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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Rameses (was [Comp2k] Results)
Message-ID: <G48Av4.Jr@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 16:23:28 GMT
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Carl Muckenhoupt <carl@wurb.com> wrote:
>I didn't get around to Remeses until after the judging period was
>over, so my experience of it is somewhat colored by the few review
>comments I had read.  But it seems interactive enough to me.  For one
>thing, the player *does* have some control over the character's
>actions, and *can* affect game state

Yeah, I remembered this last night.  I know this is just going
to sound like I'm grasping at straws to criticize the game, but
I think this part of why I never saw the "I'm the voice in the
head of the PC telling him to do things that he never wants to
do", because at a certain point he does start doing them.  Indeed,
what I wrote in my notes while I was getting frustrated during
the intro sequence:

    ARGH.  QUIT GIVING ME CONVERSATIONS WHERE I BACK OFF FROM
    EVERY SINGLE OPTION.

    Christ, I can't do ANYTHING after something like 15 moves.
    The only way this is going to be forgiveable is if it literally
    stays this way for the whole game.

I wrote that last comment, not thinking of the player as a voice
in the PC's head, but I think just recognizing there'd be some
amusement value to a totally lacking-in-control player.  But the
game *did* deviate from that standard eventually.

Comparing it to "A Moment of Hope" (from memory): AMoH allowed
depended on you to issue crucial, world-affecting commands to
advance the story.  You had to use the phone, or something, and
there was a stretch of the game where you could wander back
(from a bridge or something?), and each time you moved, you'd
get a new snippet of thought/plot--except if you moved back
the way you came; it only advanced each time you advanced to
a new location.  Rameses, on the other hand, has parts where
things just happen of their own accord, in no way depending
on you for its advance, but simultaneously allows you to issue
commands that will, in the end, affect what you see (like the
Ferdia clockwork-orange thing).  So pretty clearly by my
standards Rameses is at least on a part with a CYOA with
limited branching, whereas AMoH never branched, it just allowed
some content-free extra commands.

So I think I have to back off on my "Rameses isn't IF" claim.

(I don't think I had intended to claim that, actually, but I
think I accidentally maneuvered myself there.  Certainly I
didn't give it the not-IF vote that What-IF? did.)

>Now, if there's any one thing that surely shows a work to be truly
>interactive, it's that the player goes back to try things differently
>after it's over.

Presumably that doesn't make it interactive unless things do work
out differently?

>And in my case, that's exactly what happened.  In particular, at the
>very end, when the author tries to get you to tell Rameses to kiss
>Claire, I had refused.  So naturally I wanted to see how things
>would go for a less recalcitrant player - as well as to try some new
>forms of recalcitrance, of course.

So did it make any difference or not?  That may invite the response
"try it yourself and see", but if it doesn't make any difference, why
should I?

SeanB
