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Why Isn't This An Adventure Game?
32 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, the Back Seat Designers take a look at various movies, books, and tv-shows, and ask themselves: Why has no one turned this into an adventure game?
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Transcript
Introduction and Mock Trial
00:00:30
Speaker
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is my sworn duty as solicitor of this court to present to you the Backseat Designers, Episode 4. My name is Charles, aka the Space Quest Historian, and I will be defending the following two abhorrent specimens in today's proceedings. Frederick Olson, on the charges of speaking at the speed of paint drying, how do you plead? Well, um... Moving on. Not, uh, guilty.
00:00:57
Speaker
Cool. Dr. Gareth Millward on the charges of abandoning the British Empire to embark on a successful career of morphing into Yoda. How do you plead? No, do it again. Cool. With your office chair. We were having a chat about Gareth's impossibly old office chair that he had shipped over from the UK in bits and pieces, as it were.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, it does not survive particularly well. And if you can hear this sort of rocking back and forth, that's me. I will try to keep myself in one position and to remember to use the mute button. Yeah, actually, speaking of shit, of of creaky shit in in Denmark, we should probably yeah not to steal your thunder trolls, but OK, yes, a little bit.
Humorous Internet Outage Story
00:01:43
Speaker
We should probably tell the viewers why it has been so long first and foremost. So what happened, Gareth?
00:01:51
Speaker
what happened car Yeah, no sorry, i'm um I'm being a very, very bad podcaster and trying to eat some soup at the same time as podcasts. So my landlord decided that um he wasn't going to answer any letters from the broadband company saying that they were cutting off the broadband and that if he wanted to switch to the new line that they were putting into the building ah that he simply needed to order a new router. He did not do this. And it managed to take him three to four weeks to replace the router. And by the time I finally had internet back, ah it was nearly Christmas and we all had different plans and we're going in different directions. um And so I murdered him.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yes, as as you and this is why we're on trial indeed. Yeah, this is a much better trial than the one you had scripted. Well, yes, but and it actually it actually makes perfect sense because I do believe that we were accessories to the facts in that we suggested said murder. We may have poked and prodded a bit, yes. Yes. I have to say, lads, this is not a particularly good defense. I don't think you're supposed to admit it upfront and then without even being pressed admit to being accomplices. That's not the way that this is supposed to work.
00:03:06
Speaker
Well, we we have some very very lenient open prisons ah Yes, and also I mean if uh Not to bring real world politics into the matter But uh, if you can be applauded for murdering a ceo of a health company in the united states Surely we can be applauded for murdering a batshit insane landlord Well, you know, you've got to start little and work your way up. I think to make anomalous That was luigi's problem. He started far too high. You know, there's nowhere to go after that
00:03:37
Speaker
fucking help I think we're gonna, as soon as you start talking re world real-world politics, that's where the edit begins, and it's probably ended with a clap in a couple of seconds. Libel alert. Oh, shit. All right. um Moving on. So, um what what have you guys been up to during this interim, obviously, holidays, and of murdering a few people on the side? of what What else has been going on in your lives?
00:04:09
Speaker
I contracted pneumonia. Cool. um was what Was she gentle? but Did she fall under Gareth's language teacher skills, or was she relatively new at the game? ah Well, I don't want to make a deep throat joke, so I'm just going to ignore that question. Yeah. How is Bettina anyway, Gareth?
00:04:32
Speaker
I don't know, I haven't seen her in a while, but she's last time I saw her, she cycled up to me at a at crossroads, said hello in Danish, obviously, and congratulated me on passing my exams. And then as we were pulling away from the light, she just sped off into the distance, never to be seen again, because apparently I cycle worse than a woman in her late fifties. Was this anywhere near a major city?
Adventure Games Based on Existing Media
00:05:00
Speaker
It was on the outskirts of Orntzer, so no. Oh, you're very, very good at pronouncing that. That's a tricky city name. My attack. Oh, yeah. Oh, speaking of things that are hard to pronounce, ah we might as well move into today's topic because I know Gareth is going to flex his linguistic skills at at some point during these proceedings. um But today's topic has nothing to do with holidays and there's nothing to do with the New Year's.
00:05:29
Speaker
It has nothing to do with murdering landlords or CEOs of anything. I'm still keeping that bit in, fuck it. um We are talking about adventure games, big surprise, but also adventure games that don't exist and adventure games that we are kind of confused as to why they don't exist. Today's topic is what movies, books, TV shows or anything from any other mediums have not been turned into adventure games, but would really make for very, very good adventure games. And I suppose it have really down to earth, ah
00:06:08
Speaker
issues such as copyright licensing and and stuff like that might have something to do with it. But we're just going to keep it high level, high concept and just go, this would make a great adventure game and just screw all the nitty gritty stuff. yeah i mean let we Well, we we might as well get some of the nitty gritty stuff you know out of the way because there are definitely some posts that have been missed. I mean, we're not the first one to ask this question, but why the hell?
00:06:35
Speaker
ah have Lucasfilm sit on Star Wars as an intellectual property and not actually make a Star Wars adventure game when they are arguably at one point in the 90s kings of the genre, you know, as Sierra drifted off to make pseudo 3D games and kind of failed at that LucasArts had a really good run during, you know, the tail end of the 90s. Why the hell is Yoda stories all we got that sort of fits the bill?
00:07:03
Speaker
Well, they seem to, they seem, that the Star Wars license just seemed to believe that everything needed to be an RPG or some kind of space shooter. They just completely ignored the kind of the more narrative end of things, which is a bit weird given the number of novels that have been produced in various other things.
00:07:19
Speaker
and Indiana Jones adventure games, I have to say, because you take, and but between, you know, the the big tent poles of the Steven Spielberg Lucas um collaborations, you've got your Indiana Jones and you've got your Star Wars. I suppose Steven Spielberg wasn't like totally involved in Star Wars. But anyway, that's ah sort of the two franchises you think, okay, LucasArts could really run with this shit. And they made two fantastic point and click adventure games for Indiana Jones and the um early nineties, you've got your last crusade and you've got your fate of Atlantis. Absolutely. Suddenly I'm infatuated with the word temple. But yeah, absolute temples are the adventure game genre. And ah there's there's this new Indiana Jones game out, ah which has a really silly name that i I forget, but everyone's just going oh, this is like a throwback to those old graphic adventure games. They've actually gone back and you know done stuff that isn't absolutely terrible, like the action Tomb Raider action adventure games that they started doing after Fate of Atlantis. So hey, that's that's something. they've They've got Indiana Jones adventure games. Fantastic. Star Wars is an excellent franchise that could very well work within an adventure game genre, but I guess they just sort of
00:08:31
Speaker
There was, I don't know, sort of afraid to touch it, which is no, no, that's kind of strange because they had like TIE Fighter and X-Wing back in the day when they were making, when they were still making adventure games, but everything Star Wars turned into Dog Force's X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, that sort of thing.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, and you know I think it boils down to just a lack of imagination on the part of certain developers or license holders and not considering that, hey, this might work us and as a-driven game, and which you know I didn't mean to derail this to turn it into... Oh, shit. ah Fred died. ah Revenge of the Landlord.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, probably. Do you want me to keep talking or are we going to wait for him to come back? I don't know. Because I didn't i don't think that it's necessarily a lack of imagination um because there were a bunch of of games that were made and some of them are very fondly fought thought of. It's probably more down to the fact that but Star Wars did go with the more RPG, shootery kind of um uh kind of approach with those kind of games are the ones that you can kind of make with reused assets right and you can keep sort of recycling recycling recycling so it may well have been that it was much cheaper and more profitable to do those other kind of games rather than an adventure game when it came to star wars
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's and that's a bit strange, really, because so you know the the first Indiana Jones point and click, The Last Crusade, was made in a very, very short time, working off of a draft of the script that wasn't even the final draft of the script.
Doctor Who as an Adventure Game
00:10:09
Speaker
and they they just you just knock that out. And you would assume ah doing a Star Wars at adventure games with all the established lore you had, the first trilogy made already by the time Lucasfilm games started doing point and click adventure games. So, so well, I say point and click, um the Monkey Island onwards ah secret, which is like when the LucasArts hey days started. think Yeah, yeah and totally. yeah They could have totally done that and and they didn't.
00:10:37
Speaker
If anyone is listening to this wondering where the hell Fred went, he went. And I'm trying to get him to refresh the book. I refreshed him. I'm just letting you cook. Here. Here we are. All right. He's back and bigger than a bread box. So you were talking about lack of imagination and Gareth has now absolutely run that argument into the ground, but do you care to finish it?
00:10:59
Speaker
No because I didn't hear everything Gareth had to say so I'm gonna assume he's right, he's got the PhD I don't. That's true. Yeah but i've I've completely changed my opinion already because Trolls has pointed out that they were more than willing to they were more than willing to make adventure games of other types of ah things within various other series.
00:11:18
Speaker
um but my main My main point was that um we we know that it's cheaper to make a first-person shooter in a lot of ways ah because you can reuse assets and things like that but also at the same time like then why was there no yeah what why Why were they doing narrative games in other parts of the of the company? um So, we don't know. Maybe we'll one day we'll uncover the the secret library that... Oh, no. The library. Well, not really, actually. um Okay, so now we've covered the ah the big question that I suppose everyone listening to this show was hoping that we might cover. Why is there no Star Wars adventure game? We don't know. It would be great.
00:11:58
Speaker
I know Stacey Davidson was working on the Star Wars adventure game that kind of looked like the old Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis type thing. And it's been in development for her decades and decades. I don't know where he is with that. It looked pretty cool. That was a a fan project for ah Shadows of the Empire adventure game as well. And I don't know if you're familiar with that concept, but it was like a a Star Wars movie without the movie. So there were games, comics, books, a soundtrack CD, even and someone tried to turn that into a point-and-click adventure game for a while, unfortunately it seems to be dead. Did the mouse kill it?
00:12:34
Speaker
I don't think so. I think what usually kills fan projects that is real life stepped in and killed it. Yeah. Well, that's true. Yeah. Or they take about 15 years to complete and then suddenly they appear out of nowhere, which is always entertaining. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Fred can attest to that one. All right. So that's Star Wars. Let's ah let's move on. Who wants to go first other than Star Wars? I mean, I've got two. Fred had one or two and Gareth at 102. We've actually discussed this prior to recording. It's amazing, isn't it? I can do the rickety segue since it's a sci-fi franchise, and I hope to God that it won't cut me off again. But um I was researching the Doctor Who games put out because I think that franchise is absolutely perfect. Now, i I'm not sure how much Gareth has watched it. You know, obviously, it's a British national institution. Trolls is proudly unfamiliar with it.
00:13:34
Speaker
I wouldn't say proudly. i've I've been exposed to some who. I mean, TLDR, it's about a quote unquote time Lord who, by the time the show began in 1963, had been on Earth for a number of years with the with his granddaughter,
00:13:52
Speaker
with a spaceship hidden in this junkyard and it's a chameleon circuit or whatever it's called is stuck so it's always a blue police box in appearance that can basically blend in with its surroundings because this ship, the TARDIS, can travel in time and space um Early on in the series there was like an educational aspect where they would travel to the Stone Age and you know the time of Marco Polo and and what have you and do purely historical episodes and then it moved on to this like monster of the week type thing where you would get enemies like the Saibam and the Daleks. did Did you die on me again?
00:14:31
Speaker
No, no, I'm here. I'm listening intently. We're just actually listening to you, Fred. I know it's a weird feeling. Yeah, you're not interrupting. God, that's so weird. and i'm i'm Just a quick interjection. I'm just fascinated that you feel the need to recap the series lore of Doctor Who to a podcast that is mainly ah you know, the list is mainly into science fiction already. I think if anyone hasn't heard Doctor Who at this point. I mean, it's never really taken off that majorly outside the UK is my perspective. Obviously, there are American fans. It's never really taken off in Denmark. I know there are enclaves of fans, but it's not really a big thing. um but But really my point
00:15:11
Speaker
in summarizing ah who the Doctor, the protagonist is and what the universe is all about. It's it's it's very much, you know, he goes out ah or backwards in time or forwards in time or to other galaxies, to other planets, whatever, and solves problems. And I'm struggling to come up with a good reason why most of the games based on Doctor Who are action-oriented when there is so much of an They dropped the the the educational aspect of the show pretty quickly, but it's about using your head, it's about the peaceful way out, it's about fixing problems. It would be absolutely perfect for an adventure game, point and click or otherwise. And I don't get why we have some we have some pretty phenomenal Star Trek adventure games, but we've never actually seen a die-hard Doctor Who adventure game.
00:16:06
Speaker
Another reason why Doctor Who would work really well is because unlike ah Star Wars or Star Trek, the the law isn't quite as ah baked in. like Doctor Who has always been a bit all over the place. its It's never really had a huge amount of internal consistency. There's always been things that they've been able to rewrite or redo.
00:16:27
Speaker
ah that there's not There's certainly very little consistency between the original run from the 60s through to the late 80s and then the reboots in the 21st century. So it's the kind of thing where you could make a completely standalone story that wouldn't ruin anything else. It would seem believable. There's a lot more leeway for a writing team to do a Doctor Who than there maybe would be in those other franchises.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I mean, there is a big stretch from, you know, the character disappearing from televisions in the late 80s to suddenly reappearing in the mid 2000s where there has been this event known as the Great Time War where everything apparently kind of went to shit and and the Doctor's Home Planet got supposedly destroyed and he's all alone in the universe, last of his kind. um There's so much wiggle room in that period of the of the show's lore that they actually wrote in a new incarnation of the doctor. You know, John Hurt got to play the character for a TV special all of a sudden and that was like a whole new chapter. You know, we've got this incarnation of the doctor too because he changes appearances every once in a while to to keep the show going to ah to make sure that the lead character doesn't die off all of a sudden.
00:17:44
Speaker
And that's that's the beauty of of of Doctor Who. what What little knowledge I have of Doctor Who is every time one of the you know lead protagonist actors either get sick of the role or for some reason and don't feel like participating anymore, like they contract dementia. Excuse me.
00:18:00
Speaker
like they have dementia or something, as I believe the first doctor back in the 60s did. They just sort of, you know he just sort of dies off and then he's reincarnated into a different actor. So you can make an adventure game. You didn't even have to get any of the yeah established character protagonist actors to reprise the role or anything. You just have a brand new doctor.
00:18:20
Speaker
No, but one thing there also is this just great enthusiasm. There's a whole, you know, there's the TV show, and there's this company called Big Finish that has this whole line of audio adventures where, you know, even if if some of the past doctors have been reluctant to reprise the role on screen, most of them are actually doing these radio play type things that you can buy on CD or stream or buy on mp3 or whatever. So there is there is a lot of love one never really stops being the doctor even tom baker you know earliest man standing in his 90s never truly stopped being the doctor and i think you would you would ah honestly know you don't need
00:19:03
Speaker
the Doctor in in a game, but I don't think you would have any trouble getting the old crew back, honestly. No, and and and and certain elements of Doctor Who have like passed ah outside of the ah contained realm of Whovian fandom and have now become ah just just culturally acceptable things to spout of, like the Daleks. Everyone knows what ah what a Dalek looks like, really, and knows the exterminate thing and all of that stuff. I mean, um I'm watching this this children's TV show was with my son called Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom.
00:19:39
Speaker
I was just going, is it Magic Kingdom or is it Little Kingdom? No, it's it's Little Kingdom. There is magic in it. But anyway, one of the voice actors in that show is like 90 years old. And he plays a grumpy old elf called that simply the Wise Old Elf. And he was the original voice actor for the Daleks.
00:19:57
Speaker
And just he doesn't do the Dalek voice, obviously, but it's just just amazing. that Oh, and he was also a voice actor for the for the old Sander Katz TV show. So they sometimes they have Sander Katz references on on this children's TV show. It's just amazing. like so Some of those things, you could easily do a Doctor Who game that doesn't really reference much that has happened in the series, because why would you bother? But you could certainly have antagonists like the Daleks, maybe even the Cybermen, just to please the hardcore fans, I suppose. ah Because everyone sort of knows what a Dalek looks like.
00:20:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah and like you say, it's ingrained in culture at this point. So that's another thing because the games that have been based on Doctor Who don't seem to be particularly successful. And I'm not sure why that is. ah They don't seem to be marketed a lot. You know, I can tell you that. No, that I saw I saw two a while ago, there was these mobile games that were ah Sort of stealth-based, like you arrive on a planet and you're supposed to hide from shit against sort of an action-adventure, kind of like Broken Sword 3 in a way. That was quite terrible, actually. And we will get back to terrible mobile games of other franchises that could have been very successful at adventure games in the future of this podcast, don't you worry.
00:21:19
Speaker
um Yeah, let's ah let's let's park Dr. Hoof for a bit here because obviously we could go on and on. ah Gareth, what well what was one of your picks? Well, I think, oh yeah, the stuff that I watched as a kid that I think would work quite well.
Buffy and Other TV Shows as Games
00:21:33
Speaker
um I was going to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because I think not necessarily ah that you would take control of the scooby-yanga of any of that kind of thing, but the world that Is created in buffy the vampire slayer i think is a really interesting one around the hell mouth the different types of baddies that they have to deal with and the reasons why those things exist i feel like there's a there's a real kind of
00:22:02
Speaker
ah world there that could be explored. And I got thinking about that, because I was thinking about um listening to Richard Cobbett recently on ah the Quest Quest podcast. Not that I want to make you go and listen to other people's podcasts, you should be listening to this one, and this one alone. But if you do happen to listen to other other podcasts, Richard was talking about his love of the series, Discworld, and I won't spoil his interview and the things that he talks about.
00:22:29
Speaker
but one of the things that he mentioned was that he he one of the things he wants from an adventure game based in another franchise is something that does something new that isn't just fan service isn't just and here is that other character that you liked yeah absolutely isn't just something that just repeats a storyline from the show or something like that, something that does something different in that world and captures the essence of what that world was and the way that it used to tell stories. And you know it we just ignore what Joss Whedon has become in the past 20 years or so. And just try and remember the good times. I think that Joss Whedon storytelling in a Joss Whedon world would make an excellent adventure game.
00:23:12
Speaker
I agree. And one of the good things about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe is that you could comfortably pull ah the same trick that the X-Files game did, you know, the ah seven CD one that came out the FMV game in that you don't have to, like you say, play any of the Scooby gang. You don't have to play like ah as Buffy or as Willow or any of those shitheads. You could be the new guy on the block.
00:23:36
Speaker
And you could just walk in like a transfer student to, ah what is it, Sunnydale? Yeah, it's Sunnydale. And just ah you know basically be the new guy who has to sort of contend with the, oh shit, there's vampires. Oh shit, there's a hell mouse. Oh God. and And like run into the Scooby gang and go, yeah, we've been around the block a few times before, kind of thing.
00:23:56
Speaker
because Like I said, the lore and the ah world building in that TV show was was fantastic and you could you definitely don't need to anchor that to the established characters necessarily. yeah i mean i don't that That actually made me ah made me think not to make this blowing smoke up Joss Whedon's ass because he needs a boot up his ass instead. ah But Firefly could also work fantastically as an adventure game, yeah not least because of the dynamics between different crew members. you know Even having a game simply about walking around on the ship would be interesting. Oh, hell yeah. hell yeah and ah Walking around the ship, i've I've always wondered why there wasn't a Futurama adventure game. There was something slightly close to it. But for some reason, every man-graining franchise has always ended up being pretty shit on the video game front.
00:24:46
Speaker
ah Well, yeah, The Simpsons beat him up is regarded as a classic. Why why the fuck is Marge going around beating people up with a vacuum cleaner? Anyway, if a Matt Groening franchise really would work well as an adventure game, because ah like it or not, Futurama is a fairly smart ad been ah sorry a fairly smart universe.
00:25:05
Speaker
And it would a lot of it has to do with puzzle solving rather than strengths and you know shooting stuff and all it it occurs obviously but the one Futurama game that did come out was a PlayStation 2 sort of jump and gun type of affair which my wife and I actually played all the way through and it was great fun being able to run around the Planet Express headquarters and visiting alien planets and all that stuff and it had all the right humor because it was the script was written by the actual writers from from the TV show and all the voice actors reply reprised their roles and all that. But it just felt kind of weird to to to be doing platforming puzzles
00:25:47
Speaker
or platforming segments, I should say, as s Fry. Although it was kind of fun. like Every time you fail one of the platforming sections, he would obviously drop to the ground and and die, and then he would be beamed up by the planet Express Ship and thrown into this tube of some kind, and they would reanimate his corpse to shove him back onto the platform.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah, that does sound good. well ah One of the franchises that has done that quite well, actually, ah ah other than the the latest ah version is is South Park. um Stick of Truth and the franchise. I've played those quite quite a lot because they they do a really good job of capturing the essence of the universe. They've got the voice actors, they've got the writers in, they clearly understand what a computer game and a narrative-based computer game is and they've definitely put the effort into making that.
00:26:41
Speaker
work. And yeah, it's that thing of being able to walk around the ship on future armor, being able to walk around the town of Springfield, if you the Simpsons or, or South Park in the aforementioned South Park. I think that there is something that when when these things are done right, they are done so very well. But I think maybe it's just our age. But I think we remember some of those early 90s, just cash grabs that um had absolutely nothing to do ah with the original material.
00:27:08
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And South Park had a rocky road as well. I remember the first South Park game, the yeah the yeah the FPS. Oh, God, yeah that was terrible. God, that was terrible. I had the racing game. I think that was a rough deal as well. yeah What the fuck was up the racing game? And you know what's really weird is that one of the most beloved Simpsons games is that fucking GTA clone they put out like people honestly to God. they they They love this thing.
00:27:31
Speaker
like it's It's got ah an an active modding community to this day. I'm not knocking the game, as far as I know, it's brilliant. but Why the fuck would al Simpson run around stealing cars and ramming them into other people? Well, maybe that's the contrast. And I mean, that's not something we've been considering when we've been lining up these examples. you know We're taking something that to our minds would work extraordinarily well ah as adventure games. But what about the completely, you know, completely wrong in our eyes, maybe choices that could turn into something highly interesting, like a Simpsons hit and run game? Because I think it's that contrast that draws people in. Yeah, Peppa Pig Manhunt. God, yes.
00:28:14
Speaker
Oh God, that would be so great. Like a first-person shooter in the Peppa Pig universe, that would be great. Or like a real-time strategy game based on Neighbours, the Australian soap opera or something. Excellent.
00:28:31
Speaker
That would be fucking amazing. I suppose Neighbours would lend itself to more of like a city building, SimCity or Sims-esque type. How fucking off topic do I get, really? um Yeah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be an excellent choice for an adventure game. East Enders Walking Simulator. Just the fucking dullest fucking game of all time. Merry Christmas, Ange.
00:29:00
Speaker
shit in christ okay i'm goingnna there's that There's a tangential bridge into one of my examples here, which is that the show that I'm going to talk about actually had a neighbor's spoof on it called Androids, ah replete with a parody of the neighbor's theme song, um and which is excellent. um And the show I'm talking about is Red Dwarf, which is one of the ah my favorite shows growing up and taught me an awful lot about not just sense of humor but also British slang and invention of new slang as it were. It's just an amazing a TV show and it's in ah an amazing sense of humor and it's also got very smart writing and also very prone to the sort of, you know, just absolutely ah cynically depressive of of snarky type of humor that, you know, Space Quest is known for. See, there's kind of a connection there.
00:29:59
Speaker
Um, and, and the show has numerous references to adventure games in it. I don't know if I should recap the premise of Red Dwarf. from the bay I think he, sorry.
00:30:13
Speaker
sorry Oh, he's, he's creaking to shut me up. Yeah. You go for it. You go for it. No, I, I just wanted to say it because my name was mentioned that I did watch at least the earlier episodes, but that's like more than a decade ago. So have at it.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think at at least at least explaining the better than life plot line is definitely worth doing because that is a classic. Everyone's got their favorites. i suppose Okay, so I actually had an idea for a style that the Red Dwarf Adventure game could take, so that will tie into sort of a recap. ah The premise of the show is the last human being alive is stuck on a mining ship, a really decrepit old mining ship, three million years away from Earth because he went into stasis. He was supposed to be in there for three months and they ended up getting released after three million years.
00:31:03
Speaker
ah something something radiation of a radiation accident happened aboard the ship killed all of the crew and he's now the last human being alive because three million years, it's pretty likely that the human race has died out by then. um So his only companion aboard the yeah the ship is a resurrected hologram of his bunkmates aboard the ship. Now, these two people were the lowest ranking members of the ship. ah The guy that they reanimated is just slightly superior to him. He's like a step above. They're both chicken soup vending machine repairmen. um And the bunkmate that was resurrected is just absurdly antagonistic.
00:31:46
Speaker
ah dislikes our main protagonist and immensely. And the only reason the onboard computer resurrected him is because they had the most verbal interactions of anyone on the ship. But as the protagonist says, yeah, well, the only interactions we had half of them was me telling him to fuck off. And the other half was him putting me on report for telling him to fuck off. So, um and then they find a ah A creature in in the holding um and the cargo bay area was evolved from your basic domestic cat, who's now a bipedal, ah human-looking type thing. And they just call him Cat. They don't bother giving him a name. So he looks and and but he looks human, except he's got fangs, and he likes preening himself a lot.
00:32:34
Speaker
And then it's it's rounded out by um the ship's computer that I mentioned previously, who after three million years has gone a bit soft in the head and is quite forgetful.
00:32:45
Speaker
And later they introduced ah an android character, a robot character called Crichton, who um um you know it's is pretty much a robot, but one of those subservient robots that just says, yes sir, no sir. And the main protagonist tries to break his programming and make him more human, which is obviously futile because everyone's everyone's a complete idiot on on the show. So my idea for An adventure game based on this franchise would be one of those Dave the Tentacles type of things where you could switch between characters because they each have their strengths and their flaws. ah So the main protagonist, Dave Lister, is as a human. So he would be like your standard adventure game protagonist. Pick up, use, walk to, talk to, all that shit. ah Then you've got his bunk mate, the hologram, the restaurant hologram, Arnold Rimmer, who
00:33:31
Speaker
by virtue of being a hologram cannot touch anything he's made entirely of light so he can't touch anything but he's got these two robotic companions known as scuttles which is basically just ah but an arm on a little it's like a little rumba with a little attached arm to it and they um They rarely do what he says, but to interact with anything in the game world, he would have to tell the Scutters or tell other characters what it is they're supposed to do. So it's mostly a dialogue puzzle type thing and sort of circumventing the fact that everyone hates him. So he has to sort of sweet talk them into stuff. um The cats.
00:34:08
Speaker
obviously doesn't take direction very well, and and for the most part just doesn't really want to be part of any of the stories. But he's, by virtue of being a cat, he has an excellent sense of smell. And he's sort of he's got these supernatural-ish characteristics. He can climb things that the other people you know can't reach, squeeze into tight spaces and all that.
00:34:30
Speaker
And then you've got the robot character, Crichton, who is an android, and he has all these sort of weird attachments he can put into his body. He's got like a vacuum cleaner and a blender and stuff like that. So um even though he he finds he he thinks of himself as subservient to all humans, he could pick up various items across the ship that he could use to sort of plug into his body and accomplish tasks that the other characters couldn't.
00:34:57
Speaker
That would be an interesting premise for an adventure game, I feel. ah God, that was a long, it's just long recap. But you made me you made me realize how clever Red Dwarf was has as a science fiction the premise, because that the interaction between each of the characters is also what would make it work. I mean, the the they are antagonistic towards each other, but they are all in it together, and they do usually find some way of of of coming together.
00:35:27
Speaker
it was a really clever show because it played on a lot of social um and political issues in the 1980s around class corporate politics um as well as just being the monster of the week or the silly sci-fi story of the week kind of show and of course being a british show it ran for what 10 years and they did four episodes you know had the British the british way of ah creating content ah tends to work. But i I think that premise of being able to switch between the characters works and having them as an ensemble cast as well is one of the things that, yeah, I think David Tentacle is a really good kind of model to be using for something like that.
00:36:08
Speaker
That would be very interesting. And what I love is that you described the show as past tense, which I concur with entirely. The fact is Red Dwarf is still running. I don't know. The Dave episodes, where they are just old men bickering on a ship, that definitely speaks to me. Middle-aged to elderly British men just not getting on with each other. That speaks to me somehow, and I can't quite work out why.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah, there's there is some some sort of familiarity there. But but for ah Red Dwarf ah ran into a sort of two guys from Andromeda's situation. they They were two creators and they wrote all of the episodes together, ah like a writing team, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. But after Series 6,
00:36:55
Speaker
And you're absolutely right, they did the did the British thing where it each season or a series, as as the Brits call it, was like six episodes. Just six episodes and that was it. But after the sixth season, ah one of them left, Rob Grant left the team. And that was unfortunate because he was the funny one. The other guy was the one who came up with the high concept science fiction things to pin the stories on. And he was very, very good at that. ah But the other guy was the funny guy.
00:37:23
Speaker
And so that's why um i just after Series 6, it just seems like a weak representation of itself. i i think i think that's definitely true of the we we're going on to red dwarf now sorry everybody who's not interested in red dwarf i think that's definitely true of the middling series uh from seven through two i can't remember when um i mean there was a whole there was a whole reason why everything got delayed and it all fell apart that given that he was found not guilty uh we won't uh go into um but i i think it's um it yeah those middle ones are are bad but then about
00:37:57
Speaker
about five years ago or so they basically just forgot that they ever made those middle um episodes and just went right these are these old men they're on a they're on uh starbug or on red dwarf and they're just going around doing stuff and it doesn't really have anything to do with anything that's come before it so a little bit like fred was talking about dr who actually the fact that they're not really committed to any kind of law uh is quite a good thing i think it gives you so much freedom to do something really interesting with uh with the front chart Yeah, that's interesting because there's there's a lot of retconning going on in Red Dwarf. They are not interested in continuity whatsoever. So you could basically just take anything. There are also two novelizations written that would work quite well as adventure games if you just adapted the novelizations because they not only tell the backstory, but they also go into a lot more detail. Some of it is copied wholesale from episodes and some of it is fleshed out immensely. Like you said, the better than life.
00:38:51
Speaker
stuff. But anyway, we're not really talking about the we shouldn't be talking about the series anyway. and I think I've gone on long enough. The only thing I had really was um you know the the premise of how you could switch between the characters. I don't know what sort of story you could tell. um Obviously, you could adapt The Better Than Life, which would be absolutely fantastic because that veers off into like really freaky territory. um But you get you guys would have to go up and look that up yourself. The one thing I would just but like to to pin on this, I mentioned that they had a lot of adventure game references on the show. There's in fact an entire episode where they perceive themselves as being killed, like the ship crashes, and then they then they wake up and realize that the entire series, the the entire time they've been on Red Dwarf was actually just a VR adventure game.
00:39:41
Speaker
And then the technician that wakes them up just berates them for not figuring out the puzzles correctly. Like, he starts giving them walk-through hints for the things they should have been doing instead of pissing around in circles. It's it's just so fucking brilliant. The episode's called Back to Reality. Well, that's your death sequence. Yes, you wake up and get antagonized by this fucking technician. It's great. Dwayne Dibley? Yes, exactly. All right, let's move on. I've rambled on long enough. Back to you, Fred.
00:40:10
Speaker
i don't have any other suggestions that was that was basically it so you know i'm um yeah but i'm hearing everything you're saying with regards to red dwarf and i'm i'm only not interjecting because i agree with it all hey cool well i i have another kind of manic mansion kind of sort of idea in terms of how the how how things would work. So the first the first example from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the reason I mentioned that one was because I was just thinking about Richard Cobbett's talking about having a world that you can return to that doesn't necessarily have to be um particularly faithful to the original
00:40:46
Speaker
ah Material in the sense of it doesn't have to be faithful to an original a story that's already been told But where you're part of that world and you're part of that feeling and it gives you the platform to tell new stories and do ah new things but I think I'd like to go to the the TV show that um Before I even arrived in this country taught me the phrase yaha auntie pickin You could have got that
00:41:14
Speaker
And that is the bridge, which, for those of you who don't know, is one of those Scandi Noire series ah from the the late 2000s, early 2010s, where, at least in the original series, the premise was that there were there was a ah was a murder, and
Scandi Noir and Detective Films in Games
00:41:30
Speaker
the body was left on the bridge between Denmark and Sweden, exactly halfway along the bridge. So technically, the body was in both countries, and technically, the the two um ah police ah
00:41:45
Speaker
police forces, one from Malmo and one from Copenhagen, would have to solve the crime together. Yeah, that's not going to go well. It's not going to go well. As you know, the Danes and the Swedes don't get on. The Danish guy is the the parody of a Danish man.
00:42:02
Speaker
ah can't stay faithful to his wife, drinks too much, um doesn't really care about the brawls. And the Swede is the is stereotypical Swedish woman, follows the rules far too much, ah takes far too much snooze, and generally ruins all of her social relationships because she has no sense of irony. And this is Denmark and Sweden. Yep, this this is what I've come to know these two countries. that's Oh, it's true. Actually, a quick a quick interjection. One of my favorite facts about Denmark versus Sweden is we've had so many wars with Sweden that historians have lost count. This is a fact. We don't know how many wars we've we've had with Sweden because there's just too many of them. There's far too many.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah, we've also pulled a lot of highness shit. I mean, look up the Stockholmian Bluff bat, you know, because, you know, there are war crimes and there are war crimes. And this is one of the latter ones.
00:42:59
Speaker
Anyway, the cute Danish noir TV series. The cute Danish noir TV series, yeah. which And and i really I really like those two characters from the from the first couple of series. um they're they're They're quite interesting people, but you have an opportunity there to be able to tell a story they do have to come together at various points. That's obviously part of the plot. But you have the opportunity here to tell a story from two completely different angles, if you want to. And I think the I mean, the plot is batshit as it is with all of these kind of firm
00:43:34
Speaker
Danish-produced noir shows. If you've ever seen what was called internationally the killing, you know that actually having any kind of consistent plots or ah having it make sense at the end is completely incidental. The whole point is that you've just watched these moody people ah driving around in silly cars and then pulling guns out for no apparent reason at various points. Anyway, oh, and they have great jumpers, great knitted jumpers. That's one of the things that you eat that you need.
00:44:00
Speaker
I think criminal crime shows like that would be good or films. Yeah, so I was thinking the same thing yeah because because police detective is usually a very good ground for an adventure game. You're detecting shit and you're picking up evidence and you're analyzing evidence and I like the idea that do you have of switching between the two characters ah where one of them is overly analytical and the other one needs to sit down and have a thing to keep the room from spinning.
00:44:26
Speaker
yeah I mean, even if it's just an adaptation of the Clue game sort of, which, you know, had its own movie with Tim Curry and everything, I'm sort of thinking, you know, the Knives Out franchise, if you're familiar with any of those two films would be great for this.
00:44:41
Speaker
I'm not. So I think detective i think detective shows are they' one of the reasons detective shows work. And I think we've been talking about basically we've been talking about two different types of adventure game and adaptation since we've been doing this conversation. So on the one hand, you've got stuff that works as a tight plot that involves you going out and finding things out about the world and then making a difference to that world through what you found out.
00:45:06
Speaker
And then there's the other one where you just want to be immersed in a great world that has so much color and depth to it that you just want to spend time walking around it and and learning more about it. And I think we've had the sort of the walk around and find out more about it kind of world with things like Red Dwarf and with with Doctor Who and ah and and with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then there's this more kind of Actually, there's ah there's a plot here that works really well as finding out things about the world, and maybe something that has, as is always true with ah with these kind of detective things, where you can go in maybe different directions, where you can maybe get it wrong, as we would as so Francisco would have us do in Lamplight City, or where there can be multiple endings depending on what you find out or depending on the choices that you make.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's one question I had there, which was that if you adapt an existing crime drama, which is a murder mystery, and obviously that murder mystery has a ah resolution that has been revealed in the TV show itself, you would either have to divert from the source material pretty hard, ah give them a new case to solve or whatever it is, ah or just simply be a massive disappointment to anyone who's actually watched the show.
00:46:18
Speaker
ah just you know uh carrying on with the story i think it's true for most of the stuff that we've been speaking about that you would need to create new stories set in the same universe either that or in the case of the next example that i know you'll be bringing up focus on the journey rather than its end so if you adapt a novel or a film or a show or whatever never mind that people know how it's going to end you know you can pull that off if it's something like like retro you know something retro something from the 90s or earlier ah you know that's fine just pack it with stuff that elaborates on what you've already seen like The Last Crusade did because surely that would that would disappoint you if you'd gone in and and seen the movie already
00:47:08
Speaker
Yeah, or would it? Because because it it it diverts at some points from the ah source material. But what what I really like in in that in and specifically that adaptation is, even if you have watched the movie, what you're doing is because they elaborated on the set pieces of the movie to introduce adventure game puzzles. So like for instance, that whole bit in the library where he has to find X marks the spot and it's right on the floor.
00:47:33
Speaker
Instead of just climbing up the staircase and and looking at the floor, it's now a complete adventure game puzzle where you have to work out. ah there's There's like several floors and you have to work out which floor it is and stuff like that. So um even if you know where the story is going, you're sort of excited to get to the end bit because you already know what what's coming, but the way you have to work your way through that story. Well, that that was my point. That was my point entirely.
00:47:59
Speaker
Cool. Well, I'm happy to reiterate that. I'm like a complete idiot then. to I shall say nothing. Well, you don't have to. We already know.
00:48:10
Speaker
So, I guess I can bring up my my last example and then we can just spitball for the remaining five minutes or so. um My last example is not so much um a movie, it's a movie, but it's not so much a movie that I want to see turned into an adventure game. It's one that I don't really understand why it wasn't an adventure game to begin with. um And I... I can tell you that because of the Roman Polanski movie.
00:48:37
Speaker
Right, but it didn't necessarily have to be a Roman Polanski movie. See, the movie is based on a French novel called the Club du Mar, or something like that. ah clock dumb The Club The Club damez, exactly. Anyway, the movie is in the Ninth Gate. And um the protagonist is as referred to as a book detective. He tracks down hard to find books and um just happens to be hired by an obscenely wealthy person who wants him to go find um The Book of the Ninth s Gate of Shadows, or whatever the fuck it's called, a book reportedly written by Satan himself. Which is an interesting sort of thing to have on your shelf, really. I just hope it doesn't cackle or glow red at night. but it's ah
00:49:21
Speaker
um just Are we ramping up from Wheaton to Polanski? Okay, yeah, I think we are. Gareth is mercifully silent at this point. ah Yeah, it's it's true. no no ah ah The character of Roman Polanski himself, thankfully, has nothing to do with what I want to discuss here. anyway Satan wrote a book. he actually there There are three copies of the book, and he's ta this book detective is tasked with going out and figuring out which one is the authentic one. It turns out all three of them are spoiler. and you know ah Anyway, the point of the book is you can actually open a gate to hell itself and become immortal and and all this sort of shit.
00:50:01
Speaker
um so And there's a whole cult surrounding these books, and the the yeah dude who hired the book detective is actually completely batshit and saying, so well, if you collect books written by Satan, of course you would be kind of insane. But anyway, so the movie actually plays out like an adventure game.
00:50:21
Speaker
ah to me honest that there's there's even a scene There's several scenes at the beginning really where the protagonist sits down and and talks to people and actually says things like, what can you tell me about this book? it like It's like Gabriel Knight if Satan showed up. ah so So it would have been a fantastic adventure game. And I think you could actually do, if if you were to adapt the 9th Gate into an adventure game, ah you could do the thing that Last Crusade did where it's not so much you know what's going to happen at the end. it You're not spoiling any big surprise, but the journey there, there are many opportunities to flesh out the set pieces of that movie with adventure game-y type puzzles. so And I would gladly see that through to the end. So that's that was my final pick, The Ninth Gate, which is pretty much an adventure game and movie for him anyway.
00:51:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, anything that that kind of delves into, we've been talking about crime mysteries, but certainly anything that delves into occult mysteries would also be ideal. Absolutely. And he's a detective, so just just not a police detective. but I was thinking of one particular Hammer horror movie, which is called The Devil Rides Out, basically where Christopher Lee has to ward off the devil as opposed to playing the devil. But he has ah like,
00:51:39
Speaker
kind of a mirror image in the in the evil cult, Charles Grey playing the evil Mokada. Obviously, there are some action scenes, but I think it could work as an adventure game. There's a lot of searching for this young initiate from this club of friends who has ah been getting himself into some hot water with the occultists, some moving between locales and setting up that, you know, various stuff for ancient rites. And I think anything that has just an expansive lore, like it also features this, you know, I, you know, I digress a bit, but the fucking best horror movie line of all time. I know that's a tall order, but um
00:52:21
Speaker
Charles Grey's character has been trying to put the spell on on the good guys and you know obviously he's foiled because the movie hasn't ended yet. It fails and as he leaves he's he's exceedingly polite through this whole failed hypnotizing ordeal. As he leaves he turns towards our lead characters and says I shall not be back.
00:52:43
Speaker
But something will. Which is just a brilliant line. So yeah that and adventure game would be worth the price of admission on its own. That's better than Yaya Auntie Picken. Marginally. but But only by a slight margin, yes. yeah oh yeah yall Oh, sorry, I'm going to cut Gareth off. No, I don't want to. No, no, I was i was just thinking, thinking about sort of the occult and religion and various other things, um again, without wanting to spoil it, because it is only just coming out. But my wife dragged me to Conclave.
00:53:14
Speaker
ah the other day, ah which is ah quite an interesting thing to ah to to watch. it's It's set in the Vatican and I'm not going to talk any more about that because you probably ought to go out and and see it. um But its it's a film that's in about five or six different languages and of course going out to watch that in the cinema here meant that I had to read it in Danish.
00:53:36
Speaker
which was quite, quite the experience. But that's also a bit of a mystery where the and there's a cardinal that has to try and uncover various conspiracies that are going on in the Vatican, um while also trying to protect his own ah position. And I think that would also work quite well as an adventure game, actually, all the way through, I was thinking, actually, I can see this as an adventure. I think now that's cool. Like a serious reboot of Hudson Hark, yes.
00:54:02
Speaker
Did you guys watch Apostle? It's a Netflix horror movie with kind of... I struggle to describe the universe it takes place in, but you know, it's about this guy who goes to solve, if I remember correctly, a murder mystery on this remote island overtaken by cultists. Not unlike The Wicker Man, which might also be a good candidate for an adventure game. Nothing at all. not the Nicolas Cage version with the bees. There has to be a bees Easter egg in there. But anyway, a puzzle has this cool world, which is kind of like late 1800s Silent Hill sort of with, you know, the further the character gets into this occult world, the more bizarre things get. It's pretty amazing. And even has the puzzle as the title, so obviously that would Oh, cool. That's a good pun. Oh, hey. You also mentioned at some point Lovecraft, as in most of his... I did, yeah. The world and the lore surrounding the deep horrors and all this sort of shit would make for a great adventure
Horror and Mystery Games Potential
00:55:06
Speaker
game. Obviously, there have been two Lovecraftian adventure games, Prisoner of Ice and Shadow of the Comet, which are
00:55:13
Speaker
as most decent but not really that fondly remembered. I'm not terribly familiar with them. I think most Lovecraft adaptations in general don't capture that interconnected thing that he had going because, you know, Cthulhu will link with other Elder Gods and there'll be a race, and you know, of aliens in this story that make a reappearance in this story, maybe the the focal point in one and the they just make a cameo appearance in the other one. you know Obviously, decades before cinematic universes was a thing. He was making literary universes and rampant racism, which makes him a troublesome author to accept. But there is some good stuff in there too. Yeah, and absolutely, the the thing about Lovecraft that I read was he came up with with some of this shit and basically built the world around it. But what he did
00:56:02
Speaker
was then released that world to his friends and other authors and said, go ahead, just write some shit. A lot of these elder gods that are now famously ingrained into our culture, at least in science fiction and horror culture, were not created by Lovecraft at all. They were created by his friends who went off and wrote their own elder god stories, ah which is great. So he would probably not have any problem with adapting ah one of his stories for an adventure game.
00:56:30
Speaker
Here's an interesting thing, those two games that I mentioned previously, Shadow of the Comet and Prisoner prisoner of Ice. I have to remind myself, it's not Prisoner of Ice, there's a singular prisoner and he's in ice. um But they did one thing right, and this is something we've talked about, is that they did not try to adapt a single story by Lovecraft or mash a few stories together like a Spanish produced movie adaptation,
00:56:58
Speaker
of a Lovecraftian story called Dagon. If you haven't seen it, i kind of I kind of advise you to see it and also not because it is batshit insane. um and But anyway, the two games actually went out and and sort of did their own story. And I believe one of the things that ah Shadow of the Comet especially is fondly remembered for is that it follows the Lovecraftian rule of don't show the monster, show the madness that the monster inspires.
00:57:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's always that's always a good rule to live by. While you were talking, I was actually also thinking of Dracula, which is a very good example of, in my opinion, how not to do it. Because I've read the original novel a number of times, and it always makes my blood chill, even though I know what's coming. So why has that not been adapted rather than getting a series of sequel adventure games to the original story? I kind of thought of it as I don't know if you've watched the new Nosferatu yet. I implore you to do so. It's actually pretty good. But the original Dracula novel does have that multi-character thing going and also different perspectives. You know, it's it's basically formed by diaries and letters and and what have you in ah and phonograph recordings.
00:58:20
Speaker
transcriptions are phonograph recordings so by the time one character realizes something you as a reader may already be onto that trail and I think that would be a really interesting mechanic to try to explore.
00:58:33
Speaker
I agree. I think it would be a really good mechanic. My worry, especially with really good atmospheric horror, is kind of something that we've talked about in the past with ah dialogue and why dialogue sounds so stilted in a lot of adventure games. And it's very difficult to get the pacing right because as ah as the writer of an adventure game, you can't control how quickly ah yeah your the the player goes through your world. And if they get stuck at a particular point, um the tension can be lost either because it just builds up too much and then can't actually pay off or because people miss the bits that they're supposed to be ah paying attention to. So while I completely agree, it'd be really interesting to see somebody try that kind of thing. The only the only game I can think of um
00:59:23
Speaker
whose name is now escaping me, which is really, really bad, and has done a good job of ah keeping that tension going. And it's basically because it's a walking simulator. It's the one way you're in the yeah the house in the northwest of America and the um the the parents have gone out. Gone home. ghan Gone home. Well, we ramped it up from Polanski again. Oh, shit. He was he was so was so nice when we did the interview. It's just amazing, isn't it?
00:59:52
Speaker
Well, we didn't work for him. True. True. Look, the the the point being that that game, ah yeah, ah did yeah, we're, yeah, weeding Polanski anyway, the point, the point being that that did quite a good job of building up that tension and making that atmosphere work. But I wonder with something like Dracula, where you would need to be a little bit more, ah more of a detective,
01:00:17
Speaker
going through it. I wonder whether it would be possible to get the pacing of it right in order to really have that payoff. I mean, maybe it is, and I'm not. I was giggling before because I was like thinking playing as Jonathan Harga, you woke up to Dracula. Can you tell me what I'm supposed to do again? I told you, give me contract for Carfax Abbey.
01:00:41
Speaker
It's the same nonsense like in the seventh cast in the eleventh hour. What does the house actually want? All Stoff does is just wander around and cackle to himself and and make enigmatic things. and oh god It's a good life.
01:00:56
Speaker
Or it's a good afterlife. Yeah, I suppose it was. um But interestingly, this this actually quite nicely segues into a future episode we've been talking about doing, which is, can you do spooky horror shit in an adventure game setting where, as Gareth says, ah the pacing of which is largely up to the player and is largely non-threatening. Gone Home was a fantastic example because um I still love that game to bits because as you say, there is this underpinning tension of you walking around an empty house and people, you know you find no clippings, they start talking about fucking ghosts and shit, and you go, what the hell is going on here? And it turns and and by the end, you completely circumvent that expectation, which is fantastic. I'm not going to spoil it.
01:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to spoil it, but I was absolutely convinced it was going one way. I was absolutely dreading it. Yeah, the The way that it ends is not how you expect it to end. No, and it and it and it tells an emotional story that actually really, really works emotionally. Another thing that's really hard to to get across in and point and click adventure, at least i it seems like people are really struggling with the idea. So so one one future episode we've been talking about is Is it possible to make like proper horror in adventure games? Not just not just have a spooky underpinning or or a campy horror like Harvester and Phantasmagoria and that kind of shit, but I'd like really proper stay with you, give you nightmares type of horror. um Spoiler, my argument is no, that's what um um survival ah horror games are for. That's what your Silent Hills and Project Zero so far.
01:02:34
Speaker
Oh great, thanks trolls. Now you're just completely ruined. No, I'm going to have to come up with another idea now, Jesus. I got nightmares from King Quest V. Yeah, but for entirely different reasons I would imagine. Probably.
01:02:46
Speaker
I mean, you can you can do jump scares. That's the easy way out, obviously. I'm inclined to agree with you, but with regards to a novel like Dracula, I would argue that you don't need jump scares or you know absolute nightmarish horror. You just need the, oh my God, there's something very, very wrong. And even though I know exactly what it is, its has it has me captured. and That's the vibe you need.
01:03:10
Speaker
Absolutely and i'm I'm really tempted to just go down this rabbit hole now because I have so much I want to talk about with regards to horror but we're gonna save that for another time in fact we are out of time. Which is a shame really because we would love to hear from anyone who has ideas for something out there that has not been adapted into an adventure game which would shit I completely forgot to bring up the same.
01:03:35
Speaker
which so I even wrote a fucking design document for ah an adventure game based on the thing, like the John Carpenter. I was surprised you didn't bring that up. The thing would work really well. Yeah, ah oh we have to maybe we can shoehorn that into the horror episode or something. Well, don't reveal all the design because John Carpenter likes to get high and and play video games and he might enjoy the idea.
01:03:58
Speaker
Oh fuck, if he does, he's he's welcome to run with it. I mean, he has I was actually thinking prior to this episode, I had watched Prince of Darkness not that terribly long ago and I thought, would that make? Nah, I don't think so. And it's probably partly because of that thing you mentioned.
01:04:15
Speaker
um Also, the addition of several action scenes towards the end, because many horror films do that. you know You need to get to the climax, and monsters start appearing, stuff like that. How how does that translate well into an adventure game? It doesn't. No, Gabriel Knight even falls prey to that in the second one, where you have to run around the fucking basement and shove Von Glaur into the furnace and shit like that. Yeah, you don't want to... See, that's why the Ninth Gate will work really well, because there is no boss fight at the end.
01:04:44
Speaker
No, it's very anticlimactic and in in in the good sense. Yeah, and in that sense, it's sort of anticlimactic, and yet the ending is just so... It's it's shit. I really shouldn't spoil it, but it really but first of all, it's it's enigmatic. it leaves you It's one of those what happened next kind of endings where you just sort of go, what the fuck? And it also has titties.
01:05:06
Speaker
So basically the ending that people seem to be afraid of now, you know, people aren't doing monkey island two or on the ninth gate or the thing type endings anymore, because you'll have you'll have nerds screaming. Yeah, when multiple plot holes, you know, if there are Marvel shit doesn't line up exactly perpendicular to the next fucking film in the franchise. Oh, blood pressure. The thing has dead Norwegians as well, which, you know, going back to an earlier conversation about Scandinavian Yeah. And speaking of spoilers, that guy spoils the entire movie within the first two minutes. Oh, it's so great. Don't, don't bring the dog in. It's an alien. Shoot. Okay. See, there are for Helvade Comavec. Yeah. I see. Okay. So, so. Really, really briefly, like you say, Dead Norwegians. The first movie was about the um American outpost. The second movie, that they did sort of ah a prequel thing, um which was also called The Thing, which, you know, Rocky start and all that. But that told the story of what happened to the Norwegian camp or the thing actually came from. And there was mention of a Russian camp. So that's where I set my idea for the adventure game.
01:06:14
Speaker
It's a bit out of line with the times though. No, it isn't. Oh, oh you mean like the times like the zeitgeist? Well, the zeitgeist is pretty close to to the zeitgeist you had when the thing was made. I suppose so. Anyway, that's that's a discussion for another time. I'm very sorry. We're trying to keep these at around an hour and we don't have James Banas rocking up out of the blue five minutes before we're supposed to end. James, we love you.
01:06:40
Speaker
um So and stuff we should probably end the proceedings here, but thank you guys so much. One thing we should do, along with soliciting comments on Facebook, YouTube, what have you, which we're very eager to read, um is outline our plans for the future because we have been gone a while and it almost feels like another clean break for, you know, reasons that we didn't plan for. We've gone like for a month and a half and we all start having like withdrawal symptoms. Basically.
01:07:10
Speaker
Oh, well, ah oh I thought you were going to go ahead and outline those plans. I can do it. You're usually should be better at it. I just want to prod you and that you know talk about the stuff I want you to talk about, trolls. I will. All right. And I'll keep doing it in this voice. now um So we have a number of guests who are interested in coming back on the show and some new guests who we would like to see on the show. And we've been talking to a bunch of people who would be a very interesting guests.
01:07:38
Speaker
ah So we're gonna have some more guest episodes in the future which i just yeah yeah just's going around in circles here really yeah mean the thing is we we weren't planning on those we were actually planning to try to avoid those because it makes scheduling easier then we did a couple of them and found ourselves having a great time and now we're kinda like.
01:07:58
Speaker
Okay, well, if people want to subject themselves to this, let them. Yeah, exactly. yeah it's It's the good old days. It's brought a lot of that back. And also 2025 looks like some of those years where a lot of our old friends are going to be releasing new stuff. And it's going to be fun to just have a chat with them, give them an opportunity to try and part you listener with your money, but also maybe explain where they're coming from and why they got into what they're doing.
01:08:25
Speaker
Oh, yes. And then the one thing that we are really keen to to keep doing is not to delve in as a mistake we have made in the past is to delve into a singular experience like having people on who might or just really there to plug their game sort of things. We're going to keep things high concept. So even if we bring on a guest, excuse me, has a game coming out.
01:08:50
Speaker
This is why we had a hiatus. We spent some time... You can mute your microphone, you know. Yeah, but I'm not going to. We all spent time dying for various reasons over Christmas. Yeah, there was that as well. Anyway, so ah we're going to keep things a bit high concept.
01:09:06
Speaker
ah So if we have a guest on who has a new game coming out, we're not going to be talking about that game specifically. We're going to do what we did with Julia and Kevin and Phil in the episode about the Parsi games. They all had games, ah particularly Julia would just come out with a Crimson Diamond, but we weren't talking about the Crimson Diamond, we were talking about Parsi games.
01:09:24
Speaker
so For instance, we're talking about our good friend, David Gilbert, who has expressed interest in coming back on the show for reasons I cannot fathom. yeah He needs better quality control. ah He absolutely does. um But he has a new game coming out, and he's interested in talking about that. But we have we've been prodding him to i take the discussion in sort of a high-level concept. So we can talk about his game, and he can use his game as an example. But the topic is going to be something that's more sort of generalized. And that's the approach we're going to take with with all the guests that we have on the show in the future.
01:09:55
Speaker
um Other than that, we have an ah RSS feed now. Yes, and our podcast is currently live on Apple Podcasts, possibly with other platforms coming, I believe. Yeah. Someone has to get a Spotify account and upload this shit. No, I'm not doing it. If you, dear listener, has a Spotify account. just Yes, please. You want to you want to hold our podcast to ransom, then... What could go wrong? What could absolutely go wrong?
01:10:23
Speaker
Well, you had the podcast held to ransom by somebody on the bloody podcast and you managed to fuck it up. So, you know, yeah, we still don't have a website. No. Uh, so we, we, we're not really sure how to share this ah RSS feed. I'll share it on my socials, but obviously we, oh yeah, we have.
01:10:39
Speaker
We closed down our Twitter account, but we opened one on BlueSky. So you can go follow that. I think it's ah at backseatdesigners at BSky.app. I don't remember. Just search for backseatdesigners. We're there. And we will, of course, be posting new episodes there and also put the RSS link in our profile. So I guess that's something. And like ah Fred said, you can search for it on Apple Podcasts and possibly other um avenues as well. Still don't have a website, but at this point, do we really need one?
01:11:10
Speaker
and I suppose not really. It's an existential question. Yeah, that's the next step. That's really all I've got. Did you have anything else in mind? No. All right. Cool. So yeah, just a rundown. We got guests coming in the future. We've got an RSS feature. You can subscribe to this and actually listen to it on the go instead of having to go to my fucking YouTube page. And um we're not getting a website. Fuck it. And also we're on Blue Sky now. So fuck Twitter. um Yeah, that's pretty much it. So say goodbye, Frederick. Bye. Say goodbye, Professor Plummer. Yeah, Auntie Fiesen.
01:11:47
Speaker
Ooh, de-le-cots. Fuckin' hell, man. Yeah, goodnight, so goodnight from me. Goodbye.
01:12:02
Speaker
na de le it yeah auntie feast and