The Action-adventure genre

Up to this date, the video game industry is THE form of art that have had the biggest and fastest growth since its appearance, it’s a blend of many other art forms and every day developers finds new ways to tell their stories or convey feelings to the player, but there is one genre that since its birth has integrated the best that this media has to offer.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

The broadest video game genre of them all, it gets its name from combining various game elements, mainly… action and adventure (whoa! who saw that one coming huh?) but more than often RPG and puzzle integration as well. Mmm, but that pretty much means that it has elements of every game genre (except from spo...rr...tsss...) so let’s say that the action adventure genre is like -white light- that blends all the colors into one consistent beam..what? ok ok…We’ll start by defining its 2 main components:

1st – Adventure:  the most relevant elements of an adventure game are problem or puzzle solving, exploration through the environments and it finds heavily influenced by literature or movies on its narrative, which usually is the main motivation to progress in the game; Is rare or absent any direct control of the characters on screen with this genre, but instead you will issue them orders, choice dialog options and items to use at specific moments.

Dear Esther

Is then safe to say that games such as, the secret of monkey island, Grim Fandango and more recently the walking dead, are fine examples and they are usually referred as -point and click adventure-, ooor as I play them:-click everything on the screen until something happens adventure-. Keep in mind that the genre is not limited to those games, more recently the indie developers has granted us with first person adventure games, such as Dear Esther.

Star Soldier

2nd -Action: One simple and consistent problem…there is something ought to hurt you, destroy it or it will destroy you. It is a more ‘’physical’’ experience, you will have direct control of your avatar and it emphasizes hand-eye coordination and reaction time from the player.

It spawns different sub-genre such as fighting games, pew pews.. I mean! shooters ..and platformers.

Of course as I said early , those are the basics from which an action-adventure game draws elements from, but not limited to them, the most common addition are role-play mechanics.

Suikoden V

So let’s define briefly the core mechanics of this genre of video games, the RPG:  based on the same principles as pen and paper RPGs the player takes the Role of a fictional character, or group of characters, on a quest, the story of such quest is, ( just like in an adventure game) the main gear that moves the player to continue to see the game through… or bore the shit out of him, whoever in this case we will be able to improve attributes of the characters that we are controlling, via levels of experience accumulated, gained usually by fighting foes. Or enhancing their equipment with new pieces of armor and weapons, this, in order to face the tougher challengers that the quest presents to us; to put it bluntly this game genre emphasizes preparation over hand-eye-coordination, it recompenses the time a player puts into it, the more you play it the stronger your characters will be… is like going to the gym…a gym filled with emo Japanese teenagers.

The Legend of Zelda

So, where did the action-adventure genre started? …Well ...once upon a time BUM! Zelda. By the mind of Shigeru Miyamoto in collaboration with Takashi Tezuka and Eiji Aonuma in 1986 they created the biggest and most beloved franchises in gaming. It blends seamlessly for the first time the diverse game play elements we just talked about. Inspired by trips that Shigeru used to take as a child to the hillsides where he grew up, this game masterfully presents the player with choices, adventure, empowerment and problem solving, while in the process, creating a genre and making Nintendo profitable for 27 years.

I won’t go into much detail in why this franchise is so fine regarded, I might save It for a later post, but, I will say that, this is where console gaming started to flex some legs… and arms… and freaking wings!

Requiring several sessions to beat and discover its secrets, gave players a true sense of progress, not just in the enemies you fought, but constant and persistent enhancements on the protagonist and its equipment. You feel connected to the world, the character you control, the ones you met, the places you explored, the challenges you have overcome and the improvements in your very own skills at doing so. This description might as well be suited too, for the most part, to another game genre that we covered, the RPG.

Batman Arkham City

Then why an action-adventure game could not simply be an RPG? if those tent to transmit a similar sense of progress and achievement to the player... or does it even matter what genre any video game is in? Short answer no,  but you already are at this point in the article so at least you are curiou…wait …no, no no don’t click on another page, ..To be fair it used to be easy---er to set apart an RPG from an action adventure game but every day the line gets blurrier as they tent to draw elements from one to another, take for example lighting returns …yes I know, only the 2 people who played would know what I am taking about (Spoilers: is good), or even further complicating things, mass effect 2 and 3. This games, especially the ladder, although is referred as an action-rpg, draws stuff from so many genres that it might well be fitted as an action-adventure game, because it’s usually the broadest of videogames genres by definition. Therefore sometimes could be difficult to set them apart, and not just from rpgs, but from some platformers and contemporary shot bangs… I mean.. shootars.

But regardless, for the most part, an action-adventure game is one that, by letting the player explore the game world, tasks him to solve problems with the tools the game presents to him(whatever they might be), not by grinding levels, but skill, both logical and mechanical.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

By this point, you may already notice that several great action-adventure games belong to this category: your prince of Persias, zeldas, batman arkhams, assassins creeds, darksiders, bioshocks, soul reavers, tomb raiders, grand theft autos, etc. So you have an idea now, how inclusive this game genre is, perhaps several of your favorite games belong in this category, is possible that some of them might have spawn new subgenres, maybe you found out why you don’t like ANY of those games (you monster), and while may not be relevant to some, it still is an interesting -GAMING TOPIC- to take on… Thank you for being awesome.