Chief puzzle complains with Siege (Warning: Spoilers)
There were two particular puzzles in the game that I thought could have been better.
1st complaint: The seahorse puzzle
- I've got loads of issues with this one. First, getting Pyrite Guybrush into the chest is horridly done. I mean, the option of getting them into a staring contest doesn't always appear (I usually have to tell them to cooperate 1st). Plus, the way the camera angles are, its hard to tell the difference between when you normally distract them.
Finally, it isn't entirely clear that they take the artifact off island. Yes, this gets mentioned at the start of the conversation, but I wouldn't have minded a reminder when they got back. Something like: "Gee, for traveling away from the islands, it certainly didn't seem to take you long."
2nd complaint: The rubber tree
- Biggest complaint with this one, is that I didn't even know the rubber tree was even there. There was no reason for me to travel back to the island & I had to look to hints to find it. If only the game would have forced you into 'discovering' it when you find the artifact. (Tripping over the tree's roots after digging it up?)
That's it. My 2 chief complaints. Just thought I'd share.
Kevin
1st complaint: The seahorse puzzle
- I've got loads of issues with this one. First, getting Pyrite Guybrush into the chest is horridly done. I mean, the option of getting them into a staring contest doesn't always appear (I usually have to tell them to cooperate 1st). Plus, the way the camera angles are, its hard to tell the difference between when you normally distract them.
Finally, it isn't entirely clear that they take the artifact off island. Yes, this gets mentioned at the start of the conversation, but I wouldn't have minded a reminder when they got back. Something like: "Gee, for traveling away from the islands, it certainly didn't seem to take you long."
2nd complaint: The rubber tree
- Biggest complaint with this one, is that I didn't even know the rubber tree was even there. There was no reason for me to travel back to the island & I had to look to hints to find it. If only the game would have forced you into 'discovering' it when you find the artifact. (Tripping over the tree's roots after digging it up?)
That's it. My 2 chief complaints. Just thought I'd share.
Kevin
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Comments
The rubber tree I sort of agree on, but if you get stuck the best thing to do is visit every place you've already visited to see if anything has changed. When those pirates were on that island I knew I needed to take something away with me. Plus when you kick the coconut earlier in the game it bounces off the tree. I didn't really notice that, but it *was* a hint for the player to come back to it later.
Also the rubber tree has a different color then other trees.
If you break the mast often, Winslow comments that you need something that 'gives way' more.
It is heavily implied you need to put something into the chest to be able to track it.
You can distract the pirates in 2 ways ("look there" and "game") and there is an open chest in front of them.
When you go to any small island and click on the sand, Guybrush comments that he "is not going to dig just anywhere for treasure".
That you can click on the sand at all is a hint.
The Seahorse thing I didn't find hard either. It's not unusual for a line of dialogue to unlock new options (first you ask them to cooperate, then you can suggest how) and once I realised you could distract them it was pretty easy for me to figure out what to do (put something in the chest) and with what (the parrot, that would make noise).
However I did re-explore the whole forrest first since it looks like they come back from there after they bury the treasure. That's only after a while that I thought to go back to the 3 small islands (of course I went to the right one last. Stupid odds.)
Buckeeeeet!!!!!
I realised quite quickly that
Also when you ask the pirates what they are doing they SPECIFICALLY state that McGillicutty ordered them to bury the artifact
Plus, I did the
Also, the
I was stumped for a second with the DeCava
In fact I found that puzzle ridiculously easy.
The distracting the pirates from the treasure chest was one it took me a while to get. You are right, finding the staring contest dialogue option was a bugger!
Having to do the stairing contest -then- the discraction didn't make any sence. Why did the pirates look away differently after the contest then just with a distraction? That puzzle was the one probelm I had.
Oh, and the thing with the fish eggs? Bad Telltale! Me no likely the red herrings! :P
I like red herrings and general useless junk in your inventory
Well they do 'borrow' your raft, so my first guess was they buried it on another island/isle..
Me too. As long as there's not like 4 or 5 of them..
That puzzle made perfect sense actually and I got it right away.
You would have too if you would have just clicked on the cliff after the stuff fell down.
A case of wanting to go to fast without proper exploring. Happens to the best.
Very logical for me, and I loved the bouncy mast sequence
Actually I did click on the cliff after it fell down. It is just the idea that Guybrush walked up the mountain without it melting and pouring it a a couple hundred feet down, when he couldn't walk what should actually, in practice, be the shorter way. In my mind, it makes absolutely no sense. Often when I have gotten stuck, it has been a really obvious solution that completely passed me by, me totally not seeing the forrest because of all the trees being in the way, but this, this didn't make a whole lot of sense, even within the gameworld.
As I see it, it's getting AROUND the mountain versus getting straight on top of it.
Personally, I never saw anything illogial in that puzzle.
2) you used hints
I wouldn't be too against this, if it's what you wanted to do, but you then made that fact public and used it to criticize the game.
Observation is a feat in monkey island games. It doesn't provide the most rewarding puzzles, but it provides the longest ones. The ones that people start hanging on, and it's in these pauses that you get to explore the game and end up getting the most out of it.
It sounds like you played this game with a mindset that would have been better suited to something else.
Agree. Thought first you needed to distract them with the cannon or tree logs somehow when the normal distractions didn't work
Don't agree. It's quite obvious that they leave the island. They "borrow" your raft for gods sake.
Don't agree at all. It's well known for adventure gamers that you need to explore things several times. You would then know that it was a rubber tree.
This is Monkey Island logic
Yea, I figured that out by noticing that you had an option to distract them both while in the staring contest and out of it.. and there had to be a reason why you were given the option to distract them during the staring contest..
I guess it has something to do with the pirate's glass eye.
I'd say it's more the fact that they each look behind themselves - there's still some peripheral vision the first way but if they're staring across the chest and look behind themselves, they're unmistakeably looking away from it.
You ignored a bucket?!? How dare you?
The next thing I though was "Oh man they couldn't actually want you to do THAT". SO I tested this ridiculous idea and obviously it worked.
Silly me I forgot that I replied to this thread a few minutes ago.
I didn't even realise the staring context thing could be a problem. Got it right from the start.
The way I see it, they're staring at each other and you tell them there is something behind them, so they're going to look in opposite directions then. If you tell them to look behind them while they're facing you, they'll still see you touch the chest...
That's my afterwards justification, because I didn't even think about it at the time, got it right away for some reason.
However since they come back to you from the forest (that's what it looked like to me at least) I thought they buried the treasure in the forest, and took your raft to travel to the other side of the island faster than on foot (since they were carrying a heavy chest around, it made sense to me).
It's clear that the game isn't designed for the player to take so long in getting the
Ah. A bucket. That will do perfectly. *pick up bucket*
What do you want the bucket for? -- I don't know.
As for the seahorse puzzle, it wasn't visually clear to me that when i distracted the pirates they weren't looking far enough away from the chest. To me it looked perfectly implausible for them to see what i was doing, so i banged my head against that one for a bit.
Beyond those two, i thought the flow of things was nice and natural. Almost putting the episode on the easy side.
My thoughts exactly. I ended up exploring the forest much more than I needed to. They should have had them return on the raft, not from the forest.
Distracting the pirates had me stumped for a while. The rest of the puzzles didn't seem too difficult, and as soon as I replaced the mast a second time I knew exactly what I had to do to finish the game.
In a game like this, I think the number of screens between objects is more relevant than the real world distance.
Because their eyes were dried/watery (you ever did a staring contest in your live?) from staring and because of that their eyesight is limited at this moment. THAT'S a perfect explanation for me and i makes perfect sense. And i figured this this all out by myself. Logical thinking is not that hard.... Come on, people...
Same thing with "I haven't known the treasure will be hidden on an other island, how should i have known that??".... THEY ARE STEALING YOUR RAFT, WHEN THEY GO BURIING THE TREASURE FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE THEM "SAILING" AWAY!!!! THINK ABOUT IT!!!! AARRRRRGH!!! Why should they do that, if they plan to bury it on the same island, they're coming from? Enjoying a boattrip? Sightseeing? Do they want to be alone?... For some...special reason?
God, i hate to explain things, that are absolutley obvious to me, sorry....
I personally kinda disliked the "fishing well" puzzle, mostly because I somehow assumed that since it is a WELL it should be deep, so I need a fishing pole or at least a rope to tie my hook with if I want to fish in it. The game never gives you the slightest hint that the well is so shallow you can just dive your hand in and fish.
But for the most part I'm ok with the puzzles, except for the general feeling of "obviousness" that somehow permeates. I guess this episode was slightly rushed so a number of puzzles were "shortened"...
I thought the rubber tree being special was well-indicated -- the camera angle even shifts a bit for a close-up when you examine it, and then once you have the prying device you can try (unsuccessfully) to pry it up. Pretty obvious that it wasn't just filler for the landscape.
I had tried the 2 other lines and then tried to put the pyrite parrot in teh chest and failed. Then, when I had collected the two other artifacts I looked through my inventory, looked at the map and realized there were no possible options left in the whole game but gettign the fkin pyrite parrot into the chest. So I decided: "it's going into the chest" and tried a few combos more and BOOM!- it worked. I got a bit disappointed and confused but it's also the only reasonable complaint I have.
And there were no problems at all with the rubber, given I explore screens well.
I had no problems with the bucket though. In fact, clicking on it was the first thing I did in that screen, since it's the only clickable object when you enter it (as Anemone only emerges from the water when you are close to her/him).
BUT...
I agree that the distraction puzzle was badly done and I'm wondering if there's gonna be a "distract the pirate" puzzle in EVERY episode! It was done at least twice in episose 1 (maybe thrice). It's such a cliche, am suprised we haven't seen a "follow the Sword Master" re-hash as well.
Whoops, didn't see this before I posted. But ditto. Big freaking DITTO!