3 and I don't think anyone would argue that there aren't some rather major differences between MI2 and 3.
That's actually not a bad example, as Monkey Island 2 is by many considered the absolute masterpiece of the series, sort of similar to how KQ6 is regarded... and yet, even after playing through that, both myself and a lot of other people managed to really enjoy MI3.
To use that logic, by rights then to by fully interactive, MoE should have included a parser.
It didn't hurt the genre to include point-and-click over parser. Why should it hinder MoE to have used a fixed-angle tracking shot instead of a camera that is character-oriented?
The earlier games just happened to have wider open-ended over worlds. Many screens connected, in all directions. You really have to explore to find things.
One can see KQ1 VGA remake by AGDI, maintains the exploration, but replaces the interface with point and click. The interface really has little to do with the 'exploration' factor.
Also I'd say KQ5 maintains much of the same exploration of the earlier games in the first area. Serenia, and the desert, and forest are pretty open-ended. Serenia acts as a kinda of central hub for the first half of the game.
Infact, I'd say your comparisons to camera's to parsers, makes little sense at all... That's like comparing apples to a sports car!
Roberta once said had she had the technology at the time she would have always made her games in 3D, to her it was always more immersive, and really improved the open-ended exploration aspect she loved to put in her games (from KQ to Mixed-Up Mother Goose).
That said, there have been purists that complained about the lack of parser, when KQ5 came out. They thought that game was not an adventure game, nor a KQ game because of the lack of 'interactivity'! But that's a totally different subject.
Are you going to eat me alive if I say yes?
I have already been party to the discussion here on KQ6, and heard the complaints about Jane Jensen and other such arguements.
I do feel that KQ6 was my favorite in the series and that KQ5 was laughably bad. However, I did also enjoy the previous KQ games... of the first four, KQ3 is probably my favorite (turning Manannan into a cat was great). KQ7 is in there somewhere among my top choices, but I do recognize and agree with many of the arguements against it.
As an unrelated aside, at the risk of invoking the wrath of Rather Dashing, CMI is my favorite Monkey Island game.
Unless people give it a chance to rise again...
BTW, anyone remember those criticims over Zelda: Wind Waker and it's graphical style? Lots of fans saying it wasn't a true zelda game, and that style was wrong for Zelda? Just because of the cell shading, and no adult link?
I might have been taken aback at first, but Nintendo had never steered me wrong with any of their previous games, so I gave Wind Waker the benefit of the doubt.
I could totally understand what they meant by it, and so was perfectly willing to go into the game with an open mind. Again, they had never done wrong by their first-party titles before.
I like Wind Waker. True, I like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time more but Wind Waker is still a favorite of mine.
No, I didn't say that; I said you had to look deeper at each, meaning independently, to realize there's no relevance at all between Roberta's "interactive story" and Telltale's "interactive content". If you also don't think there's any shared context or relationship between the two, then why did you post Roberta's quotes on the matter immediately after I mentioned Telltale's "interactive content"?
The point is, Puzzle Agent, which you claim is a puzzle-adventure, does not fit the description for puzzle-adventure that you cited. Moreover, your own description that appears immediately above it isn't really consistent with the Wikipedia one that follows or the example games it gives. Finally, the Wikipedia write-up contrasts "puzzle-solving" with "item gathering" and "item use" as if that isn't a form of puzzle-solving. Is that not what you were referring to when you said, "The basic 'puzzle' in adventure games is the 'fetch quest'..."?
That might have been, and might still be, the most common type of puzzle in adventure games, but I don't think it's in any way "basic" or fundamental to the genre. In fact, when the kind of puzzle Wikipedia cites as common in its puzzle-adventure subdivision of the adventure genre, "deciphering the proper use of complex mechanisms", was brought to the fore by Myst, I think it was an example of exactly the kind of thing you continually point out that Sierra and Roberta did: taking advantage of the latest technology to push the genre. Many of the puzzles in Myst-style games could not have been done in flat 2D. But they worked nicely in a gameworld represented by multiple fixed 2D views of a pre-rendered 3D environment.
I would also add that quite a few puzzles in Myst and games of its ilk were about finding information in one part of the gameworld and applying it in another -- a code, rather than reverse engineering, was the key to progression -- which is not terribly dissimilar from an inventory puzzle.
All of which is meant to re-enforce the idea that trying to subdivide the adventure genre based on puzzle type is a messy business at best. Most importantly though, just because a puzzle game happens to have puzzles of a type corresponding to an adventure-game subgenre, it doesn't make it an adventure; you can't put something in a subcategory if it doesn't first fit into the parent category.
You were saying using a character-oriented follow-shot camera view = fully explorable = better.
I was saying that by such logic it would be better to use a parser to interact with the game environment since parser obviously gives more options for interaction than a cursor does. I was being sarcastic, since more obviously does not always mean better--and it certainly does not always when comparing camera angles either.
Whether or not TTG's Sam & Max (since I already mentioned it) is better or worse overall is not the issue. Whether or not the camera angles are, is. You're saying that TTG's Sam & Max directly suffers because of the camera angles, since having a follow-shot camera view that follows Sam around (such as in MoE) should so obviously be better as it would allow for more exploration. I disagree.
Changing the camera angle from a fixed-angle tracking shot to a character-oriented follow-shot makes for a significant change in the gameplay style, and while I don't wholly discount the value of character-oriented camera views in general, it doesn't fit well in the context of a King's Quest game. There are 7 games previous to MoE that use fixed camera angles, do not suffer for it, and well establish a fixed-angle camera view as the perspective of choice for the King's Quest series.
Actually GK3's or the later games in the Broken Sword series use full explorable 3D. I do think it is pretty cool (because secrets and puzzles can be hidden all around). It's also one of the things I liked in KQ8. It didn't take away from the game imo. Roberta has said even if she had decided not add combat (which she decided on when Sierra was owned by Sierra) to the game, it would still be fully explorable 3D.
However, I'm not saying one is better than another. Because personally both can be used effectively. It's not also something I define as a requirement for 'adventure games' to be stuck in one form of camera over another. I see a variety camera types as viable. Even 'first person' is viable, as Roberta has explained Wizard and the Princess is essentially KQ0, a prequel to KQ5. That game uses a first person perspective. Perspectives don't bother me, i'm open to any camera type.
Oh, and by the way 'control method'... Actually "point and click" or "parser", or Drag and click, are not the only methods of adventure game control. Quite a few were joystick, arrow keyes, or other form of keyboard control. Look at MI4 or Grim Fandango for games with pure keyboard control (no mouse/non parser). Designers can use really any interface imaginable... Some might be clunkier than others. Strangely sometimes the interface is the center of arguements between fans. Like for example those who hated KQ5 because they didn't like the interface and felt the parser gave them more options.
You know one interesting comparison between 2-d and 3-d adventure may be Myst vs. realMyst (the full-3d remake). Real Myst lets you see parts of the island, and angles, with environmental effects you couldn't see in the original Myst. It has more real-time feel rather than a series of static 'slide pictures'. It's less restrictive in ways. Puzzle Adventures... Castle of Dr. Brain is a Puzzle Adventure. You asked are there other games that have 'pop-ups' with puzzles. Castle of Dr. Brain and Island of Dr. Brain do that. You click on objects in the environment, and then a box pops up with the game's puzzle. You navigate the game's story by solving these puzzles (which is the 'core definition' of puzzle adventure).
Do a google search of 'puzzle adventure' and you'll see quite a few games that the industry defines as 'puzzle adventure'. Quite a few of those 'hidden-item' games even are classified as 'puzzle adventures' or 'casual adventure games' by the industry.
Discussion of casual Puzzle Adventure games
Editorial on 'Casual Adventure Games'
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/genres/21/adventure.html?channel=sem&identifier=usgooglspuzadv&WT.srch=1&v1=5576275942&v2=puzzle%20adventure%20games&v3=b&v6=g&v7=&gclid=CJ7V5uyU96oCFewaQgodhyipLw
Here is a summary of many of the 'adventure' sub genres and their basic definitions, as well as other industry classifications (and their relationship to adventures);
http://www.justadventure.com/thejave/html/JAVECategory.shtml
I don't suppose you have played Seventh Guest either? Many of the puzzles in that game were 'popups' once you discovered the location of the hidden puzzle in the environment. Although it the popups took the whole entire screen. You couldn't progress until you solved these puzzles. As I recall solving the puzzles weakened the evil forces in the house that prevented you from reach the upstairs or other rooms. Sometimes a puzzle might hide a key needed to progress as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7p7D5ptvsA&feature=related
Puzzle Agent might do it as 'bits of paper'. Layton switched to another screen whenever a hidden puzzle was found. The two early Dr. Brain's put up box overlay with the game's hidden puzzle on the screen. In many of these games, you solve a puzzle for the character to 'pick up' or find an item. You use these items later on to solve yet other puzzles... Sometimes the games automatically use the items for you, sometimes you have the ability to use the items from an 'inventory'.
It's been a while but Shivers/Shivers 2 may have had similar type of 'hidden puzzles' to progress style gameplay as well.
She created the 3rd person graphic adventure in KQ1, she enhanced (well, not her alone, but Sierra) it by adding mouse support for rudimentary P&C interfacing, she did away with the parser entirely completely changing the way players interact in adventure games (many rioted over this at this point, including Scott Murphy), voice actors and narrators were added changing the way the games were told in their dialogue (characters spoke for themselves instead of letting you be that character and the narrator describing everything), then the resolution was bumped up and the interface was dumbed down EVEN MORE to a single-icon interface that lit up on hotspots and the narrator was removed.
See a pattern here? With each advancement in the genre it changed the way you played and experienced the game. It was still very much what many consider "adventure" but that's because adventures were the best selling games at the time. By the time 3D came out there was no way that Sierra and Roberta wasn't going to take advantage of it. And if you're going to take advantage of 3D you're going to have to take advantage of everything it has to offer, namely, a full exploratory 3D world instead of fixed camera angles. Why would you keep the camera still in a 3D world when it can now move around anywhere you want? Remember, this was when 3D technology was new. Moving around the game world was something that wasn't possible before and the fad of the time (and even still today) is to move the camera around as much as possible as if you were actually there. Really show it off. This is why FPS's are so popular. You get to explore nearly every facet of the game world visible to the player. Why would players want to be stuck in one angle at a time? It's also possible that Sierra considered doing fixed angles but seeing how fans hated that in LucasArts' Grim Fandango and later Escape from Monkey Island maybe they thought to themselves that they shouldn't make the same mistakes.
I see the evolution of King's Quest into 3D as the natural next step Roberta had in mind to take advantage of the new technology available this time around. Only times were changing and adventures weren't the best-selling titles they once were. Everyone WANTED 3D action worlds. And when you look at MOE it still has more of the fundamental elements that make up an adventure game, albeit in a more modest supply. Puzzles, inventory, dialogues, etc. You could say it has more to do with RPGs than adventure, but I tend to disagree and also point out that RPG's are the close cousins of adventures that are still going strong today, and we should be thankful of that. I would be thrilled if King's Quest (or more appropriately, Quest For Glory) were still going today in the form of something like The Elder Scrolls. You could totally blend that style with some classic adventure style puzzles which would put control and interaction in a gaming world back to the parser where you could do almost anything you wanted you just had to type it in. But now you're seeing it in a full quality 3D world. That's really the only way to get the level of control we used to have from the parser days back. But instead of typing it in you're actually using game controls.
So to sum up, MOE could never be like the early King's Quest games...that's why they never made MOE a classic adventure. We really truly weren't a big enough market. It's not an insult it's the truth. You can hate on MOE for not being classic but you can't hate on Roberta or Sierra for doing what they did. Times change and so do games, sadly. I still can't stand the state of gaming today with its mindless 2-hour campaigns interspersed with cutscenes everywhere and not much interaction at all besides point and click (shoot). But that's just simple video gaming evolution. Indie games and fangames hold the most interest for me nowadays (and Skyrim). The odd time I'll find a AAA game that's appealing and I'll play it, but mostly I accept that I'm from an earlier time now and can only just hope that a video game age comes someday that's appealing to me again.
I never said the suits wanted to make it 3D, I said they wanted to brand Mask of Eternity as another mainline King's Quest sequel.
No, I asked which of the games Wikipedia cited as examples of puzzle-adventure had puzzles not incorporated into the gameworld, and the answer is none of them. Similarly, the "pop-up" puzzles in games like 7th Guest are close-ups of objects and scenes in the games' environments, shown in more detail so that the player can manipulate and solve them -- a fairly routine device used not only in "puzzle-adventures" but traditional adventure games as well. In contrast, the typical puzzle screen in Puzzle Agent is not a close-up or a representation of anything the player encounters in the environment, though they often have some implied relationship.
You can throw at me as many articles and subgenre descriptions as you want, but all they do is further demonstrate that there are no "core definitions" for any of these things. There is so much variation that they can't be put into neat little boxes, and efforts to do so not surprisingly turn out different from each other. I'm sure Just Adventure's list of categories (note that they did not use the term subgenre) is quite useful for the site's and its users' purposes, but neither it nor any other source's subcategory breakdowns are necessarily going to be universally applicable or widely used. Besides, I'm not denying the existence or usefulness of classification schemes in general, but they and your other references to broader classes of games are not really relevant to my original point about a single specific game.