Does anyone else think the VA for Mr Peanutbutter sounds like the VA for Guybrush? I legit was convinced they were voiced by the same person for a couple hours lol
Contemporarily relevant and respectful correction: Grim Fandango has actually 2 puzzles that rely on a 3D space. The second one is the elevator-forklift puzzle in Rubacava's High Roller's Lounge basement. And it was also... clunky and not very good at all. Underlines your point very well..
This was great. Your definition of adventure game as "puzzles + story", and that you pointed out that they did not evolve, made me realize that they did actually evolve - I would consider first person puzzlers like Portal, Portal 2 and Quantum Conundrum to actually be a the modernization of the adventure game.
+Craparella Smørrebrød Portal was the last real evolution of the genre, and the problem with portal is that it's a one time thing. You can't make a new game like portal because everything that makes it a puzzle game also makes it unique.
+LolsTheGreatAndPowerful I think you're wrong on several levels. Portal had a defining new mechanic. And then Portal 2 added new stuff to it. And Quantum Conundrum had yet another defining new mechanic. In other words, each of these game actually did evolve. And since we now had 3 examples of evolution, there is no reason why it couldn't be done again, couldn't it?
+Craparella Smørrebrød Games about story, with puzzles stopping you from progressing through the story too quickly ( whatever that means ) versus games about puzzles, with a little bit of story, mostly either serving as tutorial or told through the mechanics. I don't like to argue about meaningless concepts such as "genres", but those two concepts are not only different, they opposite each other. Certainly one of them does not give legitimacy to the other.
+Winchestro So you don't want to split videogames into artificial groups/genres, and then you proceed and do exactly that very thing by claiming that only games where a story is told through the mechanics are good/legitimate?
+Craparella Smørrebrød I'm sorry for my poor choice of words. I didn't try to say only one of them is good or legitimate, just that they don't give legitimacy to each other, because they are doing the exact opposite.
I freaking love Daedalic. I didn't get a chance to play any of their games until last year, as I play games solely on the ps4 and didn't know what Deponia was. Since then I've played every Daedalic title available on ps4. Actually just downloaded State of Mind yesterday and plan on starting it very soon.
RIP Daedalic they should have never tried making Gollum as it was bound to fail from the start as they never had enough budget for that game. Instead of making an action-adventure that was a licensed IP, they should have just made a 3D adventure that makes great use of features like Tiny & Big or Outer Wilds. Sure it wasn't their first 3D game, but action-adventure means Tomb Raider and Uncharted or Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor/War. Good luck competing with that.
@Ninjaeule97 they did make 3d based point and click before too! But they had already shut down p&c production since a few years before gollum. It was simply the end of a tailspin
I think the real rebirth of adventure games occurred when the first Telltale games where released. The narrative-driven Walking Dead series made a lot of people more interested in the genre. That, in my opinion, really benefits from 3-D space. The puzzles, i.e. killing Zombies, doing QTEs, or shooting others, are really intriguing and really benefit from having another dimension to work with
They only thing, literally the only thing, I don't like about the walking dead games is that there are no graphics settings whatsoever. No matter how powerful your PC is, you are pigeonholed into a world of few polygons, no shadows, and low-res textures. The original Wind Waker, a game that released thirteen years ago, pulled off the cartoon effect much better than the walking dead did.
Andrew Burnham I also didn't like how your decisions didn't make that much of a difference. They try to avoid the characters that you save in the story and it doesn't matter what you do, you will get the same ending as everyone else.
The best evolution of point and click adventure games I can think of was in Edna: The Breakout. The main gimmick was that you can use all of the inventory items with EVERYTHING and you ACTUALLY get unique and funny reactions. And there are alot of interactables, even useless ones. Also you can use the four verbs (look at, take, talk to/eat, use) with everything. The main character has her talking rabbit plushie 'ventrilocate' for the objects and this gets you the wackiest reactions!
One of the things that make Monkey Island and King's Quest so great, which I barely ever hear people talk about, is that there were so many items to collect. At any given time, you probably had a couple dozen items in your inventory. At face value, that doesn't sound all that impressive, but it had unseen repercussions on how you thought about solving puzzles. You had all this stuff that you weren't sure when you'd find useful, so it led to experimentation and paying closer attention to dialogue hints. It let you use one item on another, to alter it into a new form. Or you could combine multiple items together, to build a new thing or a crude tool of some sort. I love how classic, inventory-puzzle adventure games are making a comeback -- but so many of the new games seem to keep the inventory very small and streamlined. You seldom have more than 3-5 items at any one time, and most things only have one use that is rather obvious when the opportunity arises. There are fewer points where you can interact with objects, fewer locations, and pretty much only one solution to any puzzle. Granted, a lot of these new games are indie titles with a limited budget, so I can't really blame them too much. But it does sting a bit, when I feel like "This is a well-made thing with a ton of potential, but as far as adventure games go, it isn't AMONG them -- it just REMINDS me of them."
The best adventure game I've ever played (but is insanely underrated) is Ghost Trick. On DS and iOS. Just commenting in hopes of making more people play that masterpiece.
Man Broken Sword is like the litmus paper for Adventure Games. First 2 games are great, then the next couple are these weird, broken, adventure games that try to co-opt mechanics from other genres like action adventure games and platformers when it transitions into full 3D, oh and I shouldn't forget the awful 3D control schemes, then suddenly, the new Broken Sword Game from last year is fantastic and a return to form and really the "true sequel" that people have been waiting for since 1997.
Yes, this video is almost 2 years old. Yes, I am watching this for serious gaming discussion. But also yes, I smiled at the part where you go "I love everyone, most of all you!"
I'm so glad you brought up the IF community, because that's been seeing some awesome iteration lately too. I'm a total sucker for the classics in Inform, but seeing what people are doing with newer stuff like Twine is super interesting.
Bedinsis Well you're only half wrong. In Japan there are actually a good number of "visual novels" that use puzzles to tell stories. Though in Japan they still distinguish between "adventures games" (like Pheonix Wright) and Visual Novels (Like Higurashi) in America that distinction isn't made and they're all called 'Visual Novels'
I think the resurgence of traditional nostalgia adventure games started before Double Fine adventure. The examples i'd point to are Telltale's Sam and Max, and Tales of Monkey Island. Maybe I'm just pedantic about this, because the early Telltale Games (pre- walking dead) got me into the genre in the first place lol.. maybe theyre really not as significant as i think Good video m8! Good stuff!
Funny how when I see this series title, "Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood" that my mind thinks of the song "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Which IMO, would make a good theme for these vids. Particularly an instrumental - natch, a MIDI - version, I believe. Maybe someone could get on that?
"Malignant growths of code were added haphazardly whenever a new feature was required" ... Yeah, that still happens. A lot. Also, sample code used in production? Still doing that.
I know this is an old video and no one will probably ever read this, but I think adventure games have morphed into the Alternate Reality Game (ARG). These are insanely popular, and essentially follow the same format as adventure games, but with more collaboration and in many cases the doubt as to whether the game is real.
Hello! This was very enjoyable. An additional factor, surely, is that other game genres started being able to amalgamate elements of adventure games into themselves. So in the 90s, adventure games were pretty much the only place you could go for complex stories, dialogue, humour etc. As technology and manpower on other game genres rapidly accelerated, you could package up all these elements as cut scenes or voice-overs in 3D shooters and other genres. At the same time, games like Tomb Raider were combining action with puzzle-solving. Suddenly you find yourself wondering why you're having to click to move a character around and or use a rubber chicken on a zipwire when you could be leaping about around a fully realised 3D world while watching an epic tale unfold.
just throwing it out there: quake didn't use wasd as standard, or even mouse look (you had to turn mouse look on in the console). Half-life was the first game to use wasd and mouselook as standard. (although magic carpet used arrows and mouselook)
I kinda think you should have mentioned the gam developing studio "Daedalic", since they have been making high quality adventure games since a few years, and i think they are kinda popular.
Well, he asked a lot of questions at the beginning and this video only answered one of them. So I feel like this will be a series, and in subsequent videos, he'll be discussing the modern adventure games like Daedalic and Telltale are producing.
I'd argue that the adventure game was a product of technical limitations, it was the best way to tell an interactive story focused game back then. When it did evolve, it evolved into other genres. You can have all that narration + puzzles with any set of mechanics nowadays, so there's less reason to limit yourself enough that it's still considered a classical adventure game. Zelda, Shenmue, LA Noire, Metroid, all take adventure elements and build an action based system around it.
What I'd like to see more of is for other genres to consider borrowing more from adventure games, rather than vice versa. We already know puzzles are compatible with platformers, RPGs, and shooters, we see these things blended all the time; it's just that we rarely see the level of creativity in puzzle design that adventure games brought to the table.
something i feel like tossing out: while wolfenstein 3d _was_ just a 2d game with a first person perspective rendered in very, _very_ basic 3d, doom and its fellow idtech 1 games _were_ actually 3d see, the thing about doom's rudimentary implementation of 3d physics and rendering is that a lot of the shortcuts ( from the technical limitation stuff of not being able to overlap floors and the very limited perspective that couldn't be angled vertically, to the oversights like being able to press switches that are in the floor, to the ... stuff that was really just laziness, really, that they could justify due to not being relevant for doom 1's level design, like not checking z-collisions when doing collision detection between two solid actors ) are a lot more in-your-face than the stuff that clearly showcases the true 3d nature of doom. like, it's often said that actors are infinitely tall in it, but one of the first things you'll notice when working with the engine is that each actor actually has a defined height which is fully used for collision with the map geometry and stuff like hitscans and projectiles ( the latter of which are full actors, just not solid - in idtech 1, you can't collide with projectiles, but projectiles can collide with _you_ ) that is pretty well illustrated when you try to put a cyberdemon in a space the player can barely fit in and it gets stuck because its head is firmly in the ceiling and let me reiterate: infinite height actors, one of _the_ big proofs that doom isn't 3d? pretty much just there so they didn't have to model what would happen when a solid actor is on top of another solid actor, because doom 1 really didn't have levels where that really mattered anyway. both raven games on the same engine ( heretic and hexen ) include more vertical levels and more dynamic tools for vertical movement, however, and thus they went and added that z-collision check into the function that checks for collisions between actors aaaaand ... it barely changed, it just has an added section for that purpose like, it's not even cleanly implemented. the code that lets projectiles respect z-collisions is _still there,_ there's just a separate check for solid actors to do the same thing doom's implementation of the third dimension is definitely rudimentary, but it definitely has a third dimension. when you walk off a ledge or try to step up to a higher floor, the game _does_ do full-on 3d collision checks to handle that movement and make sure it's actually possible to do so. it does so for the enemies, too, and the projectiles. really, the biggest reason the game isn't seen as 3d is because the player has to rely entirely on the level to move through the third dimension. but for as much as you can peel back the game's skin and see tons of flaws with the implementation*, it's ... well, it's a 90s computer game that brought revolutionary tech. it's gonna be flawed to hell and back * one of my favorites is that vertically angled hitscans seem to "slide" along the ground if they manage to hit it, but that's actually two completely different things mixing together: the fact that hitscans _don't check for collision with planes at all,_ and the fact that the little visual effect that shows up when you hit a wall with a hitscan is an actor, and actors can't be below a sector's floor or above its ceiling. so the bullet puff spawns however deep into the ground the hitscan got before hitting a one-sided wall ( which actually _are_ infinite height, or rather don't have height at all, since ... actors can't go out of the vertical bounds of the sector anyway ), the physics code runs on it, and suddenly it shoots up to the floor's height so it's no longer under it, giving the impression that the hitscan somehow "slid" along the floor since that's the sole bit of feedback you get from the things
Wasn't Half-Life the first to use WASD and mouse look by default? A pro Quake player was the one who introduced it to many but I was convinced that I played Quake with only arrow keys or used the mouse to walk.
Fantastic!! I wholly welcome a second golden age of adventure games. I love the old point 'n click classics. Looking forward to Capybara's Below and I have my fingers crossed that we magically get the Loom sequels.
I'm really surprised that Portal wasn't mentioned. It might blur the lines, but it fits the definition he gives. If adventure games moved in that direction, I'm sure there would be a whole lot more enthusiasm about them.
David Mireles Well, Portal(atleast the first game), didn't had much story, nor (much) characters, though puzzling is still there. But, I can agree it can be called an adventure game
I thought it was adequately story driven. Chell was kidnapped and had to escape from the evil corporation. She moved along through, making her rounds as a lab rat before being given an opportunity to escape. There were clues about what was going on all over the place, and it seemed important to the gaming experience, even if it didn't move the central gameplay along. GLaDOS was quite the character, even if she was the only one (besides the companion cube, who was pretty dull). I can see your point, though.
I came here after seeing the comments on Game theory's newest video, which pretty much killed my faith in gamers as a whole. This video reaffirmed it. Thank you!
Well and thoroughly said. I personally thought that the Adventure game genre latched onto the first person RPG, and like evolution, wasn't strong enough to keep going and just gave up. I remember playing Mist as a kid and now as I play Skyrim and Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I've recently thought that the adventure game genre's next evolution would be into First Person RPG.
I would argue that as of the last few years (particularly 2016 and after, adventure games split into two separate genres. One, which showed earlier, was the HOP adventure game, where hidden-object puzzles, both in separate scenes and also as a major part of the adventure landscape, were key. This was especially true of the objects hidden throughout the scene that the player has to make interact in various ways. Later, an analog version of this type of game sprang from that (particularly the "escape-the-room" subset of these games) - the escape room. Where people are locked in a physical room with objects and puzzles hidden around said room, in much the same way as these adventure games, and the goal is to escape the room using these puzzles within a set period of time, otherwise one "dies" or otherwise "suffers according to the story's plot, but actually they are just let out of the room with a "Better luck next time" if they fail to escape. And these escape rooms, last I checked, are pretty popular.
Great video! Just found your channel by way of your equally great alt-right playbook. I just got one thing I must say: I LOVE Gabriel Knight 3, it's honestly one of my favorite games of all time (and it's way past my time, I was just six when it came out), I think people harp just way too much on the cat puzzle (which is also pretty much the only goofy dated puzzle in the game) and don't even care what a great game and story it is (beating Dan Brown at his own game five years earlier). I'm just being pissy, gonna binge all your channel now, mate :D
THere's ONE thing I will defend about the cat hair moustache puzzle -- fabricating a major identifying detail like a moustache can distract from the ways two people or characters don't resemble each other. And that's it. That's literally the only part of the puzzle that makes sense.
"...they scoped up their budgets and their dev time trying to compete with the Dooms and the Half-Lifes and the Calls of Duty in the world." Interestingly, Sierra published Half-Life around the same time as the release/development of their own 3D adventure games, like KQ Mask of Eternity, Gabriel Knight III, and Quest for Glory V. It's a shame that Sierra had no creative involvement with Half-Life, because Half-Life feels very much like an FPS successor to Sierra's own adventure titles. It's ironic, because no one expected Half-Life to be as successful as it was, and its success probably made things much harder for Sierra. I'm surprised that Sierra didn't try to develop adventure games with Half-Life's engine: it would've interesting to see a spin-off of King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry, or Police Quest in Half-Life's vein. Some Half-Life mods like Heart of Evil proved that adventure game mechanics could work in Half-Life. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for an adventure game to use an FPS's engine as a base, since Grim Fandango's own engine was based off the Sith Engine, which was used for the awesome FPS Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. In speaking of adventure games competing with Doom, it's a shame that no adventure games were made with Doom's engine. I mean, the closest to Doom adventure games were Hexen and Strife, and they were more like fusions of FPS/RPG/adventure. If a Doom adventure game had been made, it would just need to focus on art and explorable levels, no weaponry (except for rare occasions), a focus on item gathering and puzzles, and a borrowing from Strife's dialogue system. Considering what modders could do with Doom's engine nowadays, such an adventure game could be possible. Back to Half-Life, there are times when I wished that Half-Life incorporated more adventure game mechanics in its narrative. Considering what Half-Life 2 and its various Source engine successors are capable of, I'm surprised that there haven't been an Source-based adventure games made.
I think it's common to think adventure games "died," but the 2000's is the time when I fell in love with the genre. It's just that most of the games of that decade, adventure games were designed for and played by women. They didn't die. They just got dismissed as "not real games."
"for women" Wow, I take offense to that. I guess the dumb brutes should just play shooters right? (And I really doubt you can back that "mostly played by women" statement up. Very few early video games had a bigger female audince, the "Myst" games being a noted rare exception.)
@@whade62000 When males usually outnumber females by 3000 to one (made up numbers for illustrative purposes, don't bite), a very narrow majority is still a significant reversal - or even if it's just close to equal. And yes, the games /were/ dismissed as "not important/valued/worth developing" (same as "not real") specifically because of this. You might think the few that were produced were marketed directly to you (I don't know why), but they were in fact barely marketed at all - and most were not. At all. Because they weren't valued/worth developing. Because the "only" (perception, not mathematics) people playing them were "girls". This is also the era where it became possible for people to play online together and. hear. each. other's. voices. And if you don't think the resulting harassment wasn't sexist and misogynistic, you weren't there. Even as a male you should have been able to recognize the intensity of the abuse hurled at any woman gamer - especially if they were any good. It drove me off online games. Permanently. And I wasn't even a direct victim of it, because I wasn't particularly good. But ANYTHING perceived as being "too girly" (read: insufficiently toxically masculine) was derided and avoided. En masse. Because when Myst /did/ have an audience of more women than men, it "proved" that the entire genre was contaminated with untoxic unmasculinity. So instead of the whole developer world opening up to the possibilities - as any hit as massive as Myst was should have done - it shut down instead. All but a very few turned their backs on it - DELIBERATELY - because they wanted to make "real" games for "real" gamers - aka, boys - instead. And if you think that means "just play[ing] shooters" - you'd be right. That's what was developed, marketed, hyped, and consumed instead.
@@whade62000 Oh, and if it's OFFENSIVE that something you happened to like is described as "for women" then you've absorbed as much toxic masculinity as the developers who wouldn't touch it because it was "for women". I like a lot of things made specifically for men, including razors. I don't take offense that they're for men, although I'm really irritated that they both work better than and are cheaper than razors made for women. At least your games weren't priced higher because they were presumed to be for women.
Brilliant analysis. But it begs the question of how come this didn't happen with other mediums and genres? Whether you consider games to be entertainment or works of art, both remain popular without the need to evolve their technologies. We still read the stories revolving the same principles laid out by Aristotle and watch the same TV shows reproduced over and over again. We like what are familiar with. Especially AAA game titles remain stagnant for the most part, yet sell very well.
Here's my theory. It's the most complicated game genre of them all. You need a graphic designer, a storyteller and a cartographer to even have a game. The chances of one person fitting all titles, or the chances of three gifted individuals having a fruitful collaboration are very slim to begin with. So after a while the gifted few who could deliver good (and bad) adventure titles just dwindled. It took some time and the rise of game theory to lay out the game theory that allows this genre, among others, to exist. The lowered bar of entry to game development also helped a lot.
I kind of wanted to post something about Portal and how it takes advantage of the changes to 3D - First Person games and applies them to a puzzle environment by mixing both but instead I am just gonna look in astonishment at the comment section as I see some of my favorite UA-camrs just casually commenting on here. How did I only see this video now and why didn't it go viral?
Great stuff. Like REALLY GREAT STUFF! You just made me think about adventure genre...(which even platinum in Grim Fandango Remaster wasn't able to do...)
I loved Myst, Riven and Half Life. Then suddenly games seemed to stop being made for people like me. I never took to console gaming. I've skipped that whole market and now I'm back gaming again on my tablet. I sometimes think I should get a console game but then I see an array of unpleasant looking games surrounding the (two) games machines and I think: "nah, this isn't aimed at people like me".
I figured the reason adventure games died was that they were expensive to make, a shooter, once you have the engine, you can pump out content pretty easy, you could probably have a computer generate maps that are at least decent, and we know you can have almost infine content by just changing the behaviors of your enemies, and allies on the same maps, but you can't do any of that with adventure games
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that he is saying "WASD and Mouse-Look", NOT "Woznian Mouse-Look". I've spent years trying to figure out what Steve Wozniak had to do with keyboard and mouse controls. Am I the only person who has always spelled out WASD instead of saying "WAHSDEE"?
And we love you! Though in fairness, a 3D engine CAN change how you design puzzles. It wouldn't for something like Grim Fandango, but The Talos Principle is one of the best puzzle games I've played and would not have been possible in a 2D engine. (If you haven't played the Talos Principle, you should: the puzzles are brilliant and the graphics are beautiful, but the best things about it are the narrative, worldbuilding, and philosophy.)
I feel that Heavy Rain could actually be seen as this sort of proto-revival of adventure games to some extent. It tried to mix "cinematic" stuff with branching choices and storylines before TellTales' Walking Dead. It was fairly successful for what it was and I think it proved that there was still a market for more mainstream experimental stuff like it. I honestly think TT's Walking Dead probably wouldn't have been as successful if we hadn't seen a game like Heavy Rain succeed earlier.
I see people giving telltale's walking dead franchise the most points for the current revival of the point and click adventure game, and much with response that they made so many more seasons before that, which is true. However, I believe that it wasn't the walking dead that spurred the revival as much as two other franchises did, especially on the Playstation 3 system. I give you: Tales of Monkey Island and Sam and Max the Devil's Playhouse. Now since you're here on this video, i'm sure you know these, but more of a truth is that these two series became so successful in the mainstream media, that it gave the licensing for a walking dead game a greater chance than anything before, and after that, thanks to the walking dead game franchise- the point and click game has seen a major rise in popularity.
I think people might be aware of this, but just in case: The change to 3d for Quake was very deliberate. The game concept for Quake was originally an RPG with interdimensional travel and a living weapon that could eat souls. This will sound familiar to anyone who's played Daikanata because it was John Romero's idea, and he was very frustrated with the direction Quake ended up taking. After development started, John Carmack took a lead role and it was his decision to prioritize technology over mechanics and this definitely ended up being the right decision given that even til quite recently many modern games still contained bits of Quake's code. It was such a leap forward for technology in general not just because it looked good for the time, but because it was fast. It could render 3d objects efficiently enough that it could easily be scaled up with better hardware and improved upon iteratively. Quake also started speedrunning as a real sport, the competitive online shooter shooter scene, the trend of brown environments and space marines, it may not seem that original looking back given that it took elements from its predecessor Doom and the story was rushed and the gameplay was simple. But that game, Quake, is easily the most formative videogame yet made for what the industry looks like now. For better and for worse, Quake made videogames what they are.
I think its also important to remember is that the Golden age of adventure games happened when computers just couldnt handle much. You sorta hit on it with 3d spaces, but that ability to create smooth 3d spaces was due to the technology that became available to the consumer. With 3d graphics cards on the market computers had far more graphical power than they ever did and people want to use that. Adventure games were made for a market where you didnt need fancy hardware. I think you are completely right that adventure games tried to go 3d, but it felt more like a hindrance more often than not.
I feel like adventure games kind of did evolve. They evolved into puzzle-based platformers. Think the original Tomb Raider. 1996. It was basically a hybrid of fps/platformer and 1st/3rd person adventure games like Myst. Later games got to be more fps/platformer and less adventure. But the story + puzzle concept continued on for some time, just in new forms.
Oh hey, recognition for parser IF! (I assume parser IF, specifically the more text-adventure side of things, since the "choice-based" side of things tends pretty strongly toward puzzlelessness, especially in the recent upsurge, which would DQ them from your definition of "adventure game".) We're still here and we're still innovating -- and Hadean Lands got greenlit on Steam! Okay, I doubt that one game by one of the most famous people in the IF scene is really a sign that text games are commercially viable again, but TBH I am enjoying IF creation/play as a noncommercial, passion-driven space. Would we have small, lovely experimental pieces like Galatea, Shade, etc. shining through if text games were an industry, with all the pressures that entails? I don't know. But I'm glad we have them regardless :)
Coming late to the party, but I also think that the inclusion of "adventure" elements in first-person shooters sidelined the traditional adventure games. Think Halo - FPS at heart, but a complicated story, however not many puzzles. Tomb Raider - shooting and puzzles, a bit of story but not that much I feel. Maybe LA Noire as an example of both? Then of course came Portal as a true adventure game, as some mentioned, featuring no shooting per se, but a complex story; that was an evolution. But I feel that FPS and Adventure always had to merge sooner or later. Then the amount of shooting could be balanced either by design or by player choice. Think GTA V and all you can do without shooting? And now I'm playing Phasmophobia with the voice recognition mechanic as the biggest surprise for me - it's so good, and hope to see more games rely on such new technology.
So I know this statement makes it appear like I've missed the point of the video, but I think I want to see a 2d rendition of Grim Fandango. Just to see if it could be done without the use of 3d (which I found a pain to navigate with when I first played it). You mention in the video that there is a puzzle that requires the use of 3d, could you go into detail why that puzzle needs 3d?
You just have to aim the fire extinguisher in 3D space to make sure the flaming beaver jumps through the spray. It's not terribly complicated, but it wouldn't work as well in 2D.
Going through your videos, probably after seeing you recommended in Dan Recommends, and I'm liking your stuff a lot. Only thing that bugs me on this one - did you really have to end on a jump scare? :/
7:10 Ohhh motion sickness! How did people manage to play that back in the days. (Ofcourse referring to Doom not the clips that came immediately afterwards.)
Weren't the obnoxious puzzles in those adventure games one of the things that killed them in the first place? Like, I don't know that much of Gabriel Knights 3's Cat Puzzle, but sometimes... puzzles back in the 90's were between hallucinogenic or "what the hell where they on when they thought of this"', no ?
I hate to be the nitpicker (totally lying, I fucking love to nitpick), but the 3rd dimension works both ways in fighting games. Unlike in some genres where the 3rd dimension, when executed well, is pretty much just a bonus to the game, it's a pure trade-off in fighting games. 2D fighters offer things that 3D fighters can't and vice versa. Just thought I'd put that out there.
Id say not much though, all i can think of is tekken and doa. But even then their application is just adding this 3rd dimension that is used on and off while their gameplay is still basically 2D.
That is not true at all. Side-stepping, which makes use of the third dimension, is a huge part of the meta in Tekken. For an example, a family of characters known as the Mishimas, many of which are some of the strongest characters in some of the latest installments in the franchise, have difficulty dealing with side-stepping to the(ir) left. Hwoarang and his teacher have an alternate stance from their normal stance from which more damaging combos than the ones that can be initiated from their normal stance are possible, and optimal use of this stance is generally believe to involve lots of side-stepping. To counter side-stepping, characters have moves that sweep from one side to another and thus catch opponents side-stepping, and moves that home on the opponent's left-right position somewhat. There is more meta involving the third dimension, but I'm just giving some quick examples. In addition, 3D fighting games lack a style of play known in 2D fighting games as zoning. Zoning involves the use of projectile attacks, attacks with good range, and attacks with delayed releases in order to control large portions of the screen. This style of play wouldn't work in a 3D fighting game because many of the moves of the types used in zoning could be easily side-stepped. 3D fighting games most certainly play differently from 2D ones.
Grant Larson Ah I see, I knew about side stepping in tekken but I didn't quite know how practical it was in a competitive play. Anyways, I acknowledge the things that a 3rd dimension brings to the fighting game genre, but it to me just slightly adds to the mechanics already inherent in the game, and not really adding to the whole experience like an FPS would. Basically to me it just adds mechanics and not dynamics.
That's the point I'm making in my original post. In other genres, the 3rd dimensions is just a straight-up improvement to the game. In fighting games, there are trade-offs.
Grant Larson this discussion reminds me of how we need more 2/3d merged fightings games that use both advantages without requiring trade-offs - a fighting game that is only 3d when it has to be. Should be possible if not already made at least once.
I personally think a lot of the Adventure Game juice and effort cross pollinated into the Hidden Object games, and that note that we have Touch Screens that we can physically point out objects with, that could mean a return to form for a lot of point and click types. What's the difference between Myst and The Room, and why are they considered different experiences?
One word for you consider in the context of adventure games: Minecraft. A lot of the love and energy players had for adventure games is being channeled into Minecraft. Just ordinary Minecrafters make their own puzzle or shooting based game levels. Even the survival mode of Minecraft forces you to figure out the puzzle of crafting natural resources. Granted it's rather difficult to tell a story in Minecraft. Little Big Planet has the same diy culture.
In my opinion, the best adventure game is Outer Wilds and it completely breaks the mold. It starts you off as the next astronaut of some alien species and the only objective given to you directly in the game is to get the launch codes for your spaceship. When doing that the game asks you what planet you want to visit first instead of telling you what to do. You are then able to explore every part of the game from the start so in theory if you know what to do you can finish the game immediately in Breath of the Wild only in this game do you need knowledge not skill so in a sense you can only experience the game once. All the achievements are fun challenges that you can try to do and are not connected to the main story of the game. Also, the solar system isn't on rails but physically simulated so your ship reacts accurately to the gravity of every planet as well as the sun. If you haven't played it please do. Its a once in a lifetime event that can change your view on certain things.
Same reason why RTS, immersive Sim and real tactical shooters (think Arma) died. Not enough cheap Dopamin and Power Fantasy for teenage boys. I miss games for adults. (Oh, and survival horror too.)
I'm really surprised you didn't mention Portal or the Talos Principle in this. Anyway, one of the big reasons that adventure games died out for awhile like they did was that as you said, they failed to innovate. But I think you missed why. In fps games there was always someone who had an idea then that idea was copied but the copiers never were able to top that idea. The genre made enough money for people to want the next big thing and eventually someone would come up with an idea, they would try it, it would be a huge hit and that idea would be copied.
little late to the party but there's some crossover with other genres in gaming hybrid games seem to be big like is zelda an adventure game or rpg or both
adventure games: what do they know? do they know things? let's find out!
Created by JD Salinger
Does anyone else think the VA for Mr Peanutbutter sounds like the VA for Guybrush?
I legit was convinced they were voiced by the same person for a couple hours lol
Contemporarily relevant and respectful correction: Grim Fandango has actually 2 puzzles that rely on a 3D space. The second one is the elevator-forklift puzzle in Rubacava's High Roller's Lounge basement.
And it was also... clunky and not very good at all. Underlines your point very well..
Ennnnnhhhh.
HI hi
This was great. Your definition of adventure game as "puzzles + story", and that you pointed out that they did not evolve, made me realize that they did actually evolve - I would consider first person puzzlers like Portal, Portal 2 and Quantum Conundrum to actually be a the modernization of the adventure game.
+Craparella Smørrebrød Portal was the last real evolution of the genre, and the problem with portal is that it's a one time thing. You can't make a new game like portal because everything that makes it a puzzle game also makes it unique.
+LolsTheGreatAndPowerful I think you're wrong on several levels. Portal had a defining new mechanic. And then Portal 2 added new stuff to it. And Quantum Conundrum had yet another defining new mechanic. In other words, each of these game actually did evolve. And since we now had 3 examples of evolution, there is no reason why it couldn't be done again, couldn't it?
+Craparella Smørrebrød Games about story, with puzzles stopping you from progressing through the story too quickly ( whatever that means ) versus games about puzzles, with a little bit of story, mostly either serving as tutorial or told through the mechanics. I don't like to argue about meaningless concepts such as "genres", but those two concepts are not only different, they opposite each other. Certainly one of them does not give legitimacy to the other.
+Winchestro So you don't want to split videogames into artificial groups/genres, and then you proceed and do exactly that very thing by claiming that only games where a story is told through the mechanics are good/legitimate?
+Craparella Smørrebrød I'm sorry for my poor choice of words. I didn't try to say only one of them is good or legitimate, just that they don't give legitimacy to each other, because they are doing the exact opposite.
it's very weird listening to this discussion from germany, where point&click adventure games are still pretty strong with daedelic as the spearhead
Yeah!
I freaking love Daedalic. I didn't get a chance to play any of their games until last year, as I play games solely on the ps4 and didn't know what Deponia was. Since then I've played every Daedalic title available on ps4. Actually just downloaded State of Mind yesterday and plan on starting it very soon.
RIP Daedalic
RIP Daedalic they should have never tried making Gollum as it was bound to fail from the start as they never had enough budget for that game. Instead of making an action-adventure that was a licensed IP, they should have just made a 3D adventure that makes great use of features like Tiny & Big or Outer Wilds. Sure it wasn't their first 3D game, but action-adventure means Tomb Raider and Uncharted or Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor/War. Good luck competing with that.
@Ninjaeule97 they did make 3d based point and click before too! But they had already shut down p&c production since a few years before gollum. It was simply the end of a tailspin
GODDAMNIT WITH THE JUMPSCARE, MAN!
I think the real rebirth of adventure games occurred when the first Telltale games where released. The narrative-driven Walking Dead series made a lot of people more interested in the genre. That, in my opinion, really benefits from 3-D space. The puzzles, i.e. killing Zombies, doing QTEs, or shooting others, are really intriguing and really benefit from having another dimension to work with
The Walking Dead is nowhere near the first Telltale game.They have had at least 10 "seasons" of games that predate TWD.
McShizzify Yeah I know, I am just using it as one example. It was a weird transition on my part. So sorry for that
Haedox I liked Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
They only thing, literally the only thing, I don't like about the walking dead games is that there are no graphics settings whatsoever. No matter how powerful your PC is, you are pigeonholed into a world of few polygons, no shadows, and low-res textures. The original Wind Waker, a game that released thirteen years ago, pulled off the cartoon effect much better than the walking dead did.
Andrew Burnham I also didn't like how your decisions didn't make that much of a difference. They try to avoid the characters that you save in the story and it doesn't matter what you do, you will get the same ending as everyone else.
The best evolution of point and click adventure games I can think of was in Edna: The Breakout. The main gimmick was that you can use all of the inventory items with EVERYTHING and you ACTUALLY get unique and funny reactions. And there are alot of interactables, even useless ones. Also you can use the four verbs (look at, take, talk to/eat, use) with everything. The main character has her talking rabbit plushie 'ventrilocate' for the objects and this gets you the wackiest reactions!
One of the things that make Monkey Island and King's Quest so great, which I barely ever hear people talk about, is that there were so many items to collect. At any given time, you probably had a couple dozen items in your inventory. At face value, that doesn't sound all that impressive, but it had unseen repercussions on how you thought about solving puzzles. You had all this stuff that you weren't sure when you'd find useful, so it led to experimentation and paying closer attention to dialogue hints. It let you use one item on another, to alter it into a new form. Or you could combine multiple items together, to build a new thing or a crude tool of some sort.
I love how classic, inventory-puzzle adventure games are making a comeback -- but so many of the new games seem to keep the inventory very small and streamlined. You seldom have more than 3-5 items at any one time, and most things only have one use that is rather obvious when the opportunity arises. There are fewer points where you can interact with objects, fewer locations, and pretty much only one solution to any puzzle. Granted, a lot of these new games are indie titles with a limited budget, so I can't really blame them too much. But it does sting a bit, when I feel like "This is a well-made thing with a ton of potential, but as far as adventure games go, it isn't AMONG them -- it just REMINDS me of them."
The best adventure game I've ever played (but is insanely underrated) is Ghost Trick. On DS and iOS. Just commenting in hopes of making more people play that masterpiece.
+Klemen Kekec I think you meant "underrated"?
Moony Lunatic Haha, oops, you're right. Corrected.
I love Ghost Trick (well... From the 5 minutes I had to play it) I have nothing that will play it though :(
Ren You can still use an emulator. The story is so worth it.
I was thinking about that.
I think I will. I would love to actually support them somehow though :/
Man Broken Sword is like the litmus paper for Adventure Games. First 2 games are great, then the next couple are these weird, broken, adventure games that try to co-opt mechanics from other genres like action adventure games and platformers when it transitions into full 3D, oh and I shouldn't forget the awful 3D control schemes, then suddenly, the new Broken Sword Game from last year is fantastic and a return to form and really the "true sequel" that people have been waiting for since 1997.
Yes, this video is almost 2 years old. Yes, I am watching this for serious gaming discussion. But also yes, I smiled at the part where you go "I love everyone, most of all you!"
I'm so glad you brought up the IF community, because that's been seeing some awesome iteration lately too. I'm a total sucker for the classics in Inform, but seeing what people are doing with newer stuff like Twine is super interesting.
Was about to ask for a game title but then I read the description. Kudos to you man for naming the games you find worth showing.
You need to talk about why adventure games remained (and still remain) popular in Japan over the years.
David Umstattd Are you talking about visual novels?
Because as far as I know they don't really use puzzles to tell stories. (I could be wrong though).
Bedinsis
Well you're only half wrong. In Japan there are actually a good number of "visual novels" that use puzzles to tell stories. Though in Japan they still distinguish between "adventures games" (like Pheonix Wright) and Visual Novels (Like Higurashi) in America that distinction isn't made and they're all called 'Visual Novels'
Hi
The endings to your videos are always amazing... But this one was beyond perfect... Keep up the good work
I think the resurgence of traditional nostalgia adventure games started before Double Fine adventure. The examples i'd point to are Telltale's Sam and Max, and Tales of Monkey Island. Maybe I'm just pedantic about this, because the early Telltale Games (pre- walking dead) got me into the genre in the first place lol.. maybe theyre really not as significant as i think Good video m8! Good stuff!
Funny how when I see this series title, "Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood" that my mind thinks of the song "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". Which IMO, would make a good theme for these vids. Particularly an instrumental - natch, a MIDI - version, I believe. Maybe someone could get on that?
"Malignant growths of code were added haphazardly whenever a new feature was required"
... Yeah, that still happens. A lot. Also, sample code used in production? Still doing that.
I know this is an old video and no one will probably ever read this, but I think adventure games have morphed into the Alternate Reality Game (ARG). These are insanely popular, and essentially follow the same format as adventure games, but with more collaboration and in many cases the doubt as to whether the game is real.
full throttle was absolutely underrated. i still occasionally listen to the music from it, and fondly remember waves of energizer bunnies...
Hello! This was very enjoyable. An additional factor, surely, is that other game genres started being able to amalgamate elements of adventure games into themselves. So in the 90s, adventure games were pretty much the only place you could go for complex stories, dialogue, humour etc. As technology and manpower on other game genres rapidly accelerated, you could package up all these elements as cut scenes or voice-overs in 3D shooters and other genres. At the same time, games like Tomb Raider were combining action with puzzle-solving. Suddenly you find yourself wondering why you're having to click to move a character around and or use a rubber chicken on a zipwire when you could be leaping about around a fully realised 3D world while watching an epic tale unfold.
Wow. This channel is both alive AND actually insightful and interesting.
Color me surprised. And thank you.
just throwing it out there: quake didn't use wasd as standard, or even mouse look (you had to turn mouse look on in the console). Half-life was the first game to use wasd and mouselook as standard. (although magic carpet used arrows and mouselook)
I kinda think you should have mentioned the gam developing studio "Daedalic", since they have been making high quality adventure games since a few years, and i think they are kinda popular.
Well, he asked a lot of questions at the beginning and this video only answered one of them. So I feel like this will be a series, and in subsequent videos, he'll be discussing the modern adventure games like Daedalic and Telltale are producing.
That Full Throttle / Grim Fandango comparison is very much applicable to FFVI and FFVII.
you know, I've watched this video.. probably seven times. you should make more like these, ten years later.
You should do a video called ''Who shot Minsc & Boo? The death of isometric rpgs.''
Excellent work. Much evolution within the text-only format, too, as you hinted. But that won't ever hit the mass market again.
I'd argue that the adventure game was a product of technical limitations, it was the best way to tell an interactive story focused game back then. When it did evolve, it evolved into other genres. You can have all that narration + puzzles with any set of mechanics nowadays, so there's less reason to limit yourself enough that it's still considered a classical adventure game. Zelda, Shenmue, LA Noire, Metroid, all take adventure elements and build an action based system around it.
I'm just here to tell you that i enjoy your videos.
Your thoughts on games are refreshing and i hope you continue to contribute to youtube :)
This was the most detailed and thoughtful discussion on this topic I've seen, thank you :)
What I'd like to see more of is for other genres to consider borrowing more from adventure games, rather than vice versa. We already know puzzles are compatible with platformers, RPGs, and shooters, we see these things blended all the time; it's just that we rarely see the level of creativity in puzzle design that adventure games brought to the table.
something i feel like tossing out: while wolfenstein 3d _was_ just a 2d game with a first person perspective rendered in very, _very_ basic 3d, doom and its fellow idtech 1 games _were_ actually 3d
see, the thing about doom's rudimentary implementation of 3d physics and rendering is that a lot of the shortcuts ( from the technical limitation stuff of not being able to overlap floors and the very limited perspective that couldn't be angled vertically, to the oversights like being able to press switches that are in the floor, to the ... stuff that was really just laziness, really, that they could justify due to not being relevant for doom 1's level design, like not checking z-collisions when doing collision detection between two solid actors ) are a lot more in-your-face than the stuff that clearly showcases the true 3d nature of doom. like, it's often said that actors are infinitely tall in it, but one of the first things you'll notice when working with the engine is that each actor actually has a defined height which is fully used for collision with the map geometry and stuff like hitscans and projectiles ( the latter of which are full actors, just not solid - in idtech 1, you can't collide with projectiles, but projectiles can collide with _you_ ) that is pretty well illustrated when you try to put a cyberdemon in a space the player can barely fit in and it gets stuck because its head is firmly in the ceiling
and let me reiterate: infinite height actors, one of _the_ big proofs that doom isn't 3d? pretty much just there so they didn't have to model what would happen when a solid actor is on top of another solid actor, because doom 1 really didn't have levels where that really mattered anyway. both raven games on the same engine ( heretic and hexen ) include more vertical levels and more dynamic tools for vertical movement, however, and thus they went and added that z-collision check into the function that checks for collisions between actors aaaaand ... it barely changed, it just has an added section for that purpose
like, it's not even cleanly implemented. the code that lets projectiles respect z-collisions is _still there,_ there's just a separate check for solid actors to do the same thing
doom's implementation of the third dimension is definitely rudimentary, but it definitely has a third dimension. when you walk off a ledge or try to step up to a higher floor, the game _does_ do full-on 3d collision checks to handle that movement and make sure it's actually possible to do so. it does so for the enemies, too, and the projectiles. really, the biggest reason the game isn't seen as 3d is because the player has to rely entirely on the level to move through the third dimension. but for as much as you can peel back the game's skin and see tons of flaws with the implementation*, it's ... well, it's a 90s computer game that brought revolutionary tech. it's gonna be flawed to hell and back
* one of my favorites is that vertically angled hitscans seem to "slide" along the ground if they manage to hit it, but that's actually two completely different things mixing together: the fact that hitscans _don't check for collision with planes at all,_ and the fact that the little visual effect that shows up when you hit a wall with a hitscan is an actor, and actors can't be below a sector's floor or above its ceiling. so the bullet puff spawns however deep into the ground the hitscan got before hitting a one-sided wall ( which actually _are_ infinite height, or rather don't have height at all, since ... actors can't go out of the vertical bounds of the sector anyway ), the physics code runs on it, and suddenly it shoots up to the floor's height so it's no longer under it, giving the impression that the hitscan somehow "slid" along the floor since that's the sole bit of feedback you get from the things
Goddamn that scare jump at the end!!!
Jumpscare Zombie to explain Adventure Game's Bottleneck Effect is pretty much the content I need right now.
Wasn't Half-Life the first to use WASD and mouse look by default? A pro Quake player was the one who introduced it to many but I was convinced that I played Quake with only arrow keys or used the mouse to walk.
Fantastic!! I wholly welcome a second golden age of adventure games. I love the old point 'n click classics. Looking forward to Capybara's Below and I have my fingers crossed that we magically get the Loom sequels.
I'm really surprised that Portal wasn't mentioned. It might blur the lines, but it fits the definition he gives. If adventure games moved in that direction, I'm sure there would be a whole lot more enthusiasm about them.
David Mireles Well, Portal(atleast the first game), didn't had much story, nor (much) characters, though puzzling is still there. But, I can agree it can be called an adventure game
I thought it was adequately story driven. Chell was kidnapped and had to escape from the evil corporation. She moved along through, making her rounds as a lab rat before being given an opportunity to escape. There were clues about what was going on all over the place, and it seemed important to the gaming experience, even if it didn't move the central gameplay along. GLaDOS was quite the character, even if she was the only one (besides the companion cube, who was pretty dull). I can see your point, though.
AAAWWW, I LOVE YOU TOO!
I came here after seeing the comments on Game theory's newest video, which pretty much killed my faith in gamers as a whole. This video reaffirmed it. Thank you!
Well and thoroughly said.
I personally thought that the Adventure game genre latched onto the first person RPG, and like evolution, wasn't strong enough to keep going and just gave up. I remember playing Mist as a kid and now as I play Skyrim and Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I've recently thought that the adventure game genre's next evolution would be into First Person RPG.
I would argue that as of the last few years (particularly 2016 and after, adventure games split into two separate genres. One, which showed earlier, was the HOP adventure game, where hidden-object puzzles, both in separate scenes and also as a major part of the adventure landscape, were key. This was especially true of the objects hidden throughout the scene that the player has to make interact in various ways.
Later, an analog version of this type of game sprang from that (particularly the "escape-the-room" subset of these games) - the escape room. Where people are locked in a physical room with objects and puzzles hidden around said room, in much the same way as these adventure games, and the goal is to escape the room using these puzzles within a set period of time, otherwise one "dies" or otherwise "suffers according to the story's plot, but actually they are just let out of the room with a "Better luck next time" if they fail to escape. And these escape rooms, last I checked, are pretty popular.
You jerk, I remembered that Walking Dead scene and I still jumped! XD
Great video! Just found your channel by way of your equally great alt-right playbook. I just got one thing I must say: I LOVE Gabriel Knight 3, it's honestly one of my favorite games of all time (and it's way past my time, I was just six when it came out), I think people harp just way too much on the cat puzzle (which is also pretty much the only goofy dated puzzle in the game) and don't even care what a great game and story it is (beating Dan Brown at his own game five years earlier).
I'm just being pissy, gonna binge all your channel now, mate :D
Wanna give a brief kudos for thinking of a really cool name for a series.
THere's ONE thing I will defend about the cat hair moustache puzzle -- fabricating a major identifying detail like a moustache can distract from the ways two people or characters don't resemble each other. And that's it. That's literally the only part of the puzzle that makes sense.
Listen here. Adventure games may have died, but you don't need to kill me off as well, with that jumpscare at the end of the video. Good heavens.
I love you too innuendo studios
Petition to call the section beginning at 1:35 "Ask Me About Doom"
"...they scoped up their budgets and their dev time trying to compete with the Dooms and the Half-Lifes and the Calls of Duty in the world." Interestingly, Sierra published Half-Life around the same time as the release/development of their own 3D adventure games, like KQ Mask of Eternity, Gabriel Knight III, and Quest for Glory V. It's a shame that Sierra had no creative involvement with Half-Life, because Half-Life feels very much like an FPS successor to Sierra's own adventure titles. It's ironic, because no one expected Half-Life to be as successful as it was, and its success probably made things much harder for Sierra. I'm surprised that Sierra didn't try to develop adventure games with Half-Life's engine: it would've interesting to see a spin-off of King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry, or Police Quest in Half-Life's vein. Some Half-Life mods like Heart of Evil proved that adventure game mechanics could work in Half-Life. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for an adventure game to use an FPS's engine as a base, since Grim Fandango's own engine was based off the Sith Engine, which was used for the awesome FPS Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight.
In speaking of adventure games competing with Doom, it's a shame that no adventure games were made with Doom's engine. I mean, the closest to Doom adventure games were Hexen and Strife, and they were more like fusions of FPS/RPG/adventure. If a Doom adventure game had been made, it would just need to focus on art and explorable levels, no weaponry (except for rare occasions), a focus on item gathering and puzzles, and a borrowing from Strife's dialogue system. Considering what modders could do with Doom's engine nowadays, such an adventure game could be possible.
Back to Half-Life, there are times when I wished that Half-Life incorporated more adventure game mechanics in its narrative. Considering what Half-Life 2 and its various Source engine successors are capable of, I'm surprised that there haven't been an Source-based adventure games made.
Would be neat to see a revival of this series once the new Monkey Island is released.
I think it's common to think adventure games "died," but the 2000's is the time when I fell in love with the genre. It's just that most of the games of that decade, adventure games were designed for and played by women. They didn't die. They just got dismissed as "not real games."
Interesting. What games for example ?
"for women" Wow, I take offense to that. I guess the dumb brutes should just play shooters right? (And I really doubt you can back that "mostly played by women" statement up. Very few early video games had a bigger female audince, the "Myst" games being a noted rare exception.)
@@whade62000 When males usually outnumber females by 3000 to one (made up numbers for illustrative purposes, don't bite), a very narrow majority is still a significant reversal - or even if it's just close to equal. And yes, the games /were/ dismissed as "not important/valued/worth developing" (same as "not real") specifically because of this. You might think the few that were produced were marketed directly to you (I don't know why), but they were in fact barely marketed at all - and most were not. At all. Because they weren't valued/worth developing. Because the "only" (perception, not mathematics) people playing them were "girls". This is also the era where it became possible for people to play online together and. hear. each. other's. voices. And if you don't think the resulting harassment wasn't sexist and misogynistic, you weren't there. Even as a male you should have been able to recognize the intensity of the abuse hurled at any woman gamer - especially if they were any good. It drove me off online games. Permanently. And I wasn't even a direct victim of it, because I wasn't particularly good. But ANYTHING perceived as being "too girly" (read: insufficiently toxically masculine) was derided and avoided. En masse. Because when Myst /did/ have an audience of more women than men, it "proved" that the entire genre was contaminated with untoxic unmasculinity. So instead of the whole developer world opening up to the possibilities - as any hit as massive as Myst was should have done - it shut down instead. All but a very few turned their backs on it - DELIBERATELY - because they wanted to make "real" games for "real" gamers - aka, boys - instead. And if you think that means "just play[ing] shooters" - you'd be right. That's what was developed, marketed, hyped, and consumed instead.
@@whade62000 Oh, and if it's OFFENSIVE that something you happened to like is described as "for women" then you've absorbed as much toxic masculinity as the developers who wouldn't touch it because it was "for women". I like a lot of things made specifically for men, including razors. I don't take offense that they're for men, although I'm really irritated that they both work better than and are cheaper than razors made for women. At least your games weren't priced higher because they were presumed to be for women.
I think I'm in love with your channel.
Brilliant analysis. But it begs the question of how come this didn't happen with other mediums and genres? Whether you consider games to be entertainment or works of art, both remain popular without the need to evolve their technologies. We still read the stories revolving the same principles laid out by Aristotle and watch the same TV shows reproduced over and over again. We like what are familiar with. Especially AAA game titles remain stagnant for the most part, yet sell very well.
Here's my theory. It's the most complicated game genre of them all. You need a graphic designer, a storyteller and a cartographer to even have a game. The chances of one person fitting all titles, or the chances of three gifted individuals having a fruitful collaboration are very slim to begin with. So after a while the gifted few who could deliver good (and bad) adventure titles just dwindled. It took some time and the rise of game theory to lay out the game theory that allows this genre, among others, to exist. The lowered bar of entry to game development also helped a lot.
I kind of wanted to post something about Portal and how it takes advantage of the changes to 3D - First Person games and applies them to a puzzle environment by mixing both but instead I am just gonna look in astonishment at the comment section as I see some of my favorite UA-camrs just casually commenting on here. How did I only see this video now and why didn't it go viral?
Great stuff. Like REALLY GREAT STUFF! You just made me think about adventure genre...(which even platinum in Grim Fandango Remaster wasn't able to do...)
I loved Myst, Riven and Half Life. Then suddenly games seemed to stop being made for people like me. I never took to console gaming. I've skipped that whole market and now I'm back gaming again on my tablet. I sometimes think I should get a console game but then I see an array of unpleasant looking games surrounding the (two) games machines and I think: "nah, this isn't aimed at people like me".
If you performed a detailed analysis of your toenail clippings, I would still listen and marvel at your intelligence.
:( guybrush was a huge part of my childhood I miss those days
After this video I will re-re-replay Day of the Tentacle
love your vids man just wish you'd upload more you have very interesting opinions.
Love your videos man! Great insight as always.
SBHop sent me. I like this. I look forward to seeing where you take it. :-)
I figured the reason adventure games died was that they were expensive to make, a shooter, once you have the engine, you can pump out content pretty easy, you could probably have a computer generate maps that are at least decent, and we know you can have almost infine content by just changing the behaviors of your enemies, and allies on the same maps, but you can't do any of that with adventure games
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that he is saying "WASD and Mouse-Look", NOT "Woznian Mouse-Look". I've spent years trying to figure out what Steve Wozniak had to do with keyboard and mouse controls.
Am I the only person who has always spelled out WASD instead of saying "WAHSDEE"?
I heard "Woznian" too lol but I'm not a big PC gamer
And we love you!
Though in fairness, a 3D engine CAN change how you design puzzles. It wouldn't for something like Grim Fandango, but The Talos Principle is one of the best puzzle games I've played and would not have been possible in a 2D engine. (If you haven't played the Talos Principle, you should: the puzzles are brilliant and the graphics are beautiful, but the best things about it are the narrative, worldbuilding, and philosophy.)
I feel that Heavy Rain could actually be seen as this sort of proto-revival of adventure games to some extent. It tried to mix "cinematic" stuff with branching choices and storylines before TellTales' Walking Dead. It was fairly successful for what it was and I think it proved that there was still a market for more mainstream experimental stuff like it. I honestly think TT's Walking Dead probably wouldn't have been as successful if we hadn't seen a game like Heavy Rain succeed earlier.
I feel like JRPGs are going through this too, only our best response is... Octopath Traveler :\ Ain't lookin' too good
I see people giving telltale's walking dead franchise the most points for the current revival of the point and click adventure game, and much with response that they made so many more seasons before that, which is true. However, I believe that it wasn't the walking dead that spurred the revival as much as two other franchises did, especially on the Playstation 3 system. I give you: Tales of Monkey Island and Sam and Max the Devil's Playhouse. Now since you're here on this video, i'm sure you know these, but more of a truth is that these two series became so successful in the mainstream media, that it gave the licensing for a walking dead game a greater chance than anything before, and after that, thanks to the walking dead game franchise- the point and click game has seen a major rise in popularity.
VR is going to change adventure games like nothing has before.
i know i'm super late to the party, but i wanted to share a thought; adventure games evolved into escape rooms
this was before undertale, gotta say, that really put adventure games back on the map
I think people might be aware of this, but just in case:
The change to 3d for Quake was very deliberate. The game concept for Quake was originally an RPG with interdimensional travel and a living weapon that could eat souls. This will sound familiar to anyone who's played Daikanata because it was John Romero's idea, and he was very frustrated with the direction Quake ended up taking. After development started, John Carmack took a lead role and it was his decision to prioritize technology over mechanics and this definitely ended up being the right decision given that even til quite recently many modern games still contained bits of Quake's code. It was such a leap forward for technology in general not just because it looked good for the time, but because it was fast. It could render 3d objects efficiently enough that it could easily be scaled up with better hardware and improved upon iteratively. Quake also started speedrunning as a real sport, the competitive online shooter shooter scene, the trend of brown environments and space marines, it may not seem that original looking back given that it took elements from its predecessor Doom and the story was rushed and the gameplay was simple.
But that game, Quake, is easily the most formative videogame yet made for what the industry looks like now. For better and for worse, Quake made videogames what they are.
great stuff as always
I JUST REALIZED THAT THE TALOS PRINCIPLE IS AN ADVENTURE GAME TOO!!
I think its also important to remember is that the Golden age of adventure games happened when computers just couldnt handle much. You sorta hit on it with 3d spaces, but that ability to create smooth 3d spaces was due to the technology that became available to the consumer. With 3d graphics cards on the market computers had far more graphical power than they ever did and people want to use that. Adventure games were made for a market where you didnt need fancy hardware. I think you are completely right that adventure games tried to go 3d, but it felt more like a hindrance more often than not.
I feel like adventure games kind of did evolve. They evolved into puzzle-based platformers. Think the original Tomb Raider. 1996. It was basically a hybrid of fps/platformer and 1st/3rd person adventure games like Myst. Later games got to be more fps/platformer and less adventure. But the story + puzzle concept continued on for some time, just in new forms.
Oh hey, recognition for parser IF! (I assume parser IF, specifically the more text-adventure side of things, since the "choice-based" side of things tends pretty strongly toward puzzlelessness, especially in the recent upsurge, which would DQ them from your definition of "adventure game".)
We're still here and we're still innovating -- and Hadean Lands got greenlit on Steam! Okay, I doubt that one game by one of the most famous people in the IF scene is really a sign that text games are commercially viable again, but TBH I am enjoying IF creation/play as a noncommercial, passion-driven space. Would we have small, lovely experimental pieces like Galatea, Shade, etc. shining through if text games were an industry, with all the pressures that entails? I don't know. But I'm glad we have them regardless :)
Please make more content, I'm suffocating here.
Coming late to the party, but I also think that the inclusion of "adventure" elements in first-person shooters sidelined the traditional adventure games. Think Halo - FPS at heart, but a complicated story, however not many puzzles. Tomb Raider - shooting and puzzles, a bit of story but not that much I feel. Maybe LA Noire as an example of both? Then of course came Portal as a true adventure game, as some mentioned, featuring no shooting per se, but a complex story; that was an evolution. But I feel that FPS and Adventure always had to merge sooner or later. Then the amount of shooting could be balanced either by design or by player choice. Think GTA V and all you can do without shooting? And now I'm playing Phasmophobia with the voice recognition mechanic as the biggest surprise for me - it's so good, and hope to see more games rely on such new technology.
this comment section feels like such a community of people who want to talk about adventure games so much but never get to
So I know this statement makes it appear like I've missed the point of the video, but I think I want to see a 2d rendition of Grim Fandango. Just to see if it could be done without the use of 3d (which I found a pain to navigate with when I first played it).
You mention in the video that there is a puzzle that requires the use of 3d, could you go into detail why that puzzle needs 3d?
You just have to aim the fire extinguisher in 3D space to make sure the flaming beaver jumps through the spray. It's not terribly complicated, but it wouldn't work as well in 2D.
Going through your videos, probably after seeing you recommended in Dan Recommends, and I'm liking your stuff a lot. Only thing that bugs me on this one - did you really have to end on a jump scare? :/
wait your definition of adventure game matches my definition of star control 2 the urquan masters and i consider that an open world RPG.
7:10 Ohhh motion sickness! How did people manage to play that back in the days. (Ofcourse referring to Doom not the clips that came immediately afterwards.)
Game Theory sent me here :)
How? When? What?
Weren't the obnoxious puzzles in those adventure games one of the things that killed them in the first place? Like, I don't know that much of Gabriel Knights 3's Cat Puzzle, but sometimes... puzzles back in the 90's were between hallucinogenic or "what the hell where they on when they thought of this"', no ?
I do agree, but the Zelda franchise has maintained both story and puzzle between your timescale goalposts, and within this video's parameters...
awesome, thanks mate!
This is like AltShiftX but with games. Awesome!
I hate to be the nitpicker (totally lying, I fucking love to nitpick), but the 3rd dimension works both ways in fighting games. Unlike in some genres where the 3rd dimension, when executed well, is pretty much just a bonus to the game, it's a pure trade-off in fighting games. 2D fighters offer things that 3D fighters can't and vice versa. Just thought I'd put that out there.
Id say not much though, all i can think of is tekken and doa. But even then their application is just adding this 3rd dimension that is used on and off while their gameplay is still basically 2D.
That is not true at all.
Side-stepping, which makes use of the third dimension, is a huge part of the meta in Tekken. For an example, a family of characters known as the Mishimas, many of which are some of the strongest characters in some of the latest installments in the franchise, have difficulty dealing with side-stepping to the(ir) left. Hwoarang and his teacher have an alternate stance from their normal stance from which more damaging combos than the ones that can be initiated from their normal stance are possible, and optimal use of this stance is generally believe to involve lots of side-stepping. To counter side-stepping, characters have moves that sweep from one side to another and thus catch opponents side-stepping, and moves that home on the opponent's left-right position somewhat. There is more meta involving the third dimension, but I'm just giving some quick examples.
In addition, 3D fighting games lack a style of play known in 2D fighting games as zoning. Zoning involves the use of projectile attacks, attacks with good range, and attacks with delayed releases in order to control large portions of the screen. This style of play wouldn't work in a 3D fighting game because many of the moves of the types used in zoning could be easily side-stepped.
3D fighting games most certainly play differently from 2D ones.
Grant Larson Ah I see, I knew about side stepping in tekken but I didn't quite know how practical it was in a competitive play.
Anyways, I acknowledge the things that a 3rd dimension brings to the fighting game genre, but it to me just slightly adds to the mechanics already inherent in the game, and not really adding to the whole experience like an FPS would.
Basically to me it just adds mechanics and not dynamics.
That's the point I'm making in my original post. In other genres, the 3rd dimensions is just a straight-up improvement to the game. In fighting games, there are trade-offs.
Grant Larson this discussion reminds me of how we need more 2/3d merged fightings games that use both advantages without requiring trade-offs - a fighting game that is only 3d when it has to be. Should be possible if not already made at least once.
I personally think a lot of the Adventure Game juice and effort cross pollinated into the Hidden Object games, and that note that we have Touch Screens that we can physically point out objects with, that could mean a return to form for a lot of point and click types. What's the difference between Myst and The Room, and why are they considered different experiences?
One word for you consider in the context of adventure games: Minecraft. A lot of the love and energy players had for adventure games is being channeled into Minecraft. Just ordinary Minecrafters make their own puzzle or shooting based game levels. Even the survival mode of Minecraft forces you to figure out the puzzle of crafting natural resources. Granted it's rather difficult to tell a story in Minecraft. Little Big Planet has the same diy culture.
What has Minecraft got to do with adventure games?
In my opinion, the best adventure game is Outer Wilds and it completely breaks the mold. It starts you off as the next astronaut of some alien species and the only objective given to you directly in the game is to get the launch codes for your spaceship. When doing that the game asks you what planet you want to visit first instead of telling you what to do. You are then able to explore every part of the game from the start so in theory if you know what to do you can finish the game immediately in Breath of the Wild only in this game do you need knowledge not skill so in a sense you can only experience the game once. All the achievements are fun challenges that you can try to do and are not connected to the main story of the game. Also, the solar system isn't on rails but physically simulated so your ship reacts accurately to the gravity of every planet as well as the sun. If you haven't played it please do. Its a once in a lifetime event that can change your view on certain things.
escape rooms. these are an evolution of flash adventure games which are in turn an simplification and miniaturisation adventure games.
Same reason why RTS, immersive Sim and real tactical shooters (think Arma) died.
Not enough cheap Dopamin and Power Fantasy for teenage boys.
I miss games for adults.
(Oh, and survival horror too.)
Great video!
I'm really surprised you didn't mention Portal or the Talos Principle in this. Anyway, one of the big reasons that adventure games died out for awhile like they did was that as you said, they failed to innovate. But I think you missed why. In fps games there was always someone who had an idea then that idea was copied but the copiers never were able to top that idea. The genre made enough money for people to want the next big thing and eventually someone would come up with an idea, they would try it, it would be a huge hit and that idea would be copied.
little late to the party but there's some crossover with other genres in gaming hybrid games seem to be big like is zelda an adventure game or rpg or both
the Internet shot the graphic adventure dead, and it shot the FPS into the outer stratosphere.