Freelance Police's sudden death
This goes out to the Telltale folks who were former members of the Sam & Max: Freelance Police team. Yeah, yeah, we've all mourned and murdered over the cancellation of that game, but I've still got some questions concerning the cancellation that maybe you could answer. After all, the press release LucasArts offered wasn't particularly explanatory or in-depth, and I'd just like to hear your take on it. Basically what I want to know is: was the game's cancellation as abrupt and shocking to the guys within LucasArts as it was to the fans? Or was there reason to believe that the project was in a bit of trouble before the decision was made? I think there's more than enough evidence to show that few people were expecting the game to get axed like that, but were there, like, any hints of doom?
Thanks in advance for putting up with the curiosity; I still need closure.
Thanks in advance for putting up with the curiosity; I still need closure.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
those bastards.... X-(
but when tell tale games started,is saw there is hope for the best and oldest gaming genre
The same reason why someone gets a job,
why that person may place a big bet on a horse,
why this person will live and breath in search of materialistic possessions....
MONEY
AND LOTS OF IT
Agreed, but the thing is it they couldn't have been afraid do it when they started developing the game several years ago. They worked long and hard on the game, and then it gets cancelled. Was it because the company was being run by some "acting" executives at the time? I'd really like to hear from some team members if they're able to tell us if the cancellation was really as shocking as it seemed.
There is something I don't understand : when they canceled the game, they already had put quite a lot of money for its development. It is not as if they canceled it before starting to work on it. If they finished the game and released it, then they would have made some money by selling it. But by cancelling Sam&Max at the stage the game was, was really a pure loss of money for Lucasarts, and a huge disappointment for all the fans of adventure games.
LucasArt's spirit died last march, even if its body is still there...
If they've deleted the data(which would of course be very stupid), Telltale has to start from scratch.... :-s
I assume they still have the nearly finished game and hopefully the guys(and gals?) at Telltale can get it back from Starwarsar... Lucasarts. Work something out.
After all, It's THEIR game, which they worked VERY HARD at!
I used to Love Lucasarts, now they're crap.
But now we have Telltale Games and I have a LOT of confidence in them. They will REVIVE the adventure genre
TellTaleism
with MAX as our Fussy Bunny God [:)>-]
and Sam as our Dog god
i.e.
And then? Falling back on the things they were good at will be really hard because the people who worked on the nice projects have left the building and ran away. The fans who would have bought a mediocre Lucasarts adventure (e.g. EMI) will think twice before doing that now. And at that moment the market will be flooded by other adventure games made by Telltale (ex-Lucasarts employees), Autumn Moon (ex-Lucasarts employees), Double Fine (ex-Lucasarts employees), Ron Gilbert with one of his companies (ex-Lucasarts employees) or others. There is hope enough on adventures in the LA style. Now, LA is nothing, but in the '80's and '90's it was a great school for great adventure games and we still should be thankfull to the management of that time for putting money into new things.
After all these things with Sam and Max, I'm wondering why Full Throttle really has been cancelled. Officially it was canned to not upset the fans of the original because it couldn't live up to it. Seeing how they treated us with Sam and Max, I'm starting to doubt that statement.
Claiming Double Fine & Ron Gilbert are to be producing LucasArts style adventures is taking liberties with the truth.
Yes, you are right. Thanks for correcting me. [:">] I was a bit over-enthousiastic. But they might return to it? There still is a Monkey 3 "as Gilbert had thought it up" to be made. (I hope) I guess, because here it is already rather late, I started dreaming away. Anyhow, a score of 2 out of 4 is not so bad? Sometimes I did worse in school.
Speaking as a big fan(girl) of the original...I hope that's why they cancelled it. I played Full Throttle long after FT2 was cancelled, so after finishing the game, I backtracked to see what the sequel would've been like. And I got my hands on the E3 teaser/trailer.
After seeing that trailer, I wanted to drink bleach, spork out my own eyeballs, and throw myself off a tall building.
...Well, okay, so maybe my reaction wasn't quite that extreme. But I did spend about five minutes praising the gods of computer games that FT2 was cancelled. I could go into all the reasons why I'm so thankful, as a fan of the original (and also as a fan whose pipe dream it is to have an FT2: This Time It Won't Suck), that it was cancelled, but I think that would drag the thread off-topic. So let me just put it this way--IMHO, FT2 as LucasArts was planning it would have dragged the original game out back, shot it, kicked it while it was down, and then shot it again for good measure.
And then it would have buried the body. Deep.
Sorry if I dragged the thread off-topic. That's just something of a pet peeve for me right now.
The fact that Episode III will be here and gone soon means nothing. Sure, there'll be a lot of Episode III tie-ins, but the games won't stop. I can assure you of that. LucasArts will be able to ride the LucasArts train FOREVER.
As for Indy, Jim Ward has said that there will be a new Indy game in the future, which is a good thing. I think we all know it won't be an adventure, though.
Or have been fired.
I agree with you that it's awesome we have these other great companies to keep the genre alive now that LucasArts won't. You're also right that LucasArts will never fall back on their adventure genre. First off, they won't need to, and secondly, they've isolated their fan base anyhow. I must say, though, I think it's a shame that you call EMI a mediocre game. It was a great game...and besides, don't you realize that some of the Telltale folks were part of the EMI team? Are you trying to make them cry or something?
Well, it's easy to point the finger at those LucasArts bastards, especially since the announcement was as short and unexplanatory (if that's not a word it is now) as Sam & Max's, but the truth is that fans really were disappointed with how the game was turning out, and it probably was going to suck. Fans voiced their concern at the game's action-oriented nature, and quite frankly I'm surprised LucasArt kept it in production as long as they did. Also remember that FT2 was cancelled while the most holy Simon Jeffrey was still in power.
The problem with Sam & Max 2's cancellation is that nobody saw it coming, the game was looking great, everybody was anxiously waiting for it, it was canceled by an ACTING director, and the press release was so insultingly short and worthless (whereas any Star Wars-related press release, no matter how pointless, gets a grand, 40 page announcement handwritten on papyrus in ancient Hebrew) that fans are still not satisfied.
Aww but I liked EMI
Sorry about the rant by the way.
So did I. Hurrah, I'm not the only person in the fandom who does.
Marley's "Herman Toothrot" era was after the whole whirlpool incident. When crashed on the other side of the world due to the whirlpool, he didn't know who he was, so he took the name Herman Toothrot. And Herman arrived on Monkey Island in the Sea Monkey.
Because a) it may have been "nearly" finished, but that doesn't mean the game was playable. and b) that would prevent LucasArts from ever resuming work on the game.
Yes, I know it's extremely unlikey, but they will want to keep that option available. And 3) it's possibly damaging to the Sam & Max brand if there's an unfinished, buggy, game floating around in public and I don;t thing Steve Purcell, LucasArts or even all the let-go workers from the Sam & Max team would want their unfinished, unoptimised, unworking code floating around the internet.
No, it was not my intention to make people cry. If I did: sorry!
That's definitely not going to happen, and the whole trilogy stuff could just be Ron Gilbert pulling our leg, anyway. From my understanding it was envisioned as a trilogy, but it ended up being wrapped up with MI2 (with the addition of the LeChuck eyes at the end to keep a sequel possible). He left LucasArts very soon after MI2, and obviously LucasArts (the owner of the title) wanted to make a sequel. Now, I've no doubt that Ron was capable of making MI3 had he stayed at LucasArts, and I'm equally sure that it wouldn't have been CMI. But the fact is that Monkey Island was and always will be (well, then again these are bad times for LucasArts and adventures, and we have companies like Telltale to acquire these licenses...
I mean, it's one thing to not like CMI and EMI based on their own merits, but I get sort of frustrated people start saying how it was really a trilogy and Ron Gilbert was the only person who could make it....blah blah blah. Look, I praise Gilbert as much as everyone else, and it's my opinion that the first two Monkey Islands (especially LeChuck's revenge) are the best, but it's retarded to just toss out CMI and EMI as not belonging to the series. They are, like it or not.