Zaradan - sure, I am grateful for the MI series being taken back to life. But I don't see it as having the cake and eating it if the game is both entertaining and pretty. In that case I guess we got the cake and got to eat it too during at least the first three games.
You argue that we'd get something superficial if we had good graphics. I don't think that was the case the first three games at all. They were a work of art and the great craftmanship showed a dedication and love for what they were doing. I love Hayao Miyazakis films because they are a work of art. That they are pretty does absolutely not make them superficial, rather the opposite.
Adventure games do pretty well now, so I think it's time to start expecting something more than them just to exist and not just being grateful someone makes them. Since TT are basically the only ones who does make them, and get a load of time in the media, I would assume they do better economically than many smaller developers.
I showed a Wii game to counter the argument on technical limitations. It's a platform that's so weak that I would assume most PCs would run a Wii game without any problems. Anno for Wii still looks gorgeous because the art assets look good, something that can't be said of TTs MI series so far.
I know that it's in capable hands, at least when it comes to art direction, music, story and acting. But the art assets are simply not up to the quality I'd expect from a Lucas Arts aspiring title.
There's no need for the most advanced shaders if the basics are pretty to start with. Here's what I'd expect characters to measure up with:
Again, sorry to be a downer, but I can't help thinking it looks awful. And that's a first for a MI game.
I would much rather have ToMI look like it does than Punch Out.
The game looks fine the way it is, which is hell of a lot better than MI4 and very good for a small company with a limited budget and short development times.
If you want another 2d style Monkey game your going to have to stick to fan games.
Also with regards to the bolded quoted line. You've seen what? A trailer and a couple of gameplay movies and screenshots from a build with a moth of dev time still to go, and you can say without doubt these are looking better than ToMI.
I wish people would actually wait for the finished thing before jumping to conclusions.
If you don't like the art style that's fine, but you can't say any of those games your using as an example are techinically better until you've actually played episode 1.
Just going by what I've seen from trailers and from Sam n Max. Sorry if it offends you that I have this opinion, but I can't really change it. I'll stop ranting about it, I don't want to offend TT more than I already have, who I think do a terrific job in general, or anyone here anticipating the game.
Abdallah - I think we just need to accept that with TT's episodic model, it is unrealistic to expect the production values of the original 3 MI games. Each episode has a development cycle of a few months, so that's never going to happen. With all of their past MI experience in the team, who would you rather have making it though? I cant think of anyone.
Where as most other current adventure game developers seem to plough most of their resources into visuals, to the detriment of almost every other aspect of the game, I think TT's strengths lie where it really matters.
I may be wrong, but I just dont think it's realistic to expect Hollywood production values in adventure games across the board like we used to. MI, DOTT etc were the Halo's and GoW's of their day. Times have changed, and right now, I think this is the best result for MI. Lucasarts would have been mad to go with anyone else. They're going out on a limb here, and TT are the most bankable proposition if they're a company hedging their bets.
And if ToMI does exceed expectations, then maybe more cash will be chucked at the next one.
Abdallah - I think we just need to accept that with TT's episodic model, it is unrealistic to expect the production values of the original 3 MI games. Each episode has a development cycle of a few months, so that's never going to happen. With all of their past MI experience in the team, who would you rather have making it though? I cant think of anyone.
Where as most other current adventure game developers seem to plough most of their resources into visuals, to the detriment of almost every other aspect of the game, I think TT's strengths lie where it really matters.
I may be wrong, but I just dont think it's realistic to expect Hollywood production values in adventure games across the board like we used to. MI, DOTT etc were the Halo's and GoW's of their day. Times have changed, and right now, I think this is the best result for MI. Lucasarts would have been mad to go with anyone else. They're going out on a limb here, and TT are the most bankable proposition if they're a company hedging their bets.
And if ToMI does exceed expectations, then maybe more cash will be chucked at the next one.
Well, that's a very good argument. I had forgotten that they were indeed the GoW's of the day, but you're right. Still, I bet Anno was made with a smaller budget too, and they've done wonders with what they had to work with technically and economically.
I agree that TT is one of the most capable developers to take on this game, but I still wonder how it would have looked it Double Fine did it instead.
Just going by what I've seen from trailers and from Sam n Max. Sorry if it offends you that I have this opinion, but I can't really change it.
Don't be sorry for having an opinion, just make sure that your critique is based on actual gameplay from the finished game and not from some old build trailers and a different game series. Sa'll I'm saying.
One thing that I've noticed people have not mentioned.. the animation quality of Tales of Monkey Island is way higher than it was in Escape from Monkey Island, and that makes a big difference in the quality of the two. The characters move and animate SO much better.
HoppyDragon's right about that, animation is one of the first things I notice when I'm looking at any animated medium. TTG have really outdone themselves this time.
As for the styles, I'm glad that ToMI looks like it does and not like Punchout or Psychonauts, the problem with Psychonauts and Punchout is something that I've mentioned elsethread: The people and locations look like they've been put through a dadaist filter, and the filter doesn't really understand how dada works, it just looks at the aesthetics and copies them.
In Psychonauts, I felt that it was trying very hard to look different, but in the end it just captured that Nickelodeon look that I'm not fond of. This person has his head juttng out an odd angle for no particular reason, this person has one eye ten times bigger than the other, this person has an impossible mouth, and so on.
I'd much rather see an art style that concentrates and focuses on quality than one that tries to hide the lack of quality in pure absurdity, which is something I feel the Punchout art above does. Take away the absurdity and it's actually very basic artwork, if they had better artists and animators, they wouldn't need to make it look so absurd to try and disguise that fact.
What baffles me is that people argue for that style, and I guess I'll never understand it, but I prefer seeing that a company has talented artists and animators that don't need to resort to that, rather than seeing that used as an excuse simply because they couldn't do a better job of it otherwise.
I'll also admit that limitations in technology come into this as well, that a better job couldn't be done because they didn't have enough polygons to throw around, and on platforms like the PS2 (which Psychonauts was also on) this is forgivable. But here's an example...
If you take away the stylised look, you have some very flat art with next to no detail in it.
That's still stylised, but it's not the kind of stylised that's designed to hide a lack of detail, it looks a lot better to me than Psychonauts did.
That stylised kind of art that we see in Psychonauts, CMI, and quite a few NIckelodeon cartoons is usually down to the studio not being able to afford proper cartoon animation, or there being technological restrictions that limit the level of detail, which is hid in a stylised appearance.
To me, ToMI looks more like the bit of art I've linked above, and t hat's a good thing in my opinion.
It's just personal opinion, that's all it is, but that stylised look is usually put in place when something better can't be provided, and that's what it frequently looks like. Due to ToMI being able to do better than that (because they have a great stable of artists and the Wii doesn't have half the limitations of the PS2), that stylised art doesn't need to be present.
As for the styles, I'm glad that ToMI looks like it does and not like Punchout or Psychonauts, the problem with Psychonauts and Punchout is something that I've mentioned elsethread: The people and locations look like they've been put through a dadaist filter, and the filter doesn't really understand how dada works, it just looks at the aesthetics and copies them.
I'd much rather see an art style that concentrates and focuses on quality than one that tries to hide the lack of quality in pure absurdity, which is something I feel the Punchout art above does. Take away the absurdity and it's actually very basic artwork, if they had better artists and animators, they wouldn't need to make it look so absurd to try and disguise that fact.
What baffles me is that people argue for that style, and I guess I'll never understand it, but I prefer seeing that a company has talented artists and animators that don't need to resort to that, rather than seeing that used as an excuse simply because they couldn't do a better job of it otherwise.
The thing with PO for the wii console is that the wii is a bit stronger than a gamecube and the makers of the game (a small Canadian company) wanted to make the game look good by makin it cartoony. It was mentioned on a lot of reviews in how the stylized character designs helped the game compete with games on the 360 and ps3 despite the graphical limitations of the wii. If they didn't use cell shadin and any other filters, the game would probably look outdated as you mentioned.
I think the character designs for the key MI characters are awsome. I can't say the same about the secondary characters.
As someone else has already said, the TT characters that appeared in the game like the Captain looks bland. He kind of reminds me of the Mariachi aliens from season 2 of SnM 2, which imo is a bad thing
The bright side is that Guybrush and the voodoo lady have some awsome character designs that is different than the previous games.
I honestly thought the look of Guybrush in CMI is generic and from what I have seen from the trailers and promos of Tales, the TMI rendition of Guybrush is the ver l like the most.
The thing with PO for the wii console is that the wii is a bit stronger than a gamecube and the makers of the game (a small Canadian company) wanted to make the game look good by makin it cartoony. If they didn't use cell shadin and any other filters, the game would probably look outdated.
That's my point though, right there.
Not so much about the size of a company, because Telltale have been creating games for ages without having to resort to ridiculous style-over-substance efforts.
But about the console, you're spot on. It's hard to do realism properly on a system like the PS2, that's why games that tried that look absolutely terrible today. Look at Grand Theft Auto and the likes.
I suppose DoubleFine figured they wanted to make a game that would last longer, so they worked within the constraints, how can you make a game that you couldn't really do a remake of where it would actually look better? You use a very basic stylised approach, so the only way to make it look better then would be to change the style.
That's why Psychonauts has aged well, but that's an illusion, because really once you look past the stylised approach, the art is very basic, there are a lot of rather flat and washed out visuals there, and a depressingly large gouraud shading presence (something that should've been left behind with the PSone). And once you acknowledge that, it doesn't really look that great, there's very little substance to the art.
That's something I don't think that ToMI suffers from at all, it tries to do something a little more realistic, thus avoiding the stylised look altogether and replacing that with actual details, and what they can't do with textures, they do with polygons instead, pushing around an amount that the PS2 couldn't even dream of.
Maybe if Telltale had existed back in the days of the PS2 and they ported games to the PS2, they might have tried that approach too, I don't know. But as technology progresses, what we find is that we really don't need that approach any more, and to rely on it these days is lazy more than anything else, because it almost completely removes the need for anything bar the most basic of details, in both modelling and textures.
With today's technology, even a small company can avoid that need to remain so basic that their only way to look half decent is to opt for a style-over-substance look. And I'm thankful they have, because the detail present in some of their shots is beautiful, and detail one wouldn't see in a stylised game. If you look at DoubleFine's latest game, it has a lot of detail to it, it still has a mild stylised look, but there's real substance to the art of Brutal Legend.
That is awesome, Micheal. I was wondering when someone would do that. I used to have a montage of Monkey Island 1-4 set as my wallpaper. Needless to say, the Tales of Monkey Island version of Guybrush is the best looking.
The picture posted by secret fawful demostrates that the Tales of Guybrussh is a mixture of allof the previous Guybrushes
The Boots, jacket, and pants from MI2
The cartoony style of the outfit from EMI
The nose and phony tail from EMI
The head from CMI
The pupils appear to be a mix of CMI and EMI
Yup, I think that Telltale's version of Guybrush is the best one yet. But he needs a chunky belt buckle, and his coat? It should hang down to his knees, man. Down. To. His. Knees!
The only thing I would say about Tales' version of Guybrush, is that he looks a bit shiny, as if he's made from plastic. (Using the plastacine textures from W&G?)
I also personally thing he'd look better with a smaller beard.
Other than that, the best yet. (although Im very fond of CMI)
The only thing I would say about Tales' version of Guybrush, is that he looks a bit shiny, as if he's made from plastic. (Using the plastacine textures from W&G?)
HoppyDragon's right about that, animation is one of the first things I notice when I'm looking at any animated medium. TTG have really outdone themselves this time.
As for the styles, I'm glad that ToMI looks like it does and not like Punchout or Psychonauts, the problem with Psychonauts and Punchout is something that I've mentioned elsethread: The people and locations look like they've been put through a dadaist filter, and the filter doesn't really understand how dada works, it just looks at the aesthetics and copies them.
In Psychonauts, I felt that it was trying very hard to look different, but in the end it just captured that Nickelodeon look that I'm not fond of. This person has his head juttng out an odd angle for no particular reason, this person has one eye ten times bigger than the other, this person has an impossible mouth, and so on.
I'd much rather see an art style that concentrates and focuses on quality than one that tries to hide the lack of quality in pure absurdity, which is something I feel the Punchout art above does. Take away the absurdity and it's actually very basic artwork, if they had better artists and animators, they wouldn't need to make it look so absurd to try and disguise that fact.
What baffles me is that people argue for that style, and I guess I'll never understand it, but I prefer seeing that a company has talented artists and animators that don't need to resort to that, rather than seeing that used as an excuse simply because they couldn't do a better job of it otherwise.
I'll also admit that limitations in technology come into this as well, that a better job couldn't be done because they didn't have enough polygons to throw around, and on platforms like the PS2 (which Psychonauts was also on) this is forgivable. But here's an example...
If you take away the stylised look, you have some very flat art with next to no detail in it.
That's still stylised, but it's not the kind of stylised that's designed to hide a lack of detail, it looks a lot better to me than Psychonauts did.
That stylised kind of art that we see in Psychonauts, CMI, and quite a few NIckelodeon cartoons is usually down to the studio not being able to afford proper cartoon animation, or there being technological restrictions that limit the level of detail, which is hid in a stylised appearance.
To me, ToMI looks more like the bit of art I've linked above, and t hat's a good thing in my opinion.
It's just personal opinion, that's all it is, but that stylised look is usually put in place when something better can't be provided, and that's what it frequently looks like. Due to ToMI being able to do better than that (because they have a great stable of artists and the Wii doesn't have half the limitations of the PS2), that stylised art doesn't need to be present.
I hardly think the reason Punchout looks the way it does is because of a lack of talent!
I never said it should look as goofy as Psychonauts or Punchout, but I do miss the inspired character design. As I mentioned earlier, the chef in MI3 for example.
I posted a screen of Anno for Wii to show a half-realistic approach to characters, that would fit better with MI1 and 2. Remember that this is how the series started out:
What Telltale is doing is a spinoff of what happened to the art style in episode 3, and is probably more close to the kind of character design you say you despise than the first two games anyway.
I said I'd like to see how Double Fine would treat the franchise because they are really talented at making games in a similar artstyle to MI3. Take a look at Brütal Legend.
I've never played the ps2 ver of EoMI but I have read that that ver has more polygons
I would like to see screens comparsion of that and TMI
thats true i played emi on the ps2 and it did look a heck of a lot better than the pc version - like they just added 16xq anti aliasing and upped the resolution allot.
That's still stylised, but it's not the kind of stylised that's designed to hide a lack of detail, it looks a lot better to me than Psychonauts did.
You are completely insane.
A. Psychonauts strong visual style worked in its favour more than anything else. That piece of art you posted is completely lifeless by comparison. I might also add that it is in 2d, so saying it is 'stylized but not in a manner that hides a lack of detail' is completely absurd considering you have not seen that style rendered in 3d.
B. Psychonauts strong visual style brought the eternally charming Scott C's work into 3D and was completely faithful to it. I do not see why you should slate an original art style with such nonsensical claims. If you do not like it then fair enough, yet the "lack of detail" argument is utterly unfounded.
C. You would be hard pressed to find a game that has a visual style that is as strong as Psychonauts, especially in a world of super realism or anime-inspired trite. It imbued the game and characters with real life and vibrancy you shall simply not find elsewhere. Faulting Psychonauts's art direction seems completely irrational.
I trust you are going to slate Brütal Legend for precisely the same reasons as the same art team and animators with a lack of talent and eye for detail are behind it?
I posted a screen of Anno for Wii to show a half-realistic approach to characters, that would fit better with MI1 and 2.
You have to remember that not everyone wants to return to the quasi-realistic graphics of the original games. In fact I would say more people seem to want the cartoony versions of the 3rd one, which seems to be what Telltale is trying to do but in 3d.
PC version isn't constrained by the file size, and we haven't gone and done a lot of resolution optimization or polish yet, in either upres'd or downres'd, so the screenshots you're seeing are definitely in progress and not representative of what you'll be holding in your hands on release day (It'll look better ). I was concerned at first when we were just starting out, but at this point I'm pretty confident that we've got this, both on WiiWare and PC.
You have to remember that not everyone wants to return to the quasi-realistic graphics of the original games. In fact I would say more people seem to want the cartoony versions of the 3rd one, which seems to be what Telltale is trying to do but in 3d.
I also believe Gilbert disliked the realistic look of the first two also.
Comments
I would much rather have ToMI look like it does than Punch Out.
The game looks fine the way it is, which is hell of a lot better than MI4 and very good for a small company with a limited budget and short development times.
If you want another 2d style Monkey game your going to have to stick to fan games.
Also with regards to the bolded quoted line. You've seen what? A trailer and a couple of gameplay movies and screenshots from a build with a moth of dev time still to go, and you can say without doubt these are looking better than ToMI.
I wish people would actually wait for the finished thing before jumping to conclusions.
If you don't like the art style that's fine, but you can't say any of those games your using as an example are techinically better until you've actually played episode 1.
Where as most other current adventure game developers seem to plough most of their resources into visuals, to the detriment of almost every other aspect of the game, I think TT's strengths lie where it really matters.
I may be wrong, but I just dont think it's realistic to expect Hollywood production values in adventure games across the board like we used to. MI, DOTT etc were the Halo's and GoW's of their day. Times have changed, and right now, I think this is the best result for MI. Lucasarts would have been mad to go with anyone else. They're going out on a limb here, and TT are the most bankable proposition if they're a company hedging their bets.
And if ToMI does exceed expectations, then maybe more cash will be chucked at the next one.
I agree that TT is one of the most capable developers to take on this game, but I still wonder how it would have looked it Double Fine did it instead.
Like a platformer?
Don't be sorry for having an opinion, just make sure that your critique is based on actual gameplay from the finished game and not from some old build trailers and a different game series. Sa'll I'm saying.
As for the styles, I'm glad that ToMI looks like it does and not like Punchout or Psychonauts, the problem with Psychonauts and Punchout is something that I've mentioned elsethread: The people and locations look like they've been put through a dadaist filter, and the filter doesn't really understand how dada works, it just looks at the aesthetics and copies them.
In Psychonauts, I felt that it was trying very hard to look different, but in the end it just captured that Nickelodeon look that I'm not fond of. This person has his head juttng out an odd angle for no particular reason, this person has one eye ten times bigger than the other, this person has an impossible mouth, and so on.
I'd much rather see an art style that concentrates and focuses on quality than one that tries to hide the lack of quality in pure absurdity, which is something I feel the Punchout art above does. Take away the absurdity and it's actually very basic artwork, if they had better artists and animators, they wouldn't need to make it look so absurd to try and disguise that fact.
What baffles me is that people argue for that style, and I guess I'll never understand it, but I prefer seeing that a company has talented artists and animators that don't need to resort to that, rather than seeing that used as an excuse simply because they couldn't do a better job of it otherwise.
I'll also admit that limitations in technology come into this as well, that a better job couldn't be done because they didn't have enough polygons to throw around, and on platforms like the PS2 (which Psychonauts was also on) this is forgivable. But here's an example...
If you take away the stylised look, you have some very flat art with next to no detail in it.
Now I'd prefer it if Psychonauts looked like this piece of art.
That's still stylised, but it's not the kind of stylised that's designed to hide a lack of detail, it looks a lot better to me than Psychonauts did.
That stylised kind of art that we see in Psychonauts, CMI, and quite a few NIckelodeon cartoons is usually down to the studio not being able to afford proper cartoon animation, or there being technological restrictions that limit the level of detail, which is hid in a stylised appearance.
To me, ToMI looks more like the bit of art I've linked above, and t hat's a good thing in my opinion.
It's just personal opinion, that's all it is, but that stylised look is usually put in place when something better can't be provided, and that's what it frequently looks like. Due to ToMI being able to do better than that (because they have a great stable of artists and the Wii doesn't have half the limitations of the PS2), that stylised art doesn't need to be present.
The thing with PO for the wii console is that the wii is a bit stronger than a gamecube and the makers of the game (a small Canadian company) wanted to make the game look good by makin it cartoony. It was mentioned on a lot of reviews in how the stylized character designs helped the game compete with games on the 360 and ps3 despite the graphical limitations of the wii. If they didn't use cell shadin and any other filters, the game would probably look outdated as you mentioned.
Though Punchout has always been a sylized game
As someone else has already said, the TT characters that appeared in the game like the Captain looks bland. He kind of reminds me of the Mariachi aliens from season 2 of SnM 2, which imo is a bad thing
The bright side is that Guybrush and the voodoo lady have some awsome character designs that is different than the previous games.
That's my point though, right there.
Not so much about the size of a company, because Telltale have been creating games for ages without having to resort to ridiculous style-over-substance efforts.
But about the console, you're spot on. It's hard to do realism properly on a system like the PS2, that's why games that tried that look absolutely terrible today. Look at Grand Theft Auto and the likes.
I suppose DoubleFine figured they wanted to make a game that would last longer, so they worked within the constraints, how can you make a game that you couldn't really do a remake of where it would actually look better? You use a very basic stylised approach, so the only way to make it look better then would be to change the style.
That's why Psychonauts has aged well, but that's an illusion, because really once you look past the stylised approach, the art is very basic, there are a lot of rather flat and washed out visuals there, and a depressingly large gouraud shading presence (something that should've been left behind with the PSone). And once you acknowledge that, it doesn't really look that great, there's very little substance to the art.
That's something I don't think that ToMI suffers from at all, it tries to do something a little more realistic, thus avoiding the stylised look altogether and replacing that with actual details, and what they can't do with textures, they do with polygons instead, pushing around an amount that the PS2 couldn't even dream of.
Maybe if Telltale had existed back in the days of the PS2 and they ported games to the PS2, they might have tried that approach too, I don't know. But as technology progresses, what we find is that we really don't need that approach any more, and to rely on it these days is lazy more than anything else, because it almost completely removes the need for anything bar the most basic of details, in both modelling and textures.
With today's technology, even a small company can avoid that need to remain so basic that their only way to look half decent is to opt for a style-over-substance look. And I'm thankful they have, because the detail present in some of their shots is beautiful, and detail one wouldn't see in a stylised game. If you look at DoubleFine's latest game, it has a lot of detail to it, it still has a mild stylised look, but there's real substance to the art of Brutal Legend.
That, I think, says it all.
l know it was your point. I wasn't arguing with you, but adding a bit of what I have read to support your argument.
Yeah, the graphics are terrible in TMI. Guybrush looks terrible compared to his other incarnations. Right...uh huh...yeah... /sarcasm
Oh, right, this is the one that I am thinking of:
http://www.scummbar.com/resources/downloads/wallpapers/timeline128021082003150825.jpg
It is a trend for ppl to bash a yet to be released game, claimmin that the previous game(s) is better.
It got quite bad when ppl were complaining about Sam and Max when TT have just gotten the license.
Truth be told, l think Tales Guybrush looks waaaay betta than the other Guybrushes
The Boots, jacket, and pants from MI2
The cartoony style of the outfit from EMI
The nose and phony tail from EMI
The head from CMI
The pupils appear to be a mix of CMI and EMI
I also personally thing he'd look better with a smaller beard.
Other than that, the best yet. (although Im very fond of CMI)
Or dare I say... PORCELAIN!
I never said it should look as goofy as Psychonauts or Punchout, but I do miss the inspired character design. As I mentioned earlier, the chef in MI3 for example.
I posted a screen of Anno for Wii to show a half-realistic approach to characters, that would fit better with MI1 and 2. Remember that this is how the series started out:
What Telltale is doing is a spinoff of what happened to the art style in episode 3, and is probably more close to the kind of character design you say you despise than the first two games anyway.
I said I'd like to see how Double Fine would treat the franchise because they are really talented at making games in a similar artstyle to MI3. Take a look at Brütal Legend.
thats true i played emi on the ps2 and it did look a heck of a lot better than the pc version - like they just added 16xq anti aliasing and upped the resolution allot.
You are completely insane.
A. Psychonauts strong visual style worked in its favour more than anything else. That piece of art you posted is completely lifeless by comparison. I might also add that it is in 2d, so saying it is 'stylized but not in a manner that hides a lack of detail' is completely absurd considering you have not seen that style rendered in 3d.
B. Psychonauts strong visual style brought the eternally charming Scott C's work into 3D and was completely faithful to it. I do not see why you should slate an original art style with such nonsensical claims. If you do not like it then fair enough, yet the "lack of detail" argument is utterly unfounded.
C. You would be hard pressed to find a game that has a visual style that is as strong as Psychonauts, especially in a world of super realism or anime-inspired trite. It imbued the game and characters with real life and vibrancy you shall simply not find elsewhere. Faulting Psychonauts's art direction seems completely irrational.
I trust you are going to slate Brütal Legend for precisely the same reasons as the same art team and animators with a lack of talent and eye for detail are behind it?
You have to remember that not everyone wants to return to the quasi-realistic graphics of the original games. In fact I would say more people seem to want the cartoony versions of the 3rd one, which seems to be what Telltale is trying to do but in 3d.
I also believe Gilbert disliked the realistic look of the first two also.
[Source]
(Scroll to the bottom of the post.)