Real puzzles or just interactive movie?

[Thorba]

Has this game real puzzles (like a old school adventure fan like me loves) or is it just another interactive movie like the telltale games?
I was very disappointed with the way silence was going and have a bad feeling.

[Uyu]

Hi Thorba,

the game is focusing a lot on the narrative, on the characters and the relationships, and not so much on difficult puzzling. I suggest you watch this interview[www.gamereactor.eu] with Kevin Mentz. He is one of our authors and did both Dark Eye games: "Memoria" and "The Chains of Satinav".

[Thorba]

I was already expecting this but thx for the quick answer and the link.
Sadly the things i love most at adventures (hard but fair puzzles, many locations where i can choose to go, a bit nonlinearity) comes very short at most of the newer games.
I will read a review first before i make my final choice about buying it but i wish you guys good luck.

[kaffeesatz]

I really hope daedalic isn't becoming telltale 2.0.

[amesigo]

Originally posted by kaffeesatz:

I really hope daedalic isn't becoming telltale 2.0.

Sadly it seems to be exactly like that... I liked Chains of Satinav and LOVED Memoria, in my opinion Memoria was the best adventure game since the LucasArts legends of the 1990's.

Now with the Pillars of Earth it seems that Daedalic wants to copy the succesful "Telltale-Format".

[ProgSys]

I get the feeling it will be like Silence. Really extremely beautiful but kinda pointless...

[Pat's Cat]

I'm fine with Daedalic trying something new (although it seems a bit like a copy of the Telltale formula), but please don't neglect classic point & click adventures.

I'll give it a try though, although I didn't really like the book. Too cliched and in your face for my taste. I mean, if you characterize your bad guy by being ugly as hell and a r.apist (jeez, Steam)... well, let's just say it's not exactly Dostojewski. ;)
But hey, you've got good writers, you might actually pull it off to make the story better than the one in the book.

[FrozenTrout]

Originally posted by amesigo:

Originally posted by kaffeesatz:

I really hope daedalic isn't becoming telltale 2.0.

Sadly it seems to be exactly like that... I liked Chains of Satinav and LOVED Memoria, in my opinion Memoria was the best adventure game since the LucasArts legends of the 1990's.

Now with the Pillars of Earth it seems that Daedalic wants to copy the succesful "Telltale-Format".

I didn't much care for CoS, but Memoria is one of my top P&C adventure games of all time. Just so well done, in every aspect. The only negative thing I can say about it is that it really requires having played CoS to know the returning characters and why you should care about them.
That said, I'm totally okay with less puzzle/more narrative and cinematic games. They open the field to people who otherwise aren't interested in traditional P&C games. My dad doesn't like games fullstop, but he loves playing the newer Telltale games with me, since they're essentially interactive shows (and there's nothing wrong with that). I just hope Daedalic don't abandon the P&C puzzle style games completely, the genre is still near and dear to my heart and they've really polished the form.

[Francis_Mallman]

I used to love adventure games - but the days of me staring at my inventory, wondering which item to use and how, are over.

[Ailes]

Originally posted by amesigo:

Originally posted by kaffeesatz:

I really hope daedalic isn't becoming telltale 2.0.

Sadly it seems to be exactly like that... I liked Chains of Satinav and LOVED Memoria, in my opinion Memoria was the best adventure game since the LucasArts legends of the 1990's.

Now with the Pillars of Earth it seems that Daedalic wants to copy the succesful "Telltale-Format".

I loved CoS and Memoria, but not necessarily because they had "proper" puzzling but for their great characters, for the story, the art and the lore (which I'm not sure how much can be credited to Daedalic since The Dark Eye isn't their intellectual property), so I'm not sure myself how to feel about Daedalic seemingly abandoning their roots and following the path that Telltale, Quantic Dream and the likes have carved.

*** SOME SEMI-SPOILERS FOR CHAINS OF SATINAV AND MEMORIA INCOMING ***

That being said, I would love to see the story of Sadja and the staff continued. I wouldn't mind seeing (and hearing, I loved the English voice actors) Geron and Nuri again too, but because of the two different endings of Memoria it would probably be difficult to pick up those characters again, whose stories at any rate feel kinda finished. But not the ones from Sadja and the staff. There is still more that can be done with them. Memoria effectively ends with the notion that they haven't finished their own adventuring yet. Sadja deserves another chance. Her ending in Memoria is pretty sad. It wouldn't do her justice leaving her like this.

Originally posted by Francis_Mallman:

I used to love adventure games - but the days of me staring at my inventory, wondering which item to use and how, are over.

Yes, but keep in mind that it certainly isn't working like back then (like, LucasArts era or so). Chains of Satinav and Memoria, and other Daedalic adventures I played, have features that - if enabled - can help you advance if you aren't feeling like having your brain melt. This is how developers can, and should, adapt to the casuals without hampering the experience of those who still wish for proper gameplay. So, techncially, there is no reason some serious puzzling couldn't be there. Anyone who wouldn't want to do it could just get handholded through it (there are actually some puzzles in Deponia you can really just skip by the press of one button if I remember correctly).

The real question is whether Daedalic wants to deal with the efforts needed for coming up with such puzzles or if the man- and brainpower for that isn't better used deepening the story, characters, and world further - polishing anything that might be neglected if they had to think about puzzles too. An adventure game can have the most mindbending puzzles ever, but if you end up looking up walkthroughs, drop the game out of frustration, or having a game that (minus the puzzles) is actually terrible short in the places you visit and story you experience then what's the point in designing them in the first place?

I feel equally torn about "your choices matter". When playing Telltale games I am often thinking "Couldn't this episode have been longer, the whole story longer, that character explored further if they hadn't had to take player choices into consideration?". Because it's kinda the same here: What are choices and branching stories worth if the majority of the players will perhaps never explore those alternate routes? The experience they get may still be different to the ones from others (it may have a different "flavor" even if the main story won't change), and in that give reason for them discussing the game with others (that is also a boon of episodic releases: People discuss the game as the episodes are released, a kind of exchange you don't see in games that are fully released on day 1).

But I can tell you that I rarely replay games these days. Not even if they have zero gameplay to speak of. One go and that's it. If I can save and reload shorter portions to explore the short-term consequences of my actions than that is okay and usually finds my attention. But anything beyond has been tiring me in the past, I don't want to tire me out on one game for all eternity. So, if branches are tossed in I in the end only get to see parts of what is there, to my own slight frustration and probably to the disappointment of the developers. I end up with a shorter game, a less explored world, not as fleshed out characters and stories just because some people still want to believe in this illusion of choice only to get disappointed over and over.

Choices rarely or never matter, and if they do only in a calculated small set. Doesn't matter if we're talking Telltale or more genuine RPGs. And that is to be expected. Choices can only affect so much before the branching would get messy, out of hands, and the efforts to design all that totally over the heads of what any developer could handle. These totally natural restrictions of game design are what many still don't seem to understand, and why Telltale has managed to disappoint a good chunk of their customers lately (I've seen the good reviews of their latest Batman game, but I dunno, looks like many were disappointed with The Walking Dead: A New Frontier and that should've been their flagship if you ask me).

[Old_Albert]

sad. I mean - adventure games had their share of problems with sometimes non-logical puzzles, but the solution is to make good logical puzzles not to dumb everything down to "interactive movie". I'm here to play games. Thimbleweed Park was such a treat, oh well..

Telltale formula traded gameplay for "choice" that doesn't matter. So factually traded gameplay for nothing. And their QTEs is just pathetic "look, there's some gameplay! push a button!". Sad to see Daedalic chasing dat "minecraft story mode"-money, what a shame.

[Please be nice to me!]

Memoria was my GOTY 2013. Such a well done game! I only played prologue and the first act of PoE yesterday but i already love it as much. Though i really like classic point & click gameplay and dislike telltale formula, and PoE more like a mix of both which is fine in this case. I hope it doesn't affect future daedalic adventures much.
That being said i also really hope Daedalic will soon give us some new info on the Devil's Man and that game will be like Memoria gameplay wise or other early daedalic games.
Also i think Kevin Mentz is the man who makes all those games so great and comfy. Pls don't lay off him or anything like that.