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> One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it’s more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn’t break any new formal or thema

> One of the few negative things I can say about Day of the Tentacle is that it’s more fun than it is truly innovative; it doesn’t break any new formal or thematic ground The time travel aspect and that you control three characters in the past, present, and future, where things you do in the past affect the future was truly innovative to me. I realize now that it's not as magical design or programming wise as it appears. It's not that hard to have something done in one room affect something in another room in the game, but as a player having to think across time as well as space was really cool. The article goes on to talk about the time travel, so it's not ignored, but it seems that I found it more innovative than the author.

coroxout 7y ago
I think the site author comes from an interactive fiction background, so I suppose there were text adventures that did switchable playable characters and time travel before DotT [1], but I don't know of a graphic adventure that beat DotT to it. I found the interaction between the 3 timezones pretty innovative as a kid too and think he does the game a disservice here. It also opens the game up in terms of how many puzzles you can be thinking about at once; if you're stuck in a traditional 1-protagonist game you might only have one or two things you think you need to do next, at least in a pretty linear game, but now you always have at least 3 things to work out at once... [1] I'm not a big IF buff, but I guess Infocom's "Suspended" (1983) is a classic game where you can control different "characters" at once, and I really loved "T-Zero" (1991), where you also open up 3 different timezones you can travel between at will, and changes in the past affect the present/future in a slightly DOTT-esque manner - although it's a very different game. Suspended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) T-Zero: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr or reviewed on filfre.net here: https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/ https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Chrono Trigger was a really good old SNES RPG that had gameplay centered around time travel, where actions in one timeline affected outcomes in another. Not an adventure game, but it's something that your comment reminded me of.
  - needle0 7y ago
    Much less known than Chrono Trigger, but the Game Boy RPG SaGa 3 (known in the west as Final Fantasy Legend III) was a case of Square's attempt at time travel in RPGs that came before CT. It had a lot of thematic elements in common, eg. actions in the past affecting the future, objects that appear in all time eras, separate dimensions that exist outside of the regular time continuum, etc. Unlike CT or DoTT, the eras were only decades apart, so you could also run into the same person as a kid and an adult. The same team at Square did not work on it, but it should have at least had some influence on CT.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Zork III (1982), Sorcerer (1984), Spellbreaker (1985) and Trinity (1986) all did time travel, and Suspended (1983) did multiple characters. Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997) definitely did time travel as different playable characters in a graphical adventure, but that was four years after Day of the Tentacle (1993).
bstar77 7y ago
Not to mention that intro sequence was breathtaking for the time, especially for a graphic adventure. Lucasarts was hitting on all cylinders back then and DOTT was right there in the middle of it. The game is a work of art. Games as art is something DOTT definitely moved forward.

coroxout 7y ago

I think the site author comes from an interactive fiction background, so I suppose there were text adventures that did switchable playable characters and time travel before DotT [1], but I don't know of a graphic adventure that beat DotT to it. I found the interaction between the 3 timezones pretty innovative as a kid too and think he does the game a disservice here. It also opens the game up in terms of how many puzzles you can be thinking about at once; if you're stuck in a traditional 1-protagonist game you might only have one or two things you think you need to do next, at least in a pretty linear game, but now you always have at least 3 things to work out at once... [1] I'm not a big IF buff, but I guess Infocom's "Suspended" (1983) is a classic game where you can control different "characters" at once, and I really loved "T-Zero" (1991), where you also open up 3 different timezones you can travel between at will, and changes in the past affect the present/future in a slightly DOTT-esque manner - although it's a very different game. Suspended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_(video_game) T-Zero: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=u8qqrwutdugkexpr or reviewed on filfre.net here: https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/ https://www.filfre.net/2017/12/the-text-adventures-of-1991/

ilikehurdles 7y ago
Chrono Trigger was a really good old SNES RPG that had gameplay centered around time travel, where actions in one timeline affected outcomes in another. Not an adventure game, but it's something that your comment reminded me of.
- needle0 7y ago
  Much less known than Chrono Trigger, but the Game Boy RPG SaGa 3 (known in the west as Final Fantasy Legend III) was a case of Square's attempt at time travel in RPGs that came before CT. It had a lot of thematic elements in common, eg. actions in the past affecting the future, objects that appear in all time eras, separate dimensions that exist outside of the regular time continuum, etc. Unlike CT or DoTT, the eras were only decades apart, so you could also run into the same person as a kid and an adult. The same team at Square did not work on it, but it should have at least had some influence on CT.
logfromblammo 7y ago
Zork III (1982), Sorcerer (1984), Spellbreaker (1985) and Trinity (1986) all did time travel, and Suspended (1983) did multiple characters. Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997) definitely did time travel as different playable characters in a graphical adventure, but that was four years after Day of the Tentacle (1993).

bstar77 7y ago

Not to mention that intro sequence was breathtaking for the time, especially for a graphic adventure. Lucasarts was hitting on all cylinders back then and DOTT was right there in the middle of it. The game is a work of art. Games as art is something DOTT definitely moved forward.