Roderick

Tales of Monkey Island

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The last episode was pretty good, but hindered by uneven puzzling. It was very funny though: Telltale have one hell of a writer in Mark Darin.

The game as a whole was fantastic, and I couldn't have asked for better. Congratulations to Jake and co!

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there was a cool moment where Guybrush said to Morgan "my wife just etc etc (spoilers)" following a dramatic moment mid-way through the game, and it actually caught me off-guard. It's the sort of consideration for character video games usually don't have. So props to TT!

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Some dodgy dramatics (again):

LeFlay makes her sacrifice for Guybrush by giving up her sliver of "reputation". The fact that it's a sacrifice for Guybrush (apparently spurred on by the guilt of her previous actions) is actually what opens up the portal... Except then she's surprised when she can't go through it herself -- meaning she fully expected to be able escape from death herself. So her actions were not really motivated by a desire to help Guybrush at a loss to herself, and so weren't a sacrifice. Weird.

Edit:

I'm guessing that it's not really her reputation, but it was still an odd moment.

Still, have to say I'm really enjoying it so far. Galeb is a really visually interesting character, too.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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Some dodgy dramatics (again):

LeFlay makes her sacrifice for Guybrush by giving up her sliver of reputation. The fact that it's a sacrifice for Guybrush (apparently spurred on by the guilt of her previous actions) is actually what opens up the portal... Except then she's surprised when she can't go through it -- meaning she fully expected to be able escape from death herself, and meaning her donation was not a sacrifice to Guybrush at all. Weird.

(Warning: spoils the ending)

The ending was more confusing. Elaine supposedly somehow put courage, sacrifice, and-what-were-the-other-things-again(?) into the ring? And how did she know those were the things needed? I don't recall anyone telling her. And how did that give back guybrush's hand and make him back as he was before instead of as a ghost.

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Read this, Erkki. You have to remember what the

ring symbolizes

.

Hrmmm... It's an interesting read but I think it gives far too much credit to Elaine.

Good episode, great series. Congrats to Jake and co!

Is it strange that the biggest laugh I had from this episode was right at the end, when Elaine corrects Guybrush's pronunciation of 'La Esponja Grande'.

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Having finally finished the series, I have decidedly mixed feelings, especially about how it all pulls together.

The episodes themselves don't blend together particularly well. Taken individually, Episodes 3 and 5 stand out as remarkably better than the others. Episode 4 is particularly weak - it almost gives the impression that it was structured the way it was merely to set up Episode 5. They also don't feel like they're telling the same story. DeSinge is built up as the villain, then killed rather perfunctorily at the end of Episode 4 when it's revealed that, oh, hey, LeChuck is the villain after all. And also the voodoo lady is the mastermind behind everything. Wha? It's not that these are bad elements to reveal, but it was all handled sort of suddenly, in a way that didn't make much sense.

Frankly, the characters themselves don't always make sense. Morgan is trying to kill you, then she admires you, then she hates you, but also is apparently kinda into you, but then she stops for awhile and is just bummed out by you, and then she dies and is mad at you again, before quickly becoming willing to help you again, and then sort of just being dropped. Elaine is a bit harder to track, since she's pox-infested most of the time she sees you, but she seems to cross the line between knows-what's-going-on and doesn't-know-what's-going-on a few too many times to make sense.

I guess I felt the series would have been better served with a more coherent and perhaps simpler plot. Perhaps this is one of the drawbacks of the episodic format -- things don't always add up.

All that being said, I do think these are a huge step up from Sam and Max and Strong Bad. The production values were higher, the puzzles were (mostly) well-balanced, and I definitely felt compelled to keep playing. I played Episodes 3, 4 and 5 all in one sitting, essentially, and that certainly speaks to the quality of the games.

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It's interesting you say that, because I also found the story hard to follow, though I pieced everything together and I finally get it (unrevealed details aside). I guess Telltale need to work on explaining their story properly, as well as weaving in their puzzles with their story. I preferred chapter four; others preferred five. I guess the one we can all say weaved in story with puzzles was 3, which is worth studying because of that.

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Just finished it. Continuing my grand tradition of playing every single Telltale game in one sitting. Very good, though I still think episode three is my favorite. The callbacks started to get to be a bit much

(pot on the head in the cannon, dog in the map pile, etc)

but some of them, like the return of sword fighting, were delightful nonetheless. I do appreciate the odd reference to older games, the use of diving music from MI2 in Leviathan, for example, but I started to feel like they were being overused.

Story-wise, it was certainly more interesting than I'd assumed it would be after the end of episode 4, which I halfway agree with Thunderpeel on. (That is, I agree, but didn't react as violently as he did to it). It ended up having quite a few moments that caught me off guard, which is enough to satisfy me with this series. Very happy it turned out as good as it did. Now I want to go back and replay Sam and Max season 1, just to see how it compares after playing the more recent entries...

(Oh, and a gameplay note:

having to run back and forth from rip to rip to get back to the same damn location again and again in different forms started to get really irritating. Some kind of fast travel system would have been nice. It's the only time a telltale game has pissed me off with backtracking.

)

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It's funny how drastically my feelings for the series changed as the episodes progressed.

I was overall pretty disappointed after playing the first chapter, hated the controls, thought they were trying way too hard to reuse puzzles from the previous games and couldn't stand the art style, but at each subsequent chapter I started warming up to the game more and more. By the end of the third episode I was completely hooked and counting the days for the next chapter to hit.

I still hate the controls, but everything else rocked. The story even managed to surprise me on several occasions, and made me laugh far more than both seasons of Sam & Max combined.

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(Oh, and a gameplay note:

having to run back and forth from rip to rip to get back to the same damn location again and again in different forms started to get really irritating. Some kind of fast travel system would have been nice. It's the only time a telltale game has pissed me off with backtracking.

)

A result of running out of time, sorry to say. Would have let you take out the Crossroads map anywhere, instead of having to walk to the boat, but we ran out of time to bulletproof that so we left it as is, doubling the walk time. Sorry!

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Grah!

Oh well, it wasn't a dealbreaker. Like I said, it was the only time a telltale game has ever frustrated me in that way though, so it stuck out more than it would have in a lesser experience. Just seemed notable given how streamlined everything else had been.

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Heh, the development schedule for TMI sounds mental. You should double that next time. ;

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Yeah. On the risk of sounding like the ignorant cunt that I am, I think that Telltale's production schedule needs a shake-up. Tales was great, but a lot of its flaws wouldn't fly in a second season.

Edited by Kroms

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Yeah, I bet you guys could have gotten away with double the release time, but I don't know if that somehow leaves less money to me made.

I was very surprised at the rate they were coming out!

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Man, after finishing Tales, I decided it was time for a Sam and Max replay, so I started back at the beginning of Season One. They're still good, but with 19 (holy shit. I just counted that for the first time...) episodes released since the end of Bright Side of the Moon, the difference in quality from their latest game to Culture Shock is huge. I beat all Telltale games in one sitting, pretty much on principle. I'm finding it much easier with these earlier ones. They're so much more simplistic. It's hard to articulate exactly what it is, but if pressed I'd say it's something like they're so much less sure of themselves. The games feel tentative. Like a quiet outcast kid speaking up in class for the first time when noone else knows the answer. Almost as if the game is simultaneously doing something rad and asking your forgiveness/permission for it.

Beat Situation: Comedy last night, and if I get my paper done quickly enough today, will hit up The Mole, The Mob, and The Meatball today. My intention is to get through all 11 episodes of Sam and Max before school starts up again in mid-January. So far, it's been a really interesting experience.

Sorry this is so off-topic, but this seems to be the place where Telltale is discussed now and it didn't seem like a thing that would warrant its own thread.

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Just started playing Rise of the Pirate God, and two things:

  1. Directed by Some Other Guy and Jake Rodkin? Is this new, or was he credited with this on some other other games as well? Regardless, that's awesome.

Thing two: The intro. What a FUCKING AWESOME intro. Just the whole silent zooming out transitioning into gameplay. Even though it was totally mellow it blew me the fuck away. The intros in these games have been awesome and well animated, etc. but this was completely the opposite and worked just as well, if not weller. Don't know if it was supposed to be that low-key, or if it was a case of limited resources, but Jesus Christ, just those opening seconds. Holy shit.

Bonus thing: The thief guy is totally cool. I haven't figured out his deal yet, but the voice acting is really great.

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Stuff about Sam & Max.

So, on a peripheral note, would Sam & Max at $15 on Steam be a "must buy" sorta situation?

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So, on a peripheral note, would Sam & Max at $15 on Steam be a "must buy" sorta situation?

Absolutely. They're great adventures.

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Thing two: The intro. What a FUCKING AWESOME intro. Just the whole silent zooming out transitioning into gameplay. Even though it was totally mellow it blew me the fuck away. The intros in these games have been awesome and well animated, etc. but this was completely the opposite and worked just as well, if not weller. Don't know if it was supposed to be that low-key, or if it was a case of limited resources, but Jesus Christ, just those opening seconds. Holy shit.

I done that, and it was deliberate. Thanks dude!

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Thing two: The intro. What a FUCKING AWESOME intro. Just the whole silent zooming out transitioning into gameplay. Even though it was totally mellow it blew me the fuck away. The intros in these games have been awesome and well animated, etc. but this was completely the opposite and worked just as well, if not weller. Don't know if it was supposed to be that low-key, or if it was a case of limited resources, but Jesus Christ, just those opening seconds. Holy shit.

Totally, it was freaking awesome. I was really impressed.

Also, Jake, what was with that infamous death scene in ep4? Was there some last second changes where Ron Gilbert said "there's no blood in Monkey Island!" or some internal politics about how dramatic MI should be?

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The death scenes in chapter four were brilliant. The

Morgan

one is a little awkward on a second playthrough, but

Guybrush's

was amazing: shocking, deserved, and poignant.

There's no blood because they needed to keep a certain rating with the ESRB, though I'm not sure for exactly what reasons. Probably financial.

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Jon: Yeah, buy 'em. I'm on Reality 2.0 now, having been sidetracked by going out of town and working a bunch. They're still fantastic, though they do show their age a bit. Totally worth it for the whole bunch though, especially if that's both seasons. Don't think about it any more, buy the damn things.

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