49 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
49 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
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@style(spacing 1)
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Dear _________
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Thank you for your comments about "The Witness."
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We designed "The Witness" to complement "Deadline" in many ways:
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@begin (itemize)
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It copies the action tradition of Raymond Chandler stories instead of the
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drawing-room tradition of Agatha Christie.
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The setting is a winter night on the west coast instead of a summer
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day on the east. The house and cast of characters are small instead of large.
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The story is a (possible) suicide that looks like murder instead
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of a murder that looks like suicide. The detective is involved from the
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very beginning, in fact necessary for the crime, instead of wrapping up
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the case after standard police investigation.
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Finally, we wanted to reach a much wider audience with "The Witness,"
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so we made the English analyzer more friendly, the writing more vivid,
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and the plot simpler, without bottlenecks on which players would get stuck.
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(Just imagine how many calls we get from people stuck on the hidden closet
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or the missing teacup in "Deadline"!)
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We could have made the case more difficult just by making clues more
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difficult to find;
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in fact an early revision of the game had commands called "harder" and
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"easier" that made clues more or less obscure, but we weren't sure
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whether we could invest enough time to do that right.
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@end (itemize)
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You are one of the few people who told us that you thought the mystery
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was too easy. Perhaps you found it so because of your outstanding skill
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as a detective or game player. Perhaps you are the kind of loyal customer
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who buys every new Infocom product, expecting it to provide countless hours
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of pleasant frustration. If so, perhaps the three new products that we're
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planning for release this autumn will suit you better. They are "Planetfall,"
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a light-hearted SF story; "Enchanter I," a magical fantasy in the tradition
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of Zork; and "Infidel," our first realistic "Tale of Adventure."
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In any case, thank you for your comments. It's good to know that people
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care enough about our games to take the time to write.
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Yours,
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Stu Galley
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