Idle Forums
Broken Age - Double Fine Adventure!
By ThunderPeel2001, May 13, 2012 in Video Gaming
osmosisch
Quit gettin' mad
Location: Onnen
We did the space bit first because come on, space.
toblix
Fjord Lord
Location: Norway
I never actually manually switched, since I kept expecting to be introduced to the mechanic, like in any modern game, and suddenly I had finished it. I should go back and see if it has a cool effect or something.
SecretAsianMan
Thumbs Candyman
I'm curious if there are stats about who played which part first. I went with Vella, and I think that's both consciously because I was attracted to the landscape and the mysterious sleeping baker girl, and subconsciously because her story was on the left side of the screen, and in the West, that's where you begin. Additionally, since time moves chronologically, I think there's an inherent urge to start in the [perceived] pastoral past before tackling the sci-fi future story.
I did Vella first, partially because of the reasons you stated but also because in the beginning I was more interested in Shay's story so I decided to save it for later. In the end I liked them both (maybe Vella's a little bit more).
elmuerte
Wizard of Science
Location: a city named after cheese
Space first... because: Space!
subbes
Project Manger
Location: SF Bay Area
I started with Vella but then got stuck very early on, so I switched to Shay. I continued to switch back and forth, but I finished Shay's first.
Bad Brain's Intern(TM)
On the topic of difficulty:
I don't know if the game will 'gear up' to anything challenging in act 2, but apart from the Riddle of Yorn, which posed a fun roadblock, none of the puzzles were particularly hard... or even that noticeable. I'd say 95% of the time whenever I encountered an interaction, it was instantly solvable with an item already in my possession, and abundantly clear what the solution was, or I'd solve something just by messing around before I even know there was a puzzle (putting the feather shoes on the ladder). Am I having a serious case of Adventure Goggles? Or is Broken Age [act 1] kind of easy? At times it felt more like a Freddy Fish than a Monkey Island.
All of which isn't to say it's to the detriment of the game, which clearly wants you to flow forward and appreciate the characters and environments, but I also feel miffed that there weren't any hard nuts to crack. Take for instance Shay's elevator puzzle with the shrinking head. That could've been a neat puzzle where you need to double back to the original passage and re-enter the same elevator twice. To solve it would require you to understand the system and then figure out how to abuse it, which is gratifying. Instead, you only need to take the three elevators present in any succession and the puzzle basically solves itself. I was practically in the process of figuring out the solution to a much harder puzzle than was actually there.
Did anyone else feel this as well? «Adventure Lite»?
Nachimir
PJYxCSXjhLI#t=2m31s
I am really, really bad at adventure games, so there were a few bits of this I bashed my head on a little. Even then, I didn't switch and pushed through to the end of Vella's bit before starting on Shay.
jiggly anime false negative butts
Am I having a serious case of Adventure Goggles?
Almost certainly.
manny_c44
Zombie Thumb
That could've been a neat puzzle where you need to double back to the original passage and re-enter the same elevator twice. To solve it would require you to understand the system and then figure out how to abuse it, which is gratifying. Instead, you only need to take the three elevators present in any succession and the puzzle basically solves itself. I was practically in the process of figuring out the solution to a much harder puzzle than was actually there.
Oh man, that's the way I did solve that puzzle! I didn't realize there was an easier way. Yeah it was very lite, maybe they got the ball rolling with simple puzzles and then didn't want the progression of the game to grind to a halt with tough ones.
It's strange because the game was (atleast originally) concieved as something to please the closest fans but it ends up feeling like a game for the masses rather than the enthusiasts.
Frenetic Pony
Excelcior!
Really like the tone and visuals so far. Love how it looks, absolutely. But the tone is... it... ok I'm a huge fan of it. It reminds me of My Little Pony. Whimsical, more relatable than most stories yet with a fantastical setting, and a conflict that lacks and immediate urgency. Heck in Shay's story there little to no urgency at all. Unfortunately I'm only maybe an hour or forty minutes into Shay's story, and I already think I know what's going on. It feels too broadcast, though I hope I'm wrong. Vella's story on the other hand is really enjoyable, and I don't know where its going at all.
Still don't like "Adventure game!" gameplay. I always get annoyed with solving riddles, if there's a puzzle give me clear cut rules, I'll take math and related over an adventure games more riddle like leaps of logic any day. But like Monkey Island 1 (I never beat 2) I think I'll enjoy this enough to get through it anyway. And for the most part the puzzles have at least some logic to them, and so mostly avoid the "rub two things together and hope they make fire" kind of solution.
Though it still does happen ala
giving the fruit as an offering. "A nice light gift" wait what, really? I mean get that he likes lightness and whatever, or is supposed to, but F'ther doesn't even mention that in context to the offerings. Or the air cannister and "inflatable raft" for the Shay part. Only reason I tried it, because why would I need a raft yet? Was because I'd run out of other things to try.
So while I initially liked this, I was also not blown away. But as I've ruminated on it for a few days, it's steadily growing on me even more. One thing about Schafer's games is that they tend to have a very fucking dark edge to them, which he blunts through artistic design and humor (themes about death, loss, depression, abuse and mental illness have shown up in multiple games). Those are all present here. The darkness in Broken Age is right in your face the entire time, but it didn't really sink in right way for me. Detailed thoughts in the spoiler, which is full of very specific spoilers.
First, Shay's entire life (unbeknownst to him) is built upon ripping other families apart. Taking children and sacrificing them to a monster. Sure, the communities have tried to simply incorporate this as an element of their society and convince everyone that it is for the best, but obviously it's leaving behind a lot of broken people in its wake. It doesn't matter whether a daughter is chosen or not, ultimately everyone is damaged in some way. Either through loss of having someone taken, or shame that they weren't. This is a society with a foundational pillar of emotional and physical abuse of their daughters.
Shay is straight up suicidal. His world is so boring and safe, devoid of any feeling, that he relishes even the brief rush of maybe beating the system through death. Part of the gameplay is actually guiding him through the motions of suicide. He knows it probably won't work, but it sure looks like he's secretly hoping that it will. Of course, there is one scene where he actually could cause himself harm (going into the reactor thing), and he refuses. But his solution is to shrink his head and use a toy helmet as protection. That's like the suicidal part of him finding a way to trick the part of him that wants to live.
Then you have the feather cult, which is entirely humorous, until you think about the fact that it only makes sense to us because there are people who really do this. We know these stories. They make the news when they go horribly wrong. They sacrifice everything, including their families, pursuing what amounts to a fantasy created by mental illness (either on the follower's part, or the part of a charismatic leader). The feather cult obviously desires to separate its members from other people. That kind of control and isolation is often a recipe for abuse, and even death.
You actually have to torture a sentient creature to progress in the game. A creature who has witnessed the repeated murder and torture of its fellows, who fears genocide at the hands of your race. Very similar to Vella's fear and hatred of Mog Chothra. This is interesting because Vella is the monster in this scene. She's so concerned about destroying Mog and protecting the girls of her world, that she's blind to the ethics of her own actions.
It's hinted that Vella's village might have been proverbial monsters before the coming of the Mog. That everyone decided that occasionally sacrificing a daughter was better than whatever kind of behavior that Steel Bunting was engaged in.
Edited to add: Thought of another one. Then you have the cult of the dead eyed god, where young people (maybe all girls?) blind themselves to become servants of their god. If it is again just girls who serve (we only see two girls), then this village not only sacrifices their daughters to monsters, they also blind them for life in honor of their god. If it can be boys or girls, it's still fucked up, just more equal. The adults of this world appear to be almost universally terrible, abusive parents.
I wonder if any of the future documentary stuff will get into how intentional some of those things are, and if there was some commentary intended by Schafer with them.
Edited January 24, 2014 by Bjorn
Professor Video Games
Active Thumb
Spoilers in response to Bjorn's spoilers
There's an even more explicit suicide attempt from Shay that's possible to miss. When you're outside of the ship in the space suit, you can cut your air hose with the knife without attaching the air canister. Shay get's rescued by the arms and when he comes to he says something like "Ah well, it was worth a shot". He might even say something as he's suffocating initially, I can't remember. Anyway, that's some darkness right there.
I'm certainly curious what's going on. It's pretty clear his "discovering" Marek and the events that follow are planned, which means whoever designed the whole system deliberately drives the kids in these ships to the breaking point so they'll be easy to manipulate. Pretty messed up.
Yes, the spacesuit! I knew there was another really clear example that I couldn't remember when I was writing that out.
I also agree with your conclusion that the ship is designed to drive Shay to that point, which is maybe the most disturbing thing in the game if true.
tberton
Replica of the Original Abe Lincoln
Location: Ottawa, Canada
In response to Frenetic Pony's spoiler:
You can use anything as your offering to get to Harm'ny. I used the Cloud Shoes that Car'l gave me.
ariskany_evan
My wife and I are slowwwwly making our way through the game. Every couple of days we'll play it for a half hour or so. Leaves it feeling nicely fresh!
Puzzle-room games kill my playing momentum. I simplify it to: learning a space, hearing what everyone has to say, figuring out what I'm trying to do, puzzling the puzzle. Rinse, repeat. For some reason I get much more fatigued of this kind of loop compared to other sorts of gameplay loops. (Portal did this to me, so I imagine it's just a function of the way in which I put together the world, rather than a problem with this style of game).
That being said, the ability to switch between characters is enough to alleviate some of that loss of momentum.
syntheticgerbil
Anyone ever play The Feeble Files. Granted, that game had some terrible puzzles, but it also had incredibly good ones. At one point you're trapped in a prison colony, and stuck in a routine that you have to figure out how to break out of. Now that was an epic escape. The difficultly and repetitiveness of the routine only helped to enhance the mood and feeling of being in the prison. hmmm... I should replay that sometime.
That's one of my favorite adventures, warts and all. However, I remember the prison break being especially stressful and not very fun.
Hmm, just finished it. I apparently didn't send my name in or something, because I wasn't on the list of backers.
I enjoyed both sides, though Vella's side of things was a lot more entertaining to me than Shay's. I also got stuck a lot more on Vella's side of things, though usually because I missed a hot spot rather than being confused about what the next step was supposed to be. I'll be interested to see how Act 2 goes (as well as the next couple documentary episodes) because, right now at least, I'm not really sold on the ending.
Your name in the credits was for $100 backers.
Ah that would be it then, I only splurged for the $30 pledge. I'm so used to Kickstarters these days offering "your name in the credits" to anyone who's willing to throw a couple bucks in.
This is slightly cringeworthy at times due to technical problems, it being Nathan Grayson's first ever video interview and a few really awkward questions. But if you want to watch Tim Schafer play Broken age for an hour, you can.
Tim's defense of the game's difficulty makes a lot of sense, particularly in the context that he never intended some of his older adventure games to be as difficult as they were. Less playtesting back then meant less opportunity to discover which puzzles would stump a lot of people.
CaptainFish
Sole Brother
Just finished Act 1 this today. I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said. Love the art and the storytelling. I did really enjoy the order I chose: Vella then Shay.
In general I enjoyed Vella's section more, Shay's is great too, I just enjoyed the more traditional structure (re: cast and setting) of Vella's part.
As for difficulty, I liked the puzzles that were presented, but I did encounter a few spots where I solved something when I was wearing my adventure game tourist hat, trying to experience all the various content. With Vella, I'd often say the thing that I just assumed was the funny or throw away line and get through. I've never been one to just go down a list of dialogue options, and I ran into all the right ones in this game.
Has anyone received their digital copies of the soundtrack via Kickstarter yet? Seems odd that they'd release it on Bandcamp before sending out to the backers.
mikemariano
Yes, it's another option on the Humble Bundle page—the same place that had the Steam key. I have downloaded it but not yet listened to it.
Ah, thanks.
Do you know if it's just the music from part 1? If it's the music from both, I think I'd prefer to wait until I've played part 2 before downloading it. In the past when I've listened to music from games before hearing them in-place it has become distracting.
Go To Topic Listing Video Gaming