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Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 10:13:27 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: Organization?  Ha!
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Subject: Re: What is IF really?
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Andrew Plotkin wrote:

 >Here, John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com> wrote:
 >
[...]

 >>and finish it with "...and then a marine came in and saved the day."
 >>Doom is, in the scheme of the story, merely the big finale.
 >>
 >>I don't think there's anything I'd call IF for which this (the game
 >>merely "caps off" a static backstory in simple terms) is true.
 >>
 >Zork 1 and Colossal Cave (the Great Exceptions in talking about story
 >in IF :-) doesn't have much more story than that. "And then some jerk
 >stole it all and carried it home."
 >

On one level, that's entirely true.  On another...well, Colossal Cave
doesn't really *have* a backstory, which means that anything you might
know that happened before the "and then" was part of the game.  And if
there isn't anything there, then it's just a story about some guy
pillaging an ancient culture, which isn't entirely uninteresting.

Zork is yet another special case, since, taken with its sequels (it's
original form), and adding later sequels (particularly Zork Zero and
Wishbringer, if you force the proper connections), a very interesting
story emerges that has almost nothing to do with the gameworld's
history--that of choosing the Dungeon Master's successor.

On the other hand, perhaps Colossal Cave and Zork I are really only
"honorary" IF, having given the medium its biggest push.  It certainly
eases categorization...

 >Both text adventures and graphical shooters developed more and more
 >storyline as the genres advanced. Text adventures developed a lot
 >faster, certainly.
 >

This, I'm far less sure about.  Every time I head back to the Zorks, I'm
usually surprised by some new layer to the story that I had overlooked
the first time.  Some post-Infocom works may have been "deeper," but I
might be inclined to use the word "pretentious," in some cases, though I
would never name names, and few of them, taken as a whole, paint a
picture of the world within the framework of the story.

I suppose potential spoilers may follow.  Nothing amazing, though, I
suspect.

By the end of the Zork Trilogy, to be specific, you have a pretty good
idea that (a) your information about the white house was "planted" by
GUE agents, (b) that you came for the suggested motivation (greed) was
intentional, and (c) the lean and hungry gentleman was far more
important than originally implied (hence the human vanishing act on his
death).

Add in Zork Zero to tell you about the guy who was pulling the strings,
and Wishbringer to hint at what your previous life may have been like
(though that connection is far more tenuous, since it needs some
information from the novel to fly), and you have a genuinely complex
character who more or less "grows up" under your command.


