I don’t remember a game where going through ALL dialog options was mandatory for solving.
In fact, my three favorite adventure games - Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2 and Thimbleweed Park - have just a couple of puzzles that must be unlocked by dialog.
But I went through EVERY line nevertheless. I mean, every single one. As in “tree that falls in the forest and nobody is listening and its color is all of them”. Why? Because that’s the best part of adventure games.
Zak would surely profit from having the chance to talk with everyone, just as every game would profit if combining all the objects had an outcome other than “it doesn’t work”.
I’m in the intersection, and so are my best friends who are into adventure games. I don’t see why the overlap should be small, it’s not like witty dialogue is incompatible with good puzzles. We’re in the Thimbleweed Park forum, a game that is remarkable in both…
Do we talk about the “talk” verb in general or in Zak McKracken?
You asked if we would like to have the “talk” verb in Zak McKracken. If you don’t change the puzzles and just add the possibility to talk to other characters then talking wouldn’t be necessary. But it would make the world more interesting and (as @tasse-tee pointed out above) it would feel more natural if you can talk to a character. And with “talk” you could remove some flaws the game has. For example the player could recall some information and/or get more hints.
That wouldn’t be his in-game name, of course. He could be a philosopher who has seemingly random revelations, that actually tell you that you’ve reached a dead end. And how.
Example: if you wasted all the paper, he would make a comment about trees.
I will have to strain those nerves a bit longer… and let expectations grow a bit more…
I will post THE ULTIMATE REPLY tomorrow morning…
probably.
It still has to pass through the age rating bodies… I’m hoping for PG-12
@uriel here I am, I had a really tough working day.
The “read” verb can be used like the “look” verb, indeed.
Maybe with the ability to talk to people through a specific verb, it would have increased the amount of dialogs. But I think this game is perfect as-is.
I agree only partially, because you can’t foresee some of them. And we know the dead ends. Imagine a new player who doesn’t even know that there are dead ends. In addition at least the C64 version had/has only a limited amount of save game files. So you have to (re-)play several parts of the game.
Yes. Which is part of the gameplay of games like MM or Zak and IMHO fine. (You don’t have to read thousands of dialog lines or are forced to watch through hours of cutscenes. If you know what you are doing you can complete MM in 0.5h and Zak I think in 1h.)
For examples of unfair dead ends I especially remember some from MM, e.g. having to fetch the package without any alternative isn’t nice. Also being able to waste the paint remover on nearly every single object wasn’t a great idea.
But if you do something like taking off with the van in Zak you better make a save game beforehand (otherwise it’s your fault).
I don’t agree with you: If I have to replay a game just because I forgot - for example - to write down an important information then this is annoying IMHO.
Yes, it was more of a quest log.
I completely ignored them after discovering this. I wanted to do this by myself.
Yeah, but those mentioned times are times average players can do when they know the steps to complete the game.
Have you played those games? You die just by looking too long at your feet.
In MM and Zak deaths are mostly fair. Don’t expect something good if you give Ed the remains of his hamster back. Also: death by snu snu! (yes, this one is quite random…)
Yes, this is true. Maybe you can’t do this in modern games but I think it’s OK to have to write down stuff like a combination of a safe. Most of the time you can repeat the action to get this information though (talking about MM and Zak).
