Monday, May 05, 2008
The Longest Journey: Could be shorter
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7 Comments:
Yeah, that sounds like it would be much more fun if they cut out all the fantasy elements and just had her sitting around in cafes talking about guys. That would be an amazing game. Maybe she can go to work in an office and do some data entry too. Fucking idiot.
Man, you like... TOTALLY pwned me with this comment. Because OBVIOUSLY everything without FANTASY like TOTALLY sucks and it's just like a matter of time until the world wakes up. Duh.
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I appreciate every comment so please do post you opinions. However, I will remove further posts with foul language. Insulting people is not ok kids, not even on the Internet.
I liked the game, even with all the flaws. I was most annoyed by the somewhat convoluted way to solve some puzzles. Either you miss some obscure object, or the game expects too much imagination from your part--the solution to some puzzles doesn't actually make much sense--use a rubber duck to keep a tool open? Please. There's also the annoying retracing of your path back and forth. All these things were easy to forgive, because of the immersing universe and captivating story.
Less of the fantasy stuff? More focus on only one kind of world? I don't know--the never-ending-story feel was exactly what's cool about this game. It was NEVER predictable, you were always on the edge of your seat eager to find out what was coming next.
As a side note, when I was reading news of the future coming "The Sims" I was skeptical, saying "this is stupid, this will never work. A game about your everyday life? Eat, sleep, go to work, buy furniture? We already do those boring things in everyday life". Boy, was I wrong! The Sims was one hell of a bestseller. Even I moderately enjoyed playing it for a while.
So TLJ with less of the fantastic elements would not be TLJ. Even when the action happened in the industrial world, what kept the player engaged was the inherent intuition of the "otherworldly" stuff.
Basicly, it's about escapism. You're not a native of a fantastic world, that could get boring. You GET INTO a fantastic world as a total outsider. That's the brilliance of it.
Yup, and it goes on and on and on. That's a good thing. When the game actually ended, I still wanted MORE of it.
On the shortcomings of the interaction you're perfectly right. Still, the long times of getting from point A to point B were not that bad, as you could take in the beautiful vistas once more.
@sic Yeah, the rubber duck puzzle was just horrible.
The fantasy topic seems to ba a hot button issue for a lot of people. All I have to say is that I haven't played it when the game out. I've played it recently. The thing I found intriguing about The Longest Journey were the mature aspects of it because it is something I rarely see in Videogames. Obviously, the game has different meaning for different people. I do understand if you enjoyed the Fantastic elements. They well well-made after all. But as you've noticed yourself, the very same story has been made a couple of times now - Never Ending Story, The Labyrinth, Narnia, Harry Potter. Escapism and "a stranger in a fantasy world" is hardly what I would call "brilliant".
Oy. You've just pointed out all of my biggest frustrations with the adventure genre.
They have a tendency to take too much control away from the player. They also tend to give back-story literally, rather than imply it subtly.
The worst of all is when there is not enough stuff to interact with -- or that you cannot interact with things in a meaningful way.
I kind of have a love/hate relationship with adventure games. I want to love them, I really do. But for some reason 'story' in adventure games has evolved into these unfortunate situations where it takes over the game… At the expense of all other components of gameplay and composition.
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