Technobabylon encompasses many of the biggest problems that modern point n’click adventures are facing currently. I’m going to talk about what i consider are the key aspects of every good point n’click adventure and why Technobabylon fails at all of them.
First of all, the story. Or to be more specific, the way the story and the gameplay merge into each other. Not sure why but at some point of recent history, point n’click games slowly started to shift into a Visual Novel direction. I mean that, of course, in a sarcastic way, since they are obviously not Visual Novels per se. But they started to focus way too much on this awful balance where scripted sequences and excesive dialog started to overshadow the actual gameplay. Technobabylon is one of these games. It feels like an interactive film with a pixel art aesthetic. You have sequences that are soooo long that, when it comes the time to actually “play”, you feel completely disengaged from the experience. After that, it get’s really hard to find the will for solving a puzzle. The story should be told through gameplay –which of course require scripted sequences almost in every case – and they should never feel like you’re watching a movie, playing a mini game in between, and then catching up with the movie again. This way of telling the story just ends up taking the agency away from the player, which is the last thing you want in a videogame.
Second of all, exploration and world-building, which i found probably the most terrible in the case of Technobabylon: There’s no sense of exploration at all. Technobabylon plays mostly as a collection of third person “Escape the room” mini games. You “escape” one of these “rooms”, then comes a loooong video, and then you’re in the next room. There’s no way of going back to the previous room, or finding your own way into other rooms. It’s already hard to connect with a game that decides to tell it’s story through long sequences instead of letting the player slowly unfold the narrative interactively by themself. It’s even harder to get inmerse in it’s world when there’s not really a world to explore, nothing to actually discover. This genre is actually called “Graphic Adventure” by many. How am i supposed to feel like i’m playing an adventure when there’s no exotism, no sense of discovery at all?
Third, the puzzle design, which is some real thrash in the case of Technobabylon, and extremely determined by how awfully this game manages in the two aforementioned aspects. I’ve played games with a questionable puzzle design, which were still worth the try because they had a good story (which didn’t overshadowed the gameplay) and they offered an interesting world to explore and get inmersed to. Actually this is what happened with many of the 90’s classics of the genre. In the case of Technobabylon, there are times where you have to learn some specific mechanics that are just not really intuitive. Other times you are supposed to “choose” how to solve the puzzle but in the end the result will be exactly the same, therefore making that freedom of choice completely useless.
These three aspects sums up what i think are essentially the gaming side of a point n’click adventure, which are all handled pretty badly in Technobabylon. To make it even worse, Technobabylon’s story doesn’t really feel that interesting to be honest. Or maybe it doesn’t feel that interesting per se because of some really poor writing (dialog feels as cliché as possible) which is also performed by some of the worst voice-acting i’ve witnessed in recent times. All of this by supported by some really uninspired art, which becomes straight out bad in the faces of the characters appearing during dialog, which is a standard for Wadjet Eye but this time, particularly, feels specially annoying. Ok, i’m going to consider my harshness with the art deparment to be extremely biased by how bad i found the writing and gameplay here. What the ilustrators and artists did here is not really that bad.
Of course, i’m aware that Technobabylon holds a strong reputation. I’ve had a few discussions here and there about why i dislike this game so much. It’s not about the game being too “story-based” – Anyway what was the last point n’click game that wasn’t strongly story-based? Maniac Mansion? -. Also, it’s not about not featuring extremely hard moon logic puzzles. Actually, i think both Gemini Rue and The Blackwell Series are pretty good examples of modern games that are heavily driven by it’s story – to the point of becoming straight linear games at times, but in a good way-, also featuring a very simple, yet engaging, puzzle design. It’s not about difficulty. It’s about the game being a game, and not trying to be something else, like a movie. Ultimately, the biggest mistake of Technobabylon is failing at giving the player the feeling of being inmersed in an adventure, and in the end, trying to be something that is not.
First of all, the story. Or to be more specific, the way the story and the gameplay merge into each other. Not sure why but at some point of recent history, point n’click games slowly started to shift into a Visual Novel direction. I mean that, of course, in a sarcastic way, since they are obviously not Visual Novels per se. But they started to focus way too much on this awful balance where scripted sequences and excesive dialog started to overshadow the actual gameplay. Technobabylon is one of these games. It feels like an interactive film with a pixel art aesthetic. You have sequences that are soooo long that, when it comes the time to actually “play”, you feel completely disengaged from the experience. After that, it get’s really hard to find the will for solving a puzzle. The story should be told through gameplay –which of course require scripted sequences almost in every case – and they should never feel like you’re watching a movie, playing a mini game in between, and then catching up with the movie again. This way of telling the story just ends up taking the agency away from the player, which is the last thing you want in a videogame.
Second of all, exploration and world-building, which i found probably the most terrible in the case of Technobabylon: There’s no sense of exploration at all. Technobabylon plays mostly as a collection of third person “Escape the room” mini games. You “escape” one of these “rooms”, then comes a loooong video, and then you’re in the next room. There’s no way of going back to the previous room, or finding your own way into other rooms. It’s already hard to connect with a game that decides to tell it’s story through long sequences instead of letting the player slowly unfold the narrative interactively by themself. It’s even harder to get inmerse in it’s world when there’s not really a world to explore, nothing to actually discover. This genre is actually called “Graphic Adventure” by many. How am i supposed to feel like i’m playing an adventure when there’s no exotism, no sense of discovery at all?
Third, the puzzle design, which is some real thrash in the case of Technobabylon, and extremely determined by how awfully this game manages in the two aforementioned aspects. I’ve played games with a questionable puzzle design, which were still worth the try because they had a good story (which didn’t overshadowed the gameplay) and they offered an interesting world to explore and get inmersed to. Actually this is what happened with many of the 90’s classics of the genre. In the case of Technobabylon, there are times where you have to learn some specific mechanics that are just not really intuitive. Other times you are supposed to “choose” how to solve the puzzle but in the end the result will be exactly the same, therefore making that freedom of choice completely useless.
These three aspects sums up what i think are essentially the gaming side of a point n’click adventure, which are all handled pretty badly in Technobabylon. To make it even worse, Technobabylon’s story doesn’t really feel that interesting to be honest. Or maybe it doesn’t feel that interesting per se because of some really poor writing (dialog feels as cliché as possible) which is also performed by some of the worst voice-acting i’ve witnessed in recent times. All of this by supported by some really uninspired art, which becomes straight out bad in the faces of the characters appearing during dialog, which is a standard for Wadjet Eye but this time, particularly, feels specially annoying. Ok, i’m going to consider my harshness with the art deparment to be extremely biased by how bad i found the writing and gameplay here. What the ilustrators and artists did here is not really that bad.
Of course, i’m aware that Technobabylon holds a strong reputation. I’ve had a few discussions here and there about why i dislike this game so much. It’s not about the game being too “story-based” – Anyway what was the last point n’click game that wasn’t strongly story-based? Maniac Mansion? -. Also, it’s not about not featuring extremely hard moon logic puzzles. Actually, i think both Gemini Rue and The Blackwell Series are pretty good examples of modern games that are heavily driven by it’s story – to the point of becoming straight linear games at times, but in a good way-, also featuring a very simple, yet engaging, puzzle design. It’s not about difficulty. It’s about the game being a game, and not trying to be something else, like a movie. Ultimately, the biggest mistake of Technobabylon is failing at giving the player the feeling of being inmersed in an adventure, and in the end, trying to be something that is not.