I got BttF with my Trogday Wood Contest winnings. Though since I coulda gotten Wallace & Gromit, I do regret it...
Wallace & Gromit was the only game that entirely justified direct controls & a more cinematic approach. I had my doubts about it at first, but it really couldn't've been done any other way.
All the other games after that that took that direction could've been infinitely better in the classic point & click & no cinematic angles that turned out to be not only weird, but also jerky & cumbersome.
I still have no idea how those big, ugly buttons on BttF are supposed to add to the immersion & cinematic feel, but hey...
Wallace & Gromit was the only game that entirely justified direct controls & a more cinematic approach. I had my doubts about it at first, but it really couldn't've been done any other way.
All the other games after that that took that direction could've been infinitely better in the classic point & click & no cinematic angles that turned out to be not only weird, but also jerky & cumbersome.
It's almost as if they wanted to move away from P&C all along from the beginning. But they couldn't because they first needed to ensnare all the P&C fans to help give them their start. It's kinda twisted when you look at it that way. But that's business. Give the fans what they think they want. Or what you want them to think they want. It's always the way it is. And it's depressing. That's the one thing I felt was different about Sierra. They were always innovating and taking risks. That was Ken Williams' whole business philosophy. Even he's disappointed with how the gaming industry turned out.
I still have no idea how those big, ugly buttons on BttF are supposed to add to the immersion & cinematic feel, but hey...
It's almost as if they wanted to move away from P&C all along from the beginning. But they couldn't because they first needed to ensnare all the P&C fans to help give them their start. It's kinda twisted when you look at it that way. But that's business. Give the fans what they think they want. Or what you want them to think they want. It's always the way it is. And it's depressing. That's the one thing I felt was different about Sierra. They were always innovating and taking risks. That was Ken Williams' whole business philosophy. Even he's disappointed with how the gaming industry turned out.
How does retaining the Point and Click function that has been a standard of the adventure game world for 20 years equate to taking risks? This is not a snarky post. I can see an adventure game world skewed more heavily toward Heavy Rain mechanics of motion and interaction while perhaps retaining an inventory.
My point was that their games are getting simpler and simpler. And they had to get fans' trust to get to where they are now. The scary question is what else do they have planned to lull our fanboyism into? But to respond to your question, I don't think it does really. It's just that the direction they ARE taking as an alternative requires less work on the player's behalf in every facet of game design. No more item combining, no more exploration, no more intricate puzzle design (it's all streamlined through processes now), no more walking even. It's going too far in the wrong direction for what an adventure is supposed to be.
I do agree that the lack of walking seems like a stupid choice... right now. I'll make a final decision when I play JP, though I'm inclined to think that I dislike it being applied to all Telltale games.
Some of the Lucasarts rules were to reduce needless travel between puzzles but I feel reducing travel altogether seems like it removes the exploration component, which is another vital element of the adventure genre. Wandering about, seeing things... this should be a boon of the 3D genre, and it seems like Telltale is eliminating it. You're putting 3D Adventure games out, let me see this glorious world of yours.
The item combining... I've been iffy on this lately. Longest Journey killed me on affection towards it, but Whispered World was pretty good. I consider item combining and puzzle solving almost inherently the same in adventure games since they almost always come down to putting X with Y.
Although, to reference something closer to your heart, the (sometimes AGDI) King's Quest 2 never felt too strongly to be inventory/environment puzzling. The library puzzle in the count's castle, the simpler coconut puzzle, the grave digging sequence extended inventory puzzles a step by introducing written clue elements.
The parts of that game I detested were, for example, acquiring the elements for the alchemy spell for the green gem. That I had to return and scour the land below seemed to be what Lucasarts hinted at when detailing not to extend the puzzle too far.
That same sin goes against Longest Journey's totem puzzle. There again though, Longest Journey had some interesting puzzles that went beyond putting X with Y. The alchemist puzzle comes to mind, in which you have to mix potions. Actually the entire alchemist's tower is one of the best puzzle sequences in the game, an example of a concise set of puzzles that you don't have to wander too far to solve and yet are fun and mind tickling.
More stupidly, having a bird pick the pigeon poop off a dragon's nose to let it rain down fire on a gem that would make it into a long fabled stone. Dumb.
Though at the end of the day, I've still seen more interaction in the Jurassic Park demo than I did in all of Dreamfall, which I just took as a interactive movie. Again I must emphasize, people who toss the term interactive movie around should really try Dreamfall first.
Okay so I'm rambling now. Tl;dr: I agree and disagree with you MI on a couple of points and will see what the final product of JP is like before playing it. Inventory/environment puzzles need to be done right or they just seem like chores, but when done well are really fun.
Last note: Favorite adventure games ever - Curse of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and The Black Cauldron
I do kind of think Telltale is playing it safe at the moment.
But I guess thats because the licenses they have are very "delicate", and it would be better to have something mediocre but appeals to the target markets then take a real risk with it.
To be honest though, its not really Telltale's fault. The genre is pretty uninspired overall.
Many adventure games never seem to go beyond the established norms, that Lucasarts and Sierra defined.
I'll be honest and say I am a little bored with long-drawn out puzzles, (which fortunately, seem to be less common), pixel hunting, and trying to combine and use everything on everything.
If you ask me, Flashback and Another World had the right idea. They took the art, the story, and the challenge of the adventure game and combined it with the active Prince of Persia styled gameplay.
They replaced the obscure tough puzzles, with timing based, skillful shooting and platforming.
Those games are a bit more engrossing as they feel much more living and fluid.
Not many people spend their time walking slowly around a town, talking to strangers, and stealing stuff.
With the technology and advances in game design that we have today it should be very possible to innovate this genre.
Episodic is a good direction. Its reduces development time, and a the development team can focus on specific story elements, (nothing more irritating than plotholes, and continuity issues), plus it makes the workload a bit easier on the player.
But as we can see the Episodic nature comes with a lot of issues.
The main issue is the lack of "world" that sort of makes the game feel a little flat.
Sam and Max can get a bit annoying when most of the season is spent in the same small area of buildings.
I'm sure many of us could navigate Bosco's store blindfolded.
If I had the resources to make my ideal adventure game, it probably would be more akin to a open world RPG like Fable than say a Sam and Max episode.
In fact it probably would take the open world of Fable, combined with the time-based gameplay of Dead Rising 2, and with puzzles that would require more than either a simple attack this or collect that. (Maybe some would involve physics, building, vehicles, timing, and trading)
It probably would also have some sort of dynamic story system leading to a unique storyline, and possibly gameplay based on what you do when, and how well you do it.
(But it would be vague as to encourage multiple playthroughs)
(It would also likely involve alternate realities as I am partial to a good What if? comic, and loved the Exiles comic)
I don't know. I really liked the Heavy Rain approach myself. I like QTE and if there had been an inventory from which to combine items it would have been an adventure game in the entirely traditional sense while also having great atmosphere, QTE and investigative components.
Bones, Sam&Max S1, Sam&Max S2, Strong Bad, all came with a simple but wonderful working point&click steering. Then with Wallace&Gromit you for the first time needed two hands (controller or mouse and keyboard), beeing fond of running in zigzags, bumping into objects, sliding along invisible borders, wondering about which scene to enter which way and enjoying bad choosen camera angles.
For a few catchy scenes in Wallace&Gromit it made kind of sense but they've never invested a reasonable effort into coming up with a more clever point&click implementation like support of clicking on the hidden ground and adjusting it to well choosen angles nor did they improve direct control to a degree that it feels convincing as an option, instead some of their devs tried to sell us some hair-raising nonsense.
Considering all the messed up scenes in games afterwards and how important the way you're steering and so enjoying a game also is, this is completely beyond me and either shows a scary degree of ignorance, incompetence or greenness of some people at TT.
For adventure games i would like to see support of both, #1 enhanced point&click for computers and touch devices and #2 enhanced direct control for those who prefer this option or have to play the games on a console. For #3, all those motion sensor controllers (may it be yourself as well), you're free to go. But again on my Mac/PC or on my iPad i would like to play adventure games with point&click as imo it's the best possible solution invented so far and it also adds to the atmosphere of these games where you have to explore&think.
@Alan
Regarding the Worth it? thread in BTTF: Are you now also turning into a thread closer? Weren't you fond of the discussion going on in there more on a personal level or was it more to get it out of the people's focus for better marketing reasons? I quite don't get why some people have to care about what others are talking about but i guess it makes some sort of sense to you.
I think one of the Problems is, that while the games get more movie like from the style and camera work, the gameplay suffers, because it gets too easy.
In the case of BTTF this might be related to the fact, that in my opinion the puzzles in many cases seem to be something Marty would do in the films: running away and hiding from people, getting himself into trouble by confronting the current Tannen, trying to influence someone to do the things, that leads to the timeline he knows. Marty isn't really a character to takes everything with him, and mostly uses things in his immediate surroundings.
Somehow I am not really interested in playing BTTF right now (that's a first for a TT Game since Sam and Max Season 1, also I am trying to finally finish Final Fantasy 9 at the moment ;-) ). It's not that I think it is bad or something, I quite enjoyed Episode 1, and I think it captures the atmosphere of the movies in a good way and I also liked the story so far (I am still at the beginning of Ep2). But somehow I lost motivation and I think that feeling towards TTG started during The Devil's Playhouse. TDP had some interesting new stuff, but mostly it was too easy, because it only relied on those new features, and it seemed a lot less funny to me (especially Ep. 3 und Ep. 5). I was also really disappointed by Poker Night, because it got repetitive really soon (the first evening in fact).
I am also not really interested in the next releases for some reason or another. It is mostly because I don't know the source material, and there is no easy way for me to get to know those icenses (this was different when SBCG4AP started. I also didn't know Homestar Runner then, but it was easy enogh to get into it). The only exception here is Puzzle Agent 2, because I really enjoyed the first one, and I hope there will be more games of it down the road. After that, Jurassic Park seems to be the most interesting, but I will wait for reviews, a demo or a free episode, before I buy that.
EDIT:
Oh yeah, the interface... I quite like the Interface in early seasons and I remember thinking "Finally someone got 3D-Adventure games right" when playing Culture Shock. I quickly got used to the new Interface in Wallace and Gromit and I think this mix of P&C and direct chacracter Control is also a good way to do it and being able to use mouse was a big improvement from e.g. MI4 where you only had the keyboard. Still there is room for improvement, because sometimes I loose orientation when the camera angle changes. And I think there should be no invisble barriers in the actual gameplay areas.
Again I must emphasize, people who toss the term interactive movie around should really try Dreamfall first.
Ah, Dreamfall. I remember being so excited about it, and then playing it, finishing it and thinking, how could they do that? It's the sequel to The Longest Journey that takes everything that made The Longest Journey a great game and says "let's make a sequel without all that stuff". I remember thinking it was the worst adventure game I had ever played, and being so annoyed because I loved the universe, I loved the story... It just felt like they should have made it a book or a movie instead of trying to pass it as a game. I just felt it made all the mistakes an "adventure game" shouldn't make.
That was before I had played any telltale game. So, I have to say, I take that back. Dreamfall is NOT the worst adventure game ever. Still comes close though.
If you ask me, Flashback and Another World had the right idea.
Another World... That takes me back. I have so many memories of that games. So many parts I had to do over and over again still stick out in my mind as though I had actually lived them. I remember the weird art style, I remember rolling in pipes, I remember balancing in a cell, I remember a panther, and a bug where you could fall in a hole, not die and yet have no way out. I remember the cave with the water coming after you, one of my favourite parts. It was a great game. It's weird, I can remember all of that, and it's been what, 15-20 years now?
I never thought of it as an adventure game, though. I mean, of course, the game is an adventure, but for me the "adventure games" category has always been more specific than that. If nothing else, the fact that I played that game on something that wasn't a computer was enough for me to completely disassociate it from adventure gems. But I guess it does qualify.
You know what makes me sad? I have a lot of money in credit in the telltale store, because of an order I cancel to late and they couldn't refund. At the time, I thought "whatever, I know I'll spent more money on this company anyways" but now... Even with the money sitting there, I still prefer not getting the games. It's still not worth money that's lost otherwise. That's really the sadest part.
I'll probably end up spending it on goodies of some sort. At least I can resell these and get part of my money back.
I really like Dreamfall. It's not a game, really, and I'm ok with that. I would have been okay with them toning down Longest Journey's obscure inventory puzzles a bit, but they completely removed them entirely.
Still, as an interactive movie, I liked Dreamfall, despite its spectacular lack of anything approximating an ending. It just wasn't a game.
The constant annoying and clunky fight sequences is what ruined Dreamfall the most for me. I was patient for a while because the story and atmosphere really caught me, but I had it with the giant troll in the caves. BttF I might finish someday, since I already paid for it.
In my opinion, Telltale has yet to release a game as non-interactive and lacking in actual gameplay as Dreamfall. They still try to put some semblance of puzzle-solving in their games, even if they're extremely easy puzzles and there are unwanted hints lurking around every corner waiting to shout the already immediately apparent answers at you. Dreamfall's gameplay literary consisted of walking from point A to point B. The only game-like moments were the stealth and combat sequences, and those were few and far between and poorly implemented.
The constant annoying and clunky fight sequences is what ruined Dreamfall the most for me. I was patient for a while because the story and atmosphere really caught me, but I had it with the giant troll in the caves. BttF I might finish someday, since I already paid for it.
Then what will? We're fans, we give feedback on a company's products, and if that company listens to its fans, then perhaps changes can be made; it increases the chances of changes being made and it gives companies such as TTG an idea of where they're going wrong and how they can improve.
What I'm saying is, the attitude of this forum seems to be along the lines of x game sucks, when I buy y game I hope it's better.
What, be complacent and simply wait for Telltale to stop one day and collectively think that there may be something wrong with their games and production schedule? Yeah, that's loads better than actually giving feedback on the problems that we're experiencing. Why on earth should we be giving our input? You're right, we should just sit back, wait and hope that things change out of the blue.
Sales dropping will have a much bigger influence than complaining on the forums. Bringing it to their attention is good yes, but if the money keeps rolling in they aren't going to change much.
What I'm saying is, the attitude of this forum seems to be along the lines of x game sucks, when I buy y game I hope it's better.
Maybe for some, but the majority have actual reasoning and careful thought put into their skepticism. It's not just "x game sucks." If I or Dashing or any of the other more vocal people have just said "x game sucks" it's only because we've been explaining our standpoint in x amount of threads already and are tired of typing it all out again.
Sales dropping will have a much bigger influence than complaining on the forums. Bringing it to their attention is good yes, but if the money keeps rolling in they aren't going to change much.
I think both play a part. In a perfect world I'd rather they get their act together so I don't have to boycott their games and have them lose sales. That's the point. It'd be better for King's Quest to actually BE GOOD than for it to be released as horrible before they get their act together. It would've been better if they got BTTF right before releasing it as it currently is, but sadly now it's too late.
The fact that everyone in this thread not only agrees in principle with the notion that TellTale plays safe and could do better (thus ppl are disappointed) and that most of these people are very loyal fans of TT, I do think that it would be insulting for TT to not sit up and take notice to the general consensus if they still want our money.
All the comparisons between LucasArts, Sierra and TT are largely irrelevant because each have had their heyday in different eras, where the market nuances are very different.
Sierra rose to power in the 80s, when really hard, un-mainstream Text Adventures evolved to become such with bolt-on graphics. Before Arpanet reached the broader audience of the world, you had to pay for a hint manual or phone a premium rate hintline to get answers to otherwise unsolvable puzzles. This was in Sierra's best interest. Now that those days are long over, Sierra in recent years has had to lease their franchises out to other companies and, Leisure Suit Larry being a perfect example, have completely lost their way.
LucasArts knew that if they were to have anything like the success of Sierra, they would have to evolve the genre so as to bring in a wider audience. The inability to die and the verb interface were the excellent methods by which they went about this. LA didn't have to dumb games down further because still the only organisations to use anything resembling the internet were governments, the military, universities and some IT companies that dealt in Unix. LucasArts now makes its money on Star Wars, a guaranteed moneymaker that has no soul.
By the time Telltale came along, the gaming world had completely changed. No longer did people have to pay for walkthroughs. Adventure games were so niche they'd almost died out. The age of witless war games had taken over. As such, frustrating new players with hard puzzles was not a sensible option. They also knew they couldn't rely on Adventure game veterans alone to make a profit. Also, as LA found when they did market research for EfMI, 2D games wouldn't sell nearly as well as 3D games. The only cost-effective way to create the environments for their cheap-to-buy episodic format games was to build from scratch an in-house engine, which they did (called the Telltale Tool).
So now Telltale are regrettably starting a new trend: turning Adventure games into interactive movies, merely to draw in all the fans of the militant games now so popular. It's really sad.
But don't get me wrong: only BttF so far suffers from this really really badly IMO. I have been genuinely stuck on a few occasions while playing TT's S&M and TMI, then got a kick out of beating puzzles. With BttF, the voice acting is great, environments well-drawn and story arc thus far perhaps worthy of an extension to the original film trilogy. Everything else seems very lazy. Next to no puzzle design or stand-out music, not to mention the massive lack of polishing. Have they made all their testers redundant? The bugs were bad enough in S&M 3.
I'm beginning to think they badly need to change their episodic model to something far more flexible. To me, charging $50 for a game that has had the due time being made and polished to be respected for years to come is far more important than making a quick buck. A game with few flaws = better reviews = more sales. Aiming loosely for an episode every two months doesn't sound unrealistic, with casual (easy) mode and enthusiast (normal/hard) mode being a must. "Fans won't pay $50 if their expectations are as low as they are now" I hear you cry. Make a game on this formula with a bigger budget for a sale price of $29.95 will make a loss but it will restore much-needed confidence so that fans will actually be willing to part with $50 because they think it's worth the money. There is no real need to keep to 5 episodes or monthly/di-monthly release models either. It should be down to what the designers deem right for the plot and what they feel can realistically be achieved.
I'm sure the die-hard fanbase would much rather pay $50 for a great game than $30 for a mediocre game. Also, consumers need to appreciate sooner or later the forever rising costs in the marketplace. I don't know how much you Americans had to pay back then, but my dad bought me MI2 as soon as it came out for £35. That was in 1991. 20 years on, the equivalent would be £60 (about $90), even if you only talk about the salaries of the team making the game. Add to that that in those days, you could make a game with less than 20 people. Now, the art department alone now would employ at least 20 people per project. If the consumer is expecting to pay less than $30 for a game, you can see why it's so difficult to make a great game at a profit. How small can you make your budget before you sacrifice too much in output quality?
Now my two cents on other (more specific) things mentioned in this thread.
With regard to Guybrush losing his edge, I think TT have given 3 of the 4 main characters of MI back their mojos (or given them new ones). Guybrush is no longer as naiive and also goes through so many subtle and extreme emotions in TMI than we ever saw previously. Animation, writers and Armato have all done exceedingly well with this. LeChuck is back to being the badass he was in Monkey 2, but now more capable of hoodwinking. The Voodoo Lady at last has personality and an agenda, things she badly needed. Elaine and Stan stayed much the same but how/why would you want to change those, what with the huge risk of backfire?
I have played both HtR and all of TT's Sam & Max's titles. Like someone else said, while Farmer and Jameson sounded like men dubbing CG characters, Nowlin and Kasten play the characters exactly how I would have heard the characters in my head, ie. they sound natural and native to the characters onscreen rather than super-imposed. What I don't agree with in S&M, however, is overuse of the same support characters, environments and puzzle types. I know many people feel there are too many characters in Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island but for me, that's nearer the mark of where we should be at. Don't get me wrong, S&M 3 took great lengths to largely overcome those shortcomings of S&M 1&2.
Whoever thinks Strong Bad not only has sucky writing but also has sucky gameplay obviously doesn't appreciate late 80s video games and is the kind of straight-laced person that hates Family Guy. The game designers, programmers, Matt Chapman, writers and testers all excelled themselves imo with this title. As for graphics, it's not intricate but then it would be wrong if it were. The graphics are perfect for the scenario.
I found W&G not only boring but also really hard to get to grips with interface-wise. How many people are ambidextrous enough to be strong enough in both hands at once to control the arrow keys and the mouse? Not everyone can play the fucking piano. I have still not finished the game, even though I bought it in Autumn 2009 (I think) and have been a Wallace & Gromit fan for the past 16 years.
Whoever said puzzles based entirely in one room are insulting to the player really need to look at the escape from jail puzzle in MI2 and the escape from De Singe's lab in TMI 101. Even the final puzzle to the finale of Sam & Max 304 is simple yet satisfying.
I'm sure I planned to make some different points but I can't remember them now. I'm tired and badly need sleep before working for the 7th day in a row (and consequently having about 3 hours of sleep for the 13th day in a row).
A lot of good observations here which I can't add much to, so here's another angle.
I pre-ordered the first Sam & Max based on nothing but a demo of Culture Shock, and I never regretted it. I instantly pre-ordered the other seasons, SBCG4AP and ToMI when they came along and all was good. I pre-ordered W&G and BttF with more reluctance, but with the special discounts involved I can hardly consider them a bad idea.
I'm not going to pre-order Jurassic Park. And I'm not going to pre-order Walking Dead, King's Quest or Fables.
It's not just that these licenses don't interest me enough; it used to be I'd still trust Telltale to turn a fairly uninteresting license to gold. Now the converse seems to be true: mainstream titles bring out the worst in Telltale. See Wallace & Gromit, Back to the Future and especially CSI.
I hope Telltale gets less obsessed with growing and putting itself on the map, because it does not feel good.
I suspect this thread has been read by now by Telltale staff. My only guess as to why they haven't commented is because they don't think it's worth their while.
I propose we start an online petition. First of all, we need to aim for a specific outcome. Secondly, we need to aim for a target amount of signatures within a time period and have someone suitable within TTG to email when it's done. Thirdly, I don't trust my wording enough to do it myself (even though I have the English language in a vice-like grip).
I don't think that would do much good. On Telltale's end, coming up with a response has got to be a pretty delicate situation. With that red text, their words are almost certainly going to be taken as an official response from the company, which I imagine would make it a nightmare to try and respond to something like this, which is why I never expected a response.
My goals in posting in this thread were 1. to discuss the situation with other fans, and 2. to hopefully give the Telltale staff something to think about in the process. I feel I've accomplished both of those things as far as I'm going to be able to, and now I feel that what happens next is in their hands. I don't think a petition would do anybody any good.
I suspect this thread has been read by now by Telltale staff. My only guess as to why they haven't commented is because they don't think it's worth their while.
Really? I hope people can get a little more credit than "not worth their while."
There won't be an "official response" to this thread, because that's rarely what Telltale does. We do often give individual responses as employees or as fans or as whatever else -- one of the things I've always admired about my employer is that they allow, and encourage, their employees to post on the forums and interact directly with customers and fans -- but to respond to this thread in that context is, as GuruGuru said, very daunting. I've read it, as have a lot of people here. I've thought about it, too, as I'm sure many inside and outside the company have. I don't know what sort of response you expect in a forum post, though.
Though the results may, in some peoples eyes in this thread, come out more homogenized than we'd probably like, people here do treat every license and every series differently internally in terms of what the gameplay is, how the game and its puzzles are presented, how difficult it is, how long an episode is, etc. As an adventure game fan, the difficulty level of BTTF was on the easy side of what I prefer to play, but I think that as an exercise in using the mechanics of the adventure genre to make a game that someone looking to just play an interactive Back to the Future story could enjoy, it did what it set out to do, and a lot of people have really enjoyed it. That doesn't mean everything the company makes will work like that moving forward, or that we wish the past titles would retroactively have had the gameplay the current titles have. I hope that as the company makes more and more things which are different than the ones which came before, with more and more properties, for more and more people, the variety is seen as just that -- variety -- and not as a singular path moving in a singular direction.
I know my priorities on the games I've worked on have not always been the same as those on the forums (the two episodes on which I'm credited as the director -- the finales to Tales of Monkey Island and The Devil's Playhouse -- have been cited as two of the most rollercoaster-like, least head-scratching puzzle-like games we've put out), so my opinion could easily be torn to bits and deemed meritless on reasonably valid grounds, but I also enjoy a lot of the things you guys like in the games, and feel like we could be doing a better job of hitting pretty much all of that. It's complicated, and its daunting! It's not lack of caring.
Yep. Already not purchasing Jurassic Park, and wishing money hadn't been paid for my copy of Back to the Future: The "Game".
You are the worst at knowing when you've already made your point.
Nearly every time you have an opinion, if its not met with unanimous agreement, you repeat it ad nauseum. I don't entirely understand the intent behind this. You are well spoken and present your opinion very clearly -- there is little chance of your opinion on a matter being misinterpreted -- so why do you feel the need to harp on it forever? Repeating it won't help anyone more clearly understand it, and it won't "convert" anyone who wasn't converted the first two dozen times. I really dislike it when people bump a forum thread because they don't think they're being heard, and while that's not what you're doing literally, you do seem to be bumping your opinion, and I don't think it's necessary.
I figured you guys stopped responding as much because you were tired of arguing with people and listening to bitching about inconsequential things such as the Nutrispecs or the TF2 items. I hope not though, because there is a lot of worthwhile discussion from the people on this board, and most of us are intelligent and voice legitimate concerns.
You are the worst at knowing when you've already made your point.
You could very well be right on this, though I've found that I actually have no idea when I have "made" the point. Whenever I feel that I have, it seems that an audience of either selective readers or people who don't read the forums as thoroughly as, say, you or I do misinterprets, willfully misrepresents, or simply doesn't understand the things that I and those that agree with me say. I've tended to put the blame on myself, "Oh, I see, I need to be more consistent and clear and make sure there's a clear presence here, because some people just aren't getting it." Maybe that's a fallacy on my part, though. I'm not sure you realized how actually accurate you were with this statement, I literally don't know when my points are made. On the whole, if it seems like I'm on a crusade, it's generally less out of an assuredness in myself than it is based on a dismissal of my own abilities to make my own points, as I take it on as my fault when someone says that it's amazing how many people require VGA graphics, or that people don't want innovation, or are against new people coming into the genre, etc etc and so forth. But maybe that's just a function of people, and of the internet, and I shouldn't blame myself for an overall problem stemming from humanity as a whole.
I'd like to say though, sometimes new information does come into the discussion, and all sides and viewpoints deserve a comment or two on that new information. The quote you picked out obviously is not that, and I can easily see how cutting back on that sort of response would be good for everybody(it has no real content, it comes off as abrasive and derisive, and it can only serve as a means of discussion derailment). On the other hand, I don't think my count is solely or even mostly made up of these posts, but I can definitely see where you're coming from on this and try to look over my own posts and ask whether or not something is really being added there. Ideally, this would mean cutting off responses like the one above. I've been somewhat negatively affected by the short-posting audience that has come into the discussion boards lately, things that wouldn't have been acceptable two years ago are now commonplace, and my own standards for my posts have seen an unintentional drop along with them. I ask myself far less often "Is this adding to the discussion? Am I contributing something worthwhile for others to read?", and that's pretty inexcusable and leads to sloppy and repetitive posting.
I hope I've explained myself here. I'm not sure how well I did, and I'm looking at this post and thinking it's something of a structural mess, but I don't really know how to fix it so I'm going to leave it as is because the things I'm saying here seem important to get out, I think.
Long post made short: I think that I deserve more than a couple posts with more or less the same tone or idea, but I agree that when the content is sloppy and lazy, it leads to a repetitive and lazy board on the whole. I think I can cut back on posts that don't add anything to the discussion at hand, which should really help with the "harping on the point" concept. I think I can also probably condense many of the points I make across various threads into one or two threads dedicated to that purpose. I think another gameplay analysis thread for the next episode is in order, for example, though executed a lot better than the thread for episode two, with screenshots, better organization, a clearer and more "analytical" feel, and hard data such as numbers of interactive objects on a particular screen. I feel that, when new things come to light, like a new interview or a new piece of gameplay footage, I can write up my impressions of the thing without entirely cutting myself off or feeling stymied/pressured into being self-censored. Of the current members of the Telltale Team that post in these forums still, you're certainly one of the ones for whom I have the greatest respect. I don't take your statements here lightly, I certainly see your point, and I wish to endeavor to express myself in a way that comes off as intelligently and as measured as your posts do, and especially in a way that can be respected and understood by people who are in your position; obviously because the creative directors within the company are the people I most want to reach, but also because I wish to appeal to the most intelligent and respectable members of this community. Alienating them by coming off abrasively is not my intention, and it's obviously something that I've done as of late.
...
Dammit, that didn't work out as planned. That's not short at all! Let me try that again:
TL;DR: I see your point, and I can probably cut back on being repetitive without compromising my own point or limiting myself to a couple posts in any given forum.
I'm on my way out the door and I still stopped and read that entire post because I knew it would be well worth it, and I was not disappointed. Bravo, Dashing.
And by the way, I think I'm going to follow your example and take notes on my thoughts as I play through episode 3 so I can better contribute to your analysis thread. That was one of my favorite threads on here in quite a while.
@Jake
I would appreciate if this would be a open discussion like if you would be talking to each other sitting at a table or laying around on a meadow if you prefer it this way but talking to each other like persons. This is how the company sees it, that's what they want to do, that's how i/we see it personally, asking questions like what do you want, leaving out devs vs. customers attitudes as part of the audience is quite different to the days when video games started. And at best this also would result to improvements.
Beside of this i lack honest information about the products. JP will be for something for those guys, with Fables we will try to do a adventure game for people who like to solve riddles again, with the licence xyz we try to,...
You for sure don't get such information from your local nuclear energy supplier but i thought as this TT thing started as a island for those who love adventure games this could be a little bit different as well.
Though the results may, in some peoples eyes in this thread, come out more homogenized than we'd probably like, people here do treat every license and every series differently internally in terms of what the gameplay is, how the game and its puzzles are presented, how difficult it is, how long an episode is, etc.
The fact that you guys recognize that there are differences in games is great to hear. The only thing that I wish you would do on top of that is to advertise your games accordingly. Had I known BttF was going to be more of an interactive movie, I would have probably not purchased it. I am much more likely to wait to hear about games before trying to play them as is. If you guys know some games are less difficult...etc. then please let us know before we buy them. That way we will be able to buy the games that fit our style.
Really? I hope people can get a little more credit than "not worth their while."
Sorry, poor wording and poorly explained, both on my part. I was afraid Telltale would see the majority of this thread as a load of ill-informed, upstart fans kicking up a stink when nothing can be done about it. By the content of your response, I can see what I hoped you would be feeling: "How on earth do we respond to this? We need to tread carefully, lest what we say get taken out of context by the media."
I knew you were all fans of the games but I didn't realise to what extent. I'm pleased to see that not only would you often want to see things played out better but are restricted by powers above but also you treat each game differently.
Regarding BttF: you're probably right in that an interactive movie is best for this franchise. I've enjoyed it, please don't get me wrong. What you didn't comment on was the debugging. Perhaps then everybody feels that could/should have gone better.
To summarise, I do realise that you all care. You take a much more personal approach with fans (whether as individuals or as a company) than any other firm I've bought a game from. Thank you very much for replying.
@Guru: I'm not entirely unsure that this will make no difference. I remember a while back when I had an email from TTG, directing me to a questionnaire, which included a question asking which IPs we'd like to see TT make in the future. No doubt you and everybody else here got that as well.
The eventual fruits of that questionnaire must have culminated in the IPs recently been announced. I don't remember many of the options but IIRC, King's Quest was on there. So it does happen.
They even tested the water with Leisure Suit Larry, which they must have picked up on by seeing posts by me and one or two others that lurk on the forums. I don't think we'll ever see a LSL game made by TTG (1) because the demand is too low and 2) getting Sierra to lease out any IPs must take some doing) but that doesn't stop me hoping I'm wrong.
The fact that you guys recognize that there are differences in games is great to hear. The only thing that I wish you would do on top of that is to advertise your games accordingly. Had I known BttF was going to be more of an interactive movie, I would have probably not purchased it. I am much more likely to wait to hear about games before trying to play them as is. If you guys know some games are less difficult...etc. then please let us know before we buy them. That way we will be able to buy the games that fit our style.
This. Although, I would have been more inclined to buy, as my interest would have been piqued. As it stands, I loved the demo, but lack the funds to do so (I have a trip to London to pay for (booked a while ago, when I thought I would have a job to help pay for it), new blu-ray player software (This could wait, but i'd end up paying £20 more, as it's onsale until next week), and car insurance, in addition to not having a job and being a student. Eep.)
Yeah, the LSL posts seemed to be building into their own conversation that didn't seem to be slowing down, so I gave them their own thread. I probably should've made a mention of it here when I did it. Sorry for the confusion!
It seems like the general public's opinion about adventure games has shifted from "those stupid hard boring games with moon logic where you never know what you're supposed to do" to "those stupid easy boring games where you just click on things." I've been seeing this more and more in comments on adventure-related gaming news site articles and YouTube videos. I don't think Telltale's entirely to blame, though. I think companies like Big Fish Games have done a lot to blur and confuse the distinction between adventure and hidden object games.
I agree that TTG should probably take more care in making clear who the particular games are for. To be fair, I'm sure designing puzzles for BttF was kinda a no-win scenario when because everyone likes them some BttF, newcomers and gaming vets alike.
I'm not sure where the line will be drawn with properties like Fables, though. It's a licensed property, sure, but whereas TWD is an insanely popular franchise going through a marketing blitz (so almost certain to have ease of interface like the upcoming JP seems to have), Fables is a bizarre and complicated niche series. How would the gameplay balance for that work out? That and the continuation of Hector are enough to keep me around for a bit longer...
Comments
Wallace & Gromit was the only game that entirely justified direct controls & a more cinematic approach. I had my doubts about it at first, but it really couldn't've been done any other way.
All the other games after that that took that direction could've been infinitely better in the classic point & click & no cinematic angles that turned out to be not only weird, but also jerky & cumbersome.
I still have no idea how those big, ugly buttons on BttF are supposed to add to the immersion & cinematic feel, but hey...
Cheers!
It's almost as if they wanted to move away from P&C all along from the beginning. But they couldn't because they first needed to ensnare all the P&C fans to help give them their start. It's kinda twisted when you look at it that way. But that's business. Give the fans what they think they want. Or what you want them to think they want. It's always the way it is. And it's depressing. That's the one thing I felt was different about Sierra. They were always innovating and taking risks. That was Ken Williams' whole business philosophy. Even he's disappointed with how the gaming industry turned out.
Hahaha good point!
How does retaining the Point and Click function that has been a standard of the adventure game world for 20 years equate to taking risks? This is not a snarky post. I can see an adventure game world skewed more heavily toward Heavy Rain mechanics of motion and interaction while perhaps retaining an inventory.
Some of the Lucasarts rules were to reduce needless travel between puzzles but I feel reducing travel altogether seems like it removes the exploration component, which is another vital element of the adventure genre. Wandering about, seeing things... this should be a boon of the 3D genre, and it seems like Telltale is eliminating it. You're putting 3D Adventure games out, let me see this glorious world of yours.
The item combining... I've been iffy on this lately. Longest Journey killed me on affection towards it, but Whispered World was pretty good. I consider item combining and puzzle solving almost inherently the same in adventure games since they almost always come down to putting X with Y.
Although, to reference something closer to your heart, the (sometimes AGDI) King's Quest 2 never felt too strongly to be inventory/environment puzzling. The library puzzle in the count's castle, the simpler coconut puzzle, the grave digging sequence extended inventory puzzles a step by introducing written clue elements.
The parts of that game I detested were, for example, acquiring the elements for the alchemy spell for the green gem. That I had to return and scour the land below seemed to be what Lucasarts hinted at when detailing not to extend the puzzle too far.
That same sin goes against Longest Journey's totem puzzle. There again though, Longest Journey had some interesting puzzles that went beyond putting X with Y. The alchemist puzzle comes to mind, in which you have to mix potions. Actually the entire alchemist's tower is one of the best puzzle sequences in the game, an example of a concise set of puzzles that you don't have to wander too far to solve and yet are fun and mind tickling.
More stupidly, having a bird pick the pigeon poop off a dragon's nose to let it rain down fire on a gem that would make it into a long fabled stone. Dumb.
Though at the end of the day, I've still seen more interaction in the Jurassic Park demo than I did in all of Dreamfall, which I just took as a interactive movie. Again I must emphasize, people who toss the term interactive movie around should really try Dreamfall first.
Okay so I'm rambling now. Tl;dr: I agree and disagree with you MI on a couple of points and will see what the final product of JP is like before playing it. Inventory/environment puzzles need to be done right or they just seem like chores, but when done well are really fun.
Last note: Favorite adventure games ever - Curse of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and The Black Cauldron
But I guess thats because the licenses they have are very "delicate", and it would be better to have something mediocre but appeals to the target markets then take a real risk with it.
To be honest though, its not really Telltale's fault. The genre is pretty uninspired overall.
Many adventure games never seem to go beyond the established norms, that Lucasarts and Sierra defined.
I'll be honest and say I am a little bored with long-drawn out puzzles, (which fortunately, seem to be less common), pixel hunting, and trying to combine and use everything on everything.
If you ask me, Flashback and Another World had the right idea. They took the art, the story, and the challenge of the adventure game and combined it with the active Prince of Persia styled gameplay.
They replaced the obscure tough puzzles, with timing based, skillful shooting and platforming.
Those games are a bit more engrossing as they feel much more living and fluid.
Not many people spend their time walking slowly around a town, talking to strangers, and stealing stuff.
With the technology and advances in game design that we have today it should be very possible to innovate this genre.
Episodic is a good direction. Its reduces development time, and a the development team can focus on specific story elements, (nothing more irritating than plotholes, and continuity issues), plus it makes the workload a bit easier on the player.
But as we can see the Episodic nature comes with a lot of issues.
The main issue is the lack of "world" that sort of makes the game feel a little flat.
Sam and Max can get a bit annoying when most of the season is spent in the same small area of buildings.
I'm sure many of us could navigate Bosco's store blindfolded.
If I had the resources to make my ideal adventure game, it probably would be more akin to a open world RPG like Fable than say a Sam and Max episode.
In fact it probably would take the open world of Fable, combined with the time-based gameplay of Dead Rising 2, and with puzzles that would require more than either a simple attack this or collect that. (Maybe some would involve physics, building, vehicles, timing, and trading)
It probably would also have some sort of dynamic story system leading to a unique storyline, and possibly gameplay based on what you do when, and how well you do it.
(But it would be vague as to encourage multiple playthroughs)
(It would also likely involve alternate realities as I am partial to a good What if? comic, and loved the Exiles comic)
... and I'm one of those P&C fans, I really disliked it when they moved away from that.
For a few catchy scenes in Wallace&Gromit it made kind of sense but they've never invested a reasonable effort into coming up with a more clever point&click implementation like support of clicking on the hidden ground and adjusting it to well choosen angles nor did they improve direct control to a degree that it feels convincing as an option, instead some of their devs tried to sell us some hair-raising nonsense.
Considering all the messed up scenes in games afterwards and how important the way you're steering and so enjoying a game also is, this is completely beyond me and either shows a scary degree of ignorance, incompetence or greenness of some people at TT.
For adventure games i would like to see support of both, #1 enhanced point&click for computers and touch devices and #2 enhanced direct control for those who prefer this option or have to play the games on a console. For #3, all those motion sensor controllers (may it be yourself as well), you're free to go. But again on my Mac/PC or on my iPad i would like to play adventure games with point&click as imo it's the best possible solution invented so far and it also adds to the atmosphere of these games where you have to explore&think.
@Alan
Regarding the Worth it? thread in BTTF: Are you now also turning into a thread closer? Weren't you fond of the discussion going on in there more on a personal level or was it more to get it out of the people's focus for better marketing reasons? I quite don't get why some people have to care about what others are talking about but i guess it makes some sort of sense to you.
In the case of BTTF this might be related to the fact, that in my opinion the puzzles in many cases seem to be something Marty would do in the films: running away and hiding from people, getting himself into trouble by confronting the current Tannen, trying to influence someone to do the things, that leads to the timeline he knows. Marty isn't really a character to takes everything with him, and mostly uses things in his immediate surroundings.
Somehow I am not really interested in playing BTTF right now (that's a first for a TT Game since Sam and Max Season 1, also I am trying to finally finish Final Fantasy 9 at the moment ;-) ). It's not that I think it is bad or something, I quite enjoyed Episode 1, and I think it captures the atmosphere of the movies in a good way and I also liked the story so far (I am still at the beginning of Ep2). But somehow I lost motivation and I think that feeling towards TTG started during The Devil's Playhouse. TDP had some interesting new stuff, but mostly it was too easy, because it only relied on those new features, and it seemed a lot less funny to me (especially Ep. 3 und Ep. 5). I was also really disappointed by Poker Night, because it got repetitive really soon (the first evening in fact).
I am also not really interested in the next releases for some reason or another. It is mostly because I don't know the source material, and there is no easy way for me to get to know those icenses (this was different when SBCG4AP started. I also didn't know Homestar Runner then, but it was easy enogh to get into it). The only exception here is Puzzle Agent 2, because I really enjoyed the first one, and I hope there will be more games of it down the road. After that, Jurassic Park seems to be the most interesting, but I will wait for reviews, a demo or a free episode, before I buy that.
EDIT:
Oh yeah, the interface... I quite like the Interface in early seasons and I remember thinking "Finally someone got 3D-Adventure games right" when playing Culture Shock. I quickly got used to the new Interface in Wallace and Gromit and I think this mix of P&C and direct chacracter Control is also a good way to do it and being able to use mouse was a big improvement from e.g. MI4 where you only had the keyboard. Still there is room for improvement, because sometimes I loose orientation when the camera angle changes. And I think there should be no invisble barriers in the actual gameplay areas.
Ah, Dreamfall. I remember being so excited about it, and then playing it, finishing it and thinking, how could they do that? It's the sequel to The Longest Journey that takes everything that made The Longest Journey a great game and says "let's make a sequel without all that stuff". I remember thinking it was the worst adventure game I had ever played, and being so annoyed because I loved the universe, I loved the story... It just felt like they should have made it a book or a movie instead of trying to pass it as a game. I just felt it made all the mistakes an "adventure game" shouldn't make.
That was before I had played any telltale game. So, I have to say, I take that back. Dreamfall is NOT the worst adventure game ever. Still comes close though.
Another World... That takes me back. I have so many memories of that games. So many parts I had to do over and over again still stick out in my mind as though I had actually lived them. I remember the weird art style, I remember rolling in pipes, I remember balancing in a cell, I remember a panther, and a bug where you could fall in a hole, not die and yet have no way out. I remember the cave with the water coming after you, one of my favourite parts. It was a great game. It's weird, I can remember all of that, and it's been what, 15-20 years now?
I never thought of it as an adventure game, though. I mean, of course, the game is an adventure, but for me the "adventure games" category has always been more specific than that. If nothing else, the fact that I played that game on something that wasn't a computer was enough for me to completely disassociate it from adventure gems. But I guess it does qualify.
You know what makes me sad? I have a lot of money in credit in the telltale store, because of an order I cancel to late and they couldn't refund. At the time, I thought "whatever, I know I'll spent more money on this company anyways" but now... Even with the money sitting there, I still prefer not getting the games. It's still not worth money that's lost otherwise. That's really the sadest part.
I'll probably end up spending it on goodies of some sort. At least I can resell these and get part of my money back.
Still, as an interactive movie, I liked Dreamfall, despite its spectacular lack of anything approximating an ending. It just wasn't a game.
Giant troll?
What I'm saying is, the attitude of this forum seems to be along the lines of x game sucks, when I buy y game I hope it's better.
Sales dropping will have a much bigger influence than complaining on the forums. Bringing it to their attention is good yes, but if the money keeps rolling in they aren't going to change much.
Maybe for some, but the majority have actual reasoning and careful thought put into their skepticism. It's not just "x game sucks." If I or Dashing or any of the other more vocal people have just said "x game sucks" it's only because we've been explaining our standpoint in x amount of threads already and are tired of typing it all out again.
I think both play a part. In a perfect world I'd rather they get their act together so I don't have to boycott their games and have them lose sales. That's the point. It'd be better for King's Quest to actually BE GOOD than for it to be released as horrible before they get their act together. It would've been better if they got BTTF right before releasing it as it currently is, but sadly now it's too late.
All the comparisons between LucasArts, Sierra and TT are largely irrelevant because each have had their heyday in different eras, where the market nuances are very different.
Sierra rose to power in the 80s, when really hard, un-mainstream Text Adventures evolved to become such with bolt-on graphics. Before Arpanet reached the broader audience of the world, you had to pay for a hint manual or phone a premium rate hintline to get answers to otherwise unsolvable puzzles. This was in Sierra's best interest. Now that those days are long over, Sierra in recent years has had to lease their franchises out to other companies and, Leisure Suit Larry being a perfect example, have completely lost their way.
LucasArts knew that if they were to have anything like the success of Sierra, they would have to evolve the genre so as to bring in a wider audience. The inability to die and the verb interface were the excellent methods by which they went about this. LA didn't have to dumb games down further because still the only organisations to use anything resembling the internet were governments, the military, universities and some IT companies that dealt in Unix. LucasArts now makes its money on Star Wars, a guaranteed moneymaker that has no soul.
By the time Telltale came along, the gaming world had completely changed. No longer did people have to pay for walkthroughs. Adventure games were so niche they'd almost died out. The age of witless war games had taken over. As such, frustrating new players with hard puzzles was not a sensible option. They also knew they couldn't rely on Adventure game veterans alone to make a profit. Also, as LA found when they did market research for EfMI, 2D games wouldn't sell nearly as well as 3D games. The only cost-effective way to create the environments for their cheap-to-buy episodic format games was to build from scratch an in-house engine, which they did (called the Telltale Tool).
So now Telltale are regrettably starting a new trend: turning Adventure games into interactive movies, merely to draw in all the fans of the militant games now so popular. It's really sad.
But don't get me wrong: only BttF so far suffers from this really really badly IMO. I have been genuinely stuck on a few occasions while playing TT's S&M and TMI, then got a kick out of beating puzzles. With BttF, the voice acting is great, environments well-drawn and story arc thus far perhaps worthy of an extension to the original film trilogy. Everything else seems very lazy. Next to no puzzle design or stand-out music, not to mention the massive lack of polishing. Have they made all their testers redundant? The bugs were bad enough in S&M 3.
I'm beginning to think they badly need to change their episodic model to something far more flexible. To me, charging $50 for a game that has had the due time being made and polished to be respected for years to come is far more important than making a quick buck. A game with few flaws = better reviews = more sales. Aiming loosely for an episode every two months doesn't sound unrealistic, with casual (easy) mode and enthusiast (normal/hard) mode being a must. "Fans won't pay $50 if their expectations are as low as they are now" I hear you cry. Make a game on this formula with a bigger budget for a sale price of $29.95 will make a loss but it will restore much-needed confidence so that fans will actually be willing to part with $50 because they think it's worth the money. There is no real need to keep to 5 episodes or monthly/di-monthly release models either. It should be down to what the designers deem right for the plot and what they feel can realistically be achieved.
I'm sure the die-hard fanbase would much rather pay $50 for a great game than $30 for a mediocre game. Also, consumers need to appreciate sooner or later the forever rising costs in the marketplace. I don't know how much you Americans had to pay back then, but my dad bought me MI2 as soon as it came out for £35. That was in 1991. 20 years on, the equivalent would be £60 (about $90), even if you only talk about the salaries of the team making the game. Add to that that in those days, you could make a game with less than 20 people. Now, the art department alone now would employ at least 20 people per project. If the consumer is expecting to pay less than $30 for a game, you can see why it's so difficult to make a great game at a profit. How small can you make your budget before you sacrifice too much in output quality?
Now my two cents on other (more specific) things mentioned in this thread.
With regard to Guybrush losing his edge, I think TT have given 3 of the 4 main characters of MI back their mojos (or given them new ones). Guybrush is no longer as naiive and also goes through so many subtle and extreme emotions in TMI than we ever saw previously. Animation, writers and Armato have all done exceedingly well with this. LeChuck is back to being the badass he was in Monkey 2, but now more capable of hoodwinking. The Voodoo Lady at last has personality and an agenda, things she badly needed. Elaine and Stan stayed much the same but how/why would you want to change those, what with the huge risk of backfire?
I have played both HtR and all of TT's Sam & Max's titles. Like someone else said, while Farmer and Jameson sounded like men dubbing CG characters, Nowlin and Kasten play the characters exactly how I would have heard the characters in my head, ie. they sound natural and native to the characters onscreen rather than super-imposed. What I don't agree with in S&M, however, is overuse of the same support characters, environments and puzzle types. I know many people feel there are too many characters in Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island but for me, that's nearer the mark of where we should be at. Don't get me wrong, S&M 3 took great lengths to largely overcome those shortcomings of S&M 1&2.
Whoever thinks Strong Bad not only has sucky writing but also has sucky gameplay obviously doesn't appreciate late 80s video games and is the kind of straight-laced person that hates Family Guy. The game designers, programmers, Matt Chapman, writers and testers all excelled themselves imo with this title. As for graphics, it's not intricate but then it would be wrong if it were. The graphics are perfect for the scenario.
I found W&G not only boring but also really hard to get to grips with interface-wise. How many people are ambidextrous enough to be strong enough in both hands at once to control the arrow keys and the mouse? Not everyone can play the fucking piano. I have still not finished the game, even though I bought it in Autumn 2009 (I think) and have been a Wallace & Gromit fan for the past 16 years.
Whoever said puzzles based entirely in one room are insulting to the player really need to look at the escape from jail puzzle in MI2 and the escape from De Singe's lab in TMI 101. Even the final puzzle to the finale of Sam & Max 304 is simple yet satisfying.
I'm sure I planned to make some different points but I can't remember them now. I'm tired and badly need sleep before working for the 7th day in a row (and consequently having about 3 hours of sleep for the 13th day in a row).
I pre-ordered the first Sam & Max based on nothing but a demo of Culture Shock, and I never regretted it. I instantly pre-ordered the other seasons, SBCG4AP and ToMI when they came along and all was good. I pre-ordered W&G and BttF with more reluctance, but with the special discounts involved I can hardly consider them a bad idea.
I'm not going to pre-order Jurassic Park. And I'm not going to pre-order Walking Dead, King's Quest or Fables.
It's not just that these licenses don't interest me enough; it used to be I'd still trust Telltale to turn a fairly uninteresting license to gold. Now the converse seems to be true: mainstream titles bring out the worst in Telltale. See Wallace & Gromit, Back to the Future and especially CSI.
I hope Telltale gets less obsessed with growing and putting itself on the map, because it does not feel good.
I propose we start an online petition. First of all, we need to aim for a specific outcome. Secondly, we need to aim for a target amount of signatures within a time period and have someone suitable within TTG to email when it's done. Thirdly, I don't trust my wording enough to do it myself (even though I have the English language in a vice-like grip).
Suggestions?
My goals in posting in this thread were 1. to discuss the situation with other fans, and 2. to hopefully give the Telltale staff something to think about in the process. I feel I've accomplished both of those things as far as I'm going to be able to, and now I feel that what happens next is in their hands. I don't think a petition would do anybody any good.
Really? I hope people can get a little more credit than "not worth their while."
There won't be an "official response" to this thread, because that's rarely what Telltale does. We do often give individual responses as employees or as fans or as whatever else -- one of the things I've always admired about my employer is that they allow, and encourage, their employees to post on the forums and interact directly with customers and fans -- but to respond to this thread in that context is, as GuruGuru said, very daunting. I've read it, as have a lot of people here. I've thought about it, too, as I'm sure many inside and outside the company have. I don't know what sort of response you expect in a forum post, though.
Though the results may, in some peoples eyes in this thread, come out more homogenized than we'd probably like, people here do treat every license and every series differently internally in terms of what the gameplay is, how the game and its puzzles are presented, how difficult it is, how long an episode is, etc. As an adventure game fan, the difficulty level of BTTF was on the easy side of what I prefer to play, but I think that as an exercise in using the mechanics of the adventure genre to make a game that someone looking to just play an interactive Back to the Future story could enjoy, it did what it set out to do, and a lot of people have really enjoyed it. That doesn't mean everything the company makes will work like that moving forward, or that we wish the past titles would retroactively have had the gameplay the current titles have. I hope that as the company makes more and more things which are different than the ones which came before, with more and more properties, for more and more people, the variety is seen as just that -- variety -- and not as a singular path moving in a singular direction.
I know my priorities on the games I've worked on have not always been the same as those on the forums (the two episodes on which I'm credited as the director -- the finales to Tales of Monkey Island and The Devil's Playhouse -- have been cited as two of the most rollercoaster-like, least head-scratching puzzle-like games we've put out), so my opinion could easily be torn to bits and deemed meritless on reasonably valid grounds, but I also enjoy a lot of the things you guys like in the games, and feel like we could be doing a better job of hitting pretty much all of that. It's complicated, and its daunting! It's not lack of caring.
You are the worst at knowing when you've already made your point.
Nearly every time you have an opinion, if its not met with unanimous agreement, you repeat it ad nauseum. I don't entirely understand the intent behind this. You are well spoken and present your opinion very clearly -- there is little chance of your opinion on a matter being misinterpreted -- so why do you feel the need to harp on it forever? Repeating it won't help anyone more clearly understand it, and it won't "convert" anyone who wasn't converted the first two dozen times. I really dislike it when people bump a forum thread because they don't think they're being heard, and while that's not what you're doing literally, you do seem to be bumping your opinion, and I don't think it's necessary.
I'd like to say though, sometimes new information does come into the discussion, and all sides and viewpoints deserve a comment or two on that new information. The quote you picked out obviously is not that, and I can easily see how cutting back on that sort of response would be good for everybody(it has no real content, it comes off as abrasive and derisive, and it can only serve as a means of discussion derailment). On the other hand, I don't think my count is solely or even mostly made up of these posts, but I can definitely see where you're coming from on this and try to look over my own posts and ask whether or not something is really being added there. Ideally, this would mean cutting off responses like the one above. I've been somewhat negatively affected by the short-posting audience that has come into the discussion boards lately, things that wouldn't have been acceptable two years ago are now commonplace, and my own standards for my posts have seen an unintentional drop along with them. I ask myself far less often "Is this adding to the discussion? Am I contributing something worthwhile for others to read?", and that's pretty inexcusable and leads to sloppy and repetitive posting.
I hope I've explained myself here. I'm not sure how well I did, and I'm looking at this post and thinking it's something of a structural mess, but I don't really know how to fix it so I'm going to leave it as is because the things I'm saying here seem important to get out, I think.
Long post made short: I think that I deserve more than a couple posts with more or less the same tone or idea, but I agree that when the content is sloppy and lazy, it leads to a repetitive and lazy board on the whole. I think I can cut back on posts that don't add anything to the discussion at hand, which should really help with the "harping on the point" concept. I think I can also probably condense many of the points I make across various threads into one or two threads dedicated to that purpose. I think another gameplay analysis thread for the next episode is in order, for example, though executed a lot better than the thread for episode two, with screenshots, better organization, a clearer and more "analytical" feel, and hard data such as numbers of interactive objects on a particular screen. I feel that, when new things come to light, like a new interview or a new piece of gameplay footage, I can write up my impressions of the thing without entirely cutting myself off or feeling stymied/pressured into being self-censored. Of the current members of the Telltale Team that post in these forums still, you're certainly one of the ones for whom I have the greatest respect. I don't take your statements here lightly, I certainly see your point, and I wish to endeavor to express myself in a way that comes off as intelligently and as measured as your posts do, and especially in a way that can be respected and understood by people who are in your position; obviously because the creative directors within the company are the people I most want to reach, but also because I wish to appeal to the most intelligent and respectable members of this community. Alienating them by coming off abrasively is not my intention, and it's obviously something that I've done as of late.
...
Dammit, that didn't work out as planned. That's not short at all! Let me try that again:
TL;DR: I see your point, and I can probably cut back on being repetitive without compromising my own point or limiting myself to a couple posts in any given forum.
And by the way, I think I'm going to follow your example and take notes on my thoughts as I play through episode 3 so I can better contribute to your analysis thread. That was one of my favorite threads on here in quite a while.
I would appreciate if this would be a open discussion like if you would be talking to each other sitting at a table or laying around on a meadow if you prefer it this way but talking to each other like persons. This is how the company sees it, that's what they want to do, that's how i/we see it personally, asking questions like what do you want, leaving out devs vs. customers attitudes as part of the audience is quite different to the days when video games started. And at best this also would result to improvements.
Beside of this i lack honest information about the products. JP will be for something for those guys, with Fables we will try to do a adventure game for people who like to solve riddles again, with the licence xyz we try to,...
You for sure don't get such information from your local nuclear energy supplier but i thought as this TT thing started as a island for those who love adventure games this could be a little bit different as well.
The fact that you guys recognize that there are differences in games is great to hear. The only thing that I wish you would do on top of that is to advertise your games accordingly. Had I known BttF was going to be more of an interactive movie, I would have probably not purchased it. I am much more likely to wait to hear about games before trying to play them as is. If you guys know some games are less difficult...etc. then please let us know before we buy them. That way we will be able to buy the games that fit our style.
Sorry, poor wording and poorly explained, both on my part. I was afraid Telltale would see the majority of this thread as a load of ill-informed, upstart fans kicking up a stink when nothing can be done about it. By the content of your response, I can see what I hoped you would be feeling: "How on earth do we respond to this? We need to tread carefully, lest what we say get taken out of context by the media."
I knew you were all fans of the games but I didn't realise to what extent. I'm pleased to see that not only would you often want to see things played out better but are restricted by powers above but also you treat each game differently.
Regarding BttF: you're probably right in that an interactive movie is best for this franchise. I've enjoyed it, please don't get me wrong. What you didn't comment on was the debugging. Perhaps then everybody feels that could/should have gone better.
To summarise, I do realise that you all care. You take a much more personal approach with fans (whether as individuals or as a company) than any other firm I've bought a game from. Thank you very much for replying.
@Guru: I'm not entirely unsure that this will make no difference. I remember a while back when I had an email from TTG, directing me to a questionnaire, which included a question asking which IPs we'd like to see TT make in the future. No doubt you and everybody else here got that as well.
The eventual fruits of that questionnaire must have culminated in the IPs recently been announced. I don't remember many of the options but IIRC, King's Quest was on there. So it does happen.
They even tested the water with Leisure Suit Larry, which they must have picked up on by seeing posts by me and one or two others that lurk on the forums. I don't think we'll ever see a LSL game made by TTG (1) because the demand is too low and 2) getting Sierra to lease out any IPs must take some doing) but that doesn't stop me hoping I'm wrong.
This. Although, I would have been more inclined to buy, as my interest would have been piqued. As it stands, I loved the demo, but lack the funds to do so (I have a trip to London to pay for (booked a while ago, when I thought I would have a job to help pay for it), new blu-ray player software (This could wait, but i'd end up paying £20 more, as it's onsale until next week), and car insurance, in addition to not having a job and being a student. Eep.)
They were made a separate thread:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23511
I'm not sure where the line will be drawn with properties like Fables, though. It's a licensed property, sure, but whereas TWD is an insanely popular franchise going through a marketing blitz (so almost certain to have ease of interface like the upcoming JP seems to have), Fables is a bizarre and complicated niche series. How would the gameplay balance for that work out? That and the continuation of Hector are enough to keep me around for a bit longer...