Big themed manuals and incredible detail: things of the past

[Parvini]

What has happened to the gaming world where a Colonization 2 or an Alpha Centuri 2 seems to be almost totally inconceivable and yet at the end of last year we got: Heroes of Might and Magic FIVE, Space Empires FIVE and Caeser FOUR - all totally pointless releases, all featuring in some shape or form streamlining of micromanagement in favour of flashier graphics and "macromanagement" - following the model set by Master of Orion 3. Are Colonization and Alpha Centuri no longer acceptable to the modern gamer because both are "too detailed", too esoteric? I remember the days when games would come in big boxes with big manuals that typically came in the form of a brief from your boss or perhaps a journal or an old tome penned for wannabe adventurers - the archtypal example is Baldur's Gate 2 - a map, a big thick book, a hotkey list. Compare the paltry manual that accompanies Oblivion today - or even better - open up your 2004 copy of Neverwinter Nights and look at the spared down spell description and banal functionality of the instruction manual there. This is a trend that has pervaded all areas of gaming - even the Civ series has offered progressively less historical information and has attempted to "flavour" its manual less and less - the long descriptions that traditionally accompanied the Wonders of the World have been replaced by very brief descriptions and its in-game function. So an effort to create a theme and imaginary world for the game has by and large been traded for functionality and nothing else. Am I alone in missing these things? Was I alone in reading those manuals, becoming part of their imagination and getting lost in the world of these games? I think that the thinking now is that our graphics and whatnot have reached the stage where we no-longer need to sustain our disbelief or take on "roles" - but I don't think we are anywhere near that - the arid, cold, soulless, vacant world of Oblivion is surely testament to that. Theme Hospital, Dungeon Keeper, Civ2, Colonization, Master of Orion 2... The games of the mid-90s did their utmost to maintain the illusion that you actually are the person you are playing, and their manuals were party to that illusion, and they were largely huge. A few games, like Baldur's Gate for example, carried on that tradition into the 2000s but soon the big-box game was more or less eradicated by the DVD-case game and with that change, seemingly, the attempt to maintain an illusion was lost too...

[Scythe]

This is why I buy Deluxe editions, mostly. They almost always come with extra goodies, in the form of fiction, beautiful maps, whatever. All the stuff that wouldn't fit in a DVD case.

But yes, the feeling of sitting with the wonderful Elite: Frontier monster of a manual, with all its minute detail and funny stories, is a bygone age. It's pretty much a fact, and I don't know what else to say to that. Not that I actually ever liked those manuals. I sometimes read them in bed after a day of playing the game, practically never opened them prior to playing.

[Zyx]

And who could forget Leisure Suit Larrys, where the manuals were an important part of the game. Like in LSL3, where the advertisements in the booklet were keys to solve puzzles in-game. I think that both LucasArts and Sierra were pretty good with this at a time. I think the innovation died around Grim Fandango, which at least to me still marks the end of an era in many, many ways. The 2 CD sleeve it came with is a piece of art.

I believe that one reason is the ever increasing costs of actually making games and 3D. The latter is also one of the major drivers for escalating costs, but I think developers also think that because of 3D, the game world's immersion makes up for lack of "background material".

Then again, almost every game today has a tutorial phase, which acts like an on-line version of manual. Sometimes it's just going through the controls, but many times it's a way to tell the background story to the game. Like in Beyond Good & Evil.

[Chroelle]

Also I think the booklet on GTA3 and its successors are doing something. Maybe not to the extent of the old times huge novels, that I must admit I used the same way as Scythe- good reading on long commutes or as bedtime reading, but only after playing the game.

GTA3 presents the booklet as a parleur to the city you are visiting. The many ads in the booklet serves as clues too, but not to puzzle-solving but more as a waypoint of what is to be found in the sity.

I could wish for more, and I do, but I think it is keeping just a little bit alive...

I think however that some games were overpresented in the way of booklets. I find it nicer to have bedtime reading for a sim, adventure, rpg and such games than for sports and action games. But sometimes the stories on action games are more elaborate than the ones in RPG's and that is also a mistake. If I bought "Next Generation DOOM-game" then I did so to blast guns and implode heads, not to catch up on some deadbeats lifestory. If the game is an adrenaline-rusher, then please do not bore me with details. However if the game is a detail-hunter, please do not skip the backgrounds.