Chapter 4 and Text Adventures

Chapter 4 talked about interactive fiction, a genre of electronic literature. The text adventure games mentioned in the chapter reminded me a lot of the hypertexts that we looked at last week, but these seemed more interactive and relied more on the choices of the user than hypertext.

I looked at Galatea and Zork which were both extremely similar in regards to how they function. I played Zork first and was confused in the beginning, but started to get the hang of it. I realized quickly that the AI wouldn't recognize certain words or phrases so I was only able to give simple commands like "walk," "jump," or "climb" in order for my character to interact with the world. When I did want to perform an action, the AI asked me to be specific ("walk west" instead of simply "walk"). I walked into a forest, climbed a tree, found a jewel-encrusted egg, jumped on a grate and opened it, hopped around in a field, and screamed as I threw the egg around trying to break it. The AI mentioned something about dungeons, but I was never able to find one. It was almost like the AI was a separate character that was watching me and judging me for my actions. When I commanded my character to hop the AI responded, "Do you expect me to applaud?" I found in very unhelpful in guiding me on what to do next, especially since there were no instructions.

Galatea was a similar experience. My character came upon a marble statue of a woman in an emerald dress - Galatea. I was supposed to interact with her and talk to her, but everything I tried to ask or talk about couldn't be interpreted by the AI. I got bored and gave up after about 10 minutes of trying to communicate and failing.

Although I thought that these text adventures were interesting and imaginative, I found that they lacked a plot or any real guidance which made me disinterested after a relatively short amount of time. I think that video games today are much more interactive and immersive. Two of my favorite games of all time are Skyrim and the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy for Xbox One. Both games have extremely detailed narratives that the player can explore and customize to their own style of playing which makes me feel like I'm actually in the game myself. I think that the visual aspects of video games today makes a huge difference in a player's engagement with the game. The text adventures gave me the freedom to create my own setting and envision my own realm to explore, but the lack of visuals also left me disoriented at times with relatively no way to know where I was other than the basic terms of "FOREST" or "CLEARING" like in Zork. I appreciated the text adventures, but I would definitely prefer modern-day video games.

Lily