By Alec Meer on July 1st, 2009 at 6:01 pm.
The year’s most unexpected sequel is barrelling towards us, and Telltale hope to whet a few more preorder whistles by finally releasing a smidgen of interface’n'puzzle footage – specifically, the opening minutes of the reborn point’n'click adventure. Episode 1, Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, is out in just six pirate days (which are like normal days, but with a looser moral code), and if you’re convinced you’re going to love it, you can pay pirate money (which is much like normal money, but with a slight scent of seaweed) for it right now. Video below. Comments that will almost certainly annoy someone are also below.
Laugh? I nearly cried. Actually, I idly checked Twitter instead for half of it, because it sadly failed to raise much chuckleage from my ever-sneering lips. This doesn’t mean the thing’s a cockup, just that, as with the majority of the Sam & Max eps that preceded this, something about the humour simply leaves me cold. I must point out that I do have a sense of humour, lest you wonder. Why, only last decade I laughed at an episode of Yes, Minister.
It’s well-presented visually, however, adding in a big ol’ dose of cinematic that S&M’s more static locations perhaps lacked, and it’s good to see item combination finally find its way into Telltale’s hitherto rather simplistic puzzling system. If the humour does tickle your pirate funny bone (which is much like a normal funny bone, but with a picture of a parrot on it), I can’t see any reason why you won’t have a wonderful time with this first of five episodes. Me, though: I’m going to go paint the corner of my room black, and then go sit in it and sulk until sunset, whilst secretly hoping all the really great zingers have been saved up for later in the game.
01/07/2009 at 18:07 Rick says:
At the risk of fulfilling the prophecy at the end of the first paragraph, you peeps and your other PC Gamer UK collegues never seemed to like anything Telltale ever did anyway (despite it consisting of the same people who designed and wrote most of the LucasArts adventures), I wasn’t expecting that attitude to change now.
01/07/2009 at 18:08 pkt-zer0 says:
Don’t care. When’s the remake coming?
01/07/2009 at 18:09 Alec Meer says:
That’s not true at all, Rick – John loves the Strongbad games, and I quite enjoyed the Wallace & Gromit ones (though admittedly I’ve only played the first one so far).
01/07/2009 at 18:10 Sunjumper says:
I just watched the video and… wow.
That was tragic.
Apart from it looking worse than the 2D Monkey Islands it was also as mentioned above painfully unfunny. I had to force myself not to stop the video half way through.
01/07/2009 at 18:13 Dzamir says:
I’m going to preorder :D
01/07/2009 at 18:23 Flappybat says:
This doesn’t look very good to me even though I own all the episodes for the other series Telltale has done.
Perhaps it’s just the memories of the 3D MI games *shudder*
01/07/2009 at 18:35 HidesHisEyes says:
And not one of those wet bones!
ffs.
01/07/2009 at 18:48 jalf says:
Eh, did MI2′s intro crack you up?
I think people might have gone into nostalgia-mode a bit about how awesomely funny the original games were. Yes, they were funny, but not all the time. I wasn’t rolling on the floor laughing while watching Guybrush talked to those people round the fire in MI2′s intro. I managed to keep a straight face while picking up bananas on Monkey Island in MI1 as well. MI has always been a story first and foremost, with a handful jokes spread throughout it. Not a constant laugh-a-ton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFPFFZs5m_w for reference.
I think this looks ok. I assume it’ll have some funny sequences later on in the game.
01/07/2009 at 18:50 MrBejeebus says:
I did the opposite of laughing when I watched the video, what would you call it? Un-laughing?
Ah well…
01/07/2009 at 18:52 Mike says:
The point is, jalf, if you’re going to try and bring something back from that long ago, you’d probably try and hit hard in the opener, no?
Playing Ben There, Dan That for the first time today, it does strike me how good 2D can still be for a game. Shame. The music still does it for me, though, so I’ll probably reinstall the old ones.
01/07/2009 at 18:53 cheeba says:
What gets me is how utterly charmless the new Guybrush character design is. Really, really poor, while somehow managing to make everything he says seem a good 50% more annoying.
01/07/2009 at 18:56 lumpi says:
I admit I loved the Sam & Max episodes. And wow, you guys made me use the word “admit” while I actually don’t find anything shameful about liking them…
But Monkey Island might actually be a tad too epic for their “Episodes are to Full Games what TV is to Movies” style of making games. And wtf was that “wet funny bone” line? Do they have Seth McFarlane on their writing team?
01/07/2009 at 18:58 phat_chopps says:
Oh. Well, that seems like a Telltale remake of a classic Lucasarts adventure. And that’s all I have to say on it really. Praise the Lord that they’re remaking the original.
@ Jalf: Is this the intro though? They show dialogue options and the inventory – I got the impression this was game footage.
Also @ Jalf: True, my nostalgia mode may be kicking in, but that didn’t even feel like a Monkey Island game, regardless of humour. And that would be the biggest crime in my eyes.
01/07/2009 at 19:00 lumpi says:
PS: @jalf: You might be on to something there.
Oh my, it doesn’t look “abysmal” (or whatever kind of vocabulary you game journalists like to use nowadays) at all. Might get funnier 5 minutes in.
01/07/2009 at 19:00 Taillefer says:
The conversation with Elaine, asking if she’s hungry, etc… That almost had something. But it still ended rather pirate limply.
MI wasn’t always funny no. But it was when it wanted to be. That’s the difference.
01/07/2009 at 19:05 Dan says:
I didn’t mind the new Sam and Max games, and loved the old Monkey Islands (even Escape!) but this one doesn’t do a thing for me.
Looks like they went ahead with the Keyboard and Mouse control combo as well, which is something I was really hoping they wouldn’t do.
In response to Jalf, MI2′s intro wasn’t side splittingly funny, but it wasn’t painfully unfunny either.
Guess I’ll have to give this a miss. I might pick up the remake of the original though.
01/07/2009 at 19:08 Tworak says:
Yikes, is it capped at 12.53 fps or something? :(
I’ll probably pick it up eventually.
01/07/2009 at 19:11 Smurfy says:
I just watched a clip of old Monkey Island and didn’t even grin. I find the new stuff more amusing.
01/07/2009 at 19:13 jalf says:
True, but calling it “tragic” seems a bit of an overreaction.
01/07/2009 at 19:19 tiktaalik says:
The Guybrush design is terrible. Makes me want to punch him in the face. Grr.
01/07/2009 at 19:21 Adewade says:
Well, I, for one, was chuckling the entire way through.
Seems right up me plank!
01/07/2009 at 19:22 Optimaximal says:
I’m looking forward too this, although Telltale have to make up for the less than adequate W&G games.
It is a very infinitesimally small portion of gameplay… In fact, I wouldn’t call it gameplay at all (if any of the previews are telling the truth, the fact LeChuck is alive (heh) tells me its either the tutorial or the gentle first chapter, just like Curse of Monkey Islands fun but ultimately pointless first act!
Also, why are the characters nearly quarter of the size of the ships?
01/07/2009 at 19:30 Sartoris says:
I wish everybody would just go “Bwuh!” and snap out of this 3D-in-adventures fad. It’s ugly, the textures are stretched and blurry and it’s blocky. Sure, it worked in Grim Fandango because it was a frickin’ work of genius. This isn’t. Put some effort in it, give me hand-drawn pictures, and I’ll be happy. Now, developers! *stomps foot*
01/07/2009 at 19:39 Dorimant says:
I was looking for jokes to not laugh at. but I’m not sure if I could see any. Nonsensical fan service, yep, not so much with the jokes though.
01/07/2009 at 19:42 abigbat says:
It was alright; I think I’ll play it simply to see where the story goes.
01/07/2009 at 19:45 Psychopomp says:
I’m with Sartoris
01/07/2009 at 20:02 Guto says:
I loved it, but I’m a big Telltale fanboy (played all of their games and can’t remember a single one that I haven’t liked) and even bigger MI fanboy, so my opinion might be a little biased =). Anyway, I already preordered it and can’t wait to play.
01/07/2009 at 20:10 Anon says:
I found the bit with the conversation options somewhat amusing, but I agree that it failed in general.
01/07/2009 at 20:12 Heliocentric says:
I’d like to buy the old games. I mean, selling a sequel without selling the original? I’ve not played them beyond the demo’s because they are out of print and not on digital dist. And as i’m not pirating them, i can’t play them. So, i won’t be buying the sequel.
01/07/2009 at 20:13 Nick says:
“I just watched a clip of old Monkey Island and didn’t even grin”
Well, that’s totally the same as playing it.
01/07/2009 at 20:18 Bhazor says:
Well it made me smile so I can’t honestly criticize it. These are all about story so a 3 minute clip is not enough to pass judgment though it sounds like they’ve got a pretty good cast. Colour me hopeful.
BUT!!!
They’ve made Elaine Marley less sexy. Boo!
Still would though.
01/07/2009 at 20:19 EyeMessiah says:
Did you laugh at “The Thick Of It” more recently Alec?
01/07/2009 at 20:22 Pessimal says:
I still regret buying Sam&Max Season 1. What a disappointment that was, not one funny line or gag in sight.
01/07/2009 at 20:24 Xercies says:
I only laughed at one thing in this trailer, Monkey Island wasn’t totally funny but it was funnier then this. And whoever made the dry bone joke needs to be shot.
But I can’t stop myself preordering this, its like there selling it based on the Monkey Island Name. I hate companies sometimes.
01/07/2009 at 20:24 Xercies says:
Oh and Lechuck looks horrible, why can’t they go back to 2D. Not everything has to be in 3D.
01/07/2009 at 20:36 Abi79 says:
I think what I dislike about Telltale’s games are the voice actors. Just like in Sam & Max, they don’t seem engaged. They’re getting the … accent right, but there’s no energy in their acting.
01/07/2009 at 20:51 Wulf says:
As bizarre as it is I actually found the Strongbad entries to be the least amusing of the lot, because they relied far too much on American idiot-humour (Newgrounds material), which is just as piss poor as British idiot-humour (Clone and similar sitcoms).
I feel that my intelligence is frequently insulted by that kind of humour, and it often revels in poor taste. I find myself unable to enjoy that, especially when even a Saturday morning cartoon can put together a more intelligent, well-considered, and better researched joke. Which is kind of sad, really.
I feel that this Monkey Island game reminds me of recent Disney/Pixar offerings, and those I loved too, but I’m more than aware that not everyone has the same love for Disney/Pixar that I do… so perhaps if one prefers web flash cartoons over Pixar/Disney movies, then being amused by the Strongbad episodes and not seeing any humour in this trailer makes a lot of sense.
Whilst some readers might find that concept ludicrous, you’d be surprised at how many people I’ve encountered online actually do prefer online flash cartoons to the aforementioned alternative.
Sigh …maybe I’m just getting old.
Still, I dig this, and lines like “Prepare to meet your frosty, carbonated maker!” make me giggle, and I absolutely love the way that the Lechuck voice actor rolls his Yarrrrr-Harrr-Harrrs!
Not for everyone then, but it’s going to make me happy.
@Sunjumper
“[I think it looks] worse than the 2D Monkey Islands [...]”
Well, that’s your opinion. It’s the first Monkey Island I’ve liked the look of since Lechuck’s Revenge, and I think it looks so much better than the rather shit Curse. And Curse, having an interest in animation, made me twitch at how amateur it all was and how horrible it looked. It was as bad as a low-budget Nickelodeon cartoon.
The animation that 3D provides for is generally more accessible than 2D, you’ll never see Guybrush looking so dynamic in the first two games — on the contrary he looked very static — whereas this Guybrush is much more active. So to reiterate: One of the boons with 3D is that great animation can be done cheaply, whereas animation with 2D is expensive, this is why the characters were always so static in older 2D adventure games, including Guybrush.
So, my good man, I respectfully disagree.
@Sartoris
TBH, I’d take low-res textures (which seems to be your only complaint, reiterated again) over static characters any day of the week. I frankly wish people would go ‘Bwuh’ (as you so succinctly put it) and snap out of this love affair with 2D. As I really think that 2D looks horrible.
Compare Ben There, Dan That (since someone mentioned it proves just how good 2D can be) with Monkey Island, BTDT and Time, Gentleman Please proves exactly what I’m saying about static characters. I love those games, don’t get me wrong, but I get tired of staring at the characters in the same poses doing the same things for the entirety of the adventure.
I feel like I’m sliding cardboard cutouts around, and this is the problem I’ve always had with adventure games, that the characters completely lack any charm because they have no body language, and convey less entusiasm than Gordon Brown.
With this Guybrush I can at least feel his emotion, which is well conveyed in how he moves and acts, whhich is something that a 2D adventure could never achieve. Even the most beautifully drawn 2D adventure game has never managed to create a character witht he kind of enthusiasm that Guybrush has here, and I wish people could see that.
I feel I’m getting old, but it seems I’m not at all living in the past.
@Nick
No kidding, I’d love to strap some of these 2D fanatics into a chair and force the to watch a replay of Curse of Monkey Island and count just exactly how many times they really laugh out loud at something. I think I’d be delighted at the results, it’s schadenfreude but in this case I believe it’s deserved.
@EyeMessiah
Thank you for succinctly summarising what I was trying to get at at the top of this post. And I think that’s a perfect way to end this post, too.
I haven’t seen a single, rational, reasonable criticism of this game yet, naught but knee-jerk reactions. Personally, I’m looking forward to it!
01/07/2009 at 20:55 GLOWi says:
I played MI3 many times recently with my son. And I found it very funny. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything funny in this clip. But it was just a short clip.
What troubles me more is that I hate the Guybrush character design.
What troubles me even more is that I hate Guybrush character design in MI2 remake too.
I may be used to MI E style too much and I’ll get used to them.
01/07/2009 at 20:58 Sinnerman says:
I’m thinking of trying Escape from Monkey Island again. I didn’t finish it the first time but should I have another go as I remember it being okay if a bit boring the first time?
This video sort of reminds me of Curse of Monkey Island which had writing that was better than the first two but also lacked some sort of comic personality that the first two had in spades.
01/07/2009 at 20:59 LaundroMat says:
Funny, but I was wondering the exact thing today: “Why are the (recent) Sam & Max games generally perceived as being funny, while I haven’t even smiled at the jokes the game throws at me”?
Anyway; no pre-order from me for this new MI episode. That trailer has put me right off…
Incidentally, it’s proof yet again for my theory that the effort required to be funny in a 2D environment without voice acting is infinitesimally smaller than the effort required for the same amount of funniness in a 3D environment with voice acting.
01/07/2009 at 21:04 Wulf says:
Addendum: For example, fully articulated and varied facial expressions created on the moment for the line being delivered rather than a few crappy stock expressions at most for everything.
Does no one else see these things? Am I the only one not blinded by 2D nostalgia?
fffff
2D Guybrush didn’t even look at all alive, at least this one conveys a real sense of character even if some do find him mildly annoying.
I think it’s this 2D nonsense that irritates me more than anything. Seriously, are all these 2D supporters just taking the piss and I’m not in on the joke? That’s what it feels like.
We really want to go back to cardboard cut-outs with no body language and next to no facial expressions?
Really?
Why?
01/07/2009 at 21:04 Sinnerman says:
@LaundroMat; Your 2D textual post made me laugh more than the trailer so I suspect you may be onto something.
01/07/2009 at 21:05 LaundroMat says:
@Wulf (saying “I haven’t seen a single, rational, reasonable criticism of this game yet, naught but knee-jerk reactions.”)
Well, there’s only the trailer yet… It’s meant to solicit reactions. Preferably of the knee-jerky type, but more of a pre-ordery kind than the boo-ing and hissing kind we’re witnessing now of course.
01/07/2009 at 21:08 LaundroMat says:
@Wulf: maybe because cardboard cut-outs with no expression allow your imagination to fill in the blanks?
01/07/2009 at 21:09 Nick says:
@Wulf: I think most of the 2D fanatics are thinking about the first two games rather than Curse, although I enjoyed some parts of curse (mainly Murray related, although its been a whilse since I played it).
Lucast Arts other 2D ‘talkies’ were also (mostly) superb and had beautiful art direction and voice acting.
I don’t think the 3rd dimension is in any way bad (look at Grim Fandango) but I do find the humour is severly lacking.
Of course, humour is subjective..
01/07/2009 at 21:10 A-Scale says:
I’m so torn here. I LOVE the Money Island games (though I’ve only played 3 and 4, so I have an entirely different conception of what the series should be than fans of 1 and 2), but I hate Telltale. After they pulled the lame move of forcing you to buy all 5 Strongbad episodes to get the last one I promised to never let them see another penny from me. What’s a boy to do?
01/07/2009 at 21:12 Nick says:
Hell, apparently a lot of people found Dharma and Greg or Will and Grace funny.
01/07/2009 at 21:15 Snook says:
Some of the jokes certainly raised a smile (except for the wet bone one… probably the worst choice of joke to end on), which is pretty much what the originals did for me too.
01/07/2009 at 21:23 JKjoker says:
wow, the art sure is ugly, i think they should have gone with something like the last Prince of Persia
it does remind me a little of MI3 but less funny and worse voice acting, Guybrush is ok, Elaine kind sucks and Lechuck BLOWS! in MI3 almost everything he said was comedy gold but here i just watched 3 minutes of it and i wanted to shut him up
also they better have Murray, the amazing demonic talking skull with the old voice actor or im lighting up the torches
01/07/2009 at 21:27 kvertiber says:
If I do not want to spend pirate money on it, can I download it from pirate bay?
01/07/2009 at 21:28 Kemuel says:
Liked: The dialogue, voice acting and interface.
Disliked: The graphics/artwork. By god, they all look like they’re solidly cast from plastic or something.
I’m gonna leave it a few episodes and see where it goes.
01/07/2009 at 21:39 Clovus says:
I agree with other who find the humor in Sam and Max surprisingly unfunny. When I played Season One I kept basically fake laughing because it seemed like everything was there to be funny. In the end most of the jokes really fall flat.
Part of it is timing. I don’t know how the older adventure games got around this, but it is hard to be funny when there is just silence until I click on something. Then Sam says something droll and Max says something maniacal. And then silence. This doesn’t work.
The writers almost like to show off how many funny lines they can create. Every game has a gag where Sam asks if the store owner has certain crazy items. These all come off like someone made a funny line writing program. But computers just aren’t funny.
01/07/2009 at 21:49 suibhne says:
Wow, that wasn’t even remotely funny. It struck me as a strange bit of footage to release for publicity, since there was basically no action – the whole thing felt exceedingly static.
Oh, and not even remotely funny.
01/07/2009 at 21:52 Man Raised By Puffins says:
While not really funny, Telltale look to have imbued the game with a reasonable amount of charm. Certainly more charm than the announcement trailer seemed to suggest anyway. Colour me moderately interested.
@ Helio:
Good news! They’re (Lucasarts) also re-releasing the first game.
@ Wulf:
Fair enough that the Strong Bad don’t tickle your funny bone, but I’m left curious as to how you you found the Brothers Chaps’ schtick to be in poor taste. I guess there’s the Poopsmith but otherwise I’m drawing a huge blank.
Also, is it a good thing that I have no idea what Clone is?
01/07/2009 at 21:52 Serondal says:
I always found the old Lesiure Suit larry games to be funny but they had a lot of visual gags and funny death scenes that were almost as much fun as actually beating the game. Same with Quest for Glory and Space Quest. Those games were funny when I was younger but probably wouldn’t be so much now.
I find myself laughing at TF 2 because the timing for their silly comments are normally perfect. The first time I ate a sandvich was a heavy I almost peed myself then someone typed in “He’s EATTING A SANDVICH I CAN HEAR HIM ENJOYING IT!” And then I did pee :(
01/07/2009 at 21:55 Quests says:
Revelation for everyone:
Guybrush isn’t funny because without a voice you could give his lines the attitude(irony, sarcasm etc.) you wanted, now the voice decides for you.
01/07/2009 at 21:56 Serondal says:
I find strongbad e-mails to be extremly funny. The humor is EXTREMLY well thought out and very clever even if it is a bit silly.
01/07/2009 at 21:58 Quests says:
“wow, the art sure is ugly, i think they should have gone with something like the last Prince of Persia”
Urgh, from worse to worst.
01/07/2009 at 22:00 Serondal says:
That is exactly the reason that HK was so funny to me in Knights of the Old Republic. he had a generic voice and inserted the tone like before he said something. It made me laugh every last time.
01/07/2009 at 22:09 PuddingSenator says:
Disagree with that Quests. I thought MI3 was the best of the original series, and it was fully voiced.
I can’t watch this clip as I’m at work, but I very much disliked the new Sam and Max games, so I imagine I will dislike this as well.
01/07/2009 at 22:32 GothikX says:
@Wulf and some others: animation, graphics and general prettiness have little to do with anything. 2D graphics usually allow a certain level of artistic expression that is hard to achieve in 3D – a certain touch of personality, perhaps, although I find it difficult to put into words to be honest. While I admire the increase in dynamism, I find the characters flat and uninspired. The cardboard cutouts analogy feels a bit misplaced too, it makes little difference to me if the cardboard cutout has bumps and extrusions.
As I said, something makes it difficult to put in 3D; someone mentioned the newest Prince of Persia (and I’m sure they intended it as a point of reference, not as a ‘hey they shoulda dun that, that was teh awesome’ because that’s silly) and that’s a somewhat better example, but we can’t realistically expect (yet) adventure games to look like that, right? Well, kinda wrong. I, for one, enjoyed The Longest Journey immensely, and found Dreamfall to have better graphics, and still it mattered too little in the grand scheme of things: in the end, TLJ was the better of the two games (not by a huge margin, but quite enough to make the difference). But of course we can’t compare Funcom with Telltale.
I personally find the character design and animation jarring; it was fine in Sam and Max because that’s how they were supposed to be, with very little in the way of facial expressions conveying feelings, but here it doesn’t work. Frankly, I’d prefer two static Guybrush faces from MI3 to the ridiculous symphony of eyebrow raising and twitching in the trailer. Hm, I guess I’m a MI3 fanboy then, so my opinion is moot, probably.
As for MI4, I played it and enjoyed it, but remember very little of it beyond feeling the character design was inappropriate and the humor mostly quite flat. I remember thinking that the ‘cartoony’ feeling that was certainly present in the previous games had taken a definite turn for the worst, and that’s the most gentle thing I can say about this one as well. But hey, I’m still gonna play it, just as I almost passionately played through the first few Sam and Max episodes.
01/07/2009 at 22:32 A-Scale says:
Anyone who doesn’t find the S&M jokes funny simply doesn’t get dry, witty American humor. It’s far superior to dry British humoUr.
01/07/2009 at 22:35 Carra says:
Would be great if they released the original four monkey island games in a big box for cheap. And grim fandango!
Sigh, why can’t we buy classic games like we can buy classic movies. If I want to buy Casablanca, I just have to search the DVD on the net and pay €6. If I want to buy Grim Fandango it’ll set me down €35 for a second hand copy. If only gog.com had all classics.
01/07/2009 at 22:36 Nighthood says:
Anyone who doesn’t find the S&M jokes funny simply doesn’t get dry, witty American humor. It’s far superior to dry British humoUr.
Is this a half arsed attempt at trolling?
01/07/2009 at 22:36 GothikX says:
@Quests: I find Dominic Armato’s voice in MI3 quite alright, actually, but here it doesn’t seem like he’s really trying. Maybe he’s annoyed by the crappy dialogue or something, I dunno.
01/07/2009 at 22:41 Sartoris says:
@Wulf:
I wouldn’t agree with your description of 2D, but I guess it just comes down to different tastes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of games out there to satisfy both preferences. What matters most, in my opinion, is whether the new MI is going to be a worthy successor to the series. Here’s hoping they pull it off.
01/07/2009 at 22:45 phat_chopps says:
I actually agree with Quests to a certain extent about the voice – hearing Guybrush in MI3 was a major disappointment for me.
He didn’t sound like that in my head – for a start he’d lost his wonderful Cornish accent. All pirates are really Cornish, you see.
01/07/2009 at 22:56 Metal_Circus says:
nostalgia clouding peoples judgement SHOCKER
01/07/2009 at 22:59 jalf says:
An obvious point in favor of 3D is that, regardless of taste, it is easier and cheaper. If Telltale is going to make an episode per month, they have to keep the development process smooth and simple. Requiring hand-drawn 2D art for everything is not the way to do that.
I personally would rather see a 3D Monkey Island become a success (as in earn enough money to pay for the development costs), than a 2D Monkey Island which failed because the development costs were that much higher.
Anyway, why is it that when a game has graphics from the 80′s, we’re happy to say “graphics don’t matter”, but if it goes 3D, suddenly graphics are hugely important, and we’re all but ready to boycott the game unless they revert to 2D?
01/07/2009 at 23:31 Dante says:
Way too much rose tinted glasses around here. It looks good, quite funny and with a visual style that reminds me a lot of Monkey Island 3.
01/07/2009 at 23:33 hydra9 says:
Remember how upset everyone was about the news that Guybrush was getting a *voice* in Monkey Island 3? It seemed ridiculous to complain about something like that but watching this trailer, I can’t help but think: This would work so much better with text instead of speech. The actors are overdoing it… They’re ruining any humour that the script has. Guybrush’s voice is so damn annoying.
I like the look of the new series, but I hate the sound of it.
I wonder if there’ll be a subtitles-only option?
01/07/2009 at 23:41 Dante says:
Hydra, you do realise it’s the same voices as MI3, right?
Not that that’ll matter, there’s a lot on the net who don’t even like the third game, which is ridiculous to be honest, it’s bloody brilliant.
02/07/2009 at 00:23 Igor Hardy says:
2D (hi-res, but still 2D) – check
no voiceovers, just text – check
desperate attempt at being as funny as the old MI – check
typos, and bad grammar – check
Conclusion:
You people seem to be the perfect audience for my new adventure game I’ve just released a huge demo for. Go try it and I will enjoy playing Tales of Monkey Island in the meantime. This way everyone is satisfied.
02/07/2009 at 00:39 LionsPhil says:
“Hydra, you do realise it’s the same voices as MI3, right?”
*fires up ScummVM, refreshes memory*
In that case, I can only conclude that the voice actor has forgotten how to do it, or the audio director/script made the difference. I actually quite liked CoMI; in particular, the voicework. This…yeah. Cringeworthy.
Also: LeChuck’s laugh. Argh. Painful.
It’s really not the same voice, even if it’s the same guy. It’s picked up a wise-cracking American tint. Invoke Yahtzee here.
02/07/2009 at 00:54 MD says:
Played out exactly like a saturday morning kids’ cartoon to my eyes (and ears). Not one of the terrible ones, but, well, an average-to-decent Saturday morning kids’ cartoon.
02/07/2009 at 01:25 malkav11 says:
I generally prefer well done 2D to 3D in certain contexts (point and click adventures being one such context), but it’s not the 3Dness of this one that bugs me. It’s the part where half the things on screen look really ugly. Particularly LeChuck. The Sam and Max games from Telltale are 3D and they look much better, consistently. Same with the Wallace and Gromit games, which honestly look very close to the claymation originals.
I also disliked the voice acting, particularly, again, LeChuck, although in this case I nearly universally prefer text to voiceovers.
02/07/2009 at 01:46 Dracko says:
Well, this looks really shit. :(
Like 4 all over again.
02/07/2009 at 01:46 JKjoker says:
Lechuck’s voiceover, oh the pain …. -_- that actor cant deliver a “and prepare the flaming …. VOODOO …. CANNON BALL!!!” line
also, what about the music ? what really made MI3 so great was the AWESOME soundtrack i havent heard much from the trailers
02/07/2009 at 02:36 JoeX111 says:
Man, if that’s Dominic Armato doing Guybrush, I…seriously wonder what the hell happened to his voice talent. I thought he was PERFECT as Guybrush in Curse and Escape. Here he sounds…like an entirely different, lifeless drone.
02/07/2009 at 03:04 Mike_in_Akron_Ohio_USA says:
Speakin of monkeys:
http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=titxfbpnzv
these are priceless
02/07/2009 at 03:38 tim says:
I’m not sure I completely agree with the “the voice is terrible even if its the same actor” crowd. The majority of the time he’s supposed to be yelling across to Elaine on the other boat, which is (hopefully) why it sounds different than what you’d expect. We’ll see.
02/07/2009 at 03:54 A-Scale says:
I don’t think you understand the meaning of that idiom.
02/07/2009 at 04:59 I Am Thermite says:
Yeah… That wetbone/drybone joke was pretty bad.
There’s something about the 3D in the video that urks me– The shader(that made it look like generic plastic 3D)? The number of polygons on the models? The fact that it looks like it was made ten years ago? I’m asking too much.
It just doesn’t look nice, even for 3D.
02/07/2009 at 06:39 Adrian says:
man there is many people complaining that the first 3 MI ganmes weren’t THAT funny too but all i remember is that when i was a kid these were the only games id play every and every day because they made me laugh A LOT! why can’T they do another game like MI 3. i thoght by the jokes and the graphics that one was perfect! i mean… lok at these graphics it totally looks like MI 4 and even if you try to achieve this “comic” look you can do a lot better than that these days :(
02/07/2009 at 06:40 Dracko says:
tim: What about the times he isn’t?
02/07/2009 at 07:55 Kohlstream says:
Im amazed at all the negativity towards the game. I thought the vid was funny and i cant wait to play it quite frankly. Also telltale seems to have finally upped the audio quaity of the voice tracks. In Wallace and Gromit it sounded like it was streamed over a dial up at times, very swishy high end.
02/07/2009 at 08:00 Saul says:
Eh– looks about as funny as MI3, which is pretty much what I expected.
02/07/2009 at 09:12 BlackBandit says:
I’ve played all the MI games, so I’m not just some yellow-bellied telltale fanboy, but I think that this is pretty funny. Not quite as funny as the older games, but still funny. People have been saying that MI games weren’t funny all the time, and this is exactly right. This is just ‘huh’ funny, but I’m sure they have some laugh out loud stuff for us too.
02/07/2009 at 09:46 Turin Turambar says:
The new Sam & Max games weren’t very good games… but they were VERY FUNNY for me. Full of gags and good ‘zings’.
02/07/2009 at 10:13 Demikaze says:
Concerning the first two games, the 2D presentation and its restraints (disk space, processing power, no voice acting, etc) was a boon – with it, you’re not looking for verisimilude, it’s more expressionistic and implied. A lot of it actually takes place in your imagination, you project expressions, tone, inflection, intonation, onto the characters.
Even though MI3 suffered because of its voice work, it worked on some level because of its cartoony style. Again, you’re not striving for a realistic representation.
Escape from Monkey Island (MI4), as much as I loved it, suffered for its full 3d environments as the presentation values and polish has to take a giant leap forward. They tried to make the characters look more real and move more realistically, and the closer you get to that, the more your audience are going to notice inconsistencies. But even then, it had very stylistic elements that tied it to its prequel.
And now, with Tales of Monkey Island, the models seem quite ugly, really, and move in a very stilted fashion. And when you hear the voice actors emote, yet the models aren’t reflecting that, it grates. And I’m not certain that they have had enough development time to add that extra layer of polish that their 3d presentation necessitates. It’s missing something, some charm, some sort of style.
I didn’t think the writing was too terrible though. It doesn’t seem that different to the previous games, and, to be fair, it’s only a four minute clip. I’ll probably pick this up for the music alone – it gets me every time.
02/07/2009 at 11:25 gaspardo says:
I may be misremembering things, but I always assumed Guybrush to be annoying, being a generally inept kind of character thrust into the life of a pirate, and only being good at it through bumbling luck and being generally unaware or removed from the conventions of the world of pirates (up until such point as he figures them out and exploits their weaknesses).
It also strikes me, listening to that trailer, that this is the exact type of dialogue which has been written for Bruce Campbell (the “actor) for over 20 years, and the dialogue may have been less grating, albeit still unbearably awkward, had it been voiced by him.
02/07/2009 at 12:16 TauQuebb says:
Oh stop complaining… It really irritates me when people can’t be just glad for what they get. Would you prefer it if EA made a new Monkey Island with FPS combat? think how bad things could be.
This is the best you could hope to get, most of the original team working on it with a decent sucess rate in previouse games, the only other option is for the series to be ignored and never passed on to newer generations, which would be a sad thing to happen.
02/07/2009 at 12:58 LionsPhil says:
“It really irritates me when people can’t be just glad for what they get.”
This ‘ain’t a charity handout, kiddo. If they want moneybucks, they actually have to produce something which can withstand some critique.
02/07/2009 at 14:18 Dracko says:
TauQuebb: Are you for real? Whta exactly makes the Monkey Island franchise impervious to critical evaluation?
If you think this is the best one could hope to get, then I honestly don’t know what to tell you. Sorry for having standards. This video didn’t manage a chuckle. In fact it was cringe-inducingly bad. Should we just accept it and buy it anyway because it has the Monkey Island stamp?
02/07/2009 at 14:20 Dracko says:
The first game is still the funniest, just so you know. Mainly because its sequels – even the good ones – tried way too hard to be cartoony.
02/07/2009 at 14:28 Ian says:
I loves me some Murray.
“Is it a really evil-looking doorstop?”
02/07/2009 at 14:45 Mattress says:
From that footage, that game is begging to be cell-shaded. What an uninventive art style.
02/07/2009 at 16:55 Wulf says:
I get where you’re coming from anyway, Tau. You were just trying to say that we should be glad that there’s stuff out there to show people that Monkey Island exists.
I do think it’s funny that anyone should comment on the humour though, considering that some of the original writers were on board, and that quite a few gags were written by Gilbert himself, it seems a little dubious to say that one found previous Monkey Island games funny but not this. Unless they were much younger at the time and wouldn’t even find the Monkey Island games funny today.
I wonder how many have actually checked to confirm that isn’t the case? Perhaps they’e all turned into sour clogs and they wouldn’t be able to enjoy any kind of funny adventure, unless it insulted themd directly, probably.
And I honestly do believe that’s the case, some people have just grown out of Monkey Island, they’ve changed too much to appreciate any Monkey Island, which explains why they wouldn’t like this one, but they might have in the past. I’d really recommend that to everyone, to sit down and play the series again, those who don’t see any humour in this might not be at all the fans you think you are. Not even marginally.
Now a non-Monkey Island fan saying they don’t find this funny I can find perfectly reasonable, but this is Monkey Island, through and through.
And to be honest, the only Monkey Island I couldn’t find funny was Curse, simply because the 2D scrawlings were so poorly done that it kept distracting me. Some of the writing was actually pretty good, but the art design of Guybrush was gormless and the portrayal of the World just really threw me off, but despite that I still laughed at some parts of Curse.
And I still find the first two games funny, especially Monkey Island II: Lechuck’s Revenge, which this seems reminiscent of.
I do actually wonder if people remember Monkey Island as being an epic Indiana Jones-like adventure, with only a hint of humour (akin to The Fate of Atlantis) as opposed to a very funny adventure with humour running from every pore. Monkey Island has always been the latter, and it’s always been really quite silly.
So yeah, I’ll say it again, I think some have just grown out of Monkey Island, too sour to enjoy any of its humour. I’d love someone to prove me wrong though by playing the games again and pointing out a long list of jokes they did find funny, and in earnest, no lies now.
@Mattress
Oh Gods no, not everything has to be Strongbad, you know? Did you actually find films like Wall-E, Monsters Inc, Toy Story, and Bolt, and games like Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction to also have an unimaginative art style?
You kids and your corruptive influences these days. 3D animation doesn’t have to be cell-shaded to look good, and I believe quite to the contrary, that cell-shading removes detail and makes things look many times worse by over-simplifying the details. Guybrush’s Jacket would probably be comprised of flat, primary colours for example were the game cell-shaded, and that would be iffy.
@Ian
I dug Murray too.
I hope they bring him back, but I also hope they give him some really unique role. Like perhaps the conductor of an undead orchestra!
“Rrrrr! I’m no longer a doom pirate or a force of evil, these days I just want to make music, I’m refined now! Civilised, you hear me?!”
And one gets to try and break his new attitude with Guybrush by tempting him with piratey things.
@gaspardo
…
/watches trailer again.
…you know, I think you might actually be onto something.
It’s actually akin to the King of Thieves really, isn’t it? Autolycus had some skill but he got out of things a lot of the time through dumb luck more than anything else, and I can see a lot of parallels between the Monkey Island II Guybrush, this Guybrush, and Bruce Campbell’s characters.
The Jack of All Trades era Campbell would’ve been the perfect voice for Guybrush, because that’s actually an incredible example of what Monkey Island is like. MI had gags pouring out of the walls, moreso than most forms of entertainment, and so did Jack of All Trades.
…I’d actually really like to hear Guybrush voiced by Campbell now.
@Demikaze
Oh, not this tired old argument again.
You know, there was actually a letter in PC Gamer wherein someone was fool enough to claim that we should leave behind current gen graphics and go back to Ye Olde Style-e gaming and “set the imagination free”. Butterflies and such. Anyway, the answer to the letter was pretty much the sentiment I felt.
If the graphics of a game are so shit that they’re jarring and actually detract from the gaming experience, then one’s imagination can’t actually set in, can it? This is why I find it’s hard to engage my imagination with 2D adventure games. I find it easy with interactive fiction but… are we really claiming that all gaming should go back to that?
“A lot of it actually takes place in your imagination, you project expressions, tone, inflection, intonation, onto the characters.”
Indeed, a lot of it takes place in your imagination? So basically you’re using your imagination to fill in the gaps for shitty animators, bad artists, and technical limitations. Is that really what we want from our games? It’s not what I want from my gaming.
That would be like saying that movies should be done without voices, and without actors, and with only pixellated graphics, and we should all sit there in the theatre trying to figure out what the facial expressions should be, trying to figure out the emotions and so on, trying to fill in the gaps in the badly drawn art, having our imaginations working overtime just to make it look decent.
Just imagine if Pirates of the Caribbean had been done in that style, could anyone really argue that they’d prefer to see flat, motionless sprites than the charismatic swagger of Johnny Depp? Nnnno. And see, that’s why this argument verges on idiocy and just doesn’t work.
If you can stick it for games, you could stand it for your movies to. You could enjoy a movie without any of the good things a decent actor brings to the table. To be honest, a World without fun actors would make me cry on the inside.
Again, imagine if the charisma of David Tennant was replaced by a cold, emotionless sprite that barely ever moved. Do you think you could fully imply the attitude of Tennant from that sprite alone, every last bit of it? Do you think you could anticipate the crazy things he might do?
Of course you couldn’t, because I’m more than well aware that when you have two incredibly imaginative people, the one absolutely cannot imagine, or even begin to imagine, all the things that might enter into the other’s mind. With an actor, or an animator, they too have that imagination and they’re going to come up with things that you hadn’t considered.
And a lot of joy comes from seeing things that you might not have imagined.
And that’s why this argument is so totally flawed, because if it was correct and one person’s imagination (and amazing ego) was good enough to take the place of actors, then we wouldn’t even need talented, charismatic actors like Tennant, because people could just imaaaagine every little thing they’d do.
Sigh… yes, right.
Only the most egotistical of fools would claim that they could honestly imagine every last thing that a truly charismatic and brilliant actor/animator would do.
So if you want to pay to watch great movies and shows with fantastic work of the actors/animators removed, then be my guest, but frankly I’m glad I don’t have to live in your World, it would be an incredibly depressing place.
What would become of theatre?
Again… sigh.
Frankly, I’m so very, very glad that we’ve moved on from that nonsense and that the characters in games today can have great facial and body animations, and that they can do things that we might not expect, and perhaps things that we wouldn’t have expected from them as a cardboard cut-out sprite alone.
But as I said, this argument doesn’t just cover games, it covers everything. Games got better for a reason. And to imply they were ever better in the past than they are now is folly.
No voice inflections, no facial expressions, no body language, all “implied” for the person’s imagination to take care of. And I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine all the things that a cadre of actors, or a group of animators and voice actors, might do. I’m not so incredibly egotistical to even think to claim that I could.
I think the rest of the post you have there falls flat too because you don’t consider that the technology used in previous Monkey Island games was also incredibly primitive and didn’t provide much of a better experience than the first two games.
For example, Curse left a lot up to the imagination because 2D animation is expensive and unless you have a huge budget, the animation is shit, the animation was frankly a bit shit and very limited in Curse. Curse wasn’t a step up from Monkey Island in any way. In terms of graphics, because they couldn’t afford better, they oversimplified it and I think that was a step backward, but the voice acting was a huge improvement.
Escape used an incredibly basic and primitive 3D engine that had hardly changed since he birth of 3D, it was basically Grim Fandango’s engine, not changed in the least. The animations present, whilst some of them were actually quite nice, were still amazingly basic and primitive to what we have today, it was 3D in its infancy. Hell, Guybrush didn’t even have much in the way of facial expressions to speak of!
Now in Telltale’s adventure we see a huge leap forward, we have facial expressions, body language, and a real dynamism that comes over so well in the unification of proper animation and good voice-acting. I wasn’t sure of Amato’s voice in Curse because Guybrush was so static, and Amato had enthusiasm brimming from everyy pore. But in Tales it really, really works.
Here we’re looking at a new Guybrush, and generally speaking a far more dynamic one. This isn’t something we’ve ever seen in the series, and we have nothing to compare it to, at all. And frankly, I’m glad it took a step in this direction, because it’s an improvement in every possible way.
It’s still not quite ‘there’ as far as comparing it to a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean, but it’s as good as we’re going to get at the moment, nearly as good as Pixar movies, and pretty damned neat and I just hate that there are snotty 2D fanatics who won’t see the great work these people have done just because they’ve got their heads so far up their bums about the “superiority” of 2D.
Frankly, my opinion is the opposite of yours. Thank goodness we don’t have to put up with those static, horrible, nasty little cardboard cutouts any more, throw them in the trash where they belong these days and let’s have something in 3D, where the characters can really come to life!
Again, I still think this love of 2D is so ludicrous that it seems like there’s a huge joke being played on me and I’m just not in on it, because I find it genuinely hard to believe that anyone could be serious. And if they are then I just want to weep inside, for them, and yet be thankful that I’m not a relic of a bygone age.
@Kohlstream: I agree with you on every count, including being glad that they increased the bitrate of the audio. The difference between this and previous Telltale games is obvious, it was never a deal breaker for me before… but they obviously have some real voice talent there at Telltale, and it seems a shame not to allow all the nuances of the voice to come through.
Thankfully, in Tales, they’ve allowed for just that. And thank goodness.
[Unrelated intermission between replies: Gods, I can't get the Campbell thing out of my head now. It's perfect. It really is like it was written for Campbell. And I won't apologise to the mindless haters out there, I really liked Campbell and thought he was a good laugh. I could literally see Campbell delivering the wetbone/drybone thing. And perhaps this is the reason I found the trailer so very funny, I caught onto that subconsciously.]
@I Am Thermite
If you’re going to complain about something, make sure you understand the technology and all the nuances of what you’re complaining about.
From what I can see, there are no (or few) shaders in play, it just seems like the normal light/shadow that most 3D games have. When people have talked about a “plastic” appearance in the past, they’ve meant the glowy lines that some 3D engines give, like the Unreal engine which has glowy lines which make people look like they’re made out of some form of plastic or ceramic.
Tales has none of this.
Frankly that post reads very much like you were just fishing for a complaint that you’d seen leveraged at 3D games, you remembered a complaint that someone had used in regards to the Unreal engine, and you just threw it on in there without even bothering to check whether it was relevant to the game or not.
I do so wish people wouldn’t do that. If you’re going to complain, a t least try to complain about something relevant.
Eh?
Oh, and the 10 years ago comment was not only poorly considered but it was frankly so wrong it made me giggle. If you’re going to complain about something, at least bother to research to make sure that you’re actually right.
Here’s an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvayn8vu0mo
That’s No One Lives Forever from 9 years ago, it was basic, almost gouraud shaded in places, back then they didn’t have the technology to barely animate expressions at all, so people were stuck with one facial expression (something I remembered being jarring about NOLF), and it generally illustrates that no, if it was created ten years ago it would’ve been an impossible technological marvel.
Ten years… my rosey red arse. Sigh.
@Dracko
…
“Like 4 all over again.”
Really?
Really?
See, a lot of the comments here make me do this, it’s like a verbal twitch. It’s because the comment is so poorly considered and uninformed that it just makes me feel crazy. I did it earlier in this thread, and I’m doing it again now.
So it looks like MI4?
…really?
I…
Okay, I’ll just let pictures do the talking, because I just can’t be arsed to explain the intricacies of the many and varied differences between the primitive and limited MI4 and Tales, which I find to be infinitely better.
So you see no difference between this…
http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n164/spikeddeception/mi4_019.jpg
…and this…
http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/article/988/988732/tales-of-monkey-island-episode-1-20090601004801142_640w.jpg
…really?
Really?
I think you’re either fibbing or… or… unobservant? I don’t know.
I think this topic is beginning to wear me down.
@Metal_Circus:
You bloody said it.
To be honest, I’d like to see one rational, well-reasoned, intelligent, and honest bit of criticism about Monkey Island. But thus far we’ve had defensive nostalgia coupled with knee-jerk reactions and statements that are border-line idiotic or just plain wrong (see above). And what doesn’t fall into that category is purely subjective and mostly about people living in the past, and how games today ain’t wot they useta be, sonny–GET OFF MY YARD!
I’m not surprised, because what it proves to me is that unless it’s subjective, Tales is actually hard to criticise, if it wasn’t difficult to criticise, constructively, and in an honest way then the majority of the comments would’ve contained such. Instead, we have a bunch of holdovers, relics from the past, who find today’s World hard to live in. Quite apparently.
With stuff ranging from…
“If it ain’t ancient, pixellated 2D, it’s bad, use yer imagination, characters with a shred of character? Bah, in my day… back in my day we had t’imagine ‘arf the game an’ be satisfied with wot we got!!”
“All 3D is bad 3D, all 3D looks like ancient 3D and it’s all bad, bad I say, 2D is better because it’s 2D, I’m not goin’ ta give you a rational reason why!”
Either that or really young kids who were raised on flash cartoons, and don’t know a damn thing about animation and genuinely believe that a Strongbad approach is better than a Pixar approach.
Then there’s a whole bunch of nostalgia-borne subjectivity where people dwell and go “it ain’t wot it useta be!” Which is really depressing in and of itself.
The only reasonable comments here have been the positive ones, they’ve made me smile and they’ve been quite intelligent.
The thing is, I’m old, I know it, and I’m feeling it… but I’ve managed to stay with the times instead of becoming lodged in the past and refusing to admit that the present even exists, and making knee-jerk reactions about progress and making ludicrous claims about how past efforts were better than what we have on offer here.
@Sartoris
To be honest, I have nothing against 2D, I’m just tired of knee-jerk reactions by bygone relics, I can enjoy old Disney movies too, but the thing is, if people are going to make uninformed comments about 3D, then I’m going to point out the flws with 3D.
And it really all is subjective at the end of the day, but I can’t change how I feel about this all. I really do feel that the Telltale guys have put a lot of work into this, from all the media I’ve seen thus far, and it’s being thrown back in their face because “things ain’t wot they useta be”.
And that just makes me sigh, it also makes me marginally angry.
The reason I’ve become so irritable is that not one single person here has made a rational complaint about 3D, only knee-jerk reactions about 3D whilst praising 2D. And my only recourse is to point out the flaws of 2D by comparison.
But Gods… tired of this thread now, so I’m going to leave it at that. Maybe this giganto reply will show people how poorly considered some of the complaints are, maybe it won’t, but I’ll leave it here anyway. It just needs to be illustrated how deluded 2D fans are.
I don’t really have any problems with 2D, I just have a lot of problems with the followers of 2D.
…Gods, it’s like an organised religion, their own Jehovah.
02/07/2009 at 17:00 Wulf says:
Gah, markup fail.
I think I’ve killed my / key with too much HTML, shame I can’t fix it but them’s the breaks.
02/07/2009 at 17:08 Cedge says:
Just to be wholly anal about accuracy, regarding the title of this post:
Dave Grossman and Telltale have explicitly stated that they do not consider Tales from to be Monkey Island 5. As you’re probably aware, the Tales from games take place after the hypothetical fifth core Monkey Island game.
Anyways…I sure do wish I could be more excited about this, but it just seems so utterly pale in comparison to the series’ glory days.
02/07/2009 at 19:27 D says:
@Wulf: TL;DR? (But good post)
I found the trailer refreshing and funny. Given that its a 3 minute snippet, I chuckled enough times for the full thing to be worth, well, whatever they’ll charge. Also, people comparing to the original MI games, I think they’ve forgetten how memory works.
02/07/2009 at 19:29 TauQuebb says:
Thanks Wulf, that’s what I was trying to get across.
Way too hot today for well thought out replies from me.
02/07/2009 at 20:10 lumpi says:
Wow, longest post in RPS’ history? :D
Something I just realized: The dialog sounds like Max’ dialog from Sam&Max. Like 2 completely random adjectives thrown in front of every word: “Prepare to meet your frosty, carbonatedmaker, LeChuck!”
They seem to have gotten so used to this style of writing, it stuck!
02/07/2009 at 23:13 Quests says:
Wow, people actually like MI3… the game NOT made by the creator of… everything sir Gilbert and the other 2 guys.
This is beyond insanity, the 3rd and 4th games were utter junk.
03/07/2009 at 01:27 Tom Davidson says:
Wulf, I’d much rather have well-drawn 2D scenery and some mostly static but attractive sprites than something that sits squarely in the Uncanny Valley while simultaneously being smaller and less flexible in scale and scope. IMO, a game shouldn’t bother being three-dimensional unless it intends to use that third dimension in some way. I can think of so many franchises that, in moving to 3D animation, lost not only much of their variety and depth but also their charm and loveliness.
In the old days, if you wanted to draw a messy table covered in stained teacups, you just drew one. And if you decided on the spur of the moment to allow the player’s avatar to drink out of one of those teacups, you just had to draw that table minus the teacup, then draw a few static sprites of an arm with a teacup at the end of it. Nowadays, you’d have to render the table, each item on it — including all the fancy textures — and figure out the points of intersection between the cup object, any “liquid” inside it, and the hand. Sure, at some point diminishing returns kicks in — if you need to animate a lot of people drinking from things, it’s probably easier to build that routine into your engine than to draw sprites to represent it — but for the vast majority of old-school adventure game scenarios in particular (as opposed to the sharply limited “interactions” of modern 3D adventures) it seems obvious that sprite-based design was a lot more conducive to creative flexibility.
03/07/2009 at 04:49 Dracko says:
Wulf, no I don’t. Both look horribly dated and overly cartoonish and 3D and shit. Oh, and really unfunny and trying too hard. Where’s the problem?
03/07/2009 at 09:22 v.dog says:
I’m glad now that I hadn’t played the original games as a child. Otherwise part of me would have died.
03/07/2009 at 12:18 Demikaze says:
@Wulf
Sorry, but I think you misinterpreted my post. I’m not arguing that I want a return to 2d, I’m saying that they did what they could and it happened to work bloody well. However, today, the amount of work that has to go into realising a 3d world is astonishing. We demand a certain level of execution now and this doesn’t seem to have had that treatment. I’m still reserving judgement until I see the thing for myself though.
03/07/2009 at 12:28 Demikaze says:
And I also directly referenced the technological restraints that were imposed upon the first 2 MI games.
03/07/2009 at 17:42 MusicallyInspired says:
Sigh. You all lose the internet. HARD. TMI looks awesome. And humorously accurate as well as true to the original series. Get over your nostalgia and enjoy the 21st century. It’s Monkey time again!!
06/07/2009 at 11:24 Monele says:
Hmm, to be honest, I LeChuckled twice, which is much more than I expected from a TellTale game… But I’m only mildly curious about it, and the 3D, let’s admit it, is putting me off :/
07/07/2009 at 04:06 Swainy says:
Someone shut LeChuck up. I can’t stand his voice acting no longer.
07/07/2009 at 22:38 jalf says:
Well, the reviews so far are pretty good:
Joystiq: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/07/review-tales-of-monkey-island-launch-of-the-screaming-narwhal/
Destructoid: http://www.destructoid.com/review-launch-of-the-screaming-narwhal–138653.phtml (9/10 + editors choice)
Now if only Telltale would actually RELEASE the damn thing.
08/07/2009 at 04:01 jalf says:
Ok, so it’s official, LeChuck’s voice actor sucks. But apart from that, Episode 1 was really good imo. The puzzles struck a nice balance between meaningful and guess-I’ll-just-combine-stuff-at-random. Quite a few funnies in there, and all in all, I think they’re off to a really good start.
The controls are weird (what’s wrong with just letting you click where you want to go, like in oh, say, every single other adventure game ever made?), but it’s generally bearable.
04/01/2010 at 02:31 Abercrombie and Fitch says:
Good information!