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Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game
- Thread starter J_C
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2013
- Messages
- 491
They'll just send out keys to backers, when they launch part one early access on Steam (and call that the beta)...
Who cares? Tim will beg/borrow/raise another few millions to make it all better. TRUST DOUBLE FINE!
toro
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2009
- Messages
- 14,818
Boleskine
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2013
- Messages
- 4,045
That's too bad. I was hoping for more context-sensitive interactivity.
Look/use/talk/push/pull interactions don't make an old-school adventure game. Good riddance, that system should stay dead.
tuluse
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2008
- Messages
- 11,400
Plenty of older adventure games didn't have the verb system. Like Loom.
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2007
- Messages
- 11,158
Pff you all live in stone age. This is Broken Age ! and like it's spiritual predecessor Dragon Age, it will only have one awesome button which will solve the puzzles, so you can experience the story uninterrupted.
Hardcore old-times can use the "grandpa" mode, where you are stripped of the awesome button and you wander aimlessly for half an hour until the puzzle is solved by itself, thus simulating the experience of the oldies.
Hardcore old-times can use the "grandpa" mode, where you are stripped of the awesome button and you wander aimlessly for half an hour until the puzzle is solved by itself, thus simulating the experience of the oldies.
"Hey you guys love old school adventure games right? Well it's sad they're only made by European companies and indies that we dismiss because mainstream media bro, so we're going to REVOLUTIONIZE the industry by making one right here in San Francisco! And get press for doing so! So strap yourselves in for OLD SCHOOL POINT AND CLICK EXTRAVAGANZA! Of course we're really going to have to simplify this sucker so it works on tablets and is palatable to modern audiences. It's still going to be old school though because I said old school like three times in the pitch video. Weren't you paying attention?"
Oh, look, we are trying to act edgy, while completly forgetting that many classic, Codex approved adventure games like Grim Fandango, Full Throotle, Longest Journey, Broken Sword etc are not using Talk/push/pull/view/take buttons as in the SCUMM games.
Yeah, just crawl back under your rock pal.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,404
Most verbs on scumm games were very underutilized, and were more useful for comedic purposes than actually being useful on a puzzle. Just having one way of interaction isn't exactly the same thing of press a button and something awesome has to happen. Probably, it will use the same system as most adventure games, one button to look and another for interaction. The devil is on the details. If the puzzles are clever, the ammount of ways you interact with them is meaningless, if they are so obvious that a 8 years old knows the answer right away, doesn't matter if you have thousands of ways of interaction. While, it would be nice to have them, they are hardly necessary for a good adventure game.
Eh, there's some merit in what they say. Though honestly, DoubleFine would have a lot to lose if they tried to make a game too "old-schoo"l. They're looking for the big-big numbers; they are looking to have cross appeal. See, I'm not trying to move a million copies of what we're doing, see, in comparison - so a game like ours can DO that, cause we're not trying to make a game to conform or fit everyone. It's a different financial plan... I can understand what they're doing, but as an "old-school" adventure game fan, I don't have to like it.
Bt
Bt
Redlands
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2008
- Messages
- 983
I can't really believe how dense you people are being. You're basically arguing that it's fine to limit the number of ways a player can interact with a game world, that it's somehow better even to do so. Less interactivity means less variability in how to solve puzzles. It means less avenues to engage with the game developer's descriptive writing or witty humour or whatever else you enjoy about it. It means less chances to engage in the story, filling in details that make the character and the overall picture more detailed.
It doesn't matter if verbs are rarely useful, or only used for comedic purposes if that's what the designer wants to do: it's not like an RPG system where you're screwing players over for choosing to level up in smell. You have access to everything that the game and your mind has given you access to, so there's no necessity in balancing everything.
You don't have to take my word for it: check out Matt Barton's (the actual one's) interview with Josh Mandel, where he mentions how the switch from parser to set commands reduced their ability to be creative with puzzles. The switch from several to one interaction (two, if you're lucky) reduces this even further.
Now, you can get away with only one interaction: the Myst series of games manages it. But it's a deceptive example: most of the things you can interact with have many states, either in a logical mechanical set-up or with so many that simply brute forcing it is not worthwhile, and rely upon you observing and making notes and connections. It also had high-quality non-stylized art assets which makes making these observations far more natural than in third-person adventures, where we have to rely somewhat on the character's ability to observe things to know more about the world.
Most of the examples J_C gave are not really "old school" adventure games - which was the entire point of the fucking Kickstarter if memory serves - but more of the modern style that's been in vogue since the genre "died". The kind where you can just brute force your way through the entire game without thought when you get vaguely stuck on all of the blindingly obvious puzzle solutions so you can get your next story fix, or until there's a bad puzzle design that jars with the rest of the game, is annoying because of engine limitations, or is just illogical.
Far too fucking many modern adventure games are the exact thing Hepler seemed to want in games: button-awesome story books for people to afraid to think; and it fucking pisses me off when people seem really gung-ho to turn the genre into interactive picture books for adults by being too focused on writing a story than on having a good game.
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Redlands
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2008
- Messages
- 983
From what I can tell, it certainly is a different financial plan.
You guys seem to actually have one.
Hahaha, thanks. I won't be driving any fancy cars anytime soon, but hopefully I can pay the powerbill and go out for pizza every now and then, eh?
I really enjoyed your last post. Adventure games are button pushing story books. Yeah, a good story is awesome, but make the story involve you in the game - make the puzzles and quests, etc, enhance your story - most people do just want to seem to click through until they get their end. To me, in adventure games, the journey is the most important part. The journey IS the adventure - not just clicking a button and making a choice here and there.
I can only say that on my end, Broken Age doesn't really raise my hackles with what I've seen and heard about it. The graphics are nice enough, but there's something kind of generic about them, and I haven't seen enough gameplay to really comment on it. But what I have seen doesn't make me really excited or eager to play it.
Bt
I really enjoyed your last post. Adventure games are button pushing story books. Yeah, a good story is awesome, but make the story involve you in the game - make the puzzles and quests, etc, enhance your story - most people do just want to seem to click through until they get their end. To me, in adventure games, the journey is the most important part. The journey IS the adventure - not just clicking a button and making a choice here and there.
I can only say that on my end, Broken Age doesn't really raise my hackles with what I've seen and heard about it. The graphics are nice enough, but there's something kind of generic about them, and I haven't seen enough gameplay to really comment on it. But what I have seen doesn't make me really excited or eager to play it.
Bt
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2013
- Messages
- 491
I didn't see them confirm the one-click interface anywhere, was hoping they'd at least have a separate look function.
Grim Fandango/Longest Journey/all-goddamn-Verb-coins.. Not a fan of any of those interfaces. I guess I've accepted the Wadjet Eye action/look two-button style, but it's annoying if DF is appropriating the classic-style Lucasarts cursor for a one-click game.
Grim Fandango/Longest Journey/all-goddamn-Verb-coins.. Not a fan of any of those interfaces. I guess I've accepted the Wadjet Eye action/look two-button style, but it's annoying if DF is appropriating the classic-style Lucasarts cursor for a one-click game.
toro
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2009
- Messages
- 14,818
This is joke. Right?
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