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Because I Said So
February 22, 2000


By Ray Ivey

A Wish List for Future Games

Once again I stumble over a great subject for column from a certain Internet game bulletin board. It would be partisan of me to name it here, but let's just say its initials are G-A-M-E-B-O-O-M-E-R-S.

The question I picked up on (stole? "stole" is such an ugly word ...) was, "What do we hope to see in new games?"

Very good question.

Here's my wish list.

1. First of all, I agree with my well-spoken GameBoomer friend Advpuzlov that game acting needs to continue to improve. As I've said over and over and over, there is no excuse for bad acting in games. None. The country is lousy with good actors who'd just love the challenge of playing an outlandish adventure game character. Good acting is easily the cheapest area where a game can improve its overall quality. Otherwise excellent games like Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon can be horribly undermined by bad acting, while other games like Temujin, GK1, Full Throttle, Byzantine, Outcast, and Discworld Noir are greatly enhanced by professional voice- or on-camera acting.

2. I'd also love to see more rich and complicated storylines. But--I don't mean the annoyingly complicated plots used to justify third-person inventory fests, like in Simon the Sorcerer (though I admire much about that game, don't get me wrong). I like it when the story is deep and compelling because it's a real story, like in Byzantine, The Neverhood, GK1, GK2, GK3, Sanitarium, Circle of Blood, Full Throttle, Buried in Time, etc. All of these games have stories that I could sit down and tell around a campfire.

3. I'd like to see real time-rendered environments continue to improve. I want to see them rival pre-rendered images.

4. I want 3D characters (especially faces) to continue to improve. (Go, Cryo!)

5. I want to see continued innovation to streamline the necessarily more complicated interface that comes with 3D. GK3 did an admirable job in this area.

6. I want to see more imagination used when designers pick environments for their games. Let's give Atlantis, Egypt, and the Mayans a well-deserved rest, shall we?

7. Two exceptions to #6: two well-worn settings that I still want to see more of. First of all, the detective genre. It's a type of story that just works particularly well with our adventure games. Games like the two Broken Swords, the five Tex Murphys, Byzantine, and the three Gabriel Knights demonstrate just how well the mechanics of a well-built adventure game can meld with the classic detective story formula. I'll gleefully pick up and play as many quality titles in this category as the industry produces.

8. The other "tired" genre that I personally just don't seem to get tired of is the horror genre. Call me shallow, but I'll jump on any game about a haunted house, hotel, castle, car, parking meter, you name it. This is another type of story that just works excruciatingly well with the adventure game. There are hair-raising moments in Amber: Journeys Beyond, Morpheus, Inherent Evil, and The Blackstone Chronicles that I'll never forget. I want to see designers push the envelope in this genre and see just how badly they can scare us. However, I don't want to see them do it by adding action elements. I'm not pining for any more Resident Evil clones. I want to see it done in pure adventure style, but with imaginative stories, environments, and storylines.

9. Sequels. Since this is a wish list, I've got to name some sequels I wish they'd make; these games deserve another chapter.

So, I can dream, can't I?

10. I'd like to see the dual character concept used in GK2 and GK3 expanded. How about an adventure game where there was more opportunity to play as different characters. Perhaps even to have the choice of which character to play in a given chapter, with the player having to consider each character's different abilities. Maybe I'm talking about an adventure/RPG hybrid here, but I think it has interesting possibilities.

11. Finally, I want game designers to continue to shake us up. I want games to be released that are hard to categorize (like Outcast!). I want to play adventure games that I haven't even imagined.