Old Games with Real People

[daventry]

Games like Phantasmagoria used Real People, what Other Old Games was there that also used Real People.

I remember a Game about Two People lost in a Jungle, i think it was the Amazon or something and you could also switch between Characters at any moment, what was that Game called.

[KatieHal]

That style is called FMV (Full Motion Video). The two Phantasmagoria games used it, as well as Gabriel Knight II. GK2 was the most well done FMV I've seen...it generally just never seemed to work as well as you would hope and looked more awkward and obvious than real.

I don't know what that other game you're talking about is though.

[Baggins]

Police Quest: Swat (AKA Police Quest 5) was also in that style, and partially advertised as an adventure game, and as a tactical simulation.

The second Shivers game used FMV as well, for some of the videos you find scattered around.

Police Quest 3, and Police Quest: Open Season also had semi-FMV, or rather digitized actors incorporated into the game.

Technically even KQ6 used a bit of the semi-FMV digitized actors for certain scenes, but edited to fit into the world (but was more from the era of PQ3/PQ4 style). Note most of the close up scenes were shot in studio with real people in costume. Many of the human sprites were also built from real people dressed in costumes, and then edited.

The Amazon game, he's referring to is "Amazon: Guardians of Eden", its actually closer to PQ3/PQ4/KQ6 use of digitized actors incorporated into the game. I wouldn't call it exactly "FMV", in the same way I wouldn't call any of those other games FMV.

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,929

Also from the era of digitized actors, I'd recommend Inca I and II. Very warped hybrid of adventure game, space combat simulator, and shooter.

Back to FMV games, the later Tex Muphy games are generally well thought of.

Wing Commander 3 and 4 (not adventures but FMV games), are usually well thought off as well.

[wilco64256]

"The 7th Guest" and "The 11th Hour" both used FMV's with real actors in them.  As did the "Rama" game.

[kindofdoon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FMV-based_games

[Baggins]

The problem is there are FMV games, and there are games with digitized actors, both are reallly completely different styles of games.

ONe is actually filmed, and the FMV makes it into the game, the other is filmed or photographed then only a few cells make it into the game (and manipulated).

KQ6/PQ3/Amazon, etc were more of the latter.

[Enchantermon]

"The 7th Guest"

I played that for the first time in my early teens. I'm 22 now and it still creeps me out, even to this day. *shivers*

[crayauchtin]

Mission Critical was an adventure game that had real actors -- and some of them were names too, y'know! The guy who played Worf on Star Trek was in it!

[wilco64256]

That's cause it's just a freakin creepy game.  Just weird.

[Rosella]

"The 7th Guest"

I played that for the first time in my early teens. I'm 22 now and it still creeps me out, even to this day. *shivers*

I played The 11th Hour when I was about 7 or 8. Baaaaad move.

Also, Lost in Time is FMV. I loved that game. It wasn't that great of a quality of graphics, but I didn't think the people stuck out as awkward.

[GwydionAE]

I thought of The 7th Guest, too, but not because I ever played it.  I was pretty young when I saw someone else playing it at their house, and it gave me nightmares - years later, I still remembered some of those scenes almost word for word!

Would Myst count then?  It's not on the list, and I know there were hardly any people at all, but the scenes from the blue and red books come to mind.  Then again, I haven't played it in ages.

[Baggins]

Definitely many of the myst games, if not all of them had real FMV. Been so long since I played the first one though, I don't remember all the details exactly.

There is also the three later Zork games, Return to Zork, Zork Nemesis, and Zork Grand Inquistor. Ranging from digitized actors only (Return to Zork disk version specifically) to FMV.

[Deloria]

Did QfG5 also use that style?

[Baggins]

QFG5 is 3-d, no digitized actors, nor FMV.

QFG4 might have used digitized actors for creating the sprites, I don't know for sure. QFG1 used claymation.

[KatieHal]

Hm...I think I'd call Myst a game that has FMV in it, but not an FMV game.

And now that I think about it, I think that game's FMV worked better than a lot of games because of that (and that you never saw non-FMV characters).

[Enchantermon]

Hm...I think I'd call Myst a game that has FMV in it, but not an FMV game.

I guess it depends on your definition. All of the characters were real people, but traditional 3D animation was also used.
But yes, I think the Myst series utilized it quite well.

[Baggins]

Hm...I think I'd call Myst a game that has FMV in it, but not an FMV game.

Well actually quite a few of the games mentioned above are games with FMV added to them, rather than purely FMV. Phantas for example is mainly interactive walk around traditional adventure, with FMV cutscenes in places.  All backgrounds were prerendered 3D. As I recall they even made a disk version of the game, without most of the movies (using stills instead). It was Sierra's last disk based game I think. The demon was a traditional 3-d rendered monster...

Wing Commander 3 and 4 most of the gameplay is outside of the movies... The movies are used as cutscenes and in between interacting on board the ships various screens (which existed in previous games only in 2-d). The FMV cutscenes just replaced 2-d cutscenes of previous games in the series.

The 7th Guest/11th Hour is more like myst, a dark version of myst, with occasional cutscene, most is traditional 3D/2D animation. The Zork trilogy was mostly traditional myst style game, with the FMV in places as cutscenes.

Rebel Assault II was a game with traditional shooter sequences, with the FMV used as cutscenes.

I think only SWAT was the only one that's purely FMV (except in static scenes).

One could argue that Gabriel Knight 2 was nearly pure FMV (albeit between cutscenes was not FMV, but every action usually brought up FMV). Although GK2 had the interactivity of myst, but from a 3rd person perspective in most places.

There are very few true FMV from your definition of FMV, other than a handful of Mad Dog Mcree style laser gun shooters.... Its really the truly full FMV games we tend to forget as well, since the acting was so aweful, and there was little actual "gameplay"... like said countless FMV shooters... They fall more into the style of games as the Dragon's Lair and Space Ace arcade games that used traditional animation and limited interactivity... There was also a handful of Sherlock Homes: Consulting Detective, which also had very limited interactivity, and you mostly just watched cutscenes. That's why many of these games were easy to convert to traditional DVD players, and all you need to play them is a DVD remote. Since there is very little actual game, it acted more like DVD tracks.

Hmm, I thought of another game from the era of digitized actors that's pretty cool. Heart of China...by Dynamix.

[Mysteria]

HerInteractive's Vampire Diaries

was like that...I think.

[wilco64256]

The Journeyman Project games used FMV stuff.

[Baggins]

Yep those also fall into the Myst style games.