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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [comp00] buzzard reviews (very long)
Message-ID: <G4GL7C.LqH@world.std.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 03:47:36 GMT
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Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:59065

Adam Cadre  <reply@adamcadre.ac> wrote:
>climax at the end of the game and then dump me into a "You have won"
>message, I'm going to be pissed.  I want a payoff sequence.  In any
>event, unless you're deliberately defying storytelling convention, the
>climax isn't supposed to come at the end anyway!  Where's the
>denouement?  I don't get excited that the *finish line* is in sight --
>if I want the game to end, I can always just type >QUIT -- I get excited
>that I'm about to see the cool denouement that I fought through (or,
>much more ofter, walked through) all these puzzles to see.  The better
>the denouement, the more satisfying the experience.  So by all means,
>go ahead and put the climax closer to the middle than to the end; the
>easy puzzles thereafter will look more like a reward, whereas placed
>before the climax they'd look more like part of the punishment.

One of the problems with using existing terminology from other
media to apply to interactive fiction is that you never know whether
this is one of those rare cases where things don't translate from
non-interactive media.

The climax-denouement (which I was sloppy about in my reviews)
distinction is an important one, and one that shouldn't be skimmed
over, but it's interesting to note how many interactive works
(and I mean both IF and commercial games of every flavor) simply
cease to be interactive once the climax reaches its peak; the
denouement is a non-interactive cut-scene afterwards, almost
always.  I think I can count the number of commercial games that
are not this way on one hand; indeed the only one that comes to
mind offhand from my less-than-encyclopedic knowledge of commercial games
is the original "Toejam & Earl", in which you got to return home
for the heroes' welcome interactively.  I don't know if that's because
denouements just don't work if interactive, or they're hard to make
work and you have to be really good, or if game designers just
aren't thoughtful enough about it--aren't really trying.

I think this was the intent of "Dinner with Andre" in particular--what
I was talking about with the ending was really the denouement;
perhaps this was one reason some people found in unsatisfying, because
they don't want to be bothered with having to interact through the
denouement. (In truth, DwA was VERY oddly paced; solving the
4-waiters puzzle was the climax of the puzzling, but the climax
of the story is probably either the final pratfall or the
final encounter with the date; nonetheless the pacing worked perfectly
for me.)

Perhaps Masquerade was playing with this as well, although with
multiple endings it becomes even harder to decide where the
boundaries are; but for instance the one happy ending I found,
I see the climax as being when the character decides to get on
the train (ok, I decided for her, but you know what I mean), and
the final encounter with the love interest is just denouement.

Hmm, having finished only 13 of the games of the comp I'm not
too well suited to comment on this at length, especially since
at least three of those were experimental or just tailed off at
the end.  I don't remember what the last command of BAP was;
I believe the last command in Rameses came at the climax; the
main endings of Kaged seemed to make the last command the climax;
etc.

SeanB
