(re: re: re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) In PQ1 you’d been told “Ask her to help you with the hotel operation” and the required input has a similar grammatical structure (“help me with the operation” does the trick and that’s just dumb repeating). There were some lines, however, that had to be guessed. Like whatever you had to type in to finish Leisure Suit Larry 2 making a molotov cocktail out of some hair spray and the sick bag from the airplane.
I thing it’s a tightrope walk for a game designer working with a parser to just define which phrases work and which don’t and how many clues to give to the players. You’re either frustrating the players if you allow too little or worse, making it too easy for them if you allow too much.
What I’m trying to say is that the “impossible command lines” were probably not the result of too little, but too much consideration by the game designers (though in some cases limited vocabulary could just as well have been the result of a menacing release date hovering near… :o)
