Articles
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by Robert Washburne |
The Perfect Adventure Game |
Law 1: The Story is Everything.
The story is what defines
Adventure gaming. There may be puzzles. There may be action sequences.
But it is the story which makes it an adventure game.
The game will only be
as good as its story. The puzzles may be good. The graphics and
sound may be exquisite. But if the story doesn’t grab us then the
game won’t leave us with a feeling of having done anything special.
We might as well have played Solitaire.
So the first judgment
must be, “Does this make a good story?” If you were
to turn the game into a book, would make a good read? If someone
were to play the game and have their experience transcribed, would
it still make a good read? Arguably, the two greatest adventure
games ever written are Zork and Myst. Both developed huge fan bases
around the story and both had books published to extend the story.
The plot should unfold
during the game. It is not enough to tell the whole story in the
introduction like they did in The Arrival. That takes us back to
the old Atari games which had a story on the box, but the game
was nothing but a Zap the Zylon knockoff of Space Invaders. The
only story that counts is the story that is told as you play the
game.
Does the plot keep me
hooked so that I will lose an hour’s sleep just to read the next
chapter? That was the beauty of Myst. You wanted to know what was
going on. You needed to get that next page to hear what that person
in the book was going to say. And you were willing to play each
chapter twice just to get both pages. Just solving puzzles for
the sake of puzzles as in Rhem or Jewels
of the Oracle might be
fun, but there is no hook to that. It isn’t special.
Do I really care what
is going on? Have I been drawn into the story enough that it has
become important? Do I feel needed or am I a useless spectator?
In Myst, not only does my future depend on figuring out what is
going on, but there are several other people whom I may be able
to rescue. You finish with a sense of accomplishment. In Uru:
Path of the Shell there is no goal to achieve. You finish the game with
a feeling of “That was nice, but what was the purpose?”
Are the characters well
developed? Are their personalities unique, well defined and focused?
Are they real?
Is the story plausible?
Ghosts and space aliens can be accepted as long as the familiar
world works in the familiar way. People must act like people and
institutions must act like institutions.
And, finally, what is
my place in the story? If I am being called upon to do things in
a game, then it is me doing it. Role playing will only go so far.
If I would refuse to do something in real life, then I probably
won’t like being forced to do it in a game. Summon a demon? Destroy
a major work of art just to see what’s behind it? Kill a guard
in cold blood just to see what was in the shed? These are the kinds
of things people have definite feelings about.
