Driving to work at
Which makes me think this: why don't my games have any feel-good moments? You know, like the bit in Prince of Persia or God of War where you do a big finishing move, or doing a slow motion jump in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on a motorcycle after racing through narrow back alleys, or in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 where you pull off ‘The Equalizer’, or even in freakin’ Peggle when you hit a spiral at just the right angle and the little ball zips around the arc perfectly, leaving you reaching for the replay button.
I want to build feel good moments like these that will have players want to repeat the game just to see that part again. Perhaps it takes a sort of intuition to know how to build these moments - I sure can't think of an original way of doing it. Can adventure games even have moments like these?
Is this even the right thing to be aiming for? Is it better (if such a term can be applied to a thing such as game design where what is better and what is worse is often dependent on the subjective views of the individual player) to be aiming for a more memorable story/character/setting than to try and build Hollywood movie style moments that could arguably ‘cheapen’ a game?
Is there anyone who can actually answer these questions?
I’m sure that with some thought I’ll be able to come up with some ideas of how to do this in an adventure game. Until then, I guess I'll go back and watch my Peggle replays again. I'm sure they'll give me inspiration for this conundrum - otherwise I'm moving to building platformers ;)
7 comments:
I'd approach it through plot, which unfortunately is a tricky thing to get right. If you can engineer a twist in your game that gives players a "Oh woah" feeling then you know you've got talent. I would love to make a game with a Fight Club feel, where you enter the last act and suddenly everything is turned around. Can't think of any games that have managed that kind of thing though.
Well, to stay true to your examples, PEGGLE (and many other games) feature action, and have their "wow" moment build-in. Who couldn't help but feel proud and praised when rainbows, stars and Beethoven all meet to celebrate the end of a level?
Adventure games tell stories, and you can easily have "wow" moments in them, I'm sure. A cool line, a shocking revelation... but the crux is that a) players will have no way to save their game and replay from a point close to the "wow spot" easily and b) the "wow" might not hit everyone.
But: I still remember my "wow" when I played Anvil Of Dawn back in 1994 or so. It wasn't exactly an adventure, more storyladen RPG, but man! It was that good.
One of things that I try to do when coming up with game ideas/story-lines/screenplays is think: "What is the coolest scene that I, as the player, want to be in when playing a game?" And then try to jampack as many of those that I can into that game.
I think that's something that Half-Life 1 tried to do. It led the player straight from one adrenaline-pumping, Hollywood-esque scene to the next, until you finally completed the game.
Although I don't normally enjoy adventure games that feature a constant death threat as a means of making the game longer/more challenging/more interesting, but sometimes time-critical sequences in which you can die really add to the game a lot.
In Broken Sword 1 for example (which has been released as "Baphomet's Curse" in Germany, by the way, so I never understood what all that Broken Sword talk was about), you can die at certain points where you have to decide quickly, and you already sense the death threat before - the music starts to swell, the pace is getting faster...
I really enjoyed these moments, especially if I managed to survive at the first try, and because they were not Sierra-esque deaths (walk on the street - BANG, DEAD!), but were well introduced and scattered throughout the game, I didn't mind loading a saved game when I had died.
On the other hand, at some point you'll start saving like a madman, which can really mess up your playing experience, because (in my opinion) the constant saving makes you aware that you are playing a game. When you are really engrossed in the story, like in a good movie, you tend to forget all the "save game" stuff, but just keep on playing and playing - well, that's what Autosaves have been introduced for, I guess.
The important question is, have you located the place where the measures of sound level engage in competitions relating to their relative speeds as yet?
Wow, tons of responses!
OneDollar - Yep, I understand exactly what you are saying but the problem is not only going "I want my story to make people say this", but also having the knowledge and skill to make it do that. This is what I hope to learn.
Ghost - I get that these are "built in" and that doesn't bother me too much. I KNOW that they're leading me by the nose, but I don't care because it feels so good ;) I agree that not everyone will feel the "wow" the same, which is perhaps the reason I'm searching for other ways of hitting it.
TheJBurger - Interesting thoughts, and I admit I haven't really tried looking at it that way. I'll definitely give it a shot and see how I go - thanks for sharing the thought :)
Sebastian - This is something I've looked at a little bit, but the issue here is trying to find a balance between good and bad death sequences/timed events. Perhaps we'll try this sometime.
Ian - I knew I could rely on you to make a comment of this nature, my good man. You never let me down ;) Yes, I've found the place where the decibels race.
The main difference IMHO is that adventure games normally don't have timed action sequences.
Puzzle solving doesn't require fast reflexes, so there's no adrenaline rush.
When I solve a really difficult puzzle, I feel great, but I don't scream "Yes!", while I am known to do that when beating NES Tennis on level 5.
But why do I replay adventure games?
Police Quest I: mainly for the moving scene where Jack tells you his daughter died from drugs (which also gives the scene where you catch the drugdealer more impact)
King's Quest 6: The story & characters make me want to play it again. (The good puzzles also help.)
Gabriel Knight: Because I care about these people. (I don't even skip the historical information about Marie LeVeau.)
So: I find the reasons I replay games are mostly plot - I want to relive the story.
(Even Zelda: Link's Awakening I remember mainly for the romantic scene on the coast between Link and Marin.)
My advice would be: put some emotional scenes in there. Like the family row in the beginning of Ben Jordan 7. The death of a main character half way through also works great.
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