Special Edition looks way better

99X99X
edited August 2009 in Tales of Monkey Island
Now I get that it's 2 different styles 2.5D and 3D - but the special edition that's coming from lucasarts looks so much better then the flat color 3D look of the new episodes.

Why do game companies think 3D makes the games better? I would much rather play this type of game in 2D - with the awesome painted backgrounds. It's like playing a cartoon. I hope that the special edition sells through the roof so that more developers will use that design style and make more adventure games.

to telltale: if you're going to do a 3D version of adventure games, at least spend a lot of time making the backgrounds really detailed. I like the storyboard/concept art better then real thing.
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Comments

  • edited June 2009
    Better? Please.

    fckhead.jpg
  • edited June 2009
    One of the main reason companies go down the 3D route is time and cost. It's much quicker basically and gone are the days of having budgets like the early Lucasarts games.

    TTG, correct me if Im wrong.
  • edited June 2009
    Actually, it's not so much that it's better, it's just that making the sprites for each action can be a tedious and expensive job. It's simply cheaper to develop the game in 3D, especially for a not-so-big company like Telltale Games. Sure, it's a big company now, but not big in its budget and / or employment size in comparison to companies like Capcom and other.

    EDIT: Arrr, ya beat me to it, lad!
  • edited June 2009
    it's sad though. money shouldn't be an issue.
  • edited June 2009
    Support This game Through the roof! do the Same with special Edition!

    And Lucas Arts/talltales will give us a new 2D Monkey island game!
  • edited June 2009
    it's sad though. money shouldn't be an issue.


    Haha, they are a business.. they've chosen to make games in a genre which is not even slightly as profitable as it was when the original games come out.

    You dont except them to make the game at a loss, just out of love?

    Would you work for free making it?
  • edited June 2009
    I'm not saying they should go with a loss. did you even read what I wrote? I said it's sad that money is an issue.

    also - yes I would work for free.
  • edited June 2009
    99X wrote: »
    Now I get that it's 2 different styles 2.5D and 3D - but the special edition that's coming from lucasarts looks so much better then the flat color 3D look of the new episodes.

    Why do game companies think 3D makes the games better? I would much rather play this type of game in 2D - with the awesome painted backgrounds. It's like playing a cartoon. I hope that the special edition sells through the roof so that more developers will use that design style and make more adventure games.

    to telltale: if you're going to do a 3D version of adventure games, at least spend a lot of time making the backgrounds really detailed. I like the storyboard/concept art better then real thing.

    Actually now that I have seen the first gameplay videos on gamespot I must say the 3d version looks way better and the additional dynamic added by the 3d engine (it scrolls and zooms like in a real movie) really adds to it!
    If you want to spoil yourself then check out the videos!
    I am not sure what it is about the 2d version, maybe the crude animation but it feels somewhat cheapish!
  • edited June 2009
    I'm not saying they should go with a loss. did you even read what I wrote? I said it's sad that money is an issue.

    also - yes I would work for free.


    Yes I did read it, sorry if I came accross as malevolent. I guess its sad then that money is an issue for society.

    Also, thought you might say that. You'd work full-time for no salary to make a game that you couldn't even really play becasue you already knew all the puzzles and dialog?
  • edited June 2009
    The Special Edition characters look fine in stills, but the animation seems wooden. TOMI looks much more natural in motion.

    Not to say I'm not drooling over the SE for the gorgeous backgrounds and full voice, of course.
  • edited June 2009
    Also, thought you might say that. You'd work full-time for no salary to make a game that you couldn't even really play becasue you already knew all the puzzles and dialog?

    without a doubt. naturally I'd need food and shelter. but apart from that...
  • edited June 2009
    Haha fair enough. I actually started making my own Monkey Island game in flash a few years ago, until I realised Id have no fun playing it!

    What I found interested though is that its taken Lucasarts 9 months to do SMI:SE, and thats just building it on top of an existing game!
  • edited June 2009
    without a doubt. naturally I'd need food and shelter. but apart from that...

    Just a quick question, but how would you pay for these things if you weren't getting paid?
  • edited June 2009
    There are jobs that don't pay, but provide food and shelter :p
    I guess that's a form of payment, but it's really just so you can stay there to work.
  • edited June 2009
    Armakuni wrote: »
    There are jobs that don't pay, but provide food and shelter :p
    I guess that's a form of payment, but it's really just so you can stay there to work.

    And WHO pays for your food and shelter if everyone is working for free on a game that won't make any money? :rolleyes:
  • edited June 2009
    Just a quick question, but how would you pay for these things if you weren't getting paid?

    first of all, I'm sure people would give me foot and shelter if I needed it. it's a philosophy called mutual aid.

    also I think you are missing anyone's point by some miles now. purposely perhaps, but still.
  • edited June 2009
    Donations and part time jobs could be a possible solution. Maybe find some sponsors and put some ads in there.

    There is VERY cheap food out there if you look around a bit, and maybe someone on the team has rich relatives that could let them stay in a building they own.

    I can think of many ways :p
  • edited June 2009
    Am I the only one who likes 3D better?
    I really loved MI4, more than I loved MI3 :o
  • edited June 2009
    No offense, but SoMI looks way better than SoMI: Special Edition, thank god they let you switch between the two on the fly, as those new character designs look like crap.

    ToMI looks great though.
  • edited June 2009
    first of all, I'm sure people would give me foot and shelter if I needed it. it's a philosophy called mutual aid.

    What are you, 12?
  • edited June 2009
    first of all, I'm sure people would give me foot and shelter if I needed it. it's a philosophy called mutual aid.

    With that philosophy I'm sure there's no homeless or people starving....

    oh wait.
  • edited June 2009
    What are you, 12?

    oh look, a troll.

    With that philosophy I'm sure there's no homeless or people starving....

    oh wait.

    not in my country at least. if your country hasn't embraced that philosophy, that's really sad.
  • edited June 2009
    not in my country at least. if your country hasn't embraced that philosophy, that's really sad.

    Seriously, which country (as much as it sounds, this isn't a troll attempt, I'm really curious)?
  • edited June 2009
    Anyway, what does all that have to do with which game looks better.
  • edited June 2009
    Seriously, which country (as much as it sounds, this isn't a troll attempt, I'm really curious)?

    Norway
  • edited June 2009
    Forget Norway! It's all about Kenya!

    10 points to whoever gets the reference.



    ....oh and no offense to Norway btw.
  • edited June 2009
    Forget Norway! It's all about Kenya!

    10 points to whoever gets the reference.



    ....oh and no offense to Norway btw.

    Haha, there's no lions in Norway!

    Also, here's ToMI gameplay footage

    http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/talesofmonkeyisland/videos.html?mode=all

    It looks a lot better than the static images portray.
  • edited June 2009
    I can't watch gamestop vids. their player doesn't work here =/
    it works in Windows XP though so I guess I'll boot into that and try it later.


    edit: game*spot*. ever since gamestop opened up in my town I'm always mixing the names.
  • edited June 2009
    I'm sorry but I have to agree with the dissenters, as a fan of art in general, cartoons, comic books, and book art (both inside and cover), I have to say that the Secret of Monkey Island remake looks very rushed.

    If you look over a lot of the scenes, they've used a trick that low budget cartoons use: They've brushed over the scenes with vibrant, painted colours to try to avoid the obvious lack of detail present. To me, I find it's the reverse, TMI has quite a lot of detail and the remake looks flat, that's if we're talking about the detail present. I admit that part of the detail might be in the animation of TMI, but it's there. For those who haven't, watch the TMI trailer, it makes all the difference.

    I'm going to buy the remake, I'll just be turning the new graphics off, so I can enjoy the old game with the voiceovers, as I have longed for a version of Monkey Island with voiceovers, and I'd pay for that. I hope they do it with Lechuck's Revenge, too. Anyway, back to the topic...

    Take a look at both the trailers for SoMI and TMI, TMI has beautiful animation, it looks like a really well done cartoon, whereas the SoMI remake has used every trick in the book to lower costs, look at how the characters glide when they walk (it looks like they're moving on an escalator or perfectly flat surface, and the surface is doing part of the movement for them), this is another cheap trick used to cut corners with animation, and it looks very unnatural.

    Plus, there's my personal objection to SoMI in that I find the CMI turban-kid and anything based on him creepy, I'm not sure why but he looks a bit... well, if you met someone like that at night you'd do all you could to avoid them. That blank, inset, beady-eyed stare, the disturbing and impossibly large hair, that it looks like he's fasting and hasn't had a good meal in years, and despite all this he looks more cleanly than any other pirate out there. He comes over as a metrosexual zombie. What did Lechuck do to you, Guybrush? You were quite the handsome bloke, once upon a time. Is that the Curse of Monkey Island? I think it is, and now it's even infecting his past!

    (I linked to the meaning of metrosexual there just so there can be no confusion as to what I mean.)

    This is why I'm thankful (so thankful) that they decided to go with a completely different look for Guybrush, and one that I can tell is rather obviously based off the MI 2 Guybrush, so once again Guybrush looks rather neat and not at all creepy. Thank you, Telltale. Thank you.

    Edit: To those whom as yet hadn't noticed the zombie-like appearance of the new LucasArts Guybrush, I apologise. But now that you've seen it, you can't unsee it!! Which is precisely the problem I have.
  • edited June 2009
    oh look, a troll.

    :rolleyes:
  • edited June 2009
    To whom do you aim that quote, WailingFungus?

    What I said wasn't a troll but merely a heartfelt opinion on a series that I love. Am I not allowed to feel indignant about an envisioning of the series that I didn't enjoy? Is an unpopular opinion a troll these days? (And I'd even point out that I thanked Telltale for their efforts, and on their own forums. That hardly seems like a thing that a troll would do.)

    If you weren't aiming that at me, I apologise, but if you were... eesh, it seems like people who call troll are doing as good of a job at trolling as the supposed trolls, these days.
  • edited June 2009
    Haha fair enough. I actually started making my own Monkey Island game in flash a few years ago, until I realised Id have no fun playing it!

    What I found interested though is that its taken Lucasarts 9 months to do SMI:SE, and thats just building it on top of an existing game!

    I assume Lucasarts did not donate to many resources onto the project, besides that the old engine probably was/is pure assembly code. Good question what they took as base. I assume they did not take the old Scumm interpreter but they probably might have opted from ScummVM and enhanced from there (good question probably never answered).

    It still is a load of work to upgrade the engine and the game arts to the level they have achieved, but it is clearly visible that they significantly cut down on the animation level down to the bear minimum needed. Well getting in a lot of animation is costly, and the old game also had a bare minimum of animation so it might have made sense!

    That is one of the reasons why everyone moved to 3d, all the animation is done way cheaper in 3d due to motion tracking and you dont need a different model for every frame you do!
  • edited June 2009
    Take a look at both the trailers for SoMI and TMI, TMI has beautiful animation, it looks like a really well done cartoon, whereas the SoMI remake has used every trick in the book to lower costs, look at how the characters glide when they walk (it looks like they're moving on an escalator or perfectly flat surface, and the surface is doing part of the movement for them), this is another cheap trick used to cut corners with animation, and it looks very unnatural.

    Thats most likely because the special edition version is built on top of the SCUMM version. What you're seeing is a smoothed over version of the original Guybrush walk animation, with a HD model in place of the original sprite. I doubt there's any other way to get the seamless transition between the old and new otherwise.
  • edited June 2009
    What baffles me about the stylization in this special edition is that it is YET ANOTHER redesign of Guybrush. Why don't Lucasarts just stick with the style they developed for Curse or Escape? Preferably Curse. And what's with the hair? :confused:
  • edited June 2009
    To whom do you aim that quote, WailingFungus?

    What I said wasn't a troll but merely a heartfelt opinion on a series that I love. Am I not allowed to feel indignant about an envisioning of the series that I didn't enjoy? Is an unpopular opinion a troll these days? (And I'd even point out that I thanked Telltale for their efforts, and on their own forums. That hardly seems like a thing that a troll would do.)

    If you weren't aiming that at me, I apologise, but if you were... eesh, it seems like people who call troll are doing as good of a job at trolling as the supposed trolls, these days.

    You don't seem like a troll to me, the person I quoted does though.

    Sorry about the confusion, I actually kinda agree with you opinion. Didn't notice the zombieness of Guybrush though.
  • edited June 2009
    Forget Norway! It's all about Kenya!

    10 points to whoever gets the reference.
    This. :D

    np: Sin Fang Bous - Melt Down The Knives (Clangour)
  • edited June 2009
    Something about the hair...

    1990sguybrush.png

    There we go! Now THAT'S a 1990 look!
  • edited June 2009
    Why don't Lucasarts just stick with the style they developed for Curse or Escape? Preferably Curse. :confused:

    Curse was the worst designed Guybrush, imo... overly lanky and goofy looking. I'm glad they're staying away from that.
  • edited June 2009
    I agree about the hair they needed to tone it down a little... and it looks like a bowl cut from the side.... He looks sort of like Gareth from the Office UK
  • edited June 2009
    haha I wouldn't go *that' far Irishmile. but the hair does look funny though.
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