Exploration or story?
Telltale's games have always been strictly story driven, sometimes to their detriment. A great story can draw you in and really make you care about the characters, but at the same time, the strict linearity of many story-driven games (Telltale's games are VERY guilty of this) almost completely destroys the sense of exploration and discovery that was such an important part of classic adventure games.
So...which is more important to you for a Sierra-style adventure game? A strong story? Or the sense of exploration and discovery that comes with being able to wander a vast area, looking and interacting with the landscape and objects as you see fit? Or do you think a game can realistically do both?
What approach should Telltale take if they want to capture the "feel" of King's Quest?
So...which is more important to you for a Sierra-style adventure game? A strong story? Or the sense of exploration and discovery that comes with being able to wander a vast area, looking and interacting with the landscape and objects as you see fit? Or do you think a game can realistically do both?
What approach should Telltale take if they want to capture the "feel" of King's Quest?
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Ah, but I dream.
I voted for exploration--not necessarily because I don't think the story is important. I just think that the old King's Quest games had a very specific "feel" to them, a sense of excitement at visiting new areas and searching and interacting with new things, all in the context of uncovering clues to help solve the next puzzle.
The heart and soul of those games, to me, was the sense of discovery and wonder in getting lost in that magical fantasy world. KQ4, 5, and 6 were the pinnacle of this for me. KQ7 had a great world to explore, but the single cursor interface and inability to look and interact with things in the background destroyed the sense of discovery and immersion.
Personally, I feel like the story loomed a little too large in KQ6, but only just slightly. For the most part, you were pretty open to explore at your leisure even there, though the island settings tended to make things feel a bit contained at times.
I think how they're dealing with Jurassic Park shows how they think making the game to fit the story rather than forcing the story into a certain type of game.
My big concern is that they don't pay much attention to those on the forums. I imagine they will do their market research and not try to listen to the fans of the old games.
I don't want to come away from the game feeling like I watched a movie. If I wanted to do that, I would actually watch a movie. But so far from what I have seen from telltale, this is what they produce (probably because it can be marketed to the masses; and to be honest, that is good business even though old school fans don't get what they want).
That's it exactly. I voted exploration, but not because I don't want a strong story; I most certainly do. It's just that I want the story to be told during the course of exploration and interactivity, and not through an over-abundance of cutscenes.
Besides, I don't think there's any question whatsoever that Telltale's KQ is going to be strong on story.
I suppose, after reading RD's and MI's posts (which I agree with), I might have voted for exploration instead given that their most recent game (BTTF) has so sacrificed gameplay for story.
Well, we haven't even seen Jurassic Park in action yet. We're promised a lot of new things but we have no idea how it will all work out once we get it in our hands. So all we really have is their word.
http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-road-show-jurassic-park/17-3818/
Wow. Looks like they REALLY dumbed the gameplay down. No more walking?
Graphics are fantastic, however. Too bad that's not all that matters.
...Okay, see, they just need to drop the part where they pretend "look at thing" is puzzle-solving. And like obstacles are some sort of afterthought. And that adventure games are bad things. And that puzzle complexity, when it follows a logical line of thought, is still bad for being too hard. And they need to drop the thing where they have dropped exploration.
But if they just drop the pretending that looking at three available things in a confined space that you're not even allowed to move about in is puzzle-solving, then at least they'll be honest. I mean, they'll still be calling it a "game", which is iffy at best...but that's an industry-wide problem.
That was my reaction exactly. And if you could stand to watch the thing long enough, some of the statements made by the TTG designers are rather disturbing, from the standpoint of a long-time adventure game fan who cares about gameplay, exploration and puzzle-solving.
"We don't want players to have to worry about pixel hunting."
"We wanted to basically shortcut the sort of walking around; it's not the most fun part."
"The hope is that no one is really ever gonna get completely stuck."
"We're trying to shoot this as if it was a movie and less like a video game."
I understand that Jurassic Park is a movie license and we shouldn't have expected hard-core adventure gameplay in this particular game. That's fine. The problem is that the de-emphasis of solid gameplay -- the adoption of the philosophy represented in the quotes above -- started before Back to the Future and JP. It is clearly present in the last Sam & Max series, for instance. Sam & Max. Not a movie.
That is indeed what it looks like. But the point I was making is that it's different than what their 'normal' style of game is. The way I see it the gameplay is built around the kind of story they want to tell and what feels right for the source material. I can't see them doing the same kind of gameplay style with King's Quest.
Just because it's different doesn't mean it's bad and it shows that Telltale are willing to experiment. Hell, Puzzle Agent was an experimental gameplay type for them as well.
The puzzle presented in the video is simple, but not quite as simple as just "look at thing." The order in which you look at the things is important. Jess has to honk the horn so that the Triceratops lifts up its head. While its head is lifted she needs to turn on the headlights so that they shine directly in its eyes, momentarily blinding and distracting it. While it's distracted, Harding needs to move the branch back into the pen. He can't move the branch while it's still eating, and turning on the lights while its head is down won't distract it. It's a very simple puzzle, but it's still a puzzle. It requires an understanding of how the elements in the environment logically relate to each other.
I agree whole-heartedly with Rather Dashing and others. Being presented with an extremely limited number of options in a confined space that you aren't allowed to explore is neither puzzle-solving nor adventuring. It's trial and error separating movie clips. And it won't even take you that long to get through.
Also, am I hearing things, or did they say they were shooting for a 1.5 to 2 hour "experience?"
Disgusting. King's Quest is doomed.
Hasn't Telltale gone on record as saying JP wouldn't be an adventure game?
Whether or not I like what they're doing with JP, it IS something different from their usual style, at least in small ways, so it gives me the faint hope that this is the start of more variety in style for Telltale projects. Which gives me the even fainter hope that KQ may be their playground to experiment with a Sierra style.
Yes, that hope is VERY faint, but it exists.
I didn't actually
My goodness...that's awful. That's abysmal. That's...inexplicable.
Exactly. I noticed this about S&M3. So, my fears were proven correct. There was a lot of big talk about Jurassic Park being different from any Telltale game previously released, but all I see is the same interface, same puzzle design, and same design philosophy as all the other games plus the apparent ability to die. Oooooooo. Edgy, Telltale. You're really taking risks now.
Did you not read the quotes above?? They're taking this cinematic gaming experience too far. There's a point where it's not even worth playing if it's not a game. Like I said, it just looks like to me that they have the exact same game they've ever done (dumbed down even more than BTTF, dear goodness what a concept!) and just dressed it up differently with realistic graphics, alternate controls, and an alternate GUI. That's not experimental. That's not different at all. It's the same exact thing. Except easier.
The order in which you look at things? That's not a puzzle. That's what Sierra haters call a "typical Sierra guess-the-designer's-thought-process" puzzle.
No. They just said it would be a little different than what "our fans would expect from us." So far it looks the same to me. Just dumbed down to the lowest possible common denominator, even moreso than BTTF, which I didn't think was possible even for Telltale. Now, certainly, all bets are off in accordance to their game design philosophy. I just flat out don't agree with it at all.
Again, you can dress and pretty it up all you want but it's the same exact Telltale business model underneath it all. Granted, that's not proven yet, but it certainly isn't disproven yet either. Even by that video. If anything it all but gives me even more cause for worry.
It's not just guessing an arbitrary thought process, though. It makes sense. You're presented with an obstacle, and you have to manipulate the environment in order to get past it. There's a Triceratops in the road. You need to move it out of the way. You might be able to lure it back into its pen with the branch it's eating, but you can't grab it while it's actually eating it, so you have to distract it by messing with the other objects in the scene. It's like the trap-the-hand-in-tar puzzle from the end of Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, or the get-Skunkape-to-slip-in-the-mole-sweat puzzle from the end of the Penal Zone.
*Edit: Bringing things slightly more on topic: I do think the ability to walk around is important to the King's Quest series, because navigating precarious walkways has always been part of the gameplay. And both KQV and KQVI had puzzles that involved hiding behind onscreen objects. My point was that the ability to walk around is not necessarily an integral part of the adventure genre as a whole. But King's Quest should definitely have it.
Puzzle Agent was different. It was just a small puzzle game. Nothing more. Actually, it seems to be the only Telltale game that doesn't follow the standard Telltale puzzle design philosophy.
At the beginning of the video, they explicitly introduce it as an adventure game.
Okay, sure, walking around a single scene, ie. between the pieces of a single puzzle in a limited location, might not always be important. But that point kinda misses the forest for the trees. The desire for exploration as an element of gameplay is about being able to move among multiple many scenes to discover a cohesive, complex game-world, being exposed to its mysteries and challenges not necessarily in the order in which they are to be solved. That, to me, is the fundamental difference between an adventure game and a puzzle game.
I think what MusicallyInspired meant about Myst is that with its first-person node-based movement system, it is indeed an example of not really needing to move within a single scene. But of course, the freedom to move among many scenes -- exploration -- was critically important to Myst. I believe it's just as important to KQ. And it would have been nice in Jurassic Park.
EXACTLY. Being able to uncover a cohesive interesting world in the order in which you, the player, choose is such an important part of an adventure game...heck, even just a GAME itself.
In an ADVENTURE GAME, you might come across that Triceratop puzzle, but maybe you'd need to go back to a DIFFERENT area to find something to help you solve it. It's really not that hard of a concept. What Telltale is designing is a clickable movie. Moreso with Jurassic Park than ever before (and that's really saying something, considering BttF.) This approach would be an utter DISASTER in a King's Quest game.
That's fair. But still, they've never done a presentation quite this different on an episodic game before. I support Telltale dipping their toes into experimentation, even if the experiments are only surface-level at the moment.
The first mention I can hear of adventure games in the Giant Bomb video is at about 3:25, where they say "we're bringing adventure game mechanics to this"--IE, this isn't an adventure game, but we're including some of the elements. Sam and Max had shooting elements, but you wouldn't call it a shooter.
The video description says "adventure game", but that's what Giant Bomb's calling it, not necessarily Telltale.
Well, technically you are using something from a different area to solve it, because the interior of jeep where you play as Jess counts as a separate room that you have to use the travel menu to go to. In text adventure terms, it's essentially one screen west of the screen where you can interact with the Triceratops as Harding.
But never mind that. That's beside the point. I wasn't trying to defended it as a good or complicated puzzle, I was simply arguing that it is, in fact, a puzzle. Using the horn and the headlights in combination in order to distract the dinosaur requires the same kind of logic as any simple inventory combination puzzle. I agree that having the two things you need to combine right next to each in the room adjacent to one with the problem you're trying to solve makes for an extremely easy puzzle, but it's still a puzzle.
Really, it's the exact same kind of puzzle as the amp puzzle at the beginning of It's About Time. You have to talk to Marty's dad and turn up the amp in one room in order to the solve the problem of Biff in the adjacent room.
Which was so ridiculously simple that I didn't even realize it was supposed to be a puzzle until I read some discussion of the game after finishing it. I did those things in the right order on my first playthrough, without even realizing I was "solving" a "puzzle." Something that is so easy it could completely sneak by you really shouldn't be considered a puzzle at all.
I'm just saying that having the solution to a puzzle be a clearly highlighted hotspot somewhere on the screen really isn't puzzle solving. Because it takes no intelligence or logic at all to simply click all the hotspots and see what happens, which is basically where Telltale games have gone at this point.