Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
As adventure games became larger and began to include a more detailed story,
designers started to break them into chapters (see Figure 19.7 ). The player could
wander around all he liked in the area devoted to a given chapter, but when he
moved on to the next chapter, the story advanced and there was no way back. This
made the story more linear, which made it both easier to write for and easier to pro-
gram. If the player needed to take a particular object from one chapter to the next,
the story would not let him progress until that object was in his inventory. This
arrangement is functionally identical to the foldback story structure I describe in
Chapter 7. In a foldback story, the player has some dramatic freedom, but his
options eventually narrow to a single inevitable event before they branch out
again. In adventure games, this inevitable event is normally the transition to the
next chapter.
FIGURE 19.7
The structure of
story-driven adventure
games
E
S
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
With the arrival of 3D graphics and the action-adventure, the stories became more
linear still. Areas occasionally offered simple side branches but few complex spaces
to explore. The space in an action-adventure is structured more like that of an
indoor first-person shooter (see Figure 19.8 ), because action-adventures emphasize
conflict challenges (often shooting and fighting) over exploration. A good many
action-adventures have a lot more action than they do adventuring.
FIGURE 19.8
The structure of action-
adventure games
S
E
 
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