E3 2002 – The Adventure Genre’s Last Hurrah – Welcome to Just Adventure + – Articles

Articles

by Randy Sluganski May 28, 2002

GO GENTLY INTO THE NIGHT E3 2002 – The Adventure Genre’s Last Hurrah (for E3 2002 pictures click here)

I have been to six E3’s and never have I seen fewer pure adventure games either in production or even the talking stage than at this year’s convention.

On the other hand, there were also more adventure games announced than ever, but they were almost all of the bastardized variety – guns, fighting, violence – it seems that action/adventure has morphed into a catchall genre. With very few exceptions, point-and-click is clearly dead and action/adventure is about to go mainstream in a big way.

We promised you some exclusives and as usual we came through. So hold on to your hats for some big announcements and E3 scuttlebutt:

• The Collector, a sequel to the 7^th Guest/11^th Hour is to soon be announced!! We will have an exclusive trailer later this week. I met with producer David Wheeler (his partner Rob Landeros could not make the E3) in private and viewed simply amazing video from the game. The Collector takes place in a museum and Stauf is once again your nemesis. While The Collector will employ many of the strategic puzzles familiar to fans of the first two games, it will also incorporate other genres into its gameplay. For example, a sequence involving a Minotaur must be played in a first-person-shooter mode. Currently scheduled for a Thanksgiving release on the X-Box, we will have much more exclusive information on The Collector in the upcoming months.

• As many of you know by now, the long-awaited Syberia has been purchased by Dreamcatcher. The North American release date has been pushed back from June to September. Syberia will though still be released in Europe and possibly Canada in June. Now for the big news – Cedric Orvoine of Microids laid this bombshell on Ray Ivey and myself during our visit to Microids – a sequel, Syberia 2, is currently in production! By the way, I have personally assured both Microids and Dreamcatcher that Syberia will easily sell at least 200,000 copies in North America alone, so get those credit cards out adventure fans.

• I found a nifty new adventure game hidden in the Wanadoo booth. Only 20% complete but already looking like a must-have game was Jack the Ripper! Set in the early 1900s, the Ripper has relocated to New York City where he has resumed his murderous ways. You play as a member of Scotland Yard, sent to New York to capture and return the Ripper to London. Be forewarned, there is gunplay in the game. We will soon have screen shots and an interview with the developer.

• Noticeably absent from the E3 this year was the one-time kings of adventure – Cryo. Rumor has it that this once proud company is either about to file for bankruptcy or will reorganize as a smaller, leaner organization. It would be a great loss to the adventure community to lose this French corporation.

• I personally spoke with the man responsible for bringing The Longest Journey to life – Ragnar Tornquist – and he assured me that a sequel to The Longest Journey is now on the front-burner at Funcom. While it may be a few years until we see a finished product, at least Funcom is finally considering a sequel. We will soon have an interview with April’s creator on Just Adventure.

• After Full Throttle 2 was announced by Lucas Arts, Tom Sarris, the head of public relations, informed me that there would be no further information released on this action/adventure game for at least 9 months! Look for this game to headline the Lucas Arts releases at next year’s E3.

• Charles Cecil of Revolution was busy talking-up Broken Sword 3. While I did not have time to meet with him in person this year, he did have a long discussion with the charming Cindy Yans of Computer Games Magazine. Maybe we’ll see some welcome magazine coverage of this game in the near future?

• Jeff Tobler and his lovely wife Karen were hanging out in the Dreamcatcher area promoting their newest game – The Omega Stone, Riddle of the Sphinx 2. You know I convinced Jeff to provide some exclusive screen shots for the readers of Just Adventure! Look for them later this week.

• The best-looking and most promising adventure games at the E3 were easily Microids’s Syberia and Post-Mortem. We’ll have more on both of these games in the coming weeks.

• Probably the most disappointing game, in my opinion, was Arxel Tribe’s Hannibal. What I mistakenly believed to be an adventure game is actually a first-person-shooter. What is Arxel Tribe thinking? If there is any one character who better lends himself to a game based on deduction and reasoning, it is the villainous Hannibal. Why not just turn the game into a musical?

• Myst Online – why not? I honestly would not be surprised if an online Myst game proved to be more popular than Everquest. Give UbiSoft credit for attempting to venture into unknown territory for an adventure product.

• In what is surely a case for Nancy Drew to solve, Her Interactive did not have a booth at the show, but instead were conducting meetings in the food court. As I was not hungry at the time, I passed on a meeting, but Ray Ivey spoke with Her Interactive about their newest release, The Scarlet Hand and will fill us in later this week.

• On the console side, X-Box has some great action/adventure games in the pipeline including Project Ego and Shenmue II. Both games are sure to please adventure fans and we will have more information on them in the near future.

• It’s a sad day for the adventure community when one of my E3 lowlights was witnessing the editor of another adventure webzine verbally accosting a Dreamcatcher staff member. Maybe the entry age needs to be raised from eighteen to twenty-one?

Later this week . . . we’ll bring you all the dirt on the adventure and action/adventure games of the E3. Plus lots of pictures to boot!