Money Aspect of the game?

edited September 2006 in Sam & Max
Hey

I just wanted to know what you guys think. After ive seen the game trailer and so. I got kinda worried that the money aspect of sam & max will be kinda annoying a repetetive..

I men in the old Sam & Max, there were all these rich and colorfull inviroments where you would get that you needed in som crazy and funny way :P like the things inside the big ball of twine..

But else game looks and sounds good :) cant wait for it.

//René

Comments

  • edited September 2006
    I have faith that we'll find ourselves in some quite intersting locations along the way.
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    I'm not sure what you mean by the "money aspect"?

    Keep in mind that we have not released screenshots of all of the environments in episode 1. We want to keep a few of them as surprises for you guys! Also, episodes 2-6 will have new environments that episode 1 didn't have, so by the end of the season you should have experienced a pretty varied selection of locations. :)
  • edited September 2006
    Just read at gamespot, that quote

    "Sam and Max will frequently revisit their home office as a kind of hub area, and they'll need to line their pockets with cash to purchase all of Bosco's expensive (and experimental) weapons. To earn cash, Sam and Max can use a patrol minigame in which they hop into their Freelance Police cruiser and pursue other motorists" unquote

    Just wanted to know how much time would be spend on that and how important part of the game that is? I just think it could get really tiresome and repetative always doing that to get cash to progress in the game or maybe im wrong :P

    //RMJ
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    When I read the Gamespot preview, that sentence stood out to me as sort of misleading. Although you can drive at any time (and it's fun to pull people over and say funny things to them), it's only required at two points during the game, and only once to "line your pockets".

    It's definitely not a repetitive chore... it's a puzzle. (A puzzle that Gamespot's preview unfortunately gave away the solution to. :() The preview sort of makes it sound like something you'd do in an RPG to build stats or buy new weapons or armor, and it's nothing like that. ;)
  • edited September 2006
    okay nice to know :) thanks for the info. nice to know =) B-)
  • edited September 2006
    I now have a question for you. How often will they be released? I'm waiting for the box set to come out so I need to know how long I have to wait!
    P.S. The game looks awesome! Can't wait to play it!!!
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    * Six episodes!
    * One a month!
    * Except we're skipping over most of the month of November!
    * So we'll get episodes in October, December, January, February, March aaanddd...

    ... that means the last episode is schedule to come out some time in...

    drumroll...

    APRILish! Mark your calendars, kids!
  • edited September 2006
    ONE A MONTH!!! I actually think that's kinda slow but, i'll wait.
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    ONE A MONTH!!! I actually think that's kinda slow but, i'll wait.

    It's at least six times faster than any other episodic gaming release has been so far. :))
  • edited September 2006
    ONE A MONTH!!! I actually think that's kinda slow but, i'll wait.

    It's at least six times faster than any other episodic gaming release has been so far. :))
    And it's definitely faster than those stupid Oblivion downloads. Er... not that I buy those, of course... :-$

    But anyway, yay, every month I will hold a festival to celebrate Sam and Max's awesomeness by playing a new episode featuring their zany adventures! [\:D/]
  • edited September 2006
    speaking about lacations... how open will be the gameplay on this matter? i mean, on each episode will we be restrain to visit only the locations corresponding to that episode, or will we be able to visit any place visited during the whole season?
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    Since every game is standalone, you will only be able to visit the locations in a particular episode. It's not like each episode is an expansion pack that builds on what you already have; they're self-contained games.

    Places like the neighborhood (like Bosco's and Sybil's) will appear in more than one episode, but locations that are specific to the story being told in one episode won't necessarily be accessible in the another episode... unless it also ties in to that episode's story in some way.
  • edited September 2006
    Since every game is standalone, you will only be able to visit the locations in a particular episode. It's not like each episode is an expansion pack that builds on what you already have; they're self-contained games.

    Places like the neighborhood (like Bosco's and Sybil's) will appear in more than one episode, but locations that are specific to the story being told in one episode won't necessarily be accessible in the another episode... unless it also ties in to that episode's story in some way.

    oh... :(
  • edited September 2006
    uoahhhh...

    :((
  • edited September 2006
    Just out of interest, will the one released in December have any sort of christmassy theme to it? Will sam paint his hat red and stick a white pom-pom on it for instance :D .
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    I'm a little confused by the reactions to the news that you won't be able to go to episode 1 locations in episode 3 (or whatever). Why would you want to do that if a location isn't part of the story? There wouldn't be anything new to do there.
    Just out of interest, will the one released in December have any sort of christmassy theme to it?

    I'm not sure if the episode will, but the animated shorts might. ;)
  • edited September 2006
    I'm a little confused by the reactions to the news that you won't be able to go to episode 1 locations in episode 3 (or whatever). Why would you want to do that if a location isn't part of the story? There wouldn't be anything new to do there.

    because it adds to the sense of open/non-linear gameplay (a quality highly appreciated by some of us gamers).

    also, it adds to the difficulty factor: you got more choices from where to look for clues when you get stuck (if i had a penny for each time i uselessly visited every location on 'hit the road'...)

    finnaly, it'd help it to look like a 'bigger' game, to contrast the 'short' sense that it's episodic nature may give it.

    but i'm just speculating here, and i've learned in the past that i must not critizise without knowing, so i guess i'll just wait and see...

    edit: thinking again, i think i understand why you're confused by our reaction: you've seen the final product and know how independant each episode will be, while we're still imagining it like just one big game split in six small parts.
  • edited September 2006
    I'm a little confused by the reactions to the news that you won't be able to go to episode 1 locations in episode 3 (or whatever). Why would you want to do that if a location isn't part of the story? There wouldn't be anything new to do there.

    Have you played any japanese RPGs (such as the Final Fantasy series)? There's tons and tons of grassland and other meaningless locations just to give the immersion of a large game world, and boy does it work. Very rarely these remote areas on such games have anything of relevance in them, maybe a monster or two native to the region, but you still wander around there just exploring. It's fun and if you happen to stumble upon a Very Secret Place it makes the game seem really cool and rewarding.

    I can't see how it would hurt the game to have previous regions opened in the later chapters - maybe by the installer checking if you have any other episodes on your hardrive and unlocking the areas that come with it.

    If you really don't see the point of opening areas without anything new, consider this: Adding an easter-egg to one of the areas that isn't part of the episode to one of the other areas. Just a couple of simple lines of dialogue or something similiar, unlocked for the people with the correct episodes installed.
  • edited September 2006
    edit: thinking again, i think i understand why you're confused by our reaction: you've seen the final product and know how independant each episode will be, while we're still imagining it like just one big game split in six small parts.

    To be fair, Telltale has made it clear for awhile now that it will work exactly as Emily just described it - the episodes will be independent save for some story threads. The idea has been to make each episode self-contained. For example even though people playing from start to finish will probably get more out of the story, someone should be able to jump in to episode four and it should work as one satisfying little game experience.
    Have you played any japanese RPGs (such as the Final Fantasy series)? There's tons and tons of grassland and other meaningless locations just to give the immersion of a large game world, and boy does it work.

    But what works for an RPG won't necessarily work for a graphic adventure game. Putting new locations into Sam & Max probably takes a lot of time and work on the part of the artists. For a top-down RPG it's probably less of a deal to make huge empty areas where nothing goes on, but it wouldn't translate well to an adventure. It's not cost-effective to spends months building a gorgeous environment only for it to serve no real purpose. I don't buy that it adds to immersion, either...putting a bunch of empty space for players to traverse seems like an artificial way to generate an epic feel, and probably a transparent way to bloat game time. Sam & Max episodes may be short, but if they're any good they'll be rich. When you play the season as a whole you'll visit all sorts of locations and see a big story and you may very well experience some sort of an "epic" feeling, but as Emily said, what's the point of unlocking an unused location? If it had a purpose it would be in the episode in the first place. You're right that Hit the Road gave you unrestricted access to all kinds of locations, but that's not how this game is working. (And, from the sounds of it, isn't how Freelance Police worked either.)

    All that said, there are probably some cool possibilites that you could do with unlockable content in Sam & Max, but you're thinking of the season one way and Telltale designed it another.
  • edited September 2006
    Yeah. So, what you're saying is you want a whole lot of spaces filled with nothing useful. Great big sections of the game with nothing of use in them. To me, this sounds like the time hated idea of the pixel hunt extended to such a degree as to become not just really annoying, but insanely stupid. Like those bits in Syberia where there's nothing at all interesting but snow on a great big long path. And you run down them for like 45 seconds. But sometimes they hide a special stick you have to pick up in the corner of one. Not fun.
  • edited September 2006
    ALL I want, when I play this game, I don't really care how much it costs, but whe I play this game, I don't want to be thinking; "Geez, this is a good game" or "Man, this game could've been better." I want to be totally immersed in the story, thinking about how to solve the next puzzle. Perhaps I'll have some fond memories of HIT THE ROAD in the back of my mind, but I want to be enjoying this game for itself, trying to click on the right things and progressing through the story with as little interference from graphics and sound as possible. STORY STORY STORY. I want to be IMMERSED, and I want to be INSPIRED. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less. If I can relate to the characters like I did in HIT THE ROAD, I'll keep coming back for more.

    'Nuff said.
  • edited September 2006
    ...You found yourself relating to some of the characters in Hit the Road? ;)
  • edited September 2006
    Yeah. So, what you're saying is you want a whole lot of spaces filled with nothing useful. Great big sections of the game with nothing of use in them. To me, this sounds like the time hated idea of the pixel hunt extended to such a degree as to become not just really annoying, but insanely stupid. Like those bits in Syberia where there's nothing at all interesting but snow on a great big long path. And you run down them for like 45 seconds. But sometimes they hide a special stick you have to pick up in the corner of one. Not fun.
    AND
    Udvarnoky's reply

    That's not what I am saying at all. Let me break it down to you in a couple of points, maybe making more sense:

    1) I don't demand it to be this way - I simply see it as a positive instead of a negative; just an idea.

    2) What I did suggest was to have the areas that would be made anyway (the areas that are featured in other episodes because of the storyline there). These areas exist anyhow, so it doesn't require the team to create new environments.

    3) It will most probably be very clear as to which areas are the relevant zones for the episode you are playing. It wouldn't cause you to get lost and start 'pixel hunting' all over again.
    If there was a possibility to get lost in the vastness of the world caused by having the excess areas around, they could as well be greyed out in a world map or however you navigate in the game, so that you would know which zones are relevant to the current plot and which aren't.

    4) Here are the positive things that this could potentially give:
    - Possibility for TellTale to hide easter eggs if they feel like it into the unused zones; if you feel like it, you can hunt them down, but it's not necessary and the eggs aren't anything super awesome. Think icing on the cake.
    - If a player wants to, for one reason or another, go check out "that one thing" from another episode (maybe because of a joke made in a later one referring to it or similiar), they don't have to exit the current episode and start up the episode that he wants to check out.
    - Once players are playing the final episode of a season, they see a much more complete picture of the way things went with a complete road map with them.

    5) The negative things that this could possibly cause:
    - Some people don't like freedom of movement, so they want to be confined to the bare bones .. I don't understand why.
    - Executed poorly, this might cause confusion, but it is very easy to make clear which parts are extra, which not.



    There. On a more personal note, in many adventure games, I have wanted to afterwards go check out some references or just see if there's some info on a certain matter been available earlier that you didn't notice on your first time through a location. I guess that's just me.
    Hope I made sense. 8-}
  • edited September 2006
    Still doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying, why aren't all the locations from Monkey Island 1 also available in Monkey Island 2? There was a joke on Melee Island that I wanted to revisit, you mean to tell me I have to boot up the game to see it again?

    Yes, the episodes will be short, yes, they might be a little bit more connected than a sequel might be, but they are separate games, with their own locations, dialogue, and puzzles. Some locations may be reused, but for a reason.
  • edited September 2006
    Still doesn't make sense to me. It's like saying, why aren't all the locations from Monkey Island 1 also available in Monkey Island 2? There was a joke on Melee Island that I wanted to revisit, you mean to tell me I have to boot up the game to see it again?
    And also, why can't you go back from Monkey Island to Melee in episode 1? Okay, you can, but not whenever you feel like it.

    The problem (and the great thing!) about adventure games is that they look like this:
    adventure.png

    Adventure games are stories. Stories are always linear. If a game isn't in any way linear, it doesn't have a story. Sure, you can have a bit of side-tracking (the different coloured paths in the picture), but in the end you always go from A to B. And B is the end. After the end, the story is over, and there's no use being able to roam about. When the game is over, it's time to turn off your computer and go to bed. Is this a limitation of the genre? Perhaps. But if it is, it's also a limitation of any other type of game that tries to tell a story. And of films. And of novels. And of bedtime stories. And of time itself, even.
  • edited September 2006
    Yes, the episodes will be short, yes, they might be a little bit more connected than a sequel might be, but they are separate games, with their own locations, dialogue, and puzzles. Some locations may be reused, but for a reason.

    You might be right. We'll see when the season is out whether any of my points are valid. The thing is that I don't see what a feature like this would subtract from the game for players that don't find it necessary.
  • edited September 2006
    When the game is over, it's time to turn off your computer and go to bed. Is this a limitation of the genre? Perhaps. But if it is, it's also a limitation of any other type of game that tries to tell a story. And of films. And of novels. And of bedtime stories. And of time itself, even.

    It doesn't have to be. This is essentially like saying that "it is a limitation of computer games that you can't dish out a sequel a month after the first game". If you catch my drift. ;)
  • edited September 2006
    I think you hit the nail on the head.

    It benefits them more to have less replay value and sell more games.
  • edited September 2006
    When the game is over, it's time to turn off your computer and go to bed. Is this a limitation of the genre? Perhaps. But if it is, it's also a limitation of any other type of game that tries to tell a story. And of films. And of novels. And of bedtime stories. And of time itself, even.

    It doesn't have to be. This is essentially like saying that "it is a limitation of computer games that you can't dish out a sequel a month after the first game". If you catch my drift. ;)
    That's true as well. And the same goes for sequels to movies, novels, et cetera. :D
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    Something else people need to remember is that the games are downloadable, and the file sizes need to be kept small. This means we have to be very careful about how many locations we use in an episode, and we have to increase the value of each location we do include by cramming it with lots of stuff to do.

    I think you'll find that the Sam & Max episodes are well designed and you'll be engrossed, regardless of how many locations are in the episodes. I'll be interested to revisit this topic at the end of the season and see if people still feel that allowing access to an episode 1 location in episode 4 is necessary.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    Have you played any japanese RPGs (such as the Final Fantasy series)? There's tons and tons of grassland and other meaningless locations just to give the immersion of a large game world, and boy does it work.

    Have you played Syberia? It has huge expanses of area just to wander for environmental purposes, and while it starts off giving the game a nice open, and successfully melancholy feel, after a couple hours you realize you've spent half the gameplay time walking through empty environments that contain no puzzles or dialogue relevant to what you're solving, and want to punch your computer screen and uninstall the game.

    On one hand I see people on this board and other AG forums constantly asking for dense adventure gaming experiences - as dense as possible - and on the other they're also asking for expansive needless areas which have no relevant puzzle or story points to spread the game out... I don't really think these two requests are complementary once you set them side by side, and at Telltale - at least with the game universes and stories we've told so far - we really prefer dense tight storytelling and dense environments over huge expanses of nothing.

    Who knows what we'll be doing in the future - maybe it'll be a story which emotionally hinges on feelings and atmospheres you can only create by structuring your game in that way, but for now 1) We're not really interested in doing that sort of thing at this point in time, 2) Implementing some sort of tracker which figures out which locations you do and don't have installed and allowing Sam & Max to visit those in every episode won't realistically fit in our production cycle for the Sam & Max episodes anyway, and 3) I don't think it really even fits in a Sam & Max storyline to have them needlessly go and chat through a bunch of idle loop dialogues with uninvolved characters.
  • edited September 2006
    That's great, I've been on the fringes but that has made a lot of sense to me.
  • edited September 2006
    Man, that J-RPG metaphor really missed its mark it seems. It wasn't meant to be taken word-by-word into the AG universe.

    Still, I understand the points made. This isn't a huge thing for me, just thought it might be something nice to have around. I really didn't think it was going to happen - though it seldom hurts to toss an idea around a bit.

    I, too, am interested to revisit a quite a lot of topics after this game is halfway through the season. It's like the weather - you can tell if it seems like it's going to rain, but after a few hours it might be sunny!

    How's that for a wacky metaphor?
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited September 2006
    It's definitely an interesting idea, it's just not a practical one for the type of game we're making.

    I saw a demo of URU yesterday at a GameTap press event and was talking to Rand Miller about the real-time nature of URU. It's going to be really cool... basically a world with a story going on in it. If you don't play for six months, when you come back the world will still be the way it was before (for the most part), but the story will have progressed by six months. I'm really interested to see how that works as an adventure game.
  • edited September 2006
    ...You found yourself relating to some of the characters in Hit the Road? ;)

    They weren't patronizing, and they had a tangible friendship that surpassed the digital pixels they were created with. I related to that. Not that I'm digital pixels...well, maybe...but, no other game, besdies DOTT, allowed me immediate access to the characters like HIT THE ROAD did. IMMEDIATE, at a GLANCE! I knew what they were about.
  • edited September 2006
    I saw a demo of URU yesterday at a GameTap press event and was talking to Rand Miller about the real-time nature of URU. It's going to be really cool... basically a world with a story going on in it. If you don't play for six months, when you come back the world will still be the way it was before (for the most part), but the story will have progressed by six months. I'm really interested to see how that works as an adventure game.

    It's nice to see the gaming industry with such a boom of fresh ideas recently. With episodic gaming, Wii and games like URU there's really a sense of invention going on.
  • edited September 2006
    So, not sure if this is the time or the thread to be saying this but... WOULD EVERYONE STOP COMPARING A SERIES OF UNRELEASED GAMES TO A GAME THEY PLAYED 10 YEARS AGO! Far out. New developers, new team, new millenium... chances are the game is going to be quite different to the last one. I'm a looking forward to seeing what Telltale brings to the table. Not only for Sam and Max but also for adventure games in general. If anyone compares the voices from Hit the Road to the trailers again I swear I'm going to find them. With a knife. It probably won't be pleasant. The voices weren't that great anyway! But they were the first voices you'd ever actually heard issue from the mouths of the two crime fighters. I understand a feeling of nostalgia but you guys really need to start judging the new games by their own merits, not how they compare to a game released last century.
  • edited September 2006
    So, not sure if this is the time or the thread to be saying this but... WOULD EVERYONE STOP COMPARING A SERIES OF UNRELEASED GAMES TO A GAME THEY PLAYED 10 YEARS AGO! Far out. New developers, new team, new millenium... chances are the game is going to be quite different to the last one. I'm a looking forward to seeing what Telltale brings to the table. Not only for Sam and Max but also for adventure games in general. If anyone compares the voices from Hit the Road to the trailers I swear I'm going to find them. With a knife. It probably won't be pleasant. The voices weren't that great anyway! But they were the first voices you'd ever actually heard issue from the mouths of the two crime fighters. I understand a feling of nostalgia but you guys really need to start judging the new games by their own merits, not how they compare to a game released last century.

    It's millennium, with two Ns.
  • edited September 2006
    I bow my head in shame. Please forgive me.
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