Sorry. I've talked about
Tales of Monkey Island plenty and there's more to come. I admit, I love this series of games and I want to see people playing it, so I'm doing everything I can to keep people informed about it in my own small way. It's true. I'm a bit of a fanboy when it comes to these things - but things I have said before, like the fact that the visuals will be polished up quite a bit since E3 are clearly borne out in these new screenshots, so I like to think that I'm a realistic and
honest fanboy, at least.
One of the most common negative things I hear about the game around the internet is people saying how it should be in 2D. There are reasons for this: the first three games were 2D and 1997's
Curse of Monkey Island was beautiful for it. By contrast, the 3D (with pre-rendered backgrounds)
Escape from Monkey Island was ugly as sin, and people don't want to be reminded of that (even though this new 3D style is actually closer to the art direction of
Curse than
Escape).
Curse of Monkey Island
I understand the desire for a 2D game - really, I do. But let's look at the practicalities involved. For cinematic moments each frame of animation would need to be individually drawn, a time consuming process. Even if this would be possible for Telltale to do under their business/production model of ~6 months initial development time followed by monthly releases while working on three episodes at a time, it would be limiting.
With 3D, if they want to create a cinematic moment, they can do so just by placing a camera and getting their animator to move the characters around, enabling them to create very dynamic scenes at any point in the gameplay. With 2D the best they would be able to muster is a few bespoke animations here and there when particular situations demand it, and some pre-animated cutscenes - but I have my doubts that even this is practical under their working schedule.
Escape from Monkey Island
So, the choice is: cheaper, faster to produce graphics that are arguably much more flexible and versatile to work with OR more expensive, time consuming graphics which arguably might look prettier. It's easy to see why they went with the first option, particularly since they already
have a 3D engine and artists/animators geared up to work in 3D.
In conclusion, sure, it would be nice to see a brand new 2D
Monkey Island game from Telltale. In the same way, it'd be nice if everything I touched turned into money, too - but a) it's not something I can reasonably expect to happen and b) even if it did, there are plenty of disadvantages, too, so why waste time thinking about it? To my eyes, Telltale are doing a fantastic job with what they've got.
Tales of Monkey Island
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Good post.
You're right, they have a solid engine there that they know how to work with and will allowthem to do 3D animaton in a relatively short timefame.
I'd rather see a 2D game myself, but as you've said, it just wouldnt be practical in this episodic format and I am kind of looking forward to seeing Telltale's take on the setting in 3D.
Besides, it's the writing that will be the real test.
Well said. I think people hated the control scheme more than anything with MI4, it was very awkward. It was like Lucasarts thought that as it was 3D they could do away with point & click or somthing. I just noticed that the mouse curser in the latest Tales of MI video is the same as the one from Curse of MI, thats rad.
As for that control scheme, what TT have gone for this time is more options. You can control it like Wallace and Gromit (arrow keys move player, mouse to point 'n' click on stuff) or you can just use the mouse for the whole thing (though movement is still handled in a more elegant way than the kind of clunky point 'n' click movement seen in Sam and Max and older adventure games)
Reactionary Fanboy Statement Incoming.
3D! It's a slippery slope!! The next monkey Island!!! Will be first-person!!!! And one will be shooting monkeys... at ISLANDS!!!!!%£@@*!
"3D! It's a slippery slope!! The next monkey Island!!! Will be first-person!!!! And one will be shooting monkeys... at ISLANDS!!!!!%£@@*!"
Sounds fun.
@Nicojay: Pffft, you just know they'll screw it up somehow and have us shooting islands at monkeys instead.
I don't think one can write too much about Monkey Island.
I certainly don't see any way that the fact that the game's in 3D is going to hurt the experience in any meaningful way. And I think the things you mentioned about the possibilities that 3D affords are very true--there's a lot of cool stuff that they can do if they choose to, and I bet that they do.
what about cell-shading then, any known limitation with that? :/
It's true, cel shading could have been a possible approach. After all, they used that sort of technique for Strong Bad, but that was because they wanted it to look as close to the web cartoons as possible.
I think the reason they didn't do cel shading for this one is severalfold:
1) since they have no set style they need to be emulating, it seems unnecessary to make a cel shaded game.
2) the scenes in Tales of Monkey Island are much busier and more complicated than the simplistic Strong Bad, and making cel shaded graphics look good in more complex scenes can be tricky and time consuming in itself.
3) I suspect it was just a style choice - they just decided that they could successfully design a 3d look for the game that worked, and I think that they have done, largely.
And probably a whole lot of other reasons I haven't thought of.
From the game play I've seen, I like but I've only seen about a 1 minute of Guybrush controling. Still they did do a great job on Sam & Max, so somehow I don't think they can screw this up.
I'm getting my copy first day it comes out, so I guess I'll know soon enough.
TellTale's business is making adventure games, something they split from Lucas Arts to do, because LA said "they're not lucrative". Like you said, 99% of the reason it's 3D is because they have that TellTale engine they can use for everything, and it works. I'm sure the game will be great.