[ep.1 spoilers inside] Number of locations per episode
I've seen people claim that the jungle bits in Episode1 were intended to make the game's area seem larger than it actually is, in particular by turning it into a maze consisting of the same screens over and over if you dare to enter without one of 'em maps.
For me this was a hommage to the classic LA games of old, Zak and Monkey Island in particular and it provided the source material for some pretty fun map puzzling to boot on tops. Still, it got me thinking about the format at hand. Now if you're being honest, your average Monkey Island island has never had that many places you could explore. This ain't Morrowind or something. Still after seeing how there are a total of two buildings you could enter in Flotsam's settlement, I'm wondering if it's actually possible to portray something like say Woodtick given ToMI's build. And still offering some bits of island to explore on tops. All off a sudden it seems like 1991 all over again - where every bits of art, sound and animation was surely something really hard fought for - and the Amiga version of MI2 still shipped on a whopping 7 discs or something. That's got to hurt.
Constraints are everywhere, except if you're working on a Blizzard game it seems. Sometimes constraints prove to be a plus, in particular if a team of artists has learned to build within the confines of those constraints rather than desperately trying to pave their way around them. Something that Telltale are surely used to be doing given their schedules at hand - Flotsam is a pretty tight place with a good deal of stuff to do for a reason. Yeah, well, as said, it still got me pondering a bit.
For me this was a hommage to the classic LA games of old, Zak and Monkey Island in particular and it provided the source material for some pretty fun map puzzling to boot on tops. Still, it got me thinking about the format at hand. Now if you're being honest, your average Monkey Island island has never had that many places you could explore. This ain't Morrowind or something. Still after seeing how there are a total of two buildings you could enter in Flotsam's settlement, I'm wondering if it's actually possible to portray something like say Woodtick given ToMI's build. And still offering some bits of island to explore on tops. All off a sudden it seems like 1991 all over again - where every bits of art, sound and animation was surely something really hard fought for - and the Amiga version of MI2 still shipped on a whopping 7 discs or something. That's got to hurt.
Constraints are everywhere, except if you're working on a Blizzard game it seems. Sometimes constraints prove to be a plus, in particular if a team of artists has learned to build within the confines of those constraints rather than desperately trying to pave their way around them. Something that Telltale are surely used to be doing given their schedules at hand - Flotsam is a pretty tight place with a good deal of stuff to do for a reason. Yeah, well, as said, it still got me pondering a bit.
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Even then, however, the amount of time between episodes put constraints on the amount of rooms etc. I do like the episodal format, but I think there is a large amount of potential in the stories for MI which just aren't being built on, as we are left with a semi-hollow place which (as onemanandhisdroid mentioned) isn't the case even in MI2.
Thing is if it would fit into WiiWare format still, even with all details towned down by a notch. But like you said...
Mind, they've distanced themselves from this being Monkey Island 5 for a reason - the reason being that they cannot create the AAA budget, epic, swash-buckling, VGA graphics, Bill Tiller-art, two-dee-point'n'click
Personally I wouldn't say Episode 1 sports a hollow place, I think Telltale did a pretty fine job on this - cramming as much interactivity into a rather small space as is. To be forced to do this can do goodness all by itself - the old Monkey games had screens in which there's basically nothing to do at all. Well, except admiring pixel art in 320x200 resolution. For what it's worth, I think the number of screens/locations isn't even substantially lower than in your average Monkey Island chapter. But, yeah, the rendering of township is one thing that got me a little thinking. It's basically just an alleyway and the doc's lab. Not that Melee town had been anything like San:Andreas either, heh. This isn't meant as criticism per se - I'm just not familiar with the whole of TT's portfolio quite yet, which means I'm kind of guessing at what's possible and not.
Plus, without the recycling of locations like in the Sam&Max seasons, which nevertheless also made for an appropriate narrative for its format, this is going to be a more "epic" experience all by itself.
If anything there were fewer locations on Flotsam the locations there including; the main town, "Big Gut's" hut, the shrine in the jungle... Include all the idols and that's all I can think of. You might want to include the ships from the opening scene, though, as they were playable. (But then you might want to look at the troll bridge as somewhere comparable to the idols and there are almost no puzzles at all at the sword trainer's house).
Anyway, the main constraint in the size of the island is the episodic format. We'll never see something like in MI 2 where we could sail between the three islands, in Tales.
Are you talking about Melee Town or the entire island? If you don't count the Scumm Bar and the governor's mansion, there's a total of three buildings you can enter: a church, a prison and the Voodoo lady's very first shack in a long line of Voodoo lady shacks. Well, you can enter pretty much all of those buildings, but you know where all those doors are getting you by now.
Playing a little bit of devil's advocate here: On the one hand I was totally expecting to be able to enter at least Club41 at one point in the game and I thought the courtyard would play its role as well. On the other, well let's not forget that Flotsam "Town" is pretty much a makeshift settlement of stranded SCUMM o' the seas, it's not even an actual town or anything.
Yet I wouldn't focus entirelly on this township thing quite yet - only time and upcoming episodes will tell whether there's a place for bigger islands in this format and schedule or not. But then not every episode has to play on some kind of island, now does it? That's so cliche. I could imagine one episode playing entirelly on the Narwhale and thereabouts, telling a more character-focused story about a haunted ship the crew gets to find, or one telling about Guybrush's ongoing struggle with his hand, or something. Lack of epics don't necessarily mean a bad thing, in particular with the apt writers and animators being at work here. We'll see!
Yeah that, and about MI's open-endedness with Guybrush being able to access multiple islands at once: In all fairness, chapter2 in MI2 is the only time in the Monkey Island series this ever happens.
Yep, I think it hits the nail on the head. The three islands on MI2 took up much more of the time in the development. It also had the input that a handful of guys sitting at really crappy computers making a game will have, which I don't think can be captured in the digital age, where computer games are so mainstream.
I'm not sure what you meant, possibly because of a typo at the beginning of your post? Are you saying there's more in Melee, or less?
I think it's certainly a case that Melee is bigger. It was the main focus of about half the game, though, so that's an explanation.
Melee Island:
+ Governor's Mansion
+ Jail
+ Church
+ Shop
+ Alleyway
+ Clock-Tower Street
+ Voodoo-House
-Melee "dock"
+ Underwater Puzzle location
+ Scumm Bar
+ Walkway (where people should die daily when big waves come... or am I just pedantic?
- Melee Lookout Point
- Melee Maze
- Meathook's House
- Smirk's House
- Fettucini's Circus
- Stan's Previously Owned Ships
- Swordmaster's Shack
and probably more
Flotsam Island:
+ Flotsam dock
+ Screaming Narwhal
+ "beach"
+ De Singe's Lab
- Flotsam Gateway
- Flotsam Maze
- Deepgut's Shack
- 3-4 Idols
- Weather Control device
You also add to this, the opening of the game
This shows there is more in Melee than Flotsam, but not necessarily that this is a good thing. I suppose it will depend on personal preferences. Do you prefer to go to a city and go on a guided tour, through the main places, or do you prefer to see things yourself, and get more immersed in the local culture? Melee provides the latter, and Flotsam the former. Or, I suppose you could say, SoMI offers to latter, and ToMI the former.
Personally, i'd prefer more to do on each location and less locations overall. But that's just my preference.
I think there's not. By the feel of it, I think we're going to be racing around. Short, sharp adventure for the 21st century's population, the entirety of which apparently has ADHD.
In the words of Neil Hannon: "Your concentration span's too long; It's longer than this song, that's not allowed; Dumb it down"
No, that's not cliche at all!
... apart from having already been done in
Then again, I can see what you mean... That was very brief, whereas what you're talking about is a more in-depth, story-focussed thing. The problem is, I don't think you can really confine yourself to a ship for two episodes or something. Especially given each ship has probably only the space for a hold, a captains cabin, and a small walkway. I don't think TTG's take on MI is right for such a thing, even if it wouldn't have been massively out of place taking up a properly-sized Act in the originals.
It seems however, that you can only buy Tales episodes in a bundle rather than individually now? That means everyone who has episode 2 already has episode 1. So my point is couldn't future episodes feature Islands from the previous ones without having to make each download bigger?
By the end of the season you could could have all 5 islands to explore!
That could be quite nice, though it'd have to be deliberately designed like that, and (though i'm not sure what TTG are doing with this game) with most I think they like to give you the option to only buy one episode. I think that's a redundant feature past ep1/last ep, and it'd be an interesting idea.
Alternatively, they could do a couple of episodes on the same island, adding in a few more features in the second of the episodes, and thereby saving space in that episode for some really nice features being added in.