Originally Posted By Jenny100 (9 JUL 2004 8:21pm)
Well I've enjoyed games with a good story and &^%$! puzzles and I've also enjoyed games with good puzzles and a &^%$! story. I've even enjoyed games with both &^%$! puzzles and a &^%$! story, but which had a great gameworld to explore. So how should I answer if I think an enticing gameworld to escape to is the most important?

Originally Posted By Lucien21 (9 JUL 2004 8:27pm)
Still think they are equally important.

Originally Posted By Ford_Prefect (9 JUL 2004 9:54pm)
I couldn't agree more . An adventure game has to have something because of what the player will be willing to spend a week trying to crack a seemingly unsolvable puzzle and not throw the cd's through the window swearing. When a game has a good story and bad puzzles, most players will still play it because of the story, but when it's vice versa, a lot of them will give up. We all like those extremely difficult, frustrating puzzles because of that fantastic feeling when you finally crack it, but when you're stuck on it you need more than that to motivate you not to give up. You need to be interested in what's coming up next.

Originally Posted By Andromus (10 JUL 2004 1:10am)
I'm tempted to say "both". But one hardly ever sees both equally well done in a game. Barring that, the most satisfying games I've played have been puzzle oriented, not story oriented. Puzzles are what make an adventure for me. There's nothing like the feeling of digging into a challenging puzzle and working through it.

Originally Posted By Fickfack (10 JUL 2004 2:49am)

I'm tempted to go a step farther and say that you can't have it both ways. Storytelling is essentially a non-interactive form of entertainment. The most entertaining stories in all media rely on description, character development, and an interesting plot.
In an adventure game, however, you cannot develop characters except through non-interactive dialogues and cutscenes. As you add more depth to the characters, more details to the story, more background information, adventure games become heavier and heavier on dialogue or reading, and lighter on puzzles.
In short, I don't think we can expect profound, fully developed stories from adventure games. We can have a compelling plot, with interesting characters, but once we delve beyond that level you are forced to include a lot of non-interactive sequences.

In short, I'm looking for the challenge of Obsidian combined with the writing of the Gabriel Knight games. No problem, right?    

Originally Posted By Fickfack (10 JUL 2004 2:49am)

I'm tempted to go a step farther and say that you can't have it both ways. Storytelling is essentially a non-interactive form of entertainment. The most entertaining stories in all media rely on description, character development, and an interesting plot.
In an adventure game, however, you cannot develop characters except through non-interactive dialogues and cutscenes. As you add more depth to the characters, more details to the story, more background information, adventure games become heavier and heavier on dialogue or reading, and lighter on puzzles.
In short, I don't think we can expect profound, fully developed stories from adventure games. We can have a compelling plot, with interesting characters, but once we delve beyond that level you are forced to include a lot of non-interactive sequences.

Originally Posted By Lucien21 (10 JUL 2004 8:46am)
The problem is pacing. In traditional story methods the writer or director controls the pacing of a story and can use this to take out the tedious parts of long journeys or to heighten tension.
Adventures due to the nature of interactivity the pace is determined mostly by the player. Everyone solves games in different ways and at different speeds.
Where I think the problem lies is that story dependant developers like Syberia have tried to control the pace of the story by making the puzzles easy and so not stopping the flow of the game. Whereas games like Schizm 2 you are effectively blocked by large puzzles that take ages to solve so there is no pace/flow at all to the story.

What developers have to do is create a belivable world with all the elements of the story in place and leave it up to the player to uncover it at their own pace. Adding more depth or detail to the story might mean more dialouge, cutscenes or just more descriptive comments about the environment * but doesn't necessarily mean lighter puzzles that's the fault of the developer not the genre.

Originally Posted By Fickfack (10 JUL 2004 2:38pm)

Yes, but if you try to strike a happy medium (ie: not to easy, not too hard), someone will still have difficulty with the puzzles. If a puzzle is at all difficult, someone will be held up trying to solve it, and the pacing will be thrown off. If it isn't difficult, it's a lousy puzzle.

Yes it does, because cutscenes, dialogue and descriptive comments take disk space. Something has to be removed to compensate. GK2 was a highly developed story, but with the amount of cutscenes and dialogue they included, they couldn't put in ANY difficult puzzles. Same thing with GK3; besides the moustache puzzle and Le Serpent Rouge, there aren't really any memorable puzzles in the game.