Two hours? I pray this is a mistake...
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2006/051206_e3_day2_chris_1.x
"Each two-hour episode will see Sam & Max solve a complete case, with an overarching storyline tying the episodes together and culminating in a season finale-like grand finish."
I mean come on, two hours? Are these episodes going to cost $5.00? I just don't understand this.
At least someone tell me they will have puzzles in them to stump players right? Its not going to be a cake-walk ala Bone is it? I'm royally confused as to why these episodes are going to be so short.
The original Sam 'n Max game was short too, but at least it stumped the player with puzzles and figuring out what to do. In fact some of the game could take days to figure out, it depended on the player. Will these episodes include such puzzles?
It almost seems to me that you want to sell an interactive (barely by the sounds of it) cartoon rather than a series of adventure games.
"Each two-hour episode will see Sam & Max solve a complete case, with an overarching storyline tying the episodes together and culminating in a season finale-like grand finish."
I mean come on, two hours? Are these episodes going to cost $5.00? I just don't understand this.
At least someone tell me they will have puzzles in them to stump players right? Its not going to be a cake-walk ala Bone is it? I'm royally confused as to why these episodes are going to be so short.
The original Sam 'n Max game was short too, but at least it stumped the player with puzzles and figuring out what to do. In fact some of the game could take days to figure out, it depended on the player. Will these episodes include such puzzles?
It almost seems to me that you want to sell an interactive (barely by the sounds of it) cartoon rather than a series of adventure games.
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Comments
Diduz (Italy)
So there's less play time but we wait less for the next one.
The flipside of this is: that also means less development time, a set schedule for Telltale to adhere to, and so the games will be RUSHED. Just look at any film licensed games that come out the same time as the film for an example as to how rushed they can be.
And also, this will totally destroy two of my favourite things about adventure games: solving tricky, difficult puzzles and exploring. How much of either can appear in a 2 hour long game? There wasn't much in The Great Cow Race, and that was 5 hours.
On the other hand, TV shows have been following this sort of schedule since the dawn of television.
I'm just after one thing: knowledge that the whole series will basically be completed before the first episode hits: that's what TV shows do. The final time between episodes should be pretty much for bug-testing and polishing only.
The combination of a good story, atmosphere, jokes AND the great feeling that the player achieves when he or she has managed to solve a really really hard puzzle.
The puzzles can't be easier than those in Curse of Monkey Island. If that's the case, I prefer replaying the good ol' Hit the Road.
Lots of items on the screens and in the background to click on and explore = a good thing.
A large array of humorous responses from Sam and Max as you click on those previously mentioned things = gold.
Lots of goofy dialogue options = rockin'.
My hope is that the Sam and Max episodes will retain these things. This stuff is what made the original Lucasarts adventure games what they are. Every time I played Sam and Max Hit the Road, I'd stumble across something new that I'd never seen before as I used every command action on everything on the screen. (Yes, I played that game a *lot.*)
If the episodes retain these characteristics, I don't really care how long they each are. Difficult puzzles generally add time to the game anyway, making them seem longer than they are...
Then how else are they going to get them done to a satisfactory standard? By now, after two Bone games, I would like to think they KNOW about how to make episodic adventure games.
And when I say "completed", I mean "everything in place". So if criticisms do arise, they can use the time between episodes just to correct those problems, rather than make the whole game.
If major criticisms at the heart of the game appear that requires a total restructuring of the game, then Telltale hasn't done their job properly or learned anything. Which I doubt will happen - I think they pretty much know what they're doing now:
Make them tricky, make them have plenty to do for replaying, make them have good exploration value, make the story engrossing, make the characters entertaining, make the voices right for those characters, and most importantly - make it laugh-out-loud funny.
Telltale - print that last paragraph out and hang it on your notice board. Follow it, and we'll be happy.
Bull's eye!
Diduz (Italy)
I agree with this 100% as well. This and that the games have to be difficult enough.
Actually, that's NOT what TV shows do. TV shows generally only have a month, maybe two months, worth of episodes completed when the season starts. The rest of the shows are filmed througout the rest of the season. Only mid-season replacements are sometimes complete before they air, due to their late start date. This actually allows for networks or producers to request changes if the show doesn't perform well right away. (Although usually the networks just cancel the show.)
Keep in mind, folks, we don't KNOW how difficult the game will be yet. Bone isn't Sam & Max, and there's no reason to assume it's going to be exactly the same. And if the first episode proves to be too easy, Telltale will probably see that people aren't happy and make adjustments to future episodes. Which is why the episodic approach might not be a bad thing.
We're just expressing our concern. I'm sure every single person on this board wishes the S&M games to be great and have faith at least until the first episode is released.
These posts simply mean that we care.
Oh yes, sorry, I forgot you guys are in America where 24-episode seasons are the norm.
awesome post. I'll also add..giving the use like 8 options.."talk/use/pick up/look etc etc" is what i'm really hoping for as well.. that just increases the possibilities of things you have to do.. thus makes it more difficult..but also means you spend more time in the sam and max universe.. if you're only option is to look at that cute picture of max as a kid on the wall..instead of attempting to look/pick up combine with somethin else.. then it limits the fun..and your immersion in the game...
You know whats funny....I still have an old manual around where Ken and Roberta Williams explain how television is outdated and they want computer entertainment to take over. They explain how much more involving, interactive and challenging games are much better than an episode of any TV show.
Ironically now we are sending games into the realm of TV and Movies through episodic easy games.
Its just interesting is all...
I'm always interested when people say they want lots of "verb" options, because to me the practical upshot seems to be that you spend a lot of time listening to "That doesn't seem to work," and "I don't want to pick that up," something I personally find enormously frustrating rather than fun. People who feel likewise don't seem to be very vocal, though, and I'm wondering whether there are others out there on our forums....
--Dave Grossman, cranky opinionated game designer
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JK (Sweden)
Getting the "this doesn't work" reply isn't always such a joy, but it's a necessary evil and doesn't ruin a game by any means. I guess there could be more than one, maybe four or why not even 10 different replies of "this doesn't work" which clearly deliver the message that doing what you just did doesn't lead to anything. If you can nail 10 different, funny lines there that get picked randomly, it wouldn't get nearly as repetitive.
While were at it, now that you're doing episodic games, why not try to include one or two new "unusable" -lines each episode? A small treat, easter egg if you will for everyone to check out every time they start a new case. This way by the time you reach the later episodes, you'll have a bunch of these at your disposal!
Just an idea.
EDIT:
I just realised an important point on the topic. I honestly think that when you have a lot of options at your disposal, it greatly increases the feeling of achievement once you figure out what to do and advance a bit further. Yes, it can be irritating at times, but so are strategy games where you have to load a few turns back when you are getting your behind whooped by the AI. It doesn't mean that it's a bad thing - it's called challenge and makes you feel that much better once you actually finish the game! There doesn't have to be dozens of different commands, but there has to be some.
Since you have the hint system in place, one of the early hints could be what command you need to use next to advance. If there are people that actually despise multiple commands, they could check out the next one from there.
I enjoyed the progressive streamlining of the interface in the LucasArts range. The Hit the Road interface and the CMI "coin" were the pinnacle, I thought. Also Love that right-click to open-door, right-click again to walk through it thing rather than having to manually choose to open door with one command and walk to door in the other.
I like the Bone style context sensitive cursor, but it would be nice to have the option to disable the automated function and have to manually cycle through the options (is that what you ha to do in Hit The Road - it's been a while), which probably isn't a huge amount of coding to implement.
While we're talking about the interface, one thing that would be really good to implement in the TTG range is double click on an exit point for fast exit rather than having to walk to a door / path to be able to go through it.
The problem I have with context sensitive only cursors is the way all contol and difficulty is basically stripped away. They become hunt the pixel for the highlighting cursor unless done extremely well.
However that aside - will these episodes actually require more than just progression? Will I have to solve puzzles and think to get by rather than just easily click my way through?
I think it's already been said that these games will target a different audience to Bone and be more challenging. I also find it rather ridiculous to imply that the Bone games have no puzzles, even if they were intentional designed to be easily solved.
listening to a few phrases a lot is a small price to pay in my opinion... If I have 20 options to solve something..and I finally figure it out..its a more rewarding experience..than only having a few options..or simply moving your cursor over something.. One of my biggest problems with games these days is they never make you stop and think..and have to figure something out.. Having a few options like in hit the road definitely adds to the gaming IMHO
There should be thousands of object. When looking at them, you should get a funny line, even though they don't have anyting to do with the story. However, when trying to pick them up, you'll get a "I can't pick up that", or "No, Max could never handle it" or whatever.
Seriously, those details would enhance the gameplay so much that they would create the difference between a buy-game and a no-buy-game.
EDIT: I fully agree with THETINGLER, we wrote our posts at the same time.
I think that the episodic way strips entirely the exploring off, which frightens me, now think it like this:
You get first episode, and it has few places to go on the map... now if you can play second episode without first episode that actually means that there can't be map or similiar so you can't go to back to places which occurs in the first episode (if it's not exclusively included in the episode)...
Now lets generalize the idea: (12 episodes, took that info out of my black hat)
It actually means, what I understood, that the whole game is built on 12 different mini games, not good! And you can't visit and do something on the places you have been in episodes before. Making the world way smaller, and exploring of it is left off entirely perhaps.
You can think it this way too: Take Sam & Max 1, take all the places you can visit, separate each place as episode, and once you have finished that episode you can't go back to that place, if it's not included in the following episode. So it makes the game world way smaller. I don't like the idea at all! As i understood this "own" game concept that once you have played the episode then there is nothing to do! You can't go and explore the places you have gathered already since there are no map or similar that sums up the places you have visited and allows you to visit them again.
You can't have situation that you go back to Snuckey's doing something that you haven't done before, since it is not anymore part of the episode! You'll have to wait for next episode to play it further.
Add: Also the puzzles becomes more centralized to places that only occurs in the episode you are at the moment. Reason for this is simple, since the each episode is not built on the episodes before so you can't have puzzle where you find things in the one place and more from another. Certainly you can imitate that method but those are just ugly-hacks. (Like making episodes one mandatory that you pick that small piece of wood from ground)
I opened thread about gameplay affects of episodic content, and one of the devs said that it is multiple games and not one, which eventually lead me to do the conclusion above.
This would be unfortunate yes. There would be a really easy way to go around this though without diminishing the value of earlier episodes, which would happen if you were capable of doing everything you could do in Episode 1 in Episode 2 as well.
Here's the idea:
If there's say a supermarket as a location in one episode, you could go there in later episodes (without there being *any* reason for you to go there plot-wise), but it would be closed or something similar. Since Telltale would already have all the material for that said location, all they would need to do was to add a 'closed' sign on the door and a couple of comments from Sam & Max - ie. "Oh man, and I was itching for a round of whack-a-mole!"
Maybe once in a while a location could be destroyed by aliens or bulldozed or whatnot. There's zillions of possibilities!
I'm sure the size of the game wouldn't dramatically increase with these additions. Hell, you could have a vanilla version of the episodes where these sorts of bonus locations would be absent.
It's these sorts of small treats, as well as the multiple verbs that will give your games the 90 ratings from the press, I'm sure!
Yes but disabling the possibility to go places that were in the earlier episodes means that you can't have puzzle that spreads to the whole gaming area.
It could have been easily done with the possibility that each episode just expands the episodes before. Now let's say that in episode 8 you have puzzle that makes you to go hunt stuff from the most of the places before, that ain't just possible anymore! Making it feel like actually mini-games
Add: I'll explain a bit more, you have puzzle in 10th episode that spreads along the places you have been before, that means that 10th episode has to include places from 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10 making it like stupidest thing ever to include content that, more than not, is on every player already. So creating episodic content work like as expands is more likely the way it should have been done.
I disagree here. Jake from Telltale said that if certain locations that have been present in earlier episodes tie in to the current episode, they will be re-visitable. The duo's office was given as an example. Nothing is preventing them from reusing previous locations with new puzzles in them - they have confirmed that this is a possibility. What I'm implying is that even the locations where there wouldn't be any puzzles in were visitable in later episodes, but as simple 'bonus' locations. I won't go further into that as I already posted about it above.
The fact is, you can start playing Sam & Max at any point in the series' run - you don't need to buy episode 1 first, then episode 2, etc. What that also means is that people who start with, say, episode 3, won't have the locations from episodes 1 and 2 on their hard drive because they didn't buy or download them.
While the idea of the game constantly building upon itself by "plugging in" new locations and events on the timeline as we release new episodes is an appealing one, as far as I know that's not what's going on with this game.
We like the idea that with separate episodes people can jump into the series any time and catch up from there, plus keeping the episodes separate is going to help us in getting the basics done quicker (which means we'll have more time to spend adding all the good little details and one-off moments that make Sam & Max great).
Now, ignoring general theory for the moment, let me ask a hypothetical question. Suppose we were talking specifically about a smallish, downloadable episodic-type game instead of something the size of Hit the Road. And suppose that, due to constraints of time, budget, and download size, there was a distinct limit to the number of dialog lines which could be written and recorded. Would it be worth having more choice of actions like pick-up/use/look-at if it meant that the scope of the overall game had to be smaller as a result?
I'm interested in opinions on this point.
--Dave again
I know I like to have additional hotspots that don't necessarily have anything to do with finishing the game. But every item on screen doesn't HAVE to have some kind of hilarious comment for each action. Especially if it means that an episode would be reduced to only having 3 or 4 screens/locations. I'm exaggerating, of course. But maybe not.
I like that the games are episodic with a quick turnaround, so you can try something new and make a wrong choice (if that's what they turn out to be) and either make fixes or do something different next time.
Gosh. That's hard, you know?
I suppose you should aim at a balance between scope and choice of actions. But I'm not helping. Hmmm...let me see..
Okay, I'll go with a practical exemple: I've liked the balance I saw in The Great Cow Race, SO...if a S&M episode will be shorter that that, I'd like an amount of gratuitous interactions slightly more consistent than the one I enjoyed in TGCR. But then again, I think the continuous interaction between Sam and Max will naturally lead to increasing this kind of banter.
Dom (Italy)
Now what? More actions? How can one assume more actions against smaller game? First of all, I'm having hard time to think about which actions is missing. You can do almost anything with those, like use person to person means talk. Use object to ground means drop (which usually is useless anyway). Use Max to water and to electric fusebox means fun.
So how can one compare false to smaller world.
But in general, do you mean what are you ready to create which leads to smaller game? Better plot.. don't know yet.