Written by The TAG Team
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There's been some games with some pretty convoluted plots, some with simple ones. Which are the ones that stick out in your mind?
What's your favorite plot? Is it something simple, like a man in outdated clothing styles trying to hook up with many ladies? Or perhaps something more complex, like a college student discovering the role of magic in the world and having to bounce between the ordinary and the mystical in order to restore balance to the universe?
What was the best premise for a game? Or the biggest let-down?
I love plots with alternate timelines, and Virtue's Last Reward probably sticks out as my favorite when it comes to having to explore the same general plot from multiple "angles".
ReplyDelete(It also builds upon the foundation that 999 laid, and I don't disagree with anyone that thinks 999 did it better. It's probably the better game overall, but VLR's plot just left a much stronger impression on me, especially after finishing Luna's branch when everything really got going)
Also shoutout to the first AI: The Somnium Files, Radiant Historia, and one of the seminal non-linear adventure games, YU-NO. Let's not mention Zero Time Dilemma and the second AI game though, those were just disappointing.
What makes it work is that you don't have to do "What if?" scenarios in your headcanon but you can actually explore them as part of a larger interconnected plot. It allows exploring different character motivations and outcomes and how other characters would react to those. It makes the game simultanously non-linear, while still coming to a linear conclusion (because the plot branches often hit locks that require exploring other branches to unlock). And the idea of going back to the beginning with all that knowledge and unlock the golden path is magical to me.
999 is one of my favorite games of all time. It left an incredible impression on me, and played it several times in the last decade. The safe ending, and the true ending in particular were unique and awesome. Made the whole experience a 10 out of 10.
DeleteVLR and Zero's Dilemma, I played them in the wrong order, and recently for the first time. They were ok too. But at the end they relied too much in magic/science fiction to explain what was going on. I feel like the first one was more grounded. But still, great games.
About time someone else than me independently brings up YU-NO. The most unexpectedly epic video game story I've experienced, and IMO still better made than the other Japanese complete-all-routes-to-understand-the-mystery games I've played so far. Desire, coming up in 1994 by the same writer, incidentally is one of the earliest examples of that kind of structure, if not the earliest (but way rougher around the edges).
DeleteYU-NO unfortunately has the reputation of being an Eroge game, a genre that isn’t associated with deep plots and good writing :( And the recent remake kinda did it wrong by toning down the Eroge (thus alienating the crowd that wants that) while also not doing enough to get rid of it (thus not attracting the crowd that doesn’t want erotic content). In an ideal world, its reputation would be up there with stuff like the SciAdv series (Steins;Gate). Alas, that’s not the world we live in, but we do live in a world with both a full fan translation of the PC-98 original, and a remake that’s available on modern platforms. So yeah, highly recommended to give it a try!
DeleteI find it neat that all three Zero Escape games have core twists that are variations on the same theme of "You have been lied to about whose point of view you are playing from". That said, I think forcing that twist into ZTD was a bridge too far.
DeleteAlso 999 is undoubtedly the cleverest use of the Nintendo DS's dual-screen design, to the point that it kinda undermines the whole point on other platforms.
If you're referring to (999 Spoilers / ROT13) - gur snpg gung obgu fperraf fubj gur crefcrpgvir bs qvssrerag punenpgref (Whacrv naq Nxnar) - then I fully agree, that was a great usage of the dual screens. I don't think the other ports suffer much from it, but it was a nice - ubyl penc! zbzrag jura cynlvat guebhtu gur gehr raqvat.
DeleteNostalgia has me say Torin's Passage and Bud Tucker in Double Trouble.
ReplyDeleteThe former was my first adventure game. Unbeknownst to me, I had just played one of the most accessible Sierra game made by the man behind Leisure Suit Larry. The first (Lands Above) and fourth (Asthenia) chapter provide vivid sounds and imagery when I think about them.
The latter is an incomplete mess trying to ape LucasArts games. Main protagonist is this very annoying 90,s archetype dude. Puzzles rife with pixel hunting and questionable bugs (before Scummvm). It took me six months to finish because of a nasty glitch that removed a key item from an inventory. It's probably the adventure game I replayed the most.
These aren't the most remarkable entries but they introduced me to the world of Broken Sword, Grim Fandango and April Ryan. Ambitious storytelling with a character you can trust to follow through a path of logic and little bit of contrivances. It's doesn't need to be simple or complex. Just dreamy.
For sheer "I can't believe they even attempted this", two game that spring to mind are The Last Express and A Mind Forever Voyaging. Both have an insane amount of detail, especially considering the limitations they were working under.
ReplyDeleteFor convoluted plots, I'd go with Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Rose Tattoo. I've played it twice, many years ago, and I still have only the foggiest idea what's going on. One moment I'm investigating a terrorist attack, the next I'm giving violin lessons to some crazy old lady. Great stuff, I'm sure, but I remember being frustrated by how sluggish the game felt, with one particular animation being repeated ad nauseam.
I might go with Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in the "best" category. The implementation was also spot-on - a great adventure game!
ReplyDeleteIn the "worst" category, Man Enough. (said)
DeleteWhen Morpheus was researching the games for 1994, this was a potential for the list. My response was just a simple, hard NO.
DeleteAgreed, I'm impressed someone in the industry took more notice of it than "well, that exists".
DeleteI looked up Man Enough and read a PC Gamer review by Richard Cobbett and that was enough for me. It makes Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties seem like a masterpiece by comparison.
DeleteI think Man Enough could dubiously be called a TECHNICAL improvement over Plumbers, but it is a markedly more hateful and repugnant story
Deletemmm.. Ive been thinking for a while, and I realised that most adventure games I played are not that complex in plot. I mean .. DOTT for example, you can explain it as a time travel adventure with 3 periods where you have to save the world from a mutated tentacle. Crazy, with creative puzzles, but in the end it's not super complex plotwise.
ReplyDeleteI would say, Sherlock Holmes Rose Tattoo, which was already mentioned, I love that game. It's one of the longest adventure games Ive ever played and it has tons of plots going on at the same time, lots of places to visit, lots of characters, it gets very complex after the first 2 hours of gameplay.
While there are long epics filled with journeys and subplots, at the other end of the spectrum one of the most memorable to me has always been the short but effective Chatroom.
ReplyDeleteFor me the best plot is in The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel. It got it all: murder! kidnapping! suicide! blackmail! The sequel, The Case of the Rose Tattoo I played it a very long time ago but I don't remember the plot
ReplyDeleteFor the best, there are so many to choose from, so I categorize them in genres:
ReplyDeleteHigh Adventure:
Obviously Indy and the Fate of Atlantis is the BESTEST EVAR.
Classic Revolution stuff are also top tier (Broken Sword 1, Beneath a Steel Sky)
(yes, BaSS is not a sci-fi in my book, but an excellent comic book conspiracy adventure)
Sci-fi:
Legend's serious games (Homeworld 1/2 and Mission Critical) are also great plot-wise.
Dig by Lucasarts gets a honorable mention, shame it feels so rushed. The concept is great though.
A Mind Forever Voyaging by Infocom. Text only, barely a game and still great.
Portal by Rob Swigart. Again, a text only "game". Think of a naive hip version of Neuromancer.
Comedy:
Eric the Unready, another Legend gem. Zany and follows its internal logic.
Curse of Monkey Island by youknowwho (the first two are great as a game, but the plot is just an excuse)
Mystery adventure:
Gabriel Knight 3 by Sierra (the first is a classic but disjointed, the second is a refinement but straightforward, the third is perfection story-wise. Shame about the moustache thing though)
Excavation of Hobbs Barrow by Cloak and Dagger (Whoopiiee! A "modern" game! Why it's here? Because it copies the Old Ones, eat yer heart out ye modern "existential" adventure game rubbish!)
Fantasy:
Death Gate by Legend (them again! These guys must know something!)
The Dark Eye: Memoria by Daedalic (when they were in their top form)
Quest for Glory 3 (the best story, but not necessary the best gameplay in the series)
.... and so on. Seriously, I can write a LOONG list here, but these were my top answers come to mind Mr Steve Harvey. Have I won Fast Money?
Morale: all of the "good ones" are old games. Y'know when adventure writers were great storytellers and not emo teens with a game engine.
So many great ones. Plot was obviously thin in the early days of adventure games due to technical constraints - I feel it was only once the CD era hit that writers could tell the story they wanted to. Grim Fandango has a great story, as does Broken Sword. Fate of Atlantis could easily have been the fourth Indy movie. Longest Journey and Beneath a Steel Sky had some great worldbuilding.
ReplyDeleteI also loved Discworld Noir. The first two Discworld games had an excuse plot of generic Discworld wackiness, but Noir had a unique plot, with some memorable characters and great twists. It managed to be a game well within the spirit of both Discworld and the Film Noir it was paying homage to, while being its own thing as well.
In more modern times, for all its flaws I thought the first Life is Strange had a really compelling plot (the less said about the sequels the better though).
The fart that killed everyone but that was more of a book and not a game.... Butt it was a very good story
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I have a "thing" for any game where you're wandering a place where something bad happened in the past and your explorations uncover the details of why. I think it started for me with Shivers, game whose core mechanic isn't really my thing (The Seventh Guest-style "self-contained set piece puzzles that for dubious reasons unlock doors"), but it's got multiple layers of revealed story about the past victims in the museum that drew me in.
ReplyDeleteI generally prefer the stakes to be significant but personal. So Full Throttle and Grim Fandango fit the bill, but The Longest Journey and the Broken Swords after the first one get a bit too... cartoonish?... with their need to save the world.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of cartoonish, though, I felt like Toonstruck handled this really well (Drew primarily setting out to save his own skin, but getting drawn more and more into the world, with the stakes rising and plot complicating as the villains demonstrate real agency).
Well, the last 20% or so of Police Quest IV goes off the rails from a police procedural to illogical crazy town so stay tuned for that.
ReplyDeleteThe best game plot? Planescape Torment, hands down. It has enough adventure game elements to fit on this blog, imho.
ReplyDelete