Does TTG Still Have Adventure Game Fans?
Hello.
Haven't been here in ages, but it seems like a lot has changed in four or five years. I became a TTG fan when I heard a new Monkey Island was being made. The community was great, we endured the long wait between episodes, and I relished in all the fun, entertaining moments of an adventure game genre I thought was dead. It wasn't perfect, but at least it was developing again. I bought more of their games and enjoyed them all. Last one I bought was Back to the Future, which it seems was really TTG's last adventure game (in the traditional sense of exploration, inventory, etc.) I kind of lost interest when I saw the gameplay of Jurassic Park (with all those quick time events). It seems every game that's followed seems to have the same mechanic. As I watch games like The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, and so on, I do appreciate the attention to story and atmosphere, but the gameplay is very underwhelming. I understand it appeals to broader audiences, but is popularity and money so important? What happened to the original LucasArts developers who founded the company? Do they even have an interest in the genre any more? What about their fans from the early days? Are any of them still here? Are you content with the simple gameplay mechanics? What keeps you coming back here?
Is there any sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, a tiny fraction of all that money their raking in could be invested into developing a real adventure game? Just curious. Feel free to crush my dreams below...
Comments
Many of the people who developed the "adventure" games are now gone, off to ofter companies. While there might be something developed someday in the future, it's pretty clear what Telltale's main direction is.
So why am I still here? I often ask myself the same question.
I think it's because it's fun to see when someone new discovers the older games and is blown away by them. We also still have some good people around here who post and keep us informed of other adventure-related news.
And maybe someday they'll actually release that Sam & Max Season 3 soundtrack....
I am definitely a fan of Telltale's older games, although I never participated in the community much. Sam and Max: Episode 104 introduced me to Telltale around 2007/2008 or so!
Some other old fans are still around, but most ventured off to the Double Fine forums last year when the new site launched.
Most went to Double Fine last year after the site update.
What companies did they go to?
indiehipster inc
I feel Back To The Future and Jurassic Park is where the line of where new fans and old fans are. I had never heard of TellTale until Jurassic Park, which, despite it's quirky gameplay, I thoroughly enjoyed for it's story value, which is basically TellTale's new trademark. Back To The Future on the other hand was much more of an adventure game, and still had the great story like JP, TWD, TWAU, and so far TFTB and hopefully GOT. BTTF and JP were released the same year, 2011, before TWD. I feel the people who enjoyed story more stuck to JP, while traditional adventure players stuck to BTTF. And as new games came, the games, in term of gameplay and story, suck to Jurassic Park in terms of the existence of quick time events, but not to the extreme level of Jurassic Park, losing Back To The Future's adventure aspect.
I personally think all the TellTale Games have I played are some of the best games I've played.
To sum up my post:
-Games before BTTF=adventure, good story
-Games after JP=not as much as adventure, better stories.
I adore adventure games but nothing really good has come out not by Telltale besides Kentucky Route Zero (Still only on Act 3) and Broken Age which still only has ONE act. I've heard good things about dreamfall chapters but I'm waiting to try out the other games in the series.
I've been playing Telltale's games for a while now, and have played most of their big titles. It took me some time to venture into the forums, and I don't post often. For what little it's worth, I enjoy both Telltale's older and newer styles of games (but not Jurassic Park).
Even when you look at Telltale's older, more classic adventure games, they were pretty easy compared to the old Lucasarts titles. I feel like Telltale's always been more interested in telling a good story than making mind-bending puzzles. Their new style seems to be a natural progression of that and it's working for them. It does make me sad that we'll probably never see another Sam & Max season. Telltale is a business, and they've discovered that they'll make more money from games like The Walking Dead than games like Sam & Max. It's hard to fault them for that, though I do wish there was some middle ground they could find. I console myself with Daedalic, who seem intent on continuing to make old-school, high quality adventure games.
As I've said before, I think that Telltale could easily take their newer gameplay template and make two modes; a "cinematic" mode that focuses solely on story and QTEs/dialogue (aka their current style), and an "immersion" mode that contains puzzles and/or gameplay relevant to the source material as well as more hubs that allow you to talk to the characters.
A Sam & Max game could work pretty well with what Telltale is doing at the moment. I mean look at how well Tales from the borderlands is doing so far.
As much as others like to criticize Telltale for simplifying the inventory item system to only allow items to be used on certain areas, I think it could actually be a good modern touch on adventure gaming if Telltale still had puzzles in their titles.
It would still allow for puzzles to be fun as players would still have to figure out where in the environment to use an item, but it eliminates the time wasted trying to use a random item on every area in an environment.
Well Telltale said in an interview that there will be "puzzles" in Game of Thrones so maybe they might do just that.
I think they said the same with Walking Dead: Season 2, but I'm still optimistic. I read that same interview!
Jennifer can probably list them all off the top of her head, but I'm not quite as good.
I know that Dave Grossman just joined Reactive Studios, because that's recent news, and Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman started their own company, Campo Santo Games. If there's anyone in particular you're looking for, search for their name.
I was introduced to TellTale when I was 8 years old.
I was a big fan of Homestar Runner, and I'd watch it every week, and then SBCG4AP got announced on the website and it took me a while to believe it was real, and not just a another joke.
I just think that making a Sam and Max game that isn't heavily puzzle based would be an insult to its fanbase. Puzzle solving is so heavily tied to the series' identity. I just can't imagine playing a Sam and Max game without trying out ridiculous item combinations and such.
I haven't played Tales yet, so I'm going off what I read. I know that Borderlands is tied to shooting and they made Tales work in spite of that, but Tales isn't really part of the main series and doesn't feature vault hunters as main characters. It's more of a spinoff. Maybe I'm a purist, but I would be upset if we got a game with Sam and Max as its main characters that wasn't true to the series' gameplay. I felt the same when Rare decided to make the Nuts and Bolts game featuring Banjo and Kazooie. I heard it was a decent game, but I refused to play it because they changed the gameplay so heavily. I would be okay if Telltale married their two styles somehow, but they seem to be happy with the status quo.
I read in an interview that appealing to existing fans of their licensed property is important to Telltale, so I would hope they agree with me. I don't have any evidence, but I suspect they dropped their King's Quest project because they couldn't make it work while appealing to its fans.
I agree, but I don't see any indication that Telltale is interested in doing anything of the sort. From what I've read, they think that puzzles get in the way of the narrative. Also, I imagine that adding puzzles and interactable areas adds to development time, and they seem to already have a problem getting content out in a timely manner.
If you look at my profile, you'll see that I've been mostly lurking but occasionally posting on these forums since January 2005, one month before Telltale Texas Hold'em was released. I remember Brendon Q. Ferguson's blogs about The Blades of Stenchtar and the Mysterious Blue Line in Telltale's office. I've actually been following Telltale since before there was a Telltale. When it was announced that the team who worked on the cancelled Sam and Max: Freelance Police game would be leaving LucasArts to form their own company, I was extremely excited. For the first couple of years, Telltale was in my mind of the last bastion of hope for the adventure genre, and they were constantly announcing the BEST THING EVER. New Sam and Max! New Monkey Island! A Strong Bad adventure game?!
I watched as Telltale's games (d)evolved from very traditional adventure games to really easy adventure games to the bizarre but enjoyable mess that was Jurassic Park. I stuck with them, because the wit and humor and characters and storytelling were consistently amazing, whatever mechanical failings a particular game might have had. They were a company constantly struggling with how to make adventure games satisfying to hardcore fans while still accessible to newcomers, and that has always been a huge source of tension among their fans. And it also resulted in this weird gradual shift in the impression the general public and non-adventure game fans have of the genre. Thanks to Telltale, in the minds of detractors, adventure games had gone from "those stupid, impossibly hard games where you have to read the designer's mind" to "those stupid, ridiculously easy games where you just have to click on things." And that kind of saddened me a bit. They had reached a point where they were stripping away everything that mechanically made an adventure game an adventure game, but they weren't replacing those mechanics with anything. This trend culminated with Jurassic Park, which adventure game fans hated for not being an adventure game, and the general public hated for not being anything else. Which is a shame, because the story's awesome, and if they had just settled on a medium for telling that story, I think it would have resonated a lot more with people.
But then, finally, with The Walking Dead, Telltale decided to replace the puzzle-solving with a new mechanic -- timed choices -- and in the process began to pioneer a brand new genre. Fortunately for them, this new type of adventure game really clicked with the general public. And it clicked with me too. The choice mechanics are intriguing, and they work, and they make for an awesome experience. I'd still love to see more traditional adventure game stuff from Telltale, though. Tales from the Borderlands is awesome as it is, but it seems like its world would be ripe for wacky inventory puzzles, and it's a shame Telltale isn't exploring it from that angle.
Sadly, I think it is pretty telling that Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick are running a kickstarter for an old school adventure game Lucasarts style and there is not one single mention of it in the boards.
There is now! It met its funding goal pretty quickly, by the way.
Luckily yes, and it put me in the mood to replay Maniac Mansion and Zak again.
Campo Santo looks pretty interesting...
Reactive Studios seems... weirdly interesting? Searching it led me to an IGN article with this quote from Grossman:
“In recent years we started doing a new thing at Telltale, where the experience felt more like a directed narrative. Before that they were structured, more like traditional games with puzzles and walking around and talking to different characters. We shifted to something where the pacing was taken away from the player, and the narrative was much more directed. This was more like asking the player to role-play a character than, say, solve a problem.”
I don't know if I totally agree with him; I think you're "role-playing" either way, but I understand what he's talking about. The audio-focused interactive experience Reactive Studios is pushing for reminds me of the old "You Don't Know Jack" games by Jellyvision (which I found very fun back in the day).
Hmm, that IGN interview sounds interesting. I'll have to search for it.
Never heard of Kentucky Route Zero. Looks unique. Even though it has lots of reading, I probably wouldn't mind it. Broken Age's puzzles were far too simple for me, but I found the story to be quite entertaining. The best part of Broken Age for me is the documentary. I've enjoyed every episode so far.
Wow, that is sad indeed. Looks like I should be paying more attention to Kickstarter for my old-fashioned adventure games.
Eh, I don't think I'd say they "pioneered a brand new genre." I'd say they "re-invented" the genre that Cinematronics pioneered in 1983 with Dragon's Lair (which you can buy it on Steam.) This genre is known as an "interactive movie." It's simply a story that heavily relies on quick time events to win. Now, if you wanted to say that they've improved upon that original model, then I could agree with you, but to say they're "pioneers" is a bit much. I'm glad so many people enjoy these games; they're just not the same puzzle-game that I love.
Thanks for answering my question, by the way.
The article he's referring to is:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/11/18/dave-grossman-joins-reactive-studios-as-chief-creative-officer
It is a pretty interesting article, especially if you're interested in what Reactive Studios is doing with their audio adventures. It sounds like a fun place to work.
I had already found it shortly after my post, but thanks for sharing though! I agree, it does sound pretty interesting.
Speaking of adventures games, Double Fine just announced that a Day of the Tentacle - Special Edition is coming for PS4, PSVita and PC!
(Grim Fandango Remastered is coming out near the end of January 2015)
NEW KING'S QUEST TRAILER!
King's Quest Game Awards 2014 Reveal Trailer
Fall 2015? Oh, fine, I'll be patient.
Heh, I do have a strange way of absorbing non-vital information.
You got most of the ones who have moved on to adventure-style games. Harrison Pink just joined 2K games, but that's likely not going to be in an adventure related fashion.
On top of Reactive, Dave Grossman is also co-designing the kickstarted Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler, a Monkey Island inspired point and click adventure game by Bill Tiller (who was the lead artist on The Curse of Monkey Island), Gene Mocsy and Jeremiah Grant (who worked on Tiller's adventures at Autumn Moon).
Chuck Jordan left Telltale a while back, but he still freelances for them from time to time. He mentioned that he wants to make a game idea of his own that I hope he manages to get out, as I have always liked the games that Chuck has worked on.
If you want to go way back, Deidra Kiai (who was an intern at Telltale for a while) makes some really interesting experimental adventures under her internet nickname Squinky. Most of them are free, and are worth checking out (Chivalry is NOT Dead, in particular, is quite fun as there are at least a dozen different ways to complete the game). Also, at least check out the demo of Dominique Pamplemousse. It's a commercial game, but it's really unique in that it's a game that is performed in song throughout the entire game. It's like a long version of the Monkey Island pirate song, and just as wacky. The musical style may not be for everyone, but it's really impressive (it has some iMuse style smooth transitions between the songs, like the classic LucasArts titles and Telltale Games from Wallace & Gromit onwards).
Why am I coming back here once in a while? Well, it's mostly because I hope they'll at least do something that interests me but frankly I think Telltale jumped the shark when they started developing games based on other video games.
So you didn't like Tales From Monkey Island?
That's pretty neat looking actually. Adventuring and platforming can work well together. I really liked The Cave. With a multiple inventory system, it would have been a near perfect adventure in my opinion.
It's got me even more excited for it due to the fact that The Odd Gentlemen had a meeting with Roberta and Ken Williams, and Roberta said that their game design was aligned with where she saw the series heading. This really has the potential to be a great followup to Mask of Eternity.
Gasp
A veteran!