Several of The Adventure Company's games have made the move to a true 3D interface, offering players full 3D movement, instead of the slideshows or limited panning that most of their prior titles have. Some people have dismissed traditional point-and-click adventures as dated, and these titles should help modernize the genre.

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The Adventure Company recently announced that it had signed the North American distribution rights to Broken Sword III: The Sleeping Dragon. While the first two games were both 2D point-and-click adventures, Sleeping Dragon is making the move to a third-person 3D interface. George and Nico will return to this game, journeying to the jungles of the Congo, a historical English village, Prague, and Paris, to track down the evil power known as the Sleeping Dragon. The PC version is scheduled for a Fall 2003 release. TAC also expects to publish console versions of the game, pending final approval from the console manufacturers.

Even in 3D, the game still seems to play much like point-and-click adventures from years past. One of the puzzles on display at E3 involved a plane balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff. As I tried to climb out, the plane started to tip over to the edge -- forcing me to find a way to balance the weight enough to get out safely. A puzzle like this one makes full use of the 3D interface -- you can see the plane start to rock as you walk too far towards the unstable end -- but also still requires the kind of puzzle-solving skills that have always been present in most "pure" adventure games, without resorting to platform-like jumping puzzles. Other "action events" may require some quick thinking, but hopefully nothing too twitchy.

The interface is a bit console-like -- icons light up in the corner of the screen to indicate possible actions as you approach each hot-spot, and you press the button for whichever position the desired icon is in. The Adventure Company even supplied a gamepad to control their demo, although keyboard and mouse controls will also be available. However, as long as the gameplay remains true to the adventure spirit, and it appears so far that it will, Broken Sword III will be a game that most adventure fans can look forward to.

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Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon also makes the transition to 3D, although featuring something closer to a first-person interface that you may more commonly associate with first-person shooters. It, in fact, is being powered by a version of the Lithtech engine, which was also used in the No One Lives Forever games, for example. (Mysterious Journey was originally released as Schizm, and the sequel may still keep the Schizm name in Europe.)

Chameleon should remain largely true to the spirit of the original, even with the new engine. This title puts gamers out on another alien planet, which the player must save by solving the expected logic puzzles. The player will control only a single character in this sequel (as opposed to switching between two characters in the original), but in exchange, there should be more characters to actually talk to in the game world itself.

One of my major complaints about the original Schizm was that the graphics were just too fuzzy -- obviously the result of being compressed so much that most of the detail had been lost. I always had the sense that the designers wanted to create spectacular environments, but the execution left a lot of the detail to the imagination.

While a real-time 3D interface isn't necessarily the only way to clean up a game, the graphics in Chameleon so far are very sharp -- perhaps as good as in many of the current generation of first-person shooters. Chameleon should even run at its full intended resolution from CDs, instead of requiring gamers to find a DVD version to get the highest quality of graphics, as with the original Schizm.

It's not clear how the developers will respond to the other major criticism against Schizm -- its difficulty level. Representatives from The Adventure Company did acknowledge that some gamers in North American found the original too difficult, but they also say that European players tended to like the challenge, and they're not entirely about the difficulty level in the sequel.

Look for Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon in Winter 2003.

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TAC's third title that will be making the transition to real-time 3D is Cypher: The Sequel to Traitors Gate. As of E3, the developers had not fully developed the inventory system, so the puzzles on display were more environmental-type puzzles. TAC describes the title character, Raven, as a Bond-like hero with a collection of gadgets, although I didn't really get to see these in action. The environments do look interesting, and the graphics look nice, if not quite as sharp as TAC's other two upcoming 3D adventures. This sequel will be out this fall.

 

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