Adventure Gaming

Here's the post in which I talk A LOT about the adventure genre.

Sure, adventure games seem to be coming back lately, with the LucasArts remakes and Telltale Games Studio's success...
But they've never really been away. It's indie studios like Autumn Moon (ex-LucasArts' Bill Tiller), Revolution Software (Broken Sword series) & Péndulo Studios (Runaway series) that kept the flame alive during the whole 2000s while nobody wanted to make these games anymore.

Adventure games. Be it Point-and-clicks or not.
The genre is often misattributed to games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted, for exemple.
I prefer to call those action games, platformers or even action-adventure.

No, those ain't real adventure games.

 

You fight like a guy who's trying to explain me how adventure games were and how they ended up today!

The adventure genre grew up side by side with what we call now RPGs.

While the consoles had games like Phantasy Star, Final Fantasy and many more 8-bit RPGs, home computers developed a parallel genre, less action-based since the controllers were keyboards (and later, mouses) and much more story driven.

Zork, a classic of the ol' genre, even available on Sega Saturn in its later days!

The adventure genre has gone through a lot over the years.
Most gamers nowadays  experienced it from the few console adaptations (be it on MegaCD, PS2, Xboxlive, Wii, etc..).
But the genre was definitively made for Computers.

Since the beginning, it was built around the game's story.
That's why the genre started with what we call now Text-Adventure games.
While in an RPG it's all about grinding our stats to defeat the enemies and overcome the threats, playing hours and hours of it, "build the experience" yourself, the Adventure genre is about experiencing it. The story is presented to you and you only interract with it.

It may sounds less "playable" for you open-world games or modern RPG players, but it allows for deeper storylines, at least better-constructed ones from a pure writing perspective. Also, it's the only genre well suited for comedy. Sure you may have 2-3 jokes in an action or platformer game, but a whole parodic game? You need a dialogue-oriented gameplay for that.

Characters on screen, easy to click-on choices, music and colors! Progress!

Anyway, the genre started slowly in the 70s with the beginnings of programmation to really achieve popularity with home computers in the 80s. By then, most PCs equipped with Windows 3.1 were going in a whole new visual direction.

The Text-Adventure, which wouldn't really die and still live on in a different form to this day (more on that later below), gave the way to the Graphic-Adventure genre.
These so called Point-and-clicks (due to their interface) helped make the genre a name of its own in a gaming market that was expanding quickly, larger, bigger, more commercial day after day.

From there on this little genre, which probably never became as popular as console platformers, (and later) FPS or even Japanese RPG, evolved along the years and kept a pretty faithfull fanbase.
The ideas, the type of Adventure, the graphics or even the interface would change over the time, but the type of game would stay the same at heart.

(though others were made long before them) Many consider Sierra's King Quest or LucasArts' Maniac Mansion the prime exemples and molds for any of the other adventure games that came after.
Let's check out these two big houses that were the kings of the genre in the 90s, shall we?

Larry Laffer, always the right words for everything.

SIERRA

Sierra made a ton of Point-and-clicks from the mid-80s through all the 90s. And sure, publishing FPS games on the side helped the brand financially and turned the company into a more popular house (Half-Life, Aliens Vs. Predator, No One Lives Forever, etc..), but it was their adventure games' quality and content that made their name in the first place.

Sierra had its own gamin' studios putting up great series out that are all now considered classics of the genre.
Sierra was a lot more into franchising its games (unlike LucasArts), that's why there's so many entries in their adventure series.
 

 
Police Quest, was a "gritty" realistic (yet still funny) game where the player was taken into the shoes of police officers, helping people and stopping crime. The series, after several decent episodes later evolved into a more tactical genre under the name Police Quest: SWAT to finally ditch the adventuring and become the tactical FPS series known today as simply SWAT.

Good times

Though it's sad to see (another) adventure series leave its roots totally, I'm glad it left out the 'Police Quest' name. It would be a bit disrespectful for fans of the classic games.
Like I said in the past many times, evolution and changes are a good thing as long as it doesn't disrespect either the series or the fans.
This new Swat series can be seen as a spinoff of the ol' Police Quest games.

 Early Sierra graphics.

Sierra did also many more adventure games.
Like the other fan favorites King's Quest and Space Quest series.
(do you see a pattern here?? :P)
Both had several episodes.
While one is purely fantasy-medieval, the other, the exact opposite, is scifi oriented.
The engine and graphics evolved over the years, but they mostly stayed true to their premise and didn't detract as much as Police Quest in the later games.
Space Quest is specially known for its witty humour and funky universe.

Rockin' hard since the 90s!

But the real star of Sierra's Adventure catalog probably is Leisure Suit Larry.
One of my earlies PC gaming experience. Yep. Even if it was targeted for an adult audience.

One of the longest running franchises from Sierra, not from an episode aspect but for his ton of sales all across the world and the fact that the series has been done alongside Sierra's adventure evolution. From the earlier simpler DOS graphics (pictured above the Sierra section), through the EGA and VGA years, the 16 bits graphics and Windows 9x era!
 

Cartoony graphics at their best.

The series has always been about this loser called Larry who tries to get some 'action'. And fails miserably.
Often a bit naughty, but never gross. This "soft-porn" series of adventure games was an excuse to make fun of the genre, of porn, of losers, the film industry, anything!
Al Lowe, the genius behind Larry was a great musician and funny guy. He composed the main theme, was behind 90% of the games. He stayed along with the franchise during the whole "golden age" of adventure games, from LSL1 to LSL7 and even created another adventure game for Sierra called, Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist (a western parody).
Don't miss out his own humour site!

The LSL series should always been remembered for its sexy girls and silly humour.

Worth mentioning also, another long running series from Sierra's studios, the Gabriel Knight franchises.
Considered amongst the best more serious long running Point-and-click series.
They also did a select few original titles here and there, but none as marked the genre as much as those I talked about above.

LUCASARTS

In 1987 Ron Gilbert, a Lucasfilm Games programmer created the SCUMM engine.
In proper english, the "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion".
With it they made Maniac Mansion, an 80s monster & horror movies parody.
The game was quite original based on the fact that it allowed single-cooperation between three distinct characters.
It also made use of a different type of dialogues and objects  gestion.
With it they then produced a lot of various other Point-and-clicks including Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders and the now cult sequel to Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, which marked a new era for adventure games. Now, thanks to the better computers, lots of colors making cartoony graphics a reality (before LSL7) and the beginnings of talkie-games.

I'm Bobbin. Are you my mother?

LucasArts (the name they took, since they started going their separate way from Lucasfilm anyway) was well known for their originality. They weren't afraid to try new things, explore the medium.
Games like Loom played with the gameplays and adventure games' formula (with a musical approach).

The Dig was co-developed with Steven Spielberg, giving adventure games a more cinematic feel.

The peak of this Golden Age of adventuring!

Ron Gilbert, with other adventure games masters Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman created the Monkey Island series.
The adventures of wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, in his periples against the ghost pirate LeChuck.

The series would go on to have several entries, under different creative teams. But it still is to this day the more mainstream well known Point-and-click series, amongst the best of the genre.

I feel like I could... like I could... TAKE ON THE WORLD!!

Anyway, LucasArts became known as the more creative and original of the two big name rival studios. (with Sierra being known for the limits they took the genre into and their game's great quality).
LucasArts defined and created some of the best cartoony Point-and-clicks.
And put up the best funnier titles ever made to this day.

Then came 3D graphics...

By the end of the 90s, people started to left 2D to 3D graphics.
Now, both genres could coexists in my eyes, but it's kinda sad people left 2D that was reaching its best and peak, quality-wise, for the newly and not-quite-great at first 3D visual. It was like starting all over again, from a graphic point of view....

Anyway, adventure games were mostly based and made around the 2D aspect (3D games wouldn't be made from a fixed camera/sidescrolling view for a while, meaning all 3D games had 3rd person view like Mario 64 back then)..

In the 3D-era, most Adventure games started getting cancelled.
People prefered the more mainstream 3D platformers and 1st person shooters.
Point-and-click interfaces abandoned for Resident Evil-like controls (no classic object menu, no point-and-clicking, no pixel hunting for clues and interactions).
Series got new directions, like the 4th Monkey Island, Escape from Monkey Island.

Simply put, adventure games from the late-90s to early 2000s were designed to be played on consoles, with gamepads.
Which was kinda insulting for long time fans.

Yet, it was the time Tim Schafer got the most creative.
At LucasArt, his last title was Grim Fandango, starring the now classic character Manny.
The game was made on a brand new engine, leaving the ol' SCUMM one for the new one called GrimE.
Basically, a control sheme closer to Resident Evil, which (a game for PC specially!) wasn't that nice to use with a keyboars... But it helped keep the original camera angles proper to the genre and fixed planes to explore. Though the inventory was a bit messy and it lacked the "pixel hunting" from past games.

Then he went on, with his own development team, to explore adventuring on consoles by mixing genres in Psychonauts (adventure platformer) or Brütal Legend (RTS-adventure).

Another great name left proper adventure gaming.
The exemples are many.

No production wanted to finance studios to develop adventure games anymore, because 'it wasn't that profitable anymore'.
But the genre's never been huge to being, it's just the industry that catched on, and games were selling like made now.
The fans were still faithful and would have loved more of these.

More examples of this post-3D era. Full Throttle.
Another of Schafer's very lasts.
The game showed one of the best attempts at a modern non-DOS adventure game.
The story was quite adult, with some classic LucasArts humour thrown in the mix.
The graphics were animated, 2D and quite amazing.

LucasArts tried to make a sequel without Schafer in 2000.
Full Throttle: Payback.
But it was quickly scrapped. Because the "heads" over there thaught it wouldn't selll anymore.
(and instead they started making a ton of Star Wars games only)

In 2002, they started working on a second sequel, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels. This time in full 3D, more action oriented and with even less adventuring.
For a strange reason..it also was scrapped.
(which as bad as it sounded, seemed like the kind of game they would had released at that point)

Sadly, around the 2000s, no series was protected from that adaptation-ism into 3D generic action games.

We saw SWAT earlier, seeing that even at Sierra, no series was safe away from degenerating and detracting its original form. (though SWAT 3, being sort of a spiritual successor and spinoff from the earlier series, while still keepin the original's feel and atmosphere wasn't that bad a deal)

With the 3D gaming taking more and more importance and 2D games slowly dying, Al Lowe, Leisure Suit Larry's father, wanted to bring the series to 3D, but still under his creative vision. It was an important U-Turn for the franchise.

Then, unexpectedly Al Lowe was fired by the new executives at Sierra.
For me, it sort of marked the end of "the golden age of adventure gaming".

A new Larry game was made afterall without his supervision. Magna Cum Laude.
The art design and concepts were still pretty close to LSL7. It's like someone based a new game around what Larry games were. Trying to get the girls, salty humour, Larry ending naked and losing every turn, mini games, gambling games, casino games...only they took out the adventure part.
There was objects to collect, but no trading, combining, puzzle solving no more.
Still new areas to open and explore and have a larger, bigger, playground during the playthrough, but no challenges, nothing...
Plus the original Larry was taken out and it was his nephew, Larry Lovage. (Laffer still appeared though, as a cameo).

Then to further dig the grave of the series, another one was made, worse than...well...worse than anything else.
Box Office Bust. And this time worse than anything. Really.
A sandbox game with nothing to explore nor do.
No humour.
Out the cartoony art style from LSL7, nor the old classic look from earlier episodes.
Instead, a clumsy, fugly, awful, bland, random character design. With both Larrys looking nothing like they had in the past...
Ugh...

Basically, a sub-par platformer like those commercial cash-ins they usually do for kiddie franchises...only using an adult licensed series and humour for 3-year old jokes.
Yep. Sounds better than what it even is.

Renaissance of Adventure...in America!
Dave Grossman, unlike most of his ol' contemporary associates, never left the adventure field.
He first worked on the Pajama Sam series, budget adventure game titles for children.

Then, with other LucasArts veterans, founded in 2004 Telltale Games.

The name is already a synonym of adventure with today's audience.
They sort of rebuilt and brought back the genre to speed. And mainstream too.

First they worked on a proper Sam & Max sequel (a classic 90s point-and-click hit, after a past 3D sequel almost done, but cancelled at LucasArts). Adapted part of Jeff Smith's Bone comic.
Then moved recently on franchises lik Monkey Island, which they also brought back to the scene, with Back To The Future and Jurassic Park currently in the works.

They converted the genre to the new era perfectly, making games available digital as episodes and selling material copies of the seasons at the end.

They however completly ditched the point-and-click after some attempts at 3D point-and-click interface at first, going back to Monkey Island 4/Grim Fandango's control now.

Meanwhile in Europe
Why did I previously say in America?
Because the public in America may have left the genre from the late 90s to the late 2000s, but in Europe, it never left.

That's how, many developers (here, in Europe) still continued making adventure games during the whole decline of the genre with mainstream audience.

Sure they were AAA titles, but they were still great nonetheless.
The only problem was that, with smaller budgets, they were more difficult to grab a copy of and not as well distributed over the places.

The Simon the Sorcerer series survived all the way through the 90s and 2000s.
First created by UK developers Adventure Soft, they're currently done by German team Silver Style Entertainment.
It a very classical Adventure series (apart from the first 3D Simon game, released in 2000), using a Point-and-click approach, using witty humor and zany "magical" situations. Literally.

Revolution Software, a british team, made the excellent Broken Sword series (4 games, in 1996, 1997, 2003 & 2006).
In the 3rd game they went in 3D, with more action sequences, like almost everyone else at the time, but brought back the point-and-click aspect in the 4th 3D game.
It's a fun and pretty interesting series about George Stobbart, an American tourist, who travels to a lot of places (France, England, etc..) to unravel conspirations and mysteries.
Like a sort of Indiana Jones.
But with clever and silly snarky comments all the time.
And stealing tons of objects on the way. (boy, do these adventure heroes have huge pockets)

They also made with artist Dave Gibbons a scifi classic, called Beneath a Steel Sky.

Deck13 Interactive is a german studio.
They created the egyptian adventure hero Assil, main character of the Ankh series.

This one's a more back to basis adventure game, with lots of collecting and puzzle solving.
The series plays like your classic Point-and-click, with 3D modern graphics instead.

They also made a sort of parody/hommage game called Jack Keane.
It starts the titular hero, in a colonial era. You travel from England, the tower of London, to "Tooth Island".
It has a lot of references to Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, Broken Sword and many more movies or games.
The game also has a nice modern touch like special secret objects to find and collect (good for replay value!) and an increasing difficulty. (starting pretty low and easy)

Spanish developer Péndulo Studios made the Runaway series all the way through the "dark times". (2001, 2006 and 2009)
Which are really now some of the best modern adventure games ever made.
Fun, funny, clever, long and very original.
It follows your classic formula (very inspired by Broken Sword, mentioned above)

It stars Brian Basco and Gina Timmins. A nerdy, unlucky down to earth guy and a dancer.
Through the series they're mixed around very bad people who tries to stop them to unravel their plans.
Also, they meet some aliens at some point.

The (later) American release was a huge mess, with awful voice dubbing...seriously...grab an european copy for this one.

Unlike most other studios, they never quite wanted to go full 3D.
So only the character models and animated sequences are using real CGi, the backgrounds are hand drawn, and beautiful to look at.

Other Forms of Adventure
Of course, there's many other great studios out there.
I'm trying to simplify, without overseeing everything here.

The simpler form of adventure games may be over, rare point-and-clicks are still being released every now and then.
But games have evolved quite a bit today.
The genres aren't as clear as they were once.

It's not unusual to find some RPG elements in platformers now.

And the same way, it's not a surprise to find some pure adventure aspects in other genres.
For exemple, the survival horror genre was built upon various aspect straight from ol' adventure games.
It's not a surprise in those to have to collect various objects, trade them with other NPCharacters, or combine them to progress through the story, being themselves quite story-driven as well.

Bioware, for exemple, are well known for their involving RPG games.
But their games aren't you usual classic RPGs, like japanese studios do.
They're often quite a mix of various genres, taking many ideas from other games.

There may haven't been a proper Star Wars point-and-click game from LucasArts back in the 90s, but the Knight of the Old Republic series is the closest thing the franchise had to an adventure game.

The same way, the Mass Effect games have a lot in common to adventure games.
Including story decisions and dialogue choices.
It's a sort of RPG/FPS/Adventure game all rolled up into one.

Most studios have by now made at least one adventure game. Point-and-click or not.
While Ubisoft had a Stupid Invader game on PC and Dreamcast in 2000, Psygnosis had the Discworld games in 95-6, and Crystal Dynamics Blazing Dragons.

Though japanese studios less so than american/european ones.

I couldn't make a blog post about Adventure Gaming without mentioning Shenmue from Sega AM2.
The game may look like an RPG-ysh Virtua Fighter.
Yu Suzuki, head of the AM2 studio, wanted to create his own genre. A F.R.E.E. game as he called it.
A sort of openworld-ysh game.
With many things to do, like learning new fighting techniques, buying objects, toys and figurines, being able to go to arcades and actually play some 80s arcade Sega games.
And interacting.with the characters, the plot and every object.

In many ways, Shenmue is like the ultimate more modern evolution of what Adventure games are and were meant to be.
Like in a Leisure Suit Larry (I never thought I'd wrote "Like in a Leisure Suit Larry" while writing about Shenmue...) the player can play around with the settings or pursue the "main adventure". Talk with everybody or stop by to play on a slot machine.
And the game progress exactly like an Adventure game, with new chapters opening new areas, the mystery advancing further.
The progression being made through puzzle solving (story-wise), dialogues and interaction with objects and/or characters.
The game consists on solving "quests", finding people and making your way through dialogues.
With boss fights.
And action sequences.
Shenmue leaves the traditional controls for the 3rd person perspective completly.
And like many Adventure games that tried to mix action sequences (Broken Sword 3...), Shenmue uses an engine suited for combat for this and QTEs (Quick Timed Events, pressing a correct button at certain moments during cinematic events).

Japan's own take on Adventure
Like I said earlier, the Text-based adventure games never died really.
Though they evolve into Point-and-clicks or 3rd Person Adventure games, Japan found another way to keep them alive.

In Japan another genre was born, the Visual novels.
These games uses a sort of hybrid RPG/Text-adventure mechanic. And because we all need pictures now, have still pictures being shown.

They're the exact opposite of Action games.
Character stills show up during discussions, all these games consist in talking to people, that's what is at the heart of such games.
Sure they might seem uninteresting for people who prefer more action-ysh games, but they're mostly designed for a niche audience, fans of the subjects they talk about or the anime series they mostly adapt.

Capcom's Phoenix Wright series (Ace Attorney) is exactly just that.
(with the theme being Trials and the gimmick being over-the-top Law)

Also worth mentioning, since a crossover between those two's been mentioned recently,
on the opposite, The Professor Layton games are much more traditional point-and-clicks by Level-5.
Based around puzzles to solve and clues to find.

Indie development
Anyway, back on classic Point-and-click games, since they're easily programmable, since most of the work and ideas have already been laid out in the 90s, many indie developers or low-budget studios went on to create their own adventure games, not counting the fangames using WYSIWYG-interfaces

These last years there's been some real gems like Machinarium from little indie Czech company Amanita Design.
These kind of games have not only been able to rivalize with the current market modern Adventure games but also be closer in feel and as challenging as ol' 90s Point-and-clicks.

And most of these also have the advantage, for retro-gamers who prefered the old days, to be done in beautiful hand drawn 2D with tons of details and wonderful art designs.
Unlike the mainstream 3D shorter bigger budget titles.

The Future~
To finish this, I wanna point out to Adventure-newcomers there's not only just Telltale Games on the scenes.
Many more non-American studios are making games just as good if not better.

Some explore this new digital era by turning into episodic series, offering seasons each year. Which is a good way to recycle these games' chapters into episodes. (as long as they don't take advantage of their prices)

First pic of the upcoming A Vampyre Story: Year One - click for bigger resolution

There's a lot of ex-Sierra or ex-LucasArts employee keeping the genre alive, fun and original.
Like Curse of Monkey Island's Bill Tiller with his own Autumn Moon Entertainment.
With many people who previously worked on Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island 3, they created another pirate game based on an old scrapped MI plot, Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, and launched A Vampyre Story. With a second episode expected for late 2011 and an episodic interquel, similar to Telltale releases, sheduled to start off soon.

The genre is now sort of in-between two directions currently.
With Indie and smaller developers taking Adventure games in a more classical and truer to its roots path.
And bigger studios and mainstream titles bringing it to a wider and younger audience, in a simpler form, shorter and with in-game hints and solutions, but perhaps with more replay value with console-specific achievements  and unlockable gimmicks.

 

Nick Bounty is on the case.

Now the question is what kind of Adventure gamer are you and do you prefer more challenging longer games or shorter casual experiences.
Or do you like both and are willing to accept both ends in today's market.


This was probably my longest blog post to date...
Hot damn' - I really let myself go on with this one!