(re: A question for Ken – Sierra after move to Coarsegold/Oakhurst) Chris, you’ve been doing your best to stir up acrimony ever since you started your recent spate of posting. First with your unwarrented comments on the game project, and now coming down on adventure games. I don’t get it. What made you sign up for this forum in the first place? Especially since you knew most of us on here are adventure game fans, and to the extent that some of us are willing to sacrifice a great amount of time in order to make own of our own. What’s the story?
Johann: I would like you to cite anything I have written so far anywhere on this board that would qualify as acrimony. Also specify where and what it is I said that would give someone the impression that I am coming down on adventure games. I thought I already made it clear that I’m a big fan of adventure games, but that no one else I know plays them anymore – and I stated my beliefs as to why they don’t. What more do you want?
Regarding my “unwarranted comments” about the game project, I was hoping to offer some constructive input. So far you are the only person who seems to have taken issue with it, at least publicly. If the development project here is something that does not require or need comments from “outsiders” such as myself, someone let me know and I will refrain from making them.
John: You are absolutely right about the action elements of “Beyond Good & Evil”, and I admit it was a stretch calling it an “adventure game”. However, despite that, it DID have the elements I like most in an adventure game, particularly the exploration aspect, and I greatly enjoyed playing it. I have never played GK3 or even seen screen shots, but I agree with your assertation that 3D engines are the future, which was precisely the point I was trying to make in my last post. The problem right now is that a good 3d adventure game would most likely require an expansive, detailed, outdoor environment, while most engines today can only handle rat-in-maze maps. I think it’s important that the adventure game of the future use the latest 3d technology and break out of this “critical path” syndrome most adventure games have these days. By “critical path”, I mean you are locked in a relatively small area to explore until you do this or that, and then move on to the next small area, and so on. While all excellent games, Syberia, Broken Sword 3, and Beneath a Steel Sky were guilty of this.
The future, in my opinion, is to have a fully explorable environment in 3d. Ultima 9 attempted outdoor environments with disasterous results. The Torque engine (Tribes 2) is decent but I don’t see walking through an adventure game forest with it. The FarCry engine shows lots of promise for that sort of thing though. We will see.