Ron Gilbert joins Tim Schafer's Double Fine

edited October 2010 in General Chat
Read about 'er here or here, whichever pleases you.

Not a Monkey Island game, before anyone asks. Says so in the article.

Speculate.
«1

Comments

  • edited September 2010
    I love you, messenger.

    Edit: the 8 people who viewed this and didn't reply currently need an ambulance.
  • edited September 2010
    In the second link it says 'fans of those old adventure games will like it.'

    This sounds promising. :)
  • edited September 2010
    Finally! Without Tim, Ron's nothing. So it's great to see that they're working togethere again! There's just one left to go ;)
  • edited September 2010
    *Waits for an announcement of a TellTale Games/LucasArts/Double Fine three way project, The Final Monkey Island"*
  • edited September 2010
    This looks very promising. I don't think we'll be seeing any more traditional point and click-games from them. But I'm certain it will be awesome! :cool:
  • edited September 2010
    Trenchfoot wrote: »
    Finally! Without Tim, Ron's nothing. So it's great to see that they're working togethere again! There's just one left to go ;)

    I take it that you haven't played the Humongous games, or Deathspank.
  • edited September 2010
    ee eee eeee *dances around* fingers crossed for monkey island
  • edited September 2010
    Grim Fandango SE would be nice.
  • edited September 2010
    Well if it couldn't be TTG then this is the next best thing!
  • edited September 2010
    Trenchfoot wrote: »
    Finally! Without Tim, Ron's nothing.
    Neither of them has had anything close to their previous output, and no that cute little mediocre platformer DoubleFine released doesn't count.
  • edited September 2010
    Neither of them has had anything close to their previous output, and no that cute little mediocre platformer DoubleFine released doesn't count.

    Are you talking about Psychonauts? It was not "mediocre".
  • edited September 2010
    Far too exciting.
  • ShauntronShauntron Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2010
    This is pretty exciting news. I like the comments insisting Tim should poach Dave Grossman from Telltale. Hah! Not without the keys to Dave's cell he won't.
  • edited September 2010
    Shauntron wrote: »
    This is pretty exciting news. I like the comments insisting Tim should poach Dave Grossman from Telltale. Hah! Not without the keys to Dave's cell he won't.

    Who needs keys when you've got psychic toys?
  • edited September 2010
    Best news I've heard all day! :D
  • edited September 2010
    I think this is great news! I wish they could buy the IPs back from Lucasarts since they are not being used.

    And Psychonauts is a fantastic game. I got it for 2 dollars at the beginning of the year on steam and felt like I should have paid a lot more for it.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2010
    Avistew wrote: »
    You can talk.

    Fair enough! Deleted, took it to PM.
  • edited September 2010
    Sorry if I started a sort of "war", but it's just that I prefer Tim's style of humour a lot more than Ron's.
    Now don't get me wrong, Ron gets a lot of laughs from me, but with Brutal Legend I realised how much more Tim makes me laugh.

    That's all I meant to say :)
  • edited September 2010
    Awesome, finally, yes!
  • edited September 2010
    I look forward to whatever it is they're making.

    ...I just hope they decide to release it on PC or Wii and not just Xbox/PS3. :(
  • edited September 2010
    Oh boy, I can't wait until he makes the game he wants then leaves the company and they start making crap games and collapsing as he's done in the past.
  • edited September 2010
    Trenchfoot wrote: »
    Sorry if I started a sort of "war", but it's just that I prefer Tim's style of humour a lot more than Ron's.
    Now don't get me wrong, Ron gets a lot of laughs from me, but with Brutal Legend I realised how much more Tim makes me laugh.

    That's all I meant to say :)
    None intended on my end either. I simply meant that neither man has been performing at their peak. To say either man is "nothing" without the other is to highly underestimate them, and to say their name is an assured stamp of quality is an overestimation that is more than a decade out of date.

    I don't see their names as something special in a new game project. I do hope they can release something unique and amazing, but I hope that about every company and every name.
  • edited September 2010
    Are you talking about Psychonauts? It was not "mediocre".

    Ehhhhhhn. As a platformer, yeah, it was pretty mediocre (and buggy, too, if you got the PS2 version like I did). That isn't to say that Psychonauts isn't one of my all-time favorite games (because it is), but it's definitely not perfect, and I understand why some people may not like it.
  • edited September 2010
    Ehhhhhhn. As a platformer, yeah, it was pretty mediocre (and buggy, too, if you got the PS2 version like I did). That isn't to say that Psychonauts isn't one of my all-time favorite games (because it is), but it's definitely not perfect, and I understand why some people may not like it.

    I got the Xbox Originals version, and have encountered no bugs so far.
  • edited September 2010
    I got the Xbox Originals version, and have encountered no bugs so far.

    Well nonetheless, the platforming elements were still nothing spectacular. They weren't bad but there was nothing you haven't played in a game before.
  • edited September 2010
    Well nonetheless, the platforming elements were still nothing spectacular. They weren't bad but there was nothing you haven't played in a game before.

    That is true. The atmosphere and story is what set the game apart.
  • edited September 2010
    That is true. The atmosphere and story is what set the game apart.
    Just to be clear, by "mediocre" I never mean "bad". I mean what I say: It felt like a 90s platformer misplaced in time. Well written, pretty, and atmospheric up the wazoo? Yes. But it was "just a platformer", and the gameplay didn't do anything to set it apart and like many 3D attempts at the genre it just wasn't spectacular to actually play. I enjoyed playing it, definitely. It's just that the game is "mediocre", or "ordinary, of moderate quality".

    More than the script matters in a film, more than the story matters in a game. Both men have worked on far better than a "well written, but otherwise average [genre]".
  • edited September 2010
    As a side-note, has anyone else ever noticed that starting around the Asylum part of the game, the levels started to play a lot more like something from an adventure game? There was a lot more item-collecting and puzzles that involved using the items properly in order to get the proper reactions from people. It made me wonder if the game would have been better off as an adventure game. :P
  • edited September 2010
    Nice team up :)
  • edited September 2010
    Double Fine or Telltale needs to buy out Autumn Moon so Bill Tiller and Co. can work together with better resources and a better creative team to make better games. Bill can make great games; but I don't think he has the resources.

    I'm somewhat excited on this partnership; I was just thinking the other day that Ron really needs someone like Tim to challenge him in order to make a better creative environment and therefore better games and stories. And here they are.
  • edited September 2010
    Bill can make great games; but I don't think he has the resources.

    I usually dig his atmospheres, and he has some interesting ideas, but his writing skills are lacking, at best. I've never been a huge fan of his character design either. Some of his puzzles are superb, though.
  • edited September 2010
    Thats 2 out of the 3 big ones :)

    Could be really amazing if somehow they all 3 could get togther again for some game. That would be really epic, there is just something about these 3 people styles that compliment each other so very very nicely, when they work togther.
  • edited September 2010
    I can just say how surprised I am? This is good news! Whatever they are gonna work on it better be good and made for the Wii. Probably wont happen but hey I can dream cant i?
  • edited September 2010
    I don't see their names as something special in a new game project. I do hope they can release something unique and amazing, but I hope that about every company and every name.

    Nothing special? Seriously? It's a plain and simple fact that very few major games out there have anything approaching the personal authorial stamp that is obvious in pretty much everything these two have ever put out. You're welcome to hope for similar from every company and every game, but you'd be hopelessly misguided to do so because, even at their worst, these two are working from a very different value system to the one favoured by the corporate gaming world. An outright failure from one of these guys would be more interesting than 99% of the generic dreck out being pumped out there.
  • edited September 2010
    I think you missed the point, so here it is: A good game is marked by a good game, not the name on the box.

    Yes, these people have proven that they can make good games if they tried, but that doesn't mean anything they put out is automatically good.
  • edited September 2010
    It would be nice if Autumn Moon would have enough ressources for beeing able delivering adventures more in a way they and also the gamers would like them to be. I enjoyed A Vampyre Story a lot. It had a few downs as well but overall it was a great and unique adventure.
  • edited September 2010
    Giant Tope wrote: »
    I think you missed the point, so here it is: A good game is marked by a good game, not the name on the box.

    Yes, these people have proven that they can make good games if they tried, but that doesn't mean anything they put out is automatically good.

    Of course not. But because their games tend to showcase their unique personalities in a way most games don't, anything they put out is all but guaranteed to be distinct and halfway interesting at the very least. I just don't buy this idea that every designer is on the same level - pedigree and wider creative vision counts for something. Not every movie Scorsese, Fincher, Lynch, Gilliam etc puts out is a winner, but their personal creative stamp makes even their failures worth a glance in a way an anonymous weak movie probably isn't. Likewise unless he resolves to make faceless generic games for the rest of his life, I find it hard to imagine not finding a new Schafer project worth at least a little bit of special consideration.
  • edited September 2010
    I think it's incredibly shallow to attribute a game down to a single person, unless there were in fact only a single person working on the game. And the fact of the matter is that any game company can make good games if they had a solid line up of passionate and talented people working hard. Are Tim and Ron passionate people? No doubt. Are they talented? Sure they are. However, as much as I like their recent games, I do have to admit that they lack the luster that their earlier work had shown. I'm not going to automatically assume that a person is going to be able to pull out the same quality product time after time. I mean, it's great that they're putting their names on their products, and I do think that's important, but at the same time you can't automatically assume a game is going to be great because of it.

    And to assume that a game can't have personality just because it doesn't a name backing it up is fairly faulty logic as well. Just look at pretty much all the games Valve put out since Half-Life 2. And if you seek more games like this and you're not satisfied with the mainstream, go look for indie games. In this day and age, you can find tons of awesome indie games made by small developers who can make risks because they have nothing to lose.
  • edited September 2010
    This is great news! :)
    Same feeling I got when I heard about Telltale.
  • edited September 2010
    Giant Tope wrote: »
    I think it's incredibly shallow to attribute a game down to a single person, unless there were in fact only a single person working on the game. And the fact of the matter is that any game company can make good games if they had a solid line up of passionate and talented people working hard. Are Tim and Ron passionate people? No doubt. Are they talented? Sure they are. However, as much as I like their recent games, I do have to admit that they lack the luster that their earlier work had shown. I'm not going to automatically assume that a person is going to be able to pull out the same quality product time after time. I mean, it's great that they're putting their names on their products, and I do think that's important, but at the same time you can't automatically assume a game is going to be great because of it.

    And to assume that a game can't have personality just because it doesn't a name backing it up is fairly faulty logic as well. Just look at pretty much all the games Valve put out since Half-Life 2. And if you seek more games like this and you're not satisfied with the mainstream, go look for indie games. In this day and age, you can find tons of awesome indie games made by small developers who can make risks because they have nothing to lose.

    Honestly, you seem intent on willfully misunderstanding my fairly easy to understand points and I'm not going to waste my time connecting the dots for you. Suffice it to say that Valve are another company whose track record and creative pedigree is such that any project they put out is worth special consideration, even if it turns out to be a failure.
Sign in to comment in this discussion.