This game is for Tim's daughter, not the backers; and it still fails.

[Felipepepe]

Back on the kickstarter, we were promised a old-school adventure game, in the line of Lucasart's classics, with a nice image of Day of the Tentacle as example.

We got nothing like that. Broken Age Act 1 is a banal and extremely simple game, with tablet controls and UI, obvious puzzles and clear focus on animation and storytelling, not gameplay. For those who saw the documentary, the first big sign of how Tim's goals were confused was how he always thought of how to please his daughter. Tim Schafer wanted to do a cute animated game for his daughter, so he blew up all the budget on animation, art and voice acting, and forgot to add any fun gameplay.

The sad thing is that all that art & animation was never needed. Everyone who played the Lucasarts classics as a kid knows that never once you felt that Guybrush was badly animated, or that Loom's graphics were too simple. You just immersed into that magical world the developers had done, having fun with the puzzles, even if it took weeks.

Tim Schafer failed two times: He lied to the backers by not making a old school game; and he made a game for his daughter that is all style and no content, like a expensive toy that plays by itself.

In the end, Broken Age is a cute and well-animated story, and just that. Great if that's what you like, but that isn't what we were promised; to me this is a huge dissapointment and a disingenuous use of all the hard-earned money that old-school fans trusted into Tim's hands.

[Haba]

There isn't anything to debate here, really. Broken Age is a broken promise. There is not a single shred of "old school" adventure in this title, and very little "game" either. It wouldn't be a problem if this game wasn't explicitly advertised as a quote: "a classic point-and-click adventure".

A lot of people may enjoy it, some fans of modern adventure "games" interactive movies may even judge it to be "good". Doesn't change the fact that Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions misled their fans and failed to deliver what they promised.

Broken Age is a product that does exactly what all the publisher-backed big titles have done for the past decades: plays it safe, avoids risks and relies on audiovisual candy to hide the inherit shallowness of the game itself.

You can like it, I'm not denying you the right to your opinion. But please do not pretend that it is what we were lead to believed it would be.

[gamer]

I don't think anyone here has actually played what is considered a modern adventure game.

[Termix]

The simple puzzles are one thing, the length another. The thing that bothered me most was the story, because after playing Vella and starting with Shay I was like "oh please don't let the story turn out like this"....

[TheTurnipKing]

Publicado originalmente por I'm actually a videogame:

I don't think anyone here has actually played what is considered a modern adventure game.

I dunno. Emerald City Noir was pretty good. So were the Blackwell games.

[Wisebl00d]

Publicado originalmente por Felipepepe:

Back on the kickstarter, we were promised a old-school adventure game, in the line of Lucasart's classics, with a nice image of Day of the Tentacle as example.

Even during the adventure game hey-days in the 90's, there was a gradual shift towards simplifying the interface. I dont think the UI used in Broken Age is that different to some of the last great adventure games of the 90's from Sierra or Lucasarts. I also think there is nothing wrong with trying to open up this genre of games to a new audience which require (yes unfortunately) a shift in accessability.

Also, the complaint about the game (act 1 at least) being too simple could also be a product of the way the game was designed. Because it was originally planned as a single release the difficulty in puzzles was probably strictly linear. The problem is now that the game is being released in two acts so we will not get the harder puzzles until Act 2.

Personally I've really enjoyed Act 1. The art is fantastic, the voice acting is AAA on a shoe string budget, and the game put a smile on my face constantly which doesnt happen much these days.

[AuldWolf]

@OP

Oh, zombie gamers.

I'm always disappointed to see that someone will dismiss a game based upon such trite criteria as mechanics or length. I've said in the past that there are games which, I feel, judge the player as much as the player is judging the game. And the opinion the player has of the game is often a direct indictment of their own critical capacities.

You are given beauty, imagination, and novelty.

You are given peerless efforts of intrigue, character, and writing.

You are given charismatic eccentricities aplenty.

You are given the kind of profound cleverness that would make a timelord blush.

You are given intelligent, high-brow humour (warp and woof is a fabulous pun).

You are given what is hands-down one of the most genuinely fascinating and engaging settings to ever grace a game.

And you admonish it because you can't pigeonhole it into your ever-so-quaintly rigid notions of what an adventure game must be? That it didn't satisfy your need for that particularly repugnant brand of inventory puzzles where one would have to be wasted on booze and DMT to even begin to understand what the developers were thinking?

This shows your character flaws.

So, it didn't have inventory puzzles dreamed up by happy home inmates, instead choosing to be a beautiful thing that everyone could enjoy. And? That doesn't make it a bad game, it just means that you're too outdated to appreciate it.

What's worse is that you're probably bloody half my age, and I was likely playing text adventures when you were in diapers.

And because of that, should I admonish your favourite adventures because they don't require an incredibly comprehensive understanding of word-play (sometimes in more than one language)? Of course not!

Broke Age is a brilliant game.

You're just not a brilliant enough of a person to be able to appreciate it. You're limited, staid, and just not self aware enough. If you were able to enjoy it for what it was, it would have brought you joy, as it did so for me. And, frankly, you were never advertised ridiculous invenotry puzzles at all, I know this as I was with the Kickstarter from the beginning, too. That's just something you've implied.

So... do try to wake up. Be a better person, and enjoy one of the better games to have been released in a good while. Though you'll probably continue to be a zombie and my words will fall on deaf ears, you'll remain blissfully asleep to the rest of the self aware world, living in the past, whilst everyone else moves on without you.

You're like Rush Limbaugh to my Stephen Fry.

[AuldWolf]

Publicado originalmente por Haba:

There is not a single shred of "old school" adventure in this title, and very little "game" either.

Poppycock! I want to lash out at you for your zombified, outdated definitions, but I've already done that with someone else and I don't care to argue semantics too much.

What bothers me is that people like you have no soul, no heart, no imagination, and no mind with which to appreciate what made adventure games great. The Longest Journey is perhaps the best example, here, which I call to the fore now to illustrate just how completely wrong you are about everything.

What was it that made The Longest Journey amazing?

You'd probably tell me that it was the inventory puzzles, of all things, that made that game so utterly sublime. To the contrary, I'd say they were a detriment that acted against a game that could have been better without them. What made adventure games so breathtaking was their brazen boldness. The average adventure game was anywhere between the truly fantastic and the exquisitely impossible.

What happens in adventure game land, stays in adventure game land.

ToonStruck, Syberia, Day of the Tentacle, Myst, Grim Fandango, Discworld Noir, Tex Murphy, The Dig, and so, so many more. The Dig, especially, is notable because it was too niche, too strange, to be a film. It failed as a film because the people with a monetary stake in it felt that it would simply go over the heads of a mainstream movie-going audience, so it lived on as an adventure game.

And whilst RPGs were stuck in a rut, being almost exclusively about swords & sorcery in Little Germany/England, adventure games were striding into the incredible.

I played adventure games because they could wow me.

Adventure games, of all genres, were the crazy-haired man around the fireplace, telling the most unbelievable yet completely captivating stories imaginable; waving his hands, sounding insane, and looking like he was ready to be committed, and you loved every minute of his company.

When I think of old school adventures, that's what I reminisce about. It's not the god awful inventory puzzles that everyone hated back then. I think that most gamers of my age at the time realised that the only reason they were there was to a.) convince shareholders that those adventure games could work as conventional games, and b.) to make lots and lots of money via expensive hint hotlines and cheat books with the more impossible puzzles.

What made adventure gaming great? Raw, unbridled imagination. No one to tell you that you couldn't do something, writers unchained. Unchained. No holds-barred batpoop craziness for the ages. And we loved it. Us true adventure gaming fans, anyway.

Then we have poseurs like you, who're hung up on the mechanics, trying to look like you're part of the cool kids' club. You're really not. You have no idea of what made adventure games great.

Tim clearly does, conversely.

You're the figurative child in the woods -- lost, bewildered, and out of your element. You're just unable to cope with the idea that there are people who saw more in adventures than the limited experience you had.

For people like you who saw only the inventory puzzles...

For people like you who missed out on all the jaw-agape, wide-eyed wonder...

I feel sorry for you. I genuinely do. I feel sorry for you.

Publicado originalmente por Haba:

It wouldn't be a problem if this game wasn't explicitly advertised as a quote: "a classic point-and-click adventure".

It is that.

You're just not able to perceive it as such because your perceptions are woefully limited, which is hardly the fault of the game, now is it?

Publicado originalmente por Haba:

Broken Age [...] does exactly what all the publisher-backed big titles have done for the past decades: plays it safe, avoids risks [...]

It clearly doesn't. Even those 'interactive movies' you so despise are a limited audience. Something like Broken Age is going to go over the heads of most people and it's going to make them angry because it made them feel stupid. You're the perfect example of that. Frankly, I'd say that's as risky as risky can be.

It could have had a boring story, a real world setting, and nonsensical puzzles which required hint books. That would have made you happy, but it also would have been safe, and risk-averse. You're being a snake-oil salesman, here, as you're trying to sell something truly fantastic as something mundane, when the opposite is true. Your evaluations are pointedly ironic. If your perception of 'risky' is correct, then I want everyone to 'play it safe.'

The truth is, though, that you're wrong. Broken Age is very individual, and those lacking the self awareness and understanding to appreciate it are going to lash out at it for being so very individual. It dares to be different, your scream is undoubtedly 'how dare you?' Yes, indeed, how dare you, Broken Age, how dare you be different.

Publicado originalmente por Haba:

Do not pretend that it is what we were lead to believed it would be.

It's actually better than what I was expecting. I thought they'd play to the peanut gallery and create a plodding, safe point & click adventure. Instead, they created something truly singular and memorable, something that's going to last and be remembered decades from now.

Sadly, your name and your complaints won't be. People will be playing this game for years to come, and you'll just be festering in your rot-pit of limited thinking and bile-lined hatred.

[evdk]

Publicado originalmente por AuldWolf:

Sadly, your name and your complaints won't be. People will be playing this game for years to come, and you'll just be festering in your rot-pit of limited thinking and bile-lined hatred.

Or alternatively playing a game from Daedalic, Wadjet Eye or Crystal Shard.

[Felipepepe]

Publicado originalmente por Wisebl00d:

I also think there is nothing wrong with trying to open up this genre of games to a new audience which require (yes unfortunately) a shift in accessability.

Don't you find contradictory that you ask your old fans to make one of those games from the past they have always loved, and when they give you the money you start to adapt it to new audiences?

Is like John Romero went to kickstarter for a old-school shooter, in the lines of DOOM, but then he releases a cover-based shooter with regenerating health, because that's what the new audience likes... and when you point that out, fanboys start to attack you, saying that "no one even liked rocket jumps".

I understand that he will make more money like this, and get tons of new fans, but I can't but feel that I was just used. He took the money of the old fans, to develop something for the new ones, it was extremely dishonest of him.

[monoculo_jim]

Publicado originalmente por AuldWolf:

*extremely* long winded and self indulgent rant

It does seem like someone was made to feel a bit stupid playing classic adventure games. Did something happen to your head after your savant-solver-of-arcane-wordplay-riddles-in-text-adventures (in multiple languages) phase? Still holding a grudge after all this time? Please tell us which part of Day of the Tentacle's sublime and exquisitely crafted inventory puzzles you didn't quite get even after looking it up in a guide, we may be able to help.

[5M0k1N]

Publicado originalmente por AuldWolf:

You'd probably tell me that it was the inventory puzzles, of all things, that made that game so utterly sublime. To the contrary, I'd say they were a detriment that acted against a game that could have been better without them.

personally id say both are really important. i wont get inmersed too much or connect too much if im just breezing through the game with simple puzzles. the sense of struggle is important after all