Despite the very same flaws, my favorite Sierra game was Laura Bow - The Colonel’s Bequest. When I was a kid I never actually understood it, we played with all our friends and it was enough for us that we got once to the “ending” - that is, making the game end without dying - and we called it a day and never replayed it.
When I grew up, I replayed it and found out that I was missing basically ALL of the game. I had to play it tens of times in order to understand you needed more and more iterations to unlock everything. The clock advancing meant you basically discovered something new and some new situations might have arisen - or, totally missed something. So, for example, if you were supposed to check out a location at 8:30 but went directly to check for the corpse, the clock advanced to 8:45 and that important hint was gone forever.
Once you accept that the game is like that, where the goal isn’t to get to the end but instead to iterate (after the end screen you can see stats on what you missed, like “people befriended - none” written in red, giving you hints for the next play), it becomes more interesting. It is fortunately a quite short game, once you know what to do you can get to the ending in an hour or so, so it’s not that frustrating, and getting to new locations or finding new hints gives you the same thrill you get in an “usual” adventure. It is however frustrating for people who are used to Lucas-style adventures where you just get to the end and that’s it, and if sometimes you stop and think “I got there only because I knew that Tizio and Caio were in that room at that time”.
I never got to 100% because my PC died and after I got a new one I had more important things to do than re-install the game and begin playing again - I was writing my PhD thesis - but I think I’ll resume it someday, because it frustrates me: twenty years trying to solve that *beep*ing game and still no 100% ending.
Good! I think this is the solution to fix the porthole puzzle. You need to find a note with “let’s meet in your cabin at 11:50 AM”
And suppose they had put some clue of this kind, but I missed it. I look at the walkthrough, read the solution, and think that the game sucks. And I do a bad review. How can the game let me understand that it’s my fault, not its fault?
One possible solution: before solving a puzzle, the character should think aloud and explain the reason why looking at that porthole at that time makes sense. In general, he should explain why it makes sense to try that action. This would also force the designers to stay “honest”. Most often, they would realize the puzzle is bad, because once you spell out loud the exact reasoning to solve that puzzle, they would realize it’s not very logical.
going back to the original problem (the frustration trying everything over and over): there is another more general solution I think: after time advances, they could simply show a short cut scene with all the locations where something changed. (eg, show the bar, so the player sees that now there is someone drinking there., Or show the butler room , so the player understand that now there is someone inside, and if you open the door, it will work). For the porthole, this can’t be done, because it would be a spoiler. But in most cases, it would work. Don’t you think?
Colonel’s Bequest: I really like the setting, the graphics and the atmosphere. I also like the text UI that forces you to think. But… I found the story uninteresting and uninspired. I wasn’t able to finish it, even though I discovered secrets. Probably I discovered some secrets too late, and I wasn’t able to listen to the right stuff at the right time. However, I can’t accept this:
I can’t even totally explain why I can’t accept it, but I can’t
Probably it’s that I don’t want to relisten to the same dialogs over and over.
Cruise for a Corpse does not have this problem, BTW.
You don’t really have to listen… I mean, you can skip them but, for example, if you start the game and you enter the Colonel’s room from the door, you just see the maid giving him a kiss and it goes to 8:15, but if you already know that there’s a secret passage to spy all rooms you can spy that moment and understand more about their relationship. It still goes to 8:15 but the effect is different. And in subsequent plays, you already know what you needed to know, so you skip with the esc key. It’s tedious that you have to remember to do it every time you play, yes.
with a book, it’s easy to go back and reread something, and then go forward again. You don’t need to reread everything to get back to your bookmark.
with games, it’s not as simple. if you restore an old savegame, and change something, the future changes. So you need to replay everything, while instead you only want to see the difference. You only want the part of the future that changed with your action in the past. So, I think the game should somehow highlight the changes you made to the future, and present all the rest greyed-out. or something like that. it could even repeat all your actions automatically, until it meets an action that can’t be performed because the future has changed.
Well, it could be simple, respectively there are two general solutions:
Stop the clock until the player has discovered all necessary events. For example if the player had to listen to a discussion at 11:30h, it remains 11:30h in the game until the player had actually listen to the discussion.
Make events optional. This is how Sunset did it (Sunset on Steam). In my example the players doesn’t need to listen to the discussion at 11:30h. They won’t miss something.
I personally didn’t like “The Last Express” and “Colonel’s Bequest” due to the fact, that you have to play several parts of the game over and over again. (Some Infocom adventures did this too - AFAIR Deadline.) In “The Last Express” you have even only one save slot: If you discover near the end of the game that you missed something, you have to (literally ;)) rewind the whole game. This “rewinding” is the same as the bookmark in a book, btw. But it doesn’t work. Even in a book I don’t want to go back and reread something.
If you make an adventure game with timed events, you have to make sure that there are enough hints for the player, so that he/she/it can decide when and where he/she/it wants to go.
Yes, this is the Cruise for a Corpse solution. And the obvious solution, actually.
With the example that Guga gave, this means that, if you go check the body, time does not advance, until you also check the other location and find the clue.
But then the question becomes: why did Colonel’s Bequest not do this obvious thing? What is it that would not have worked ?
or achievements maybe. but this can’t be done for important events, of course.
What you say about “the last express” is terrible… I am going to play it nonetheless.
Are you sure? It’s awhile ago since I last played it, but as far as I remember there were some events that could be missed…
Because the developers didn’t care. It’s a Sierra game. Think about the odd situations in which you can die. Sierra produced one adventure after another and they had a poor quality assurance IMHO.
Well, at least the graphics are interesting: They used rotoscoping on/with real actors.
Well, I played it two days ago. Not finished yet. I assume if something could be missed, I would have missed it and got stuck. (unless it is only revealed at the end…)
I suppose for the same thing I posted earlier - at 8:00 there’s an event you can experience in two ways, one by entering a room and one by spying. However, if it’s your first play, you’ll surely enter that room interrupting that event and that’s it. The event is gone, and it’s your fault
You know you can spy from another location only after you learn about the spying locations… which is quite impossible to get right on the very first try
Hm… I could swear that you can miss some of the events … But maybe I mix this up with the Last Express. So please report when you have finished the game.
Right. how could Roberta Williams have done better in this case? possible solution: you enter the room, you surprise the colonel talking to the maid, but he kicks you out saying “we are busy, go away”. Time does not advance until you understand you have to to spy them from the hole. It would have been a very nice puzzle actually.
I agree. But that would have been a completely different game
I repeat, you have to accept that it’s not your “usual” adventure game, where by “usual” I mean “the wonderful and perfect design our mighty god Ron gave us with Monkey Island”.
We also have to think that it’s a 1989 game, a time where AGs as we know them weren’t already well established. And, we’re talking Sierra OnLine, those who made you die just because they felt like it so, all in all, it’s not that bad.
- but I think I’ll resume it someday, because it frustrates me: twenty years trying to solve that *beep*ing game and still no 100% ending.
but, for example, if you start the game and you 