Tales of Monkey Island

[Thyroid]

I can't understand how people can say it should be in 2D other than for just some nostalgia factor.

I'm 20; I played the Lucas games when I was 17. If there's anything I don't miss, it's highschool.

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

I'm not saying now. I was just thinking that blending 2D with 3D is probably the way to go, and that, at some point in the future, I'd be interested in seeing what Telltale did with it. Even Glen Keane was doing it for the new Rapunzel movie, before he had to step down. Regardless, I love Monkey Island too, and I think the art team did a stellar job.

[toblix]

It seems to me you can get a level of quality and detail in both the characters and animations when doing a game in 2D that I haven't seen in any 3D game. The best looking adventure games I know of are the 2D ones made right before the shift to 3D was made (CMI, the Broken Sword games). I also think all the VGA adventure games still look awesome -- Monkey Island, Legend of Kyrandia, Beneath a Steel Sky, Simon the Sorceror, you name it -- but I can totally see why that's not a viable option for anything but niche games today. It's no secret that the graphic style of the TellTale games goes hand in hand with low poly count. I'm not saying it looks bad, because it doesn't -- it's gorgeous and sweet-looking, but take a look at people's sleeves, look at the environment. Everything's blocky and the level of detail of things is generally very low. Then play Broken Sword 2 and tell me it doesn't look better than any 3D adventure game in existence.

I don't know if there's a big market for an adventure game with high-resolution hand-drawn graphics. I know it would have even lower system requirements than any 3D adventure game, I know it could look amazing, with native 1920x1200 hand-painted, hand-animated graphics, and I know I'd buy it at once. There could very well not be a market at all. TellTale could, for all I know, have market researched the hell out of this and have all the numbers.

Also, of course there's a bunch of stuff you simply can't do with 2D graphics, which is a perfectly good reason to go 3D. I'm not saying 3D is wrong, I'm just saying I prefer the look and feel of every 2D adventure game I've played over that of any 3D adventure game I've played.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Thoroughly enjoying Episode 2, more so than 1 (although I did enjoy it, too). I think I'm near the end now (just got through the blockade) and I kind of don't want it to end!

There were a few puzzles that annoyed me a little (only a little):

- I totally missed the fishing well... It looked too much like the pointless things from the last episode's jungle maze so I totally ignored it straight away. If you'd made the coupon more noticable or just made the well look a bit different, then I would have paid more attention to it. (Guybrush's hints at trying to find a local fishing spot didn't help, as I did not expect to find it in the jungle!)

- Using the locket would have made more sense if it had a distinct shape (like a heart!), but I guess its shape had already been pre-decided in the previous episode... I can't even remember why I tried it now. Total trial and error.

Also: "Good LeChuck" is the best idea ever, and an incredibly original and ingenious use of his character! I love the uncomfortable tension between Guybrush and him. In fact the whole triangle between Elaine, Good LeChuck and Guybrush is extremely satisfying... I'm kind of hoping that Elaine leaves both of them at the end of the season!

Edited August 23, 2009 by ThunderPeel2001

[Erkki]

Also: "Good LeChuck" is the best idea ever, and an incredibly original and ingenious use of his character, too! I love the uncomfortable tension between Guybrush and him. In fact the whole triangle between Elaine, Good LeChuck and Guybrush is extremely satisfying... I'm kid of hoping that Elaine leaves both of them at the end of the season!

I really loved the good LeChuck as well, and yeah, those transitions by Jake are awesome!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Just noticed that the transitions were by our man, Jake... They did indeed rock my world. Heck, the whole polish in TOMI is just awesome and totally worth the extra time and effort put it. Great stuff!

[Simon]

I finished 'Siege of Spinner Cay' today and it was great. The puzzling was a little more obvious here than in the first part I think, as I didn't get stumped besides failing to notice the bucket for a while. More importantly, the story is skipping along nicely, and the game is super fun.

Van Winslow is blossoming into a pretty charming and hilarious sidekick (responsible for me laughing out loud a few times), with some excellent banter between him and Guybrush. I find that he is making up a little for those occasional generic repurposed pirates. I am also enjoying the friendly LeChuck twist.

The island-hopping was handled very neatly, although someday I hope they get round to a 'Four Map Pieces' type section with several proper islands to flit between, solving different branches of puzzles. That sort of size and complexity seems way beyond what Telltale is aiming for with their episodes, understandably.

The old games had parts which were quite variable in how much gameplay they represented (for instance 'The Three Trials' take significantly longer than 'The Journey'), but even if it were possible to develop that much gameplay, I guess Telltale have to balance everything and can't really justify putting out a mammoth chunk of gameplay one month and then a 'Guybrush Kicks Butt' or smaller the next.

My favourite observation on this game I've seen so far is:

I like the idea that Guybrush somehow is familiar with the non-diagetic music from his past adventures.

That's CapnNacho in Mojo comments, referring to

Guybrush whistling Largo's theme in an idle moment

.

[BooJaka]

Ahh! I thought that was

Largo's Theme

but it took me a few minutes of just sitting there trying desperately to recall. A hint at the future perhaps?

[SignorSuperdouche]

I really enjoyed the episode, more so than episode one. My main issues with the game are the sound quality and an annoying bug (I assume) which meant Guybrush kept giving the same, totally unhelpful, hint over and over.

All the good stuff has been highlighted by others already so I wont go into too much detail but briefly: I'm really enjoying the story, Dom's voice acting is perfect, new environments were great, writing is fantastic.

In fact the whole triangle between Elaine, Good LeChuck and Guybrush is extremely satisfying... I'm kid of hoping that Elaine leaves both of them at the end of the season!

I hoping the season finale features

LeChuck and Guybrush having to team up against a pox infected Elaine

.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Well I finished it and I'm REALLY enjoying the story so far. Yes, it's gotten under my skin Blast that we have to wait weeks for the next one!

I was so concerned when LeChuck turned human at the beginning of the first game... it just didn't feel right. But when he was finally introduced properly in this one, it just felt perfect and really funny. The whole story and world of this episode was great, and just sucked me in. Thinking about it, I guess it did a really good job of hinting at a larger Carribean with lots of things going on that we don't necessarily have to know about. Good stuff.

The pirate hunter character was also really interesting and I'm glad she's going to be in the next one! (She's a fan of Guybrush, but also completely unmanipulatable by him -- superb). Van Winslow is really funny and it wouldn't take much to turn him into a truly unforgettable by just adding a little more dimension to his character (bad example; but maybe he secretly fancies Elaine or something -- or maybe the "stickler" thing is expanded upon. Or maybe he's secretly a millionaire tycoon who loves the idea of being a pirate. Something that could be added without needing a whole storyline for it).

It's great to see this series already moving away from fan-pleasing referential stuff into adding excellent new things to the mythology. It's a hard thing to do right, but already there's three excellent and interesting new characters (if you consider Good LeChuck to be new, which I do).

It's was also great that this episode allowed you to see Guybrush in a somewhat capable light (thanks to the opening fight), while also being insecure, dorky and dumb (while remaining loveable, of course!). Great balance there!

Even the music sounded better in this one, in fact it was really good! (Maybe Michael Land needed to find his MI "feet", as it were?)

Loved the ending, too... That was a MASSIVE

manatee

!

Can't wait for episode 3! (Darn, I hope I don't forget the thread of the story between now and then.)

PS - Who did the artwork on the Voodoo Lady's tarot cards? It was awesome!

[Noyb]

Nthing the compliments about the map transitions. In general, the animations seemed really good this episode, particularly the

fight scenes with LeFlay

. I also got a good chuckle out of the camera movement in the

Nice Cans

b-joke.

The LeChuck adventure game puzzle had some hilarious moments. I love how the game interprets the "wrong" answers as Guybrush intentionally messing with LeChuck.

Puzzle-wise, it was a tad disappointing. I could have sworn

both pirates turned around when I shouted the distracting thing when they weren't staring at each other

. I was happy that the jungle wasn't so labyrinthine this time. Putting the

amulet

in the fish didn't make much sense. Most of the puzzles after collecting the three Macguffins were so well telegraphed that I knew how to do them all (apart from not guessing final step of the one

where the melted metal cools down if you walk too far

). I was (pleasantly) surprised that the

rubber tree puzzle didn't require you to put it in the pile with the other trees.

Looking forward to the next episode!

Oh, and LeChuck randomly turned into a black ball when I returned to the cannon near the end of the game. Not sure what that was about.

[Jake]

Nthing the compliments about the map transitions. In general, the animations seemed really good this episode, particularly the

fight scenes with LeFlay

.

The opening fight stuff was animated by Jessica Lozano, one of our animators in the studio, who happens to also do a lot of swordfighting related activities when not at work. Good to have these people around, you know.

PS - Who did the artwork on the Voodoo Lady's tarot cards? It was awesome!

That stuff's by Ryan Jones, the concept artist on Tales of MI. He also designed the characters and most of the environments, with the art directors.

[BigJKO]

Oh, yeah. The intro with the tarot cards was awesome! What a great way to catch up on the story so far.

Also, indeed the transitions were amazing. They add so much. Although, the transition from the big island (with the two arguing pirates) did seem to stay on blank water for a little too long.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Can't say I had any issues with the arguing pirate puzzle... Just wanted to addm my 2c

[Thrik]

That puzzle confused me because you have to make them play the staring game and then turn around, even though in both cases they have their backs to the chest. I still don't see the logical distinction between them looking in opposite directions with their backs to the chest, and them looking in the same direction with their backs to the chest.

[toblix]

Could it be that they're standing in the same direction at first, so when you shout "behind you", both turn 180 degrees, so one is still looking at the chest. However, if you first make them stare at each other, they're both facing the chest, so when you tell them to turn 180 degrees ("behind you") they're both facing away from the chest? If so, that's stupid.

edit: Not stupid, but awesome and badly implemented/explained.

[syntheticgerbil]

It seems to me you can get a level of quality and detail in both the characters and animations when doing a game in 2D that I haven't seen in any 3D game. The best looking adventure games I know of are the 2D ones made right before the shift to 3D was made (CMI, the Broken Sword games). I also think all the VGA adventure games still look awesome -- Monkey Island, Legend of Kyrandia, Beneath a Steel Sky, Simon the Sorceror, you name it -- but I can totally see why that's not a viable option for anything but niche games today. It's no secret that the graphic style of the TellTale games goes hand in hand with low poly count. I'm not saying it looks bad, because it doesn't -- it's gorgeous and sweet-looking, but take a look at people's sleeves, look at the environment. Everything's blocky and the level of detail of things is generally very low. Then play Broken Sword 2 and tell me it doesn't look better than any 3D adventure game in existence.

I agree with you fully Toblix, and you certainly have good taste in exceedingly artistic adventures (a lot of people don't mention Kyrandia, even though those were gorgeous (first two especially)). I think it's not really a nostalgia thing but a matter of personal taste and preference along with what standard you hold art and animation to.

3D generally falters in both full blown CG movies and games because it will always lack the personal artist touch of someone moving a pencil around and organically creating the line flow as well as the animation. Traditional 2D animation is drastically different than 3D, the latter always falling into some degree of clumsiness or technically imposed robotic like movement, so with the way it's done now, it may never give off that personable feeling that people get from paintings or pen and ink animation. Although some would argue, I think great motion capture (at least for artistic purposes) is a pipe dream. The benefit from 3D is better pipelines and work flow once it's set up, not worrying about conflicting drawing styles, and the ability to use more realistic or varied textures and animation usually lends to 3D being more easily welded now.

So yeah, while I would love for Telltale games to be 2D or 2.5D because of some of the concept I've seen there, it would pretty much deconstruct their whole engine and business model I'm sure.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Ooh, I just remembered my favourite moment of the episode (how could I forget)...

The moment when LeFlay (is that her name?) chops off Guybrush's hand was absolutely priceless. Not only did it make her character feel like a genuine threat, but the moment was so totally unexpected. Perfect comedy timing.

Loved it!

[miffy495]

Man, some parts of this game just made me feel so damn smart and pleased with myself. Just finished it about 5 minutes ago. So awesome. Although I did experience a lot more graphical issues with this game than any other from Telltale. A lot more stuttering and such. Never anything huge, but noticeable. At the same time, this was the first time I've ever noticed the audio compression issues that other people seem to like to complain about. If I'm noticing it in this episode and have never heard it before, I'm guessing it must be completely horrible for those who have heard it all along. Those presentation/optimization issues aside, damn fine game.

I didn't have a particularly hard time with the pirates getting distracted, but

figuring out that I had to throw lil' Guybrush the Pyrite Parrot into the chest made me very proud of myself. Well designed puzzle that. Although having him help me out so much made it very hard when I had to melt him not ten minutes later.

I spent a good deal more time wandering around aimlessly in this episode than I did in any other Telltale projects. Not so much once I got into the game, but initially having to find a path through the jungle and working out how to even start looking for the macguffins. Once I'd remembered

what I could use the eye of the manatee for

it all clicked, but a little more direction early on would have been nice. Just stumbling on what I needed to do, while certainly in character for Guybrush, led to a mildly irritating opening half hour or so.

[Jake]

People wishing to improve the voice quality in TMI chapter 2 should re-download, as they put up a new build earlier tonight with a higher quality voice pack file.

[toblix]

That's great. Do you know if there was some special "thing" this time around, or have you permanently adjusted the sound quality?

[Jake]

We set it higher with Ch 1, too. I don't know what caused the initial release of Ch 2 to go out with the lower quality, but it's been fixed. We have better audio tuning/compressing tools at this point than we did when doing previous games, so theres more room to make it sound better and tune it. The downside to that is that someone can screw it up when making a build. The goal, to my knoweldge, is to make the games sound better over time, not worse.

[toblix]

We set it higher with Ch 1, too. I don't know what caused the initial release of Ch 2 to go out with the lower quality, but it's been fixed. We have better audio tuning/compressing tools at this point than we did when doing previous games, so theres more room to make it sound better and tune it. The downside to that is that someone can screw it up when making a build. The goal, to my knoweldge, is to make the games sound better over time, not worse.

Okay, that makes sense. I read somewhere (I forget) about your new build setup where one of the features was adjustable sound compression for the various builds. I also didn't notice any sound issues at all with Ch 1 (or, to be precise, I noticed that there was no hissing), which, in retrospect, should indicate this last thing was indeed a bug. Anyway, good job. Now you can go back to making awesome podcasts and scene transitions.

Have you done any camera or character animations in the game other than scene transitions?

[Erkki]

People wishing to improve the voice quality in TMI chapter 2 should re-download, as they put up a new build earlier tonight with a higher quality voice pack file.

Wohoo! It's much better. I still noticed the compression was a bit too lossy, but that's probably because I was specifically paying attention to that.

[ThunderPeel2001]

People wishing to improve the voice quality in TMI chapter 2 should re-download, as they put up a new build earlier tonight with a higher quality voice pack file.

Is there a way to "update" games you've downloaded? Or is there a way to discover if there's a new version out?

[brkl]

This is wonderful, Jake!