#man it's weird how attached i am to the idea of silent protagonists

[pandor-pandorkful]

A couple days ago I was thinking about the disconnect between the makers of classic adventure games (the Coles, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, etc) who later went on kickstarter cuz they wanted to make more games, and the fans who desperately want more games from them.

And while there's been several crowdfunded games that seem like they've managed to scratch that classic adventure game itch for folks, the disconnect I'm seeing is this:

Game makers want to make new games with new methods in new styles, which is fair!

But fans of classic adventure games crave classic styled adventure games, which I think is also fair.

However that does mean that as much as I want it, I'm never going to get "Quest for Glory 6: You Can Actually Customize Your Hero This Time" because the Coles aren't interested in making the same old same old. (And idk if they've got the rights to the title Quest for Glory anymore or if they've glommed onto HeroU because that's closer to the original title they wanted for the series, Hero's Quest.)

Like I don't have a conclusion here or anything, but it's just interesting to think about how the things that creators find important and are attached to can be so massively different from what the fans get attached to and hold on high as being important.

Like pixelated graphics. VGA style graphics are very dear to me, and I prefer adventure games to look like, say, Quest for Glory 4.

Or a silent protagonist with heavy, pun laden second person pov narration.

That's just kinda my preference because those were the types of games that made a huge impression on me as a kid.

HeroU: Rogue to Redemption kinda failed to capture my focus, in spite of my best attempts, because the protagonist has his own dialog, and because there was this lingering disappointment that I wasn't going to really be able to craft my own hero in the way it felt like you were in QfG (aside from being limited to the physical appearance of a white human male.)

From as far as I got, I could tell that the punny sense of humor was there, and there were loads of call outs to the characters and events in the prior QfG series, but it didn't suck me in. Shaun kept butting against me, he's no blank slate with an ambiguous past.

Also I just kinda hate school narratives, please don't force me to keep up my grades or risk expulsion/game over. Just, don't.

QfG1: So You Want to be a Hero, you're nobody, you have a short explanation of your character's background in the manual but that's pretty much it. You choose your character class and wander into town. From there you're on your own, kid.

I dunno, like I said, I want completely different things from what the actual creators want to make.

It's kind of a Star Wars: Special Edition problem, isn't it? Now that they're unrestrained by a publisher or by technology, adventure game makers can chase their original vision.

But fans didn't know what was in the game maker's heads in the 80's and 90's. Fans only knew what they actually saw, and they liked what they saw.

So, disconnect. Yeah.

That's my pointless ramble for the day, take care.