NOTE: This text originally has been intended as a comment to a youtube video. That video deals with the user interface in adventure games and I got inspired by its content. After some quick brushes, I rushed out a rather simple idea. In the essay I refer to someone as "SQH". It's the author of said video I mentioned above. I'd like to dedicate this essay to him. You can find the original video here. Thanks Troels!
The interface has to die
With each UI there comes a different design idea. SQH pointed out a lot of the reasons why the ideas changed, but there's a slight shift in game design that lead to radical different forms. The change in technology and taste produced different stories that produced different manipulation methods. I think the manipulation aspect of interaction with the game world is fundamentally determined by the narrative.
The linear approach implicates more actions than the explorative. If the player is in one situation at a time, he has to have lots of options to manipulate that situation, so here the parser comes in handy to give the illusion of freedom, even though there are very limited correct actions. As the story progresses to the next situation, the player has to adopt to that and might get more creative to use the parser. This creativity is overwhelming when many situations are already open to the player.
The more exploration is an integral part of the game, the less linear its narration could be and so the focus lies less on problem solving. Text adventures often overwhelm with an illusion of things to do, while the number of puzzles to solve the games are relatively low. In early graphic adventures this still is the case. Progress is made by narrowing the problems down. Gradually though this idea comes to its limits. The explorative game introduces more and more problems that would be overwhelming if the method of manipulation was just as complex. To have an enjoyable experience though, complexity has to be interesting. Here it comes again:
The narrative shifts to another form of exploration. While the manipulation method itself was the creative field of exploration in before, the discovery of different situations now becomes the center of interest. The player merely wants to discover all the graphical world has to offer, not the vocabulary of the parser. The consequence is a change in methods of manipulation.
If the game even drifts away from the exploration of the game world and gets more film like in nature, the narrative again shifts into another form which has to be reflected in the UI. In simple terms: If the interface kills the story, the interface has to die.
