Okay, I haven''t played Gabriel Knight 3 yet or anything, so I''m not sure how it plays. Anyway, I was a big fan of the adventure game in it''s time. It was a simple puzzle solving experience with pretty 2D graphics with sprites, funny well thought out and scripted characters and a nice involving experience with more plot that most other genres boasted at the time (ie - Wolf3D, Duke Nukem, 1 million + 1 sports games). I''m thinking that there could be a big potential for the 3D adventure style game to be the next big immersive experience for gamers. The chance for extremely high quality plots and scripts with excellent character interaction could make it as close an experience as it could get. There''ll be less focus on the combat and violence, the same ability to explore a large area that RPGs have and this could allow for a much more freely flowing game experience. The only two problems are designing one that doesn''t have the strong linear puzzle sovling that the adventure games of old had, and that''s most likely what killed them. But also one that lacks direction. Due to the similarities between adventure games and rpgs I have noticed that if you don''t know where you are supposed to be going and what you are doing it can become quite an annoying affair. Anyone tried to design this kind of game or thought of it. Anyone played a game like this and can say what was wrong with it?

We''re the only ones online right now aren''t we?
At the moment me and my brother (co-designer) are trying to flesh out a game that runs basically on the 3D adventure game principle.

We sort of needed a way to go ahead and have the perfect gaming interface where a person could investigate a rather large crime scene (basically a city that has become a ruin of villainy and criminalism) and we are at a loss to find a current system that would facilitate that.

See that''s the problem - it''d be hard to give the player the feel that they are in this dark dank screwed up place if it was segmented. If we start to substitute graphical splendour to remove some physical boundaries of the world then it''s also possible that some of the gameplaying experience could be lost due to the fact that it really needs to feel immersive. This is one of those annoying technology driven design questions isn''t it? damnit.

It''d be interesting trying to avoid the Sindrome. Because with such large areas to load, and possibly lots of game data to store due to the fact that character interactions and all that would most likely have to be logged to an extent in order to make the game flow properly for the player, it could result in long loading times. If Deus-Ex had been brought out at the same time as Sin, it would''ve suffered the same problem because Deus Ex has large areas to load and other such nonsense. I might email the programmers there and ask how they did it

I''m not a guru, but I play one on TV...

As far as segmenting goes, what about the approach I''ve games like Requiem and Quake II use? You have segmented levels, but you use the background map to suggest other parts of the city. For instance, in QII you saw the huge anti-orbital cannon off in the distance, then you got to be right near it. Jedi Knight''s levels are a perfect example of this. You''d still had to do a level load, but maybe you could break it up like Half-Life does, so that loading is frequent but less intrusive.

I guess that''s something of a dependancy issue, ie how you want the city to pan out.
But what about suggestions as to how to improve an adventure game and put it into a 3D world? Anyone have much experience with the 2D kind of adventure game?