作者：Brice Morrison

指向点击式冒险游戏是某个时代所风行的游戏。上世纪80年代和90年代初，诸如Sierra等现在已经不存在的公司是这个题材的王者。这类游戏的主体是紧凑的故事、幽默、对话和角色，玩家可以深入探索游戏世界，触及其最为核心的内容。

但是今天，指向点击游戏已经被降级到只适合某些玩家的游戏。此类游戏主要以PC为平台（游戏邦注：还有少数以掌机为平台，如《Phoenix Wright》），但是目前这些游戏已经让位于那些发展更快的游戏，包括动作冒险类、RPG和小游戏。

被遗忘的智慧

有些人或许会说，这些游戏失去过往荣誉的原因在于它们对叙事过于关注，叙事是游戏美学布局的一部分。尽管这种说法有一定的道理，但是冒险游戏的某些层面还是值得现代开发者学习的，可以让游戏设计想法更为丰富。

现代游戏设计师通常较为关注游戏的基本机制。机制如何发挥作用？哪些是游戏规划中的新想法？那个正方形和那个圆形之间要如何互动？虽然基本机制确实属于Game Design Canvas的一部分，但是并不是全部。这便是可以从上述这些过时的冒险游戏中学到的内容，也就是在美学布局的故事和叙事中投入更多的精力会产生某些有趣的结果。

Broken Sword from thegameprodigy.com

下文中我们将举例阐述这个方面，《Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars》是款上世纪90年代的PC游戏，最终被移植到许多其他的系统中，包括Playstation和Wii。有些人对这款游戏不是很熟悉，我们会从游戏最开始的部分进行阐述。

叙事点心

“我考虑过爬上Lamp Post，但是那样它就无法照射出事件了。”

以上是游戏主角George Stobbart在游戏最初的过程中说出的富有幽默感的话语。《Broken Sword》中的基本机制是堪称标准的冒险题材游戏机制。玩家可以点击游戏世界中的各种物品和任务，对游戏进行探索。点击某些物品会使得情节和游戏向前发展，而点击其他的物品只会看到某些妙趣横生的话语，就像开头所列举的那种。

但是上述列举的独白显示了冒险游戏和其他题材游戏间叙事重要性的显著差异。这个小笑话并不能增添游戏的可玩性。玩家没有获得任何奖励，角色也没有做出任何导致游戏向前发展的事情。

对于某些玩家来说，这种体验是毫无作用的。但是对于其他玩家来说，尤其是那些很喜欢冒险游戏的玩家而言，仅仅是听到这种独白就会觉得很愉快。这种独白是独特的，它让角色和游戏世界显得更为真实。如果将游戏的故事线路比作正餐的话，那么这些趣味的独白就是点心。

正是出于这个原因，冒险游戏的剧情编排和文字工作需要花费比其他题材游戏更长的时间。就像Charles Dickens的作品一般，《Broken Sword》让你可以探索各种环境细节，了解所有精巧布置过的场景，同时探索主角的思维方式。

并不适合所有人

人类是很复杂的物种，各个人之间都有不同之处。有些玩家希望开发团队（游戏邦注：或者是独立开发者）花些时间在游戏过程中布置些许美学内容。对于这些玩家来说，美学内容越多越好。但是有些玩家会很快因这些内容而感到厌烦，他们会忽视并跳过这些内容，认为游戏的故事情节完全毫无用处。对于那些玩家而言，开发者所创造的非机制性内容越多，他们越会感到自己受到了欺骗。

在这种情况下，开发者所需要掌握的技巧就是决定游戏将以哪类玩家为目标用户，然后依他们的兴趣进行设计。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Storytelling in Games is Useless. Right?

Brice Morrison

Point and click adventure games are truly games from a different time. Back in the 80′s and early 90′s, now defunct companies like Sierra were kings of the genre. Based around tightly woven stories, humor, dialogue, and characters, the games allowed players to deeply explore a world to their heart’s content.

Today, however, point and click games are relegated to a niche genre. Available mostly on the PC (and a few handheld titles like Phoenix Wright), these games have largely faded away to games of a much faster pace, including action/adventure, RPG, and mini-games.

Forgotten Wisdom

Some may say that the reason these games have faded from their past glory is because of their excessive focus on narrative, part of the Aesthetic Layout of a game. While part of that may be true, there are aspects of adventure games that modern developers can learn from as another color to add to their game design pallet.

Modern game designers often tend to focus a lot on the game’s Base Mechanics. How does it work? What are new ideas in programming terms? How does that square interact with that circle? While the Base Mechanics are certainly a part of the Game Design Canvas, they are not the entire canvas. This is a lesson that can be learned in these anachronistic adventure games — that putting more weight and effort into the Aesthetic Layout, in terms of story and narrative, can indeed give some interesting results.

These results are apparent in a moment near the beginning of the game we’re going to look at to illustrate this: Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, a 1990′s PC game that was eventually ported to a number of other systems including the Playstation and the Wii. For those who aren’t familiar with the title, we’re just going to run through the very beginning of the game, watchable here.

A Narrative Snack

“I considered climbing on the Lamp Post, but it wasn’t going to shed any light on the affair.”

This is one of the humorous lines that the main character, George Stobbart, says in the first few moments of gameplay. The Base Mechanics in Broken Sword are standard enough for the adventure genre. The player can click on various objects and people in the world to explore and look around. Clicking on certain objects will move the plot and the game forward, while others, like this one, just provide some witty line of narration and nothing more.

But the monologue line above illustrates one great difference between the importance of narrative in adventure games and other genres. Does this little joke add any gameplay? No, not necessarily. The player doesn’t receive any reward, nor has the character done anything to make progress in the game.

For some players, this experience is therefore useless. However, for other players, particularly the ones who would most likely enjoy adventure games, the little monologue is a delight just to listen to. It is unique, it develops the character, and makes the world feel more real. It is a fun snack on the way through the five course meal of the game’s storyline.

For this reason, adventure games take more strongly after novels and literature than any other genre in games. Like a paragraph out of Charles Dickens, Broken Sword allows you to explore the environment in detail, learning about all of delicately placed pieces of scenery while simultaneously exploring the main character’s mind.

Not for Everyone

People are complex creatures, and people are different. Some players will love that a dev team (or indie developer, for many readers on this site) spent time to sprinkle little bits of Aesthetic content throughout their game. For these players, the more the better. But other players will quickly grow bored with it and fly through the content, ignoring it, believing the storytelling aspects to be completely useless. For those players, the more non-mechanical content is created, the more cheated they will feel.

The trick in this case is to decide which player developers are creating for, and then be true to what they are interested in. (Source: thegameprodigy)