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[RettMikhal]

I was never a fan of the transition from text input to mouse input. Larry 6, Police Quest VGA and Robin Hood: Conquest of the Longbow are the only mouse inputs I've completed more than once. Things that annoyed me, besides the somewhat clunky interfaces getting worse instead of better, were the addition of narrators and the disappearance of good text boxes and options to turn the narrator off.

Space Quest IV and VI as well as Larry VII really annoyed me with the narrator. There was no way to turn him off without turning everyone off. Larry VII was especially disappointing because Larry VI had a great interface; talking, beautiful photos of every character (which were just fine silent, in fact I prefer it, I hate Larry's dorky voice), individual color boxes with a different text and background color for everyone, and well written dialog. Larry VII however made it all audio, with a last-minute addition of a textbox that is bland and ugly looking, as well as too small.

So, the long and short of it. Do any of you find these or other narrators in other games annoying as hell?

[Blood-Pigggy]

I agree with you in regards to many games, I never found narrators suitable in most adventure games except for those that contained plenty of self-referential humor, including titles such as Monkey Island or Grim Fandango.

But when I played Blade Runner or Gabriel Knight it got on my nerves, not only is it entirely necessary to listen to them if the game's got voice acting, but even if it's not a talkie you have to watch them scroll through speech instead of being able to read verbose descriptions through a text parser.

Of course, people will argue that games need to evolve, voice acting is always a big issue, and in order to implement that you need to have a character narrate. The new Sam & Max pulls this off well, but as I said, it has a lot of self referential humor.

I don't see what's outdated about text descriptions for things in adventure games, it would be best if voice acting was left to dialog and other interactions with NPCs.

[rabadi]

I actually like the narrator in Space Quest VI

[zafo999]

I agree for the most part. A lot of narration just seemed unnecessary. Although I have to admit I really thought Gary Owens was appropriate for the Space Quest games. He kind of became his own character, and I remember him having some pretty well-delivered jokes throughout, too.

[ysorian]

Originally Posted by Blood-Pigggy

The new Sam & Max pulls this off well, but as I said, it has a lot of self referential humor.

theres a new sam n max?!?!?!?! where!

[Blood-Pigggy]

You kidding me?

http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmax

[RettMikhal]

Originally Posted by zafo999

I agree for the most part. A lot of narration just seemed unnecessary. Although I have to admit I really thought Gary Owens was appropriate for the Space Quest games. He kind of became his own character, and I remember him having some pretty well-delivered jokes throughout, too.

I agree that I liked Gary Owens for some of his great lines and the totally over-the-top performance; however, as Piggy noted, is there any point to having a guy describing items to you? Why do you need a guy telling you how many buckazoids you have or what a can or floor grate looks like. I think it would have been better if the always faithful 'look at room' command made him describe things, and he narrated your thoughts and the scenes. Or, if he would only describe an item you're carrying or can get ONCE instead of friggen constantly.

Space Quest VI was forgivable for at least having good cartoony graphics (surprisingly gritty, too) and that nice multipurpose HUD at the bottom.

[ultimaIX]

I agree as well - i cannot understand why games previously mentioned simply don't have an option to turn the voice off and show a text box instead. There's nothing worse than reloading a game after you somehow managed to kill yourself and having to listen to alllll the speech again. Personally, i like to explore the many deaths that can happen in various adventure games (king's quest series springs to mind) and having to go through the speech over and over again is tedious at best.

And on the item descriptions - what in the heck were they thinking? Talk about a waste of time! :/ Not just in inventory, but all the "look" descriptions in the various rooms... Add to that the rather long (and normally humorous) descriptions become such a pain that i frequently find myself not bothering to look at anything and just walking to the next screen.

Pigggy did mention Grim Fandango - and that's certainly one game that got it right! A true gem! And afaik, it's also one of the last adventure games ever released by a major software company. (now if only there was a way to fix it so that it plays fine on fast computers... )

Maybe we're all just too old school. Maybe the next generation of gamers can't read. Or perhaps it was a sign of the death of the adventure game genre... Who knows?

-uIX

[Luchsen]

more speech = better copy by download protection :amused:

[Tulac]

I enjoyed the narration in LSL7, I don't know what you're talking about. :P