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At the risk of besmirching
any semblance I have of journalistic integrity, I will once again
go on record as saying “I love hybrids!” Many of the best
gaming experiences I have ever had were with games that didn’t
fit comfortably into any specific genre.

The first two games that
raised my “Hybrid Consciousness” were System
Shock and Outcast.

The
now-legendary System Shock (Looking Glass,
1994) was Warren Spector’s follow-up to his highly-regarded
Ultima Underground games. SS
took place on a remote space station called The Citadel, in which
the ships onboard master computer (creepily named Shodan) goes homicidally
crazy. You play as a hacker grunt who desperately tries to neutralize
Shodan. Though presented in first-person, the game wasn’t a
shooter. And even though it sort of felt like an RPG, there were no
actual stats or leveling. But Looking Glass’s willingness to
borrow features from shooters, RPGs, and even adventure games created
an unforgettable play experience.

Appeal’s
Outcast (1999) took the superficial features
of an action/adventure but added the world-building complexity of
the best RPG and the story richness of the best adventure games. Stranded
on an alien world and caught up in its complex political and military
struggles, your character had to find a way to fit in and survive
a beautiful, but terrifying series of environments. The game’s
designers even marched to a different beat with their game engine,
using voxels instead of polygons. This is a game that I found myself
thinking about for weeks after I completed it . . . as if the characters
I had met during my journey had actually been real.

Perhaps
not too surprisingly, the next three great hybrids I encountered all
had either Looking Glass or Warren Spector involved: System
Shock 2, the scariest game I’ve ever played,
Thief:
The Dark Project, which turned the mechanical conventions
of the first-person action game upside down and created the PC stealth
genre; and Deus
Ex, a dazzling action/adventure/shooter/RPG hybrid
that utterly defied any attempts to cubbyhole it into any genre.

I also fell helplessly
in love with the subversive Anachronox,
a wild game from Ion Storm, which tried to use the conventions of
Japanese console RPGs to create a game with a very Western feel.

I’m
passionate about hybrids because these are the games that actively
embrace the idea that digital entertainment is a rapidly-evolving
phenomenon. The designer of a hybrid is trying different and innovative
combinations of gameplay styles in an attempt to come up with something
new. This is a very valuable impulse in a gaming landscape choked
with cookie cutter Real-Time Strategy games, Japanese console RPGs,
and mindless shooters.

I believe the inherent
complexity of hybrids can appeal to an older audience. And because
the gaming public is aging, perhaps this will help the marketing of
hybrids in the years to come.

But
for now, unfortunately, creating a hybrid game is a very risky business.
My favorite hybrid of recent years (and one of my favorite games of
any kind in recent memory) was UbiSoft’s spectacular, if lamely
named, Beyond
Good and Evil. This beautiful game combined adventure,
action, stealth, Ico-esque environmental
puzzle solving, Pokemon-reminiscent collecting,
and wrapped it all up in a story worthy of a first-rate science fiction
film or novel. This was one of those rare “played with a stupid
grin on my face the entire time” games. The game was designed
by Rayman creator Michel Ancel, and I was
impressed that UbiSoft would put their resources behind a project
so unusual, and even release it on all consoles.

Alas,
despite winning numerous awards, Beyond Good and Evil’s
sales were quite disappointing. It’s always sad to see this
happen to an innovative game, especially one published by a giant
like UbiSoft, because it sends a deadly message to the bean counters:
hybrids are bad business.

Charles Cecil, the gamegod
behind Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken
Sword games, has also had recent heartbreak in the hybrid
department. His last two games, In
Cold Blood and Broken
Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, could both be considered
hybrids, in that he attempted to expand the definitions of what an
adventure game could do. Both games had sales that were disappointing,
to say the least.

Perhaps
the most heartbreaking example of grand hybrid goals coming to naught
is the case of Attaction’s wildly ambitious game based on the
popular German novel The Neverending Story.
I first saw the game in development at E3 in 1999, and I was stunned
at the designers intentions. They really wanted to make a game with
the richness of a novel, with complex character interactions, branching
storyline, and even something called a “Karma Meter.”
Alas, the game collapsed under the weight of so many lovely ideas,
and the game they finally released through DreamCatcher, Auryn
Quest, was a sad shadow of the designer’s original
intentions.

Perhaps the most important
hybrid on the radar screens of adventure game lovers is FunCom’s
Dreamfall, the follow-up (but not direct
sequel to) their much-loved The
Longest Journey.

FunCom’s designers
have high ambitions for the game, every one of which I hope is realized.
I do think they have their work cut out for them in the world game
market, however, considering the poor track record of other recent
adventure hybrids. I’ll be very curious to watch how they attempt
to position, market and sell the game in a world that insists on neat,
easily-described, well-defined game genres. My hope is that Dreamfall,
if it’s as good as we all hope it will be, will break the negative
trend these kinds of ambitious and creative games have been suffering
under.