It's no secret that adventure games, such as Grim Fandango and The Longest Journey, have a special place in my heart. Without them, I most likely wouldn't have gotten interested in game designing in the first place.I just recently finished Another Code: Two Memories (known as Trace Memory in North America), the developer Cing's first graphic adventure for the Nintendo DS. I had already played their masterpiece Hotel Dusk: Room 215 earlier this year and since I had heard that the two games are rather similar, my expectations were high. In the end, Another Code wasn't quite what I was hoping for, but I'm not disappointed - after all, Cing is doing wonders to the genre. Along with a few other developers, they're keeping adventure games alive and well and bringing out new elements to the table besides the usual inventory and item puzzles. I'm definitely looking forward to what other ideas they've got up their sleeve.
There is one certain design, or lack thereof, in Another Code that I want to discuss. I've thought about the importance of this particular feature before and now that I've seen it done badly, I simply cannot stop myself from writing a rant. I'm talking about the comments the game's main character makes when the player examines different objects and environments - moreover, comments that also reflect the character's personality.
As we all know, the genre focuses heavily on story telling. Aside from the smart puzzles, the story is the main reason why most players pick up an adventure game in the first place, and they expect it to make them cry, laugh or sigh in amazement. And what is the heart of any good story? The characters, of course.
In adventure games, the main character's personality is usually shown little by little through conversations with non-playable characters, but in many games the NPCs are scarce and the designers can't rely on them alone to make their character believable.
That's where the comments come in - there's no better way to get to know a person than to learn about the way they view the world, after all. An old desk is never the same object for different people; one person cannot understand why it hasn't been thrown away yet, other would love to have it in her room, and someone is reminded of the summers he used to spend with his uncle.
This is where Another Code went badly wrong. Examining objects always lead to the same, boring comments: "It's a red lamp." "It's a chair". The player does not do anything with such info - not when he can tell what it is by simply looking at it. Either teach us something new about the environment, a current puzzle or the main character, or don't bother at all. As Ernest Adams would say: "Bad game designer, no Twinkie!"
There are games that have nailed this design exceptionally well, and The Longest Journey for the PC is one of them. The main character is April Ryan, a witty 18-year old student, but we probably wouldn't have gotten to know half of her personality if examining even the simplest of objects hadn't resulted in her sarcastic insights. And The Longest Journey went even further than that, also letting the player read a regularly updated diary which retold the game's past events in a manner that made it feel like it was truly written by April herself.
It's no wonder that April is often said to be one of the most memorable video game characters.
The Longest Journey
I'll mention one more example, Syberia. While the game otherwise was wonderfully designed, I never quite got a hang of what kind of person Kate Walker, the main character, really was. Even though it's a point-and-click game, which makes exploration very easy, there was no way to examine anything else than active objects. Luckily, the game had plenty of colorful characters and chances to have conversations with them so it didn't bother us too much.
I can't stress this feature enough. It might seem unsignificant, but if done right, it can give the characters much more depth.
- TM
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