Tales of Monkey Island

[Thyroid]

Goddamit, I'm stuck on the very first puzzle :

How am I supposed to untied the rope near the fish barrel ?

Gimme a hint, just a hint.

You can try going over to it

[vimes]

Well, I try to get to the mast via the cable but it's apparently out of reach and using items on it hasn't yield anything .. I tried to climb the mast but all Guybrush does is angrying Morgan by repeating "This is the Mast!"

[BigJKO]

Talk to Morgan. You owe her something.

[syntheticgerbil]

It's a deal with a whole new company.

This is ridiculous, the original deal was made with Disney for Miramax to distribute Mononoke and Buena Vista to do the DVD releases. You are being ridiculously stubborn and completely overlooking that FACT to purposefully not see that obviously the two companies that Disney owns is carrying out a deal made with the parent company Disney, as stated in the original deal. You're only argument is that Miramax is not Disney because it's not the same building which is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard. You're making use of misinformation out of your own stubbornness to get the last word.

FYI, they're a sales company for Studio Ghibli. They don't directly release their stuff, they sell it to companies that want to release it in their territory, like Disney. In the UK, for example, a company called Optimum usually releases studio Ghibli stuff. Oddly enough, Disney are releasing Ponyo in France, for example.

Okay do you have a source for any of that or did you make that up too? The link you gave was pretty flimsy and poorly written in explaining anything. As far as I can tell, you found some far fetched source you seem to think states that the French company Wildbrain somehow took over the selling of distribution rights for everything the Japanese company Ghibli puts out. Find some more sources that say it much clearer and I'll believe you. I certainly can't find any looking myself. Everywhere else says Ghibli got it's own rights to distribute after Tokuma collapsing in 2005.

Either way, your "oddly enough" aside at the end seems to contradict what you are trying to say.

Disney don't have any exclusive rights to the theatrical distribution of Studio Ghibli stuff, each film is sold on a per film, per territory basis. So NO, John Lasseter isn't just doing his job which was started by The Weinsteins.

Please read more carefully. I did not say they had exclusive rights, but the deal is obviously still going, is it not? John Lasseter is doing the PR for Disney. Out of all of the films released since Mononoke, Disney has released all except one in the US, if I'm not mistaken. They are also due to released the Earthsea one, not to mention the plethora of DVD releases.

Unless you can prove that the deal is not being expanded on and that Disney is actually bidding for each film continously, then go for it. Otherwise again, stop making stuff up.

Anyways, either provide some solid sources on your next reply to me or forget it. I'm not looking to get this topic closed too. I don't know what else I can say on this matter, it's already gone on too long.

Edited August 20, 2009 by syntheticgerbil

[BigJKO]

Ah, finished! This was awesome! Only got stuck twice, and that was more a case of me not exploring enough.

Anyways, this one felt really tight. A lot more focused, the music was very memorable and the humour and timing was a lot better IMO.

Winslow constantly asking Guybrush to point at the map; LeChuck's lack of puzzle solving skills; 101 Fish Jokes and the library mer-person's "I hate you now." Man, there were a lot of awesome moments in this one. Although I hope they don't go for the obvious "Here are three things we're missing that you need to go find" structure again in the next episode. And that ending. Man, that was a great cliffhanger.

Cons: Does anyone else just really not like the Marquis De Singe character? I don't know if it's the stupid french thing or just the fact that it feels like he's just there to be an obstacle, now that LeChuck's a "good" guy. I'd probaby like him more if he weren't trying to be sinister, but just needed him for experiments. Right now it's like he wants to experiment on Guybrush, but for some reason he really hates Guybrush and has to be sinister and evil about it. But he does send Morgan after you, who's awesome. Guybrush's only fan!

[Noyb]

Is it just my computer acting up, or is there a memory leak in the later (W&G, ToMI) Telltale Games that slows down the game something fierce after a few hours of play?

Liking the new episode so far. Some great animation in the intro puzzle.

[elmuerte]

last W&G game worked ok for me, finished it 2 seatings iirc.

[Thrik]

Only played for like half an hour, but very impressed so far!

So mental that they keep using that bloody speech compression format, though. Listening to Elaine is ear-piercing when she pronounces an 's'.

[thorn]

I'm not a big fan (of the expression "not a big fan of", nor) of the constant mismatch between the lines you click on, and what the character says. The first time I selected a line I thought they were going for one of the ones where no matter what you choose the guy says something hilarious, and that I just didn't get it, but they do it all through the game. Sometimes Guybrush says what you select, and sometimes something that doesn't really match what you selected. I would prefer they did it like in the previous games.

The Sam & Max games did the same thing. I actually prefer it, as usually the written line gives the general gist of what you want to say but when it's said by the character, it's longer, more humorous and given more character depth.

Also, I don't want to get into the whole Pixar discussion, but I just want to give a lonely thumbs up for Cars. I know it's not their best work, but it has fantastic atmosphere and great... erm... is there a word for production design that's specifically to do with buildings and landscape rather than characters?

[Horticulture Tycoon]

Yes, but also Larry the Cable Guy...

I'm a few hours in, still in the part of the game where I'm collecting a bunch of junk and talking to people, and not really solving puzzles yet. It does seem a little samey compared to Chapter 1. But then this is my first non-Half-Life experience with Episodic gaming, so I guess that's to be expected.

Teaching LeChuck how to play an adventure game

is adorable, incidentally.

[Jake]

I don't know why the "character doesn't say what you selected" thing got so abused in episode 1, but it's not in the subsequent episodes to anything near the same degree. What Guybrush can say is sometimes compressed down or simplified in dialog selection when the dialog is more about gathering information, or when its funny to do so, but most of the time its closer to 1:1.

[vimes]

Finished it and enjoyed it; but, I don't know ... even though the characters and the dialogs are more than fine (loved the dialogs between Winslow and Guybrush, and the awkward Elaine/Le Chuck predicament), as far as gameplay goes, it's pretty standard and unimaginative : too many of the puzzles summed up to

getting coupons for the bait shop

and, this time around, there were only Fedex, 'use this on that' puzzles; and not really well disguised with that. No dialog puzzle, no un-traditionnal puzzle, no surprises.

Also being a swashbuckling adventure and having several swashbuckling moments, I was surprised that they didn't manage to get the same spot-on rhythm that the W&G climax had.

Anyway, I hope that the next episode will give us the chance to spend a bit more time with the characters (friends or foe) ... I know it's already done, but if we get any time

inside the manatee

please, do use

Munchausen

as a reference for the atmosphere.

Oh, and the Island-to-map transitions were gorgeous. And the final short was genius. So, here, no one can say I'm pissing all over the game.

[Patters]

Is it just me or does the animation seem a lot smoother in this chapter?

[BooJaka]

Just finished it and it was great. If my memory serves me well it surpassed the first one in pretty much every way which was already excellent

Now we've had a bit more time with it I'm so glad they've gone with a truly

original story

and not just a

rehash/update of an old story like in CMI and EMI

. Spending some quality time

with LeChuck and Elaine

confirms this and it feels that for once there doesn't need to be

an evil guy

. (I've been a bit over diliegent with the spoiler tags there...)

Great stuff! I do kind of agree with what Vimes was saying though.

[Thrik]

Just finished it after five hours. I really enjoyed the whole experience, and the series as a whole already sits well above EMI for me — although unsurprisingly it hasn't managed to shift my nostalgia-fueled top-place positioning of the first three games.

What I like most is the fresh take on the story, with the whole Guybrush/Elaine/LeChuck formula really being turned on its head. Both episodes thus far have been entirely unpredictable, and I was routinely beaming at the various scenes with human LeChuck.

Some criticisms:

• The speech compression format sounds genuinely grating at times through my home cinema set-up. I don't know what's going on here because even a 128kb/s MP3 doesn't sound this bad, although the nastiness only seems to occur with certain sounds (mostly 's').
  
• The model re-use continues to be obvious. I'm sure we can all speculate about why this is done, but still every time I see it I can't help but sigh a little inside.
  
• Some really obvious copy/paste action going on in the jungle.
  
• Seems like a bit more testing would have been beneficial. Quite often F4 didn't do anything for no discernible reason (it should highlight hotspots), sometimes Guybrush's orientation would get messed up between scenes while moving with WASD, and when I revisited the area where
  LeChuck fights the pirates
  after he'd gone his music was still playing rather than the jungle music.
  

Great overall though, and naturally it's left me very much looking forward to the next episode!

[toblix]

Just finished it, and it was great, although I still liked the first one better.

• Jesus, they're still using that sound compression. We've been over this before with the S&M games, and I don't get why they're doing it. The female characters' s-es sound really horrible. They could probably fix this by increasing the game size by a couple of hundred kBs.
  
• I liked the Flotsam Island environment better than the fish island. There's just something about the theme/palette (glowy purple cave) and layout... it felt less "populated" than Flotsam, although that's probably a result of there being loads of other islands this time around.
  
• Some of the quests felt really unfinished... The one where you have to get the guys to turn around... I still don't know why I solved it. I think it had something to do with getting them to turn around some other direction, I dunno.
  
• The helping LeChuck adventure thing felt like the beginning of a puzzle, but it was only a matter of doing the completely obvious. This was really just a joke that should've been more of a puzzle. Hopefully they'll return to this in a more fleshed-out form later, because the concept is awesome.
  
• The transitions were fucking amazing. The one where you return to the ship after being on a small island is probably the best transition I've seen in a game ever. It just feels so... right.
  
• I miss the epic final puzzles I (think I) remember from the S&M games, and that also Time Gentlemen, Please had.
  
• I'm interested in why Spaff and Marek are in the credits. Playtesting, perhaps?
  
• The map thing with the ship guy was hilarious and awesome.
  
• I was pretty stuck for a long time while playing, and Guybrush kept on hinting "I should look around for more stuff to plunder" or something. That didn't help at all. Also, I totally thought I was supposed to do something with the coconut for a while.
  

Anyway, can't wait for the next game. The final moment was pretty awesome. I really felt the scale of the thing.

[Thyroid]

I don't want to sound like a dick or anything, but is there any way at all that Telltale could merge future games with 2D? See, I've been playing Curse of MI again and although I love Tales (and I love it a lot), I can't help feeling that Monkey Island does need some sort of blend with 2D, sort of the way

.

See, W&G looks unbelievably good in 3D; Strong Bad is perfect. Sam and Max is excellent (especially with the art style they went for). But Monkey, I think, needs a 2D look to it. I always thought there'd be a way to get the advantages of 3D with the timeless look of good 2D art. I can't help but feel that, if it weren't for the great art talent at Telltale, the game would've looked crummy (this is apart from writing, acting, puzzles, etc, and the little touches, like the wind, that make the game). Also can't help but feel it will look that way in a few years regardless.

Just curiosity; wondering if anyone can satisfy it.

[toblix]

I would also prefer a 2D art style like the first games, but I think that for some reason 2D adventure games are harder to sell. It could be the same thinking that caused all game series to "go 3D" back in the day, still in effect, a belief that people only want 3D and will only pay for 3D, and that 2D adventures are only for indie developers that would've done 3D if they could.

I wonder if TellTale would make a 2D adventure game if they knew it would sell (as well as 3D). I mean, do they themselves prefer 3D to 2D, or is it purely a market decision?

[Erkki]

Haven't read the recent posts in fear of happening on spoilers, but man this second episode is really good! Just a few gripes:

For the first time in any Telltale episode I'm noticing the sound compression problems others have complained about. I never noticed that with earlier games, but it is especially bad in the opening sequence of this episode and also whenever Elaine speaks.

Also, found a bug (might be spoilerish):

the ship is gone

[Erkki]

Finished it in one sitting (the only pause was writing the previous post). Only got stuck once:

didn't immediately think of using the parrot to track the treasure

so wondered about aimlessly, thinking of what more to plunder.

Another awesome episode! Keep up the good work, Telltale!

[Erkki]

I just played the opening sequence of Screaming Narwhal again and the sound compression issue has definitely gotten much, much worse. I still didn't notice anything in Screaming Narwhal, but every S uttered by the Voodoo lady in the beginning of Spinner Cay is just grating to my ears. This is horrible, is it really worth just to save a few megabytes? Or is it perhaps some other issue, not compression?

[Jake]

Just finished it, and it was great, although I still liked the first one better.

• The transitions were fucking amazing. The one where you return to the ship after being on a small island is probably the best transition I've seen in a game ever. It just feels so... right.

YEAAAAAAAHHHH!

[brkl]

Hah, I figured that was your work, I was going to gush about it too. The transitions somehow contribute way more than a simple transition should.

Man, it must be annoying to read the compression stuff again and again :X Actually, when I was playing Screaming Narwhal, I started to suspect they'd fixed it, or at least I didn't notice it that much. But it's back in full force in Spinner Cay.

Also, Telltale would have to rework all their engine stuff and tools for 2D, which would be really expensive. I get the feeling that those tools are a big reason they can put out these episodes so quickly (see Valve).

[BooJaka]

I can't understand how people can say it should be in 2D other than for just some nostalgia factor. The game looks gorgeous, better than either season of Sam and Max did, and I think we're all far enough into the age of 3D to make games that won't look bad within a few years time. Am I really alone on this?

[brkl]

No. I don't think there's any reason or anything to gain by moving to 2D now.