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Because I Said So
September 18, 2000
By Ray Ivey
Does the Adventure Genre Deserve to Be in the Trouble It's In?
I love adventure games. I love pure adventure games. I live to solve puzzles, explore interesting and beautiful new environments, and uncover the secrets of a clever plot.
Those of us who love these games have watched with dismay as our genre's dwindling sales have reduced adventure games to the status of Red-Headed Stepchild of the computer game industry. We've moaned and criticized the vicious reviews many magazines have given recent adventure games. All in all, we've felt pretty put-upon.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've decided that, to a certain degree, developers of adventure games (and perhaps even us players) can stop blaming evil outside forces for the decline of our genre. It's the developers' fault. And it's our fault.
Before you send videotapes of Jennifer Jason Leigh films to my house in retribution, hear me out.
First of all, we're talking about a subset of a very specific type of entertainment here. We're not talking novels, we're not talking movies, we're not even talking music. We're talking about computer games. Now, as everyone knows, what moves faster than greased lightning? Computer technology, of course. If you look back on the twenty-something years of computer games, you'll see a story of incredibly accelerated evolution in game technology--mirroring the acceleration in computer technology in general.
As this fast-forward version of evolution moved forward, game genres changed. RPGs developed from thin recreations of board games (the early Ultimas, for example) to the rich visuals and complex gameplay features of Betrayal at Krondor, Diablo, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and now Planescape Torment.
Action games, too have barreled forward in this progression, from simple arcade-type games such as Asteroids to the extremely sophisticated Half-Life and Unreal Tournament.
This same story is told in the racing genre, the simulation genre, the strategy genre, and the sports genre.
What's the only game genre that has lately been lagging behind? You guessed it, our beloved adventure.
I'm not quite sure why it happened. Maybe it's because as players we've been so vocally provincial in our tastes, vociferously resisting any and all new technological advances. First traditional gamers who cut their teeth on third-person cartoon adventures bitterly resented Myst's Windows-based, gorgeous, prerendered, first-person environments. Next we hated video. Next we hated anything that had a whiff of nonmouse support.
In the meantime, RPG players were progressing from Quest for Glory III to Betrayal at Antara to Icewind Dale. Actioners made the leap from Marathon to Doom to Quake to Quake Arena.
When I think about the recent adventure games, I realize that, with one exception, all of them have been decidedly old-fashioned. The exception? The brilliant and forward-looking Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. Which didn't sell well, partially because adventure purists hated the 3D movement that required moving their stubborn hands off the mouse, for heaven's sake.
Some of the recent "pure" adventures I've played, with their tired Mystiness and utter lack of new ideas (Reah, Pompeii, Rent-a-Hero) have given me newfound sympathy for the exasperated and impatient reviews adventure games have been getting in mainstream game sites and magazines. Even the superb recent adventures I've enjoyed (The Longest Journey, Dracula Resurrection, Louvre: The Final Curse) have all been very traditional.
On the other hand, I'm surrounded by games in other genres that are truly exciting because their designers are embracing new technology and are using it to create new and different gaming experiences.
Lately, I've been playing the brilliant Thief, a game that turns the conventions of the action genre so upside down that the result is a game that feels more like an adventure than almost anything I've played in recent months. I also just completed System Shock 2, which really combines three separate genres (action, role-playing, and adventure) to create a stunning game experience. Also thrilling was Outcast, which in the guise of an action/adventure created an impressively convincing world.
After the freedom of movement and intense vicarious feeling of reality I get from those games, it's easy to feel suffocated by the tedious nodular movement and static gameplay of a traditional adventure. Especially if the adventure is new (and should therefore know better).
I can't wait to play Deus Ex and thrill to the way the game adapts to my personal way of solving problems. I'm eager to get my hands on Black and White, which promises to redefine the whole concept of strategy/sims. I'm also eager to play Omikron, Planescape Torment, and Seaman, among many others.
The sad irony is that many of the other genres I've mentioned owe at least some of their evolution to the very fact that they coopted adventure game features! Nowadays players expect strong stories not only from RPGs but even from action games. But whenever the cross-pollination goes the other direction, we tend to squeal and head for the hills.
I think it's utterly unrealistic to expect adventure games to stand still technologically. It's just not going to happen. I've got plenty of unplayed good, old-fashioned pure adventures on my shelf. But I'm going to have a tough time fitting them in around all the exciting new multi-genre games that are heading my way.