Thrik

Grim Fandango being remastered for PS4 and Vita

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I missed the Sony E3 conference and when I heard about this I thought it was a joke at first.

 

Please, please, please, remove the tank controls.... That's all I ask for! 

 

This is the first Double Fine game for Vita, right?

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HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT

 

WHY IS THIS TOPIC TITLE NOT IN CAPS?

 

SONY WINS E3 ALL E3 PS4 NOW A MUSTBUY THE ENTIRE EARTH HAS BEEN WON BY SONY IT IS DONE

 

IT IS DONE.

 

It's done.

 

I'll be waiting for the PC release for this """exclusive""" (triple quotation marks because I don't buy that it's anything more than a timed exclusive).

 

(ADDED) I wrote the above before reading Sno's link and now I'm pretty chuffed with myself.

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This is the one, genuine surprise game at E3 this year. Did not see it coming at all.

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This is the one, genuine surprise game at E3 this year. Did not see it coming at all.

You're certainly going to see a lot of people coming today.

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You're certainly going to see a lot of people coming today.

 

It is the day that webcams were invented for....TO CHATROULETTE

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Jesus.. the twitter reactions to this being maybe a timed-exclusive Playstation thing is ridiculous. "Thanks for abandoning your fan base!" etc., etc..  Tim Schafer's reply feed is just full of "Hey, read my earlier tweet, angry man. The one about other platforms being announced later.."

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Hahaha, people are upset about timing? About a game they've clearly already played? What difference does it make? It's not like there are spoilers or it'll truly influence the cultural zeitgeist so that they'll 'miss out' if they don't play it on day one. For me, this is almost an archiving process: get me this game as beautiful as it can be, get it on the marketplace, preserve it in everyone's memory and Steam library.

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Ooh, not sure if I'll really want to wait for the mysterious PC release, this could just remind me to get round to playing it. I have repeatedly been told great things, but I kind of want to play it before the re-release gets hyped and sets my expectations even higher.

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Remind me again how long did we have to wait for Brütal Legend to be released on PC? :P

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If you truly want to play this without any preconceptions, time travel back to the land before 1998, the year this video game called Grim Fandango was released. It was made by a company called Lucasarts.

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Remind me again how long did we have to wait for Brütal Legend to be released on PC? :P

That was basically a different Double Fine.

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If you truly want to play this without any preconceptions, time travel back to the land before 1998, the year this video game called Grim Fandango was released. It was made by a company called Lucasarts.

 

Unfortunately this evil tentacle guy stole my time machine, so I'll have to settle with trying to minimise my preconceptions.

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I haven't played Grim Fanfango and was pretty content keeping it that way. This remastering kinda forces my hand and I'm not going to be able to get out of it now, so I guess I'll play it.

tegan: Wow that actually looks really really nice visually. Nice.

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The only thing that really bums me out is that I'll have to update my avatar to reflect the new models.

 

Manny's head was pretty much perfect, his body could've used some additional polygons. I wonder if they'll change the visuals to reflect the original artwork. In other words: to which extent did the technical limitations inform the visual style and the shape of the heads? I'm guessing not much, since Glottis shows they could've gone for more bloated, 'skull-like' heads, but they chose not to. One brilliant device that came from tech restrictions were the 2D animated faces, which are to this day extremely brilliant. My guess is they'll keep those, since they're so key to the feel of the game.

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The only thing that really bums me out is that I'll have to update my avatar to reflect the new models.

 

Manny's head was pretty much perfect, his body could've used some additional polygons. I wonder if they'll change the visuals to reflect the original artwork. In other words: to which extent did the technical limitations inform the visual style and the shape of the heads? I'm guessing not much, since Glottis shows they could've gone for more bloated, 'skull-like' heads, but they chose not to. One brilliant device that came from tech restrictions were the 2D animated faces, which are to this day extremely brilliant. My guess is they'll keep those, since they're so key to the feel of the game.

 

I think they went too far in the original by adding a shiny red nose to Manny, i hope they get rid of that.

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It wouldn't surprise me if they don't go too crazy with it, after all it'd be madness to mess with the game's iconic aesthetic. The key word is 'remaster', which to me implies that they'll be revisiting all of the original assets and making changes where necessary to get them looking great on a HD screen. Probably the hardest part that our old friend Thunderpeel can probably empathise with is the difficulty in making all of the backgrounds widescreen, because the framing just doesn't work in many cases.

 

Aside from compatibility, the main issues with the game all involve the technical implementation of assets that are themselves actually very good (e.g. beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds heavily compressed; peerless art direction of models undermined by really rough connections between leg joints, etc; stunning soundtrack heavily compressed). If they manage to delicately resolve all of these things while leaving the original intact then it'll be perfect. As Rodi says, this should be more about archiving a classic in the utmost quality than anything: a Monkey Island: Special Edition is not what we need.

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I hope that they keep the 2D animation on the skeletons, but give Glottis an actual mouth. I felt the tech broke down with Glottis.

 

Also I hope that they maybe fill in a little in the back half of the game where it feels like they ran out of money.

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Some extra incidental dialogue during year four would be nice, not sure how feasible though. Also AFAIK the return to Rubacava was meant to be set during the day so that'd be awesome to see.

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Remind me again how long did we have to wait for Brütal Legend to be released on PC? :P

 

Just to put it out there, Tim Schafer tweeted that it was specifically console-exclusive to PS4. Which, like Jon Blow said about The Witness, means it's still open for coming to whatever non-console platforms they want.

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Some extra incidental dialogue during year four would be nice, not sure how feasible though. Also AFAIK the return to Rubacava was meant to be set during the day so that'd be awesome to see.

I'd be pretty happy if they didn't do any "originally meant to be"s. Down that road lies a lot of late-production choice reversal that seems too risky to try 15+ years after the fact.

I feel like, in the moment, in active production, a lot of lemonade gets made from lemons like "it has to be night time." They were given that constraint and created a ton of content around that constraint and still made it work... It was moody as hell and felt right in the game as shipped. I suspect suddenly reverting the time of day to day just won't work and feel cohesive, without also redoing music, rewriting dialog, redoing sound to reflect that new context, and holy crap I'd be bummed if they move that much content around.

Maybe it wouldn't require all that work and just changing the art would do the job just fine. But is that the choice they'd have made in 1998? If they'd found out they could light for day would they request a new feel for the music? Would the camera setups change? Would the characters discuss seeing the city in full light? Regardless of discussions they had or intentions they had, it's impossible to know what they would have actually done when the rubber met the road. Nobody can know that definitively because that's not the game that had to get closed and shipped in 1998... So instead of second guessing creative content they did or didn't get to do I hope they can focus on giving what WAS made an archival grade clean-up, give the controls a once over and call it a day.

If for instance Manny moved better, used modern animation blending and turns to move around, that would be the sort of change I'd welcome, but nothing to alter the mood, structure, or intent of any scenes as they shipped on the original CD.

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Also I hope that they maybe fill in a little in the back half of the game where it feels like they ran out of money.

 

Have you read the GF design doc? I'm actually glad the puzzles that were cut from the game aren't there. The years 1 & 3 cut puzzles were kinda lame. The year 4 ones had a bit of interest, but I think would have slowed down the plot too much.

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Have you read the GF design doc? I'm actually glad the puzzles that were cut from the game aren't there. The years 1 & 3 cut puzzles were kinda lame. The year 4 ones had a bit of interest, but I think would have slowed down the plot too much.

You mean the one with the last scenes "accidentally" xeroxed over because Schafer hadn't finished writing it?

 

Does anybody have a copy of that around? I didn't hold onto one, and then it got taken down.

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