Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
THE HEROIC QUEST
The majority of adventure games fall into the category of heroic quests, each one a
mission by a single individual to accomplish some great (or, in the case of
Leisure
Suit Larry,
not-so-great) feat. You can imagine adventure games structured along
other lines but will find few on the market that don't adhere to the heroic quest
scenario. Although it's possible to write an adventure game based on a detailed
character study, no one has done so as a commercial product.
The heroic quest traditionally involves a movement from the familiar to the unfa-
miliar and from a time of low danger to a time of great danger. The biggest, most
dramatic climax you offer the player should be the last major climax in the game
because anything that follows is likely to seem irrelevant. Remember that the boss
enemies appear at the ends of levels in action games; if you defeat the Lord of
Terror, it feels anticlimactic and rather unfair to have to fight his second-in- com-
mand afterward.
Occasionally exceptions to this structure arise, such as in stories in which the hero
is abducted at the beginning, escapes, and must return to his home. However, in
these stories, the protagonist's struggles don't get easier and easier until he just
strolls in happily. He often returns home to find that things have changed for the
worse and must be corrected or that he must leave again to hunt down his abductor.
None of this means that there can't ever be periods of quiet; in fact, there should
be. In both of J. R. R. Tolkien's most famous topics,
The Hobbit
and
The Lord of the
Rings
, periods of great danger alternate with periods of safety and rest for the
heroes, during which they regain their strength. A long story that consists of noth-
ing but action will feel unrealistic and silly after a while.
The works of Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler discuss the heroic quest at
length. (See the references for details.)
THE PROBLEM OF DEATH
For many years, game designers have debated the question of whether adventure
games should allow the player to make a fatal mistake. Some adventure games
proudly advertise on their boxes that the avatar can't ever die; the manuals of other
games warn that the player might encounter mortal danger. In some respects, this
seems like a strange thing to worry about. After all, avatars routinely die in action
games and in flight simulator crashes, so why shouldn't they be able to die in
adventure games?
The nature of the gameplay makes the question controversial. In a first-person
shooter or a military flight simulator, it's obvious that the avatar is in mortal peril
all the time. In fact, in games of most genres, it's win or lose, kill or be killed by
clearly marked enemies, all the time. Adventure games differ because they seldom
provide an explicitly declared enemy; instead, the game encourages the player to go
everywhere and touch everything. If you tell the player to explore the world and
