"I Liked Telltale Before It Was Cool" - Goodbye Letter from monkeymovies, a vintage TTG Fan (UPDATE)
I Liked Telltale Before It Was Cool
A Goodbye Letter from monkeymovies, a vintage TTG Fan.
A collection of Telltale Games memorobillia purchased over the years.
So... yeah. Hi, everybody! Haven't posted here since 2011! Certainly looks a bit different around here, nowadays! Anyway, I'm monkeymovies. Named in 2009 from my love of the Monkey Island games and the fact that I have always wanted to work in the movie industry.
So long story short, I am a longtime adventure game fan. I played The Secret of Monkey Island in 2004, played the whole Monkey Island series in 2005, and I made it my life's goal after that to seek out the rest of the LucasArts catalogue. Cut to 2009, when Telltale Games, a company I was familiar with but had never played their Sam & Max revival or their other games yet, announced that they were continuing the Monkey Island series with Tales of Monkey Island. I was beyond excited. I crept onto these boards, engaged in a few discussions, and soon became an active poster as I was able to speak so passionately about a genre and a series I loved so much. Needless to say, I loved playing the game.
I then went back and bought the rest of Telltale Games' catalogue, from Bone, to Telltale Texas Holdem, to the first two Sam & Max series, to Strong Bad, etc, not to mention the odd piece of merchandise from the old Telltale Games store! (pictured above). Since then, and over the course of the release of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse and Back To The Future: The Game, I was an active poster on these forums. At one point, I also began livestreaming episodes of Telltale's games with commentary, and built up a small community of my own over the years. (Fhqwgads, The Gentlemen, etc. Where you guys at?!) It was fantastic to be part of a community of adventure gamers, and I finally had a chance to live what I would almost describe as the second golden age of adventure games, as I never got to experience the LucasArts glory years first hand. Plus the fact that Telltale were so "casual" and easy to interact with in their communications with us on these boards really made it feel like a close family group of like-minded adventure gamers.
Then as Telltale's style evolved past making adventure games and seemingly reaching for the post popular game licenses, not to mention altering the genre to appeal to the masses, I started to lose interest. I wasn't familiar with many of the licenses they'd acquired, the style of the games was less suited to me given that they were transitioning into a more "hybrid" genre, and this was also around the time where I felt like they were biting off more than they could chew in terms of ambition, timescales and licenses. As a result, the games began to get buggier and less refined than they when I began playing their games. So, I naturally lost interest and decided not to blindly purchase every one of their games anymore. And in the end, when it became clear that they were not going to revisit their older properties now that they'd hit it big with The Walking Dead, etc. (they also cancelled their planned Kings Quest reboot around this time), I decided to part ways with Telltale as a customer as they now no longer made the type of games I loved to play.
I did eventually play The Walking Dead: Series One and enjoyed it, but it still didn't click with me like their older titles did. On a personal note, I needed those original games in my life more at the time than I needed a Walking Dead game.
That was seven and a half years ago. Now, cut to seven years later, and the events of yesterday.
Reading yesterdays report of the layoffs amongst Telltale Games was awful. To see that many people, many of them, I'm sure, long-time staff lose their jobs in a snap is truly a horrible event to have to go through, and it was truly a shock to read, as from an outsiders point of view on Telltale for a long time, it seemed to me that they were doing extremely well. They were acquiring more and more licenses over the years (Both DC AND Marvel, Game of Thrones, etc!) which stunned me knowing the niche game licenses they were tackling in their early days and seeing how much they'd grown. But I suppose there has to be a point where the bubble bursts and the financial and deadline risks just become too great. And sadly, it looks like it has now happened.
Personally, I have moved on from my life in the seven years since being active these boards. I now have my own home, I have a job in my specialist field that I'm very lucky to have, I have adult responsibilities, and I feel the desire to play new adventure games that get released slipping away as I get older (the odd exception, Thimbleweed Park!), but Telltale was such a large part of my life for a long time and I treasure all of the memories that I had on these forums. I remember the people I interacted with, the community we built, the excitement and speculation before each and every new release, helping each other solve the puzzles, pointing out easter eggs in the games to each other to try, and I think back on the fun that we had playing those original games extremely fondly.
In fact... just last year, I replayed Tales of Monkey Island, all three Sam & Max seasons and Back to the Future: The Game, for the first time in years out of nostalgia. And you know what? Through all the low budget visuals and awkward moments at times, I had a lot of fun. Through Tales and Sam & Max Season Three particularly, you could see that they were getting better and better with storytelling, and particularly dramatic moments that we hadn't seen before even when LucasArts owned the IP's to those games.
I always thought this was Telltale's greatest strength. Staying true to the spirit of the licenses they work with and building on them, both dramatically, and in terms of characters. I almost can't remember a time when Morgan LeFlay, Human LeChuck and Van Winslow (the first LGBT character in Monkey Island, looking back?) didn't exist in the Monkey Island universe, nor a time when ***'s death wasn't an iconic, emotional Sam & Max moment, nor a time when Young Emmett Brown and Marty McFly didn't form a close friendship in 1931.
And I'm sure Telltale improved and expanded even more on their stories, worlds and characters in their later licenses, but I was glad to be there early on and just about glimpse the roots of all of that. I was thrilled that I had the chance to be a part of such an active era of adventure gaming, and I'd like to thank Telltale for giving me, and everybody else, the chance to continue the adventure game glory days.
So long, Telltale. You will be missed.
-monkeymovies
Comments
Nice to see some fellow old school Telltale fans poke their heads out. Devil's Playhouse will always remain one of my favorite Telltale titles out of both their old and new content. Speaking of which, nice Devil's Playhouse poster collection!
I too will miss the small scale, homely atmosphere that the forums used to have - although to be fair, I largely lurked up until 2013. My account says I signed up in 2011, but I actually lurked for around a year or two before.
I relate to the OP very much. I loved Telltale for their revivals of the classic point and click adventure game genre and then lost interest as they abandoned that format to make the narrative-driven games they are now synonymous for. It seemed to me particularly sad that Telltale, a company originally born from former LucasArts employees trying to keep the adventure game genre alive, would go down the exact same path that LucasArts did by essentially abandoning adventure games in favour of flashier licenced titles. Just another case of history repeating itself. I didn't bare Telltale any ill-will, I just had no interest in the types of games they were making.
I somewhat liked the first Walking Dead season but overall the experience left me feeling hollow. While I loved the Sam and Max series and ToMI is still my favorite thing that Telltale has ever made, I had gotten to the point of believing that even if Telltale wanted to make new seasons of those games, they were no longer the right company to handle it. I just wish they hadn't left cliffhangers in the end of both ToMI and Devil's Playhouse, but there is nothing that can be done about that now.
Man, 2009-2013 was such an exciting time. There was a new Monkey Island game, as well as remakes of the first two games in the series; Sam and Max was still alive; Telltale was at the top of their game and spearheading the adventure game revival movement; Tim Schafer was crowdfunding a brand new original point and click adventure game; Kickstarter was allowing a bunch of other classic adventure game directors like Jane Jensen and Two Guys From Andromeda to fund new games. How the times have changed...
Original post updated with additional merch I found!
Yeah, while I wouldn't rule out these adventure IP's ever returning again, as time goes on, and gaming keeps evolving, it's looking increasingly unlikely that they will barring the idea of reboots. Maybe it is for the best that those games and those memories remain in the past. We certainly wouldn't want them to be tainted by a lackluster new entry, let alone one that "modernises" the genre and removes the elements that we loved about those games to begin with.
I don't think I'd want a new Monkey Island sequel without the original cast and characters, and it's looking borderline impossible we'll ever hear Earl Boen's voice again in any project due to his retirement and age, sadly. Barring Disney overhauling the IP, or Ron Gilbert miraculously managing to procure the rights from them, I can't see Monkey Island returning in the near future. Sam & Max I could definitely see returning in one way or another, even if not as a game.
So yeah, even though the Telltale that I knew and loved has been over for years, the fact that the company now truly is over is really hitting home with me and making me realise how lucky we were to be a part of the adventure game era.