Q&A With the Team

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Comments

  • edited July 2009
    ugh control schemes. It really ruined EFMI for me but the new cursor system shown in the latest trailer looks to do the job.

    I'm off work for a few weeks so I'll have to find out exactly when this launches for me here in Australia and be on the release!

    I wonder if any puzzle solving elements in TMI will intertwine similar to the map pieces in MI 2, or if it'll be more step-by-step and scene-by-scene progression like the new Sam & Max (or the first chapter I played of it anyway).
  • edited July 2009
    PorkLord wrote: »
    ugh control schemes. It really ruined EFMI for me but the new cursor system shown in the latest trailer looks to do the job.

    I'm off work for a few weeks so I'll have to find out exactly when this launches for me here in Australia and be on the release!

    I wonder if any puzzle solving elements in TMI will intertwine similar to the map pieces in MI 2, or if it'll be more step-by-step and scene-by-scene progression like the new Sam & Max (or the first chapter I played of it anyway).

    I think this launches the same time over there in Australia as it does here in England as it does across the pond in the Untied States (A cravat is not necessary over there BAD PUN) - sometime in the morning on the 7th of July their time. You'll get an email when it does come out.
    Don't know about the way the puzzles will work.
    Also, yeah for time off work etc.! I just last week got off from University until October! (but now got to wait for results sometime this month - urgh)
  • edited July 2009
    Slanzinger wrote: »
    I just last week got off from University until October! (but now got to wait for results sometime this month - urgh)

    I hate the waiting for results - just got mine back for the 2nd year of my degree course. Failed two of my modules so I'll have to limit my playing of TMI until I've completed my resit assessment (at least I've only one to do, the other fail was on an exam which I'll resit at the end of August).
  • HoboStewHoboStew Telltale Alumni
    edited July 2009
    Nope. It came out June 8th. Didn't you get the memo? Oh wait. No. Nevermind.
    It only released June 8th for the cool people.
  • edited July 2009
    i was thinking about this the other day: you forget how many "null" responses you were willing to endure when there were only 256 colors on the screen.

    Do you mean "Null" in a programming sense, as in dereferencing null pointers?
  • edited July 2009
    Do you mean "Null" in a programming sense, as in dereferencing null pointers?
    Probably more like in the sense of "trying actions that don't do anything." Like in MI1 if you did something nonsensical like selecting "Turn off hunk o' meat" or "Open important-looking pirates."
  • edited July 2009
    Are there any poor, unfortunate people working on this game over the holiday?
  • edited July 2009
    Jeroen_JRP wrote: »
    And by the way, the island wasn't accually in MI2 exept if you count the ending, but that is only if CMI got it right.

    Wasn't it? I don't remember 100%, but wasn't Dinky Island actually on TOP of Monkey Island or something?...When Guybrush falls down the fall, he lands on Monkey, right?

    I can't 100% remember.
  • edited July 2009
    Kroms wrote: »
    Wasn't it? I don't remember 100%, but wasn't Dinky Island actually on TOP of Monkey Island or something?...When Guybrush falls down the fall, he lands on Monkey, right?

    I can't 100% remember.
    IIRC, the tunnels you fall into link the two islands.
    Not sure I do "RC" though...

    I hate the waiting for results - just got mine back for the 2nd year of my degree course. Failed two of my modules so I'll have to limit my playing of TMI until I've completed my resit assessment (at least I've only one to do, the other fail was on an exam which I'll resit at the end of August).

    Ooh, that sucks. I just finished first year, there's a couple of modules I'm a little worried about, and if I've failed *any* exam I have to retake it in September.....
    OOI, what are you studying? Where?
    (Sorry everyone else for the extremeness of the off-topic!)
  • edited July 2009
    Slanzinger wrote: »
    IIRC, the tunnels you fall into link the two islands.
    Not sure I do "RC" though...

    The tunnels do link Dinky and Mêlée Island, but Monkey island isn't mentioned untill CMI (where they say a tunnel system links Dinky to Monkey island).
  • edited July 2009
    Slanzinger wrote: »
    Huh.
    I had heard about the latter, which sounds like a pseudo-joysticky thing (and also, according to Kotaku, that it was very twitchy - has that been fixed yet?) and was kinda hoping for a bit of P&C lovin'. Ah well. Will still be good.

    It seems when Kotaku tried it they were still working on it.

    Also, and I can't stress this enough, it's still a point and click game. When you need to interact with stuff, you point and click on it. It's just that they've shifted movement to direct control. This is good for a number of reasons:

    1) it means you can play with camera angles a lot more, because the player doesn't have to be able to precisely click on where they need guybrush to go, they can just walk him there.

    2) Because a lot of these scenes are quite large, especially the main town in Chapter 1 by the looks of things, clicking to move would actually be quite annoying - because you'd click to the edge of the screen, and guybrush would go there, it would scroll, and you'd have to keep clicking every few seconds to get him to stay moving in that direction. To get a sense of what I mean, get a demo of Sam and Max and try walking along the main street - it can get quite annoying!

    3) It generally looks better, animation wise.
  • edited July 2009
    Slanzinger wrote: »
    Ooh, that sucks. I just finished first year, there's a couple of modules I'm a little worried about, and if I've failed *any* exam I have to retake it in September.....
    OOI, what are you studying? Where?
    (Sorry everyone else for the extremeness of the off-topic!)

    I'm studying for a BSc in Computer Games Programming (!) at the University of Teesside, just finished my 2nd year.
  • edited July 2009
    Still can´t believe it... once in a while (once 1 year or so...) I checked if there were news on a possible MI sequel and here it is - two days prior to release !!
    Astonishingly, I haven´t had the endurance to go through 61 pages of thread so I might have missed answers to the question: How will it play??? Will there be the good old "push, pull, take, give..." buttons to press like in part 1-3 (can´t honestly remember how part 4 worked...:( ) or will it be some new way how to play it? My last adventure was MI 4, so I´m not really up to date...

    will my favourite Murray be in the game???

    will there be wicked riddles like the one from part 2 (which -in times without internet -took me hours to solve and made me age for roughly two years ...) where you had to pull Le´chucks underpants as one ingredient for that darned voodoo recipe???

    what will be the size of one download block (e.g. chaper 1) ?

    oh hell, I can´t await it!
  • edited July 2009
    I'm studying for a BSc in Computer Games Programming (!) at the University of Teesside, just finished my 2nd year.

    Ooh nice. Personally, doing physics at Imperial College London, finished first year. Apparently we get pass/fail halfway(ish) through this month (which by their standards probably means August...)
  • MarkDarinMarkDarin Former Telltale Staff
    edited July 2009
    Quick answers to few of your quetions:
    How will it play??? Will there be the good old "push, pull, take, give..." buttons to press like in part 1-3 or will it be some new way how to play it?

    We don't use a "Verb" system. Simply clicking on an item will contextually do the thing most natrual. If there is a sword on the Ground, Guybrush will probably pick it up. If there is a drink on a bar, he will probably drink it. There is nothing worse than going through the whole list of verbs only to have Guybrush say "I don't want to do that" for 80% of them! (Ok, there are many things worse than that, but it's still annoying)
    will my favourite Murray be in the game???

    From time to time you'll see a few familiar faces turn up. We aren't saying who or when yet though. That'd ruin the surprise!
    will there be wicked riddles like the one from part 2 where you had to pull Le´chucks underpants as one ingredient for that darned voodoo recipe???

    Wicked head scratching puzzles, yes! Crazy non-translating puzzles like using a Monkey as a Spanner, no.
    what will be the size of one download block (e.g. chaper 1) ?

    We aren't sure yet, Typically a single episode of a Telltale Game is a few hundred megs.
  • edited July 2009
    I don`t know i anyone ask before, but for many people it`s important
    to know if the episode-version of Tales of Monkey Island will be a complete
    Game (in one Part to play) ... or have to play every single episode for
    itself?
  • edited July 2009
    I don`t know i anyone ask before, but for many people it`s important
    to know if the episode-version of Tales of Monkey Island will be a complete
    Game (in one Part to play) ... or have to play every single episode for
    itself?
    I'm sorry, but I really couldn't make heads nor tails of your question.

    ToMI will most probably work like all previous series from Telltale - you install the downloads separately and run each one via a link on your desktop or start menu.

    np: Evil Nine - All The Cash ft. EL-P (They Live!)
  • edited July 2009
    I don`t know i anyone ask before, but for many people it`s important
    to know if the episode-version of Tales of Monkey Island will be a complete
    Game (in one Part to play) ... or have to play every single episode for
    itself?

    If you're talking about the story, there will be an overarching storyline which covers all the games (so it'd be best to play them from the start) and I think (apparently) individual mini story arcs within each episode.

    @MarkDarin: Using a monkey as a (monkey) wrench? Makes perfect sense! ^_^
  • edited July 2009
    Leak wrote: »
    you install the downloads separately and run each one via a link on your desktop or start menu.


    Yes... for the single downloads of course. I ask about the dvd-version,
    when all episodes are avaible. I hope than i can start the dvd-version and
    play the complete story without loading the single episodes anymore...
  • edited July 2009
    Yes... for the single downloads of course. I ask about the dvd-version,
    when all episodes are avaible. I hope than i can start the dvd-version and
    play the complete story without loading the single episodes anymore...

    Ooh, I see what you meant now.
    That'd be pretty cool actually, and I doubt it'd be all *that* hard to make the episodes come together into a single game...
  • edited July 2009
    New here (better late than never) :)
    Were I still employed I may have joined/preordered sooner!
    Been a fan since release of MI1 and have loved all the quality Telltale has brought back to adventure games! Class act guys.
    I can't wait to see what you do with Monkey the Island series!

    Thanks for being so awesome.
  • edited July 2009
    On topic of "hard puzzles" and "verbs" and "useless items":

    I agree that if most of the possible combinations lead to "null" the game gets boring quickly. However it was what I appreciated a lot in the MI games (and other Lucas games, especially the "i can't pick that up" lines from S&M Hit The Road) that most of these "null" results were still worth getting because they could include a funny line or some easter egg. So even when I did not solve a puzzle with every click I made, I still had a good time playing the game and was still satisfied when doing something for the progress, because I solved a puzzle instead of just taking the last possible option. In modern adventure games, I am missing such details.

    Sure, having 9 or 12 different verbs like SMI or LR is a bit too much for unexperienced players (or probably for most players), but I think that 2 or 3 different actions in a similar way like in CMI should work, where the character still chooses the most appropriate one in the end (Look, Use/Pick Up/Push/Pull, Talk/Eat/Lick/???).

    Also I like the idea of "useless" items that you just have, but never use (except for eastereggs, e.g. EFMI's artificial body parts, so they're not completely wasted). Having too little choices I think leads to trial-and-error-clicking-around-until-it-works, which is IMO not the way it's meant to be played. Too often I found myself solving a puzzle (in "modern" adventure games) based on the logic of "I have used this item already on puzzle #A, so puzzle #B can only be solved by another item" which is not very natural.

    I could be wrong, because I have not analysed gaming behaviour of a high enough percentage of players, but this is the way I experienced it personally.

    And of course there's still the option that you (TTG) are good enough to make a decent puzzle out of just one action per object.
    That I am in this secret board pretty much prooves that I trust you guys anyway. ;)
  • edited July 2009
    Guinea wrote: »
    Also I like the idea of "useless" items that you just have, but never use (except for eastereggs, e.g. EFMI's artificial body parts, so they're not completely wasted).

    I really like useless items too, much more than item combinations, as long as it actually fools me into thinking that it needs to be used somewhere. In The Great Cow Race, each character had an item the carried the entire game that was never used, but it was pretty obvious that it had no purpose, like Smiley's cheese sandwich.
  • edited July 2009
    I like items with multiple uses more than useless items.
  • edited July 2009
    Well, I finally caved and pre-ordered. ^^; I'm not sorry in the least, though my bank account might be.

    I'm really excited to see what you do with this game series. Something that had bothered me about the two MI games I had played (A little bit of Curse and all of Escape) was that I never was very good about bending my mind in the really weird directions that the puzzles sometimes required, but I'm confident that the games will be just difficult enough without being frustrating. And that hints section will be a big help.

    I'm pleased as all heck that we're seeing Guybrush again, and after buying SBCG4AP from Telltale, I can't think of a better company to do Monkey Island justice!
  • edited July 2009
    MarkDarin wrote: »
    Simply clicking on an item will contextually do the thing most natrual. If there is a sword on the Ground, Guybrush will probably pick it up. If there is a drink on a bar, he will probably drink it. There is nothing worse than going through the whole list of verbs only to have Guybrush say "I don't want to do that" for 80% of them! (Ok, there are many things worse than that, but it's still annoying).

    It's a noble reason, but the applications have been a little disappointing. For example in Fright of the Bumblebees if I click on the newspaper stand Wallace says something along the lines of "I don't need that" when I instead expected him to read it, so it's really still generic failure feedback. And in this case it's not really doing the most natural thing, it's assuming I want to pick it up, and just as frustrating. With verbs I was frustrated because the stuff I was trying to do was inappropriate (and may have a whole bunch of amusing failure feedback a la Host Master), not because what the game assumed I wanted to do inappropriate stuff.

    At the very least I feel there should be a look verb or command, so the charcter could clue you in on what the object is and what the natural action seems to him, because it's not always the same natural action I'd think of. And when the action is appropriate but it's not the one I thought of, I'm robbed of the feeling I did something right, instead it's the character who figured it out.
  • edited July 2009
    I really would have liked to have at least a look verb, so it can be explained what the item is, also wondering if it could be possible for the episodes to be updated some time down the track ,maybe for the DVD release, to include a few verbs (maybe the ones that were in Curse of Monkey Island)?
  • edited July 2009
    Yeah... a variety of postive/negative feedback for different actions taken on an item actually made all those early games all the more interesting.
  • edited July 2009
    Question for the team: Is Elaine's lipsync fixed? I'm refering to the game's intro, the line "And now we're going to die, again. Heh, wonderful!"
  • edited July 2009
    prizna wrote: »
    I really would have liked to have at least a look verb, so it can be explained what the item is, also wondering if it could be possible for the episodes to be updated some time down the track ,maybe for the DVD release, to include a few verbs (maybe the ones that were in Curse of Monkey Island)?

    From what I saw in the gameplay video, there is in fact a magnifying glass in the inventory, so we can at least examine our inventory items, which is a step in the right direction.
  • edited July 2009
    So after pre-ordering Tales I went ahead and got all the Telltale games after giving Sam and Max Episode 101 a whirl. After completing Season One and this morning Two, I have absolutely no doubt this is the perfect company to make a new Monkey Island game - in the 2 seasons of Sam and Max
    fight against Hugh Bliss is my favorite ending to an adventure game with the only exception being MI2 - I loved his evil nature and the boss puzzle. Abe Lincoln Must Die! is my favorite overall episode and one of my favorite games ever, Reality 2.0 was brilliant, the Hell thing was great and just pure amazing, traveling through time and space was gold...I could go and on and on
    but the point is that I'm just blown away and impressed by the games you've made so far and am even further excited about Tales.

    Glad I didn't just replay old MI games.
  • edited July 2009
    I don't miss the verbs. I don't need the option to talk to a sword or walk to the sun or open rock. Telltales implementation is a more effecient use of screen space and saves the writers having to imagine all the stupid things I might do, and write responses for them, and it saves me having to try all the stupid actions to see if they wrote anything. Sure a few of the jokes were funny, but funny jokes isn't something Monkey Island is short on, so it doesn't matter.
  • edited July 2009
    nadir wrote: »
    I don't miss the verbs.
    Agreed. Verbing just weirds language...

    np: Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Joy Maker Machinery (Twice Born Men)
  • edited July 2009
    All I want to be able to do is look at an item (and get an amusing description) then use the item in the most appropriate way.
  • edited July 2009
    I'm PRAYING that it's someting like CoMI, as i've played through it like 10 times :D Seriously. AND I'm 13 :D On my Dad's Account :D
  • edited July 2009
    And one thing... or more
    1)do you get all 5 episodes at once or do you still get them monthly
    THANK YOU for not including monkey kombat. I didn't like it. obviously.
  • edited July 2009
    each episode is released monthly

    so on 7th u only get epi 1
  • edited July 2009
    LuigiHann wrote: »
    Ideally, you'd have the option to choose an individual episode, or to "Play all," like on a TV show DVD, except with intermediate credits removed :)

    A++ way of doing it.
  • edited July 2009
    You know, why don't you guys just take some of the good insults from the 'Insult Swordfighting' thread and use them? It would be cool!
  • edited July 2009
    Selfish question, but what is going to happen to this forum after the release date? It's not gonna up and disappear on us, is it? I like visiting this happy forum as opposed to the other forum where people are not so happy.

    And Jake, what the hell kind of high school did you go to that had a parking garage? Mine barely had a parking lot.
This discussion has been closed.