BTW, it seems there's support for the XBOX 360 controller.
Yeah, there's also some keys getting carried over from Wallace&Gromit, for example it's still I for inventory if so you wish. Which makes me wonder if the "cycling through hotspots" keys are still in place too. I had mapped my gamepad to the keyboard/mouse and played the game with that.
Oh yeah, and I think I'm off to frying some French fries and draining them in some spicy sort of tomato ketchup.
I implemented this and several other options related to the drag+move system, but at the time the game shipped there was not a UI to hook it up to. Jake and I will hopefully have something working soon.
W00t! You (and Telltale) rule! I know of no other company that listens as well as, or provides as fantastic a line of comunication between the developers and fans as Telltale.
Perhaps. I'm probably just having trouble explaining this in a not-terrible way. From my perspective (with the information I possess), the suggestion that we use point-and-click instead of direct control is akin to asking McDonald's to stop selling hamburgers and start focusing on hot dogs to accommodate my tastes. Liking hot dogs more than hamburgers is definitely a valid opinion. And there are probably a lot of people that like hot dogs more than hamburgers. But no matter how much the hot dog lovers want McDonald's to change, they won't. Not because McDonald's hates them, but because McDonald's sells a lot of hamburgers and switching over to hot dogs would be a not insignificant change.
That's what it looks like from my perspective, if that helps. From the user perspective (guy writing the hot dog letter to McDonald's) in this situation, the only possible outcomes are to feel totally ignored that McDonald's doesn't respond, or to become enraged that McDonald's did not seriously consider his hot dog suggestion.
I'm not a PR person, I'm a programmer. I come here and I try to be honest with you folks even if it's not what you want to hear because I remember what it was like to hang around in video game forums waiting for devs to respond with something more meaningful than "Thank you for your suggestion, have a nice day."
The analogy doesn't work because point&click was part of the adventures at TTG and it was selling before as well. Actually this was a happy place until Wallace&Gromit landed with no point&click steering anymore.
If you really would like to add a point&click steering then it's also possible. And let's just pretend it wouldn't be, then i still would favour a comfortable control and relaxed gaming experience over fancy camera angles because that's just not the primary reason why i'm playing adventure games. If we can have both, fine, but at the moment we're sacrificing the better for the worse.
The difference between a troll and an honest standpoint is elaboration, at least for me. If a person has a very controversial viewpoint, I won't mind as long as they can back it up with something substantial, but if they choose to just make generalised points which could apply to most of the games out there, they're just trolling.
Let's use the OP as an example...
- the control system is worse than in Monkey Island 4
This basically amounts to "The game has bad controls."
Firstly, whether a game's controls are good or bad is largely subjective. It can be objective if a peer review of the control system within the game is held and all those who engaged in such a review found the system to be bad, but we're actually seeing that here, and the peer review primarily says either 'good controls' or 'manageable and different'.
I've seen people say that the controls of games like Street Fighter II are crap, but a peer review shows that's not true, the truth of the mater is simply that the person making the claim is more than a bit crap at the game. However, one person being bad at utilising a control system does not make a control system bad, it just means that there's one person who can't wrap their mind around how to use it.
This does not show the control system in a bad light, it just means that a very small amount of skill and/or intelligence is equired to utilise the control system successfully. I believe the same applies to Tales of Monkey Island and its control system. I aired caution about it before I played it, but that was just my own worries and I made no claims, after I played the game though... well, all those worries melted away.
- I don't recognize the good old Monkey Island humor
The key words are here "I don't recognise", that's not the same as "It does not exist". In this case, I'd call a lack of observation on part of the user. The game had many parts which were true to different Monkey Island games, I saw parts that were similar to Secret of Monkey Island, Lechuck's Revenge, and even Curse of Monkey Island.
For example, de Singe's lab room was very similar to the humour used for when Shinetop tied an idol to Guybrush and tossed him off the pier in the first game.
In other words, I recognise the humour within the game, and a lot of the responses would seem to lean towards there being a strong presence of classic Monkey Island humour within the game. I'm glad that the OP was honest with this point, because there's plenty of true, classic Monkey Island humour in the game, but whatever incredibly specific element of it they were looking for apparently wasn't present.
Either that, or their memories of Monkey Island are inaccurate and perhaps the OP should play through the series again.
- the games environment looks very poor (they should have gone back to 2d)
This is a baseless statement, and it might as well not exist because it reads like an insult more than a valid point. For example, let me repurpose that sentence a little: "Your hair looks very poor, my hair looks better because I have a different hair style."
Now one could say that any game looks horrible, even if they've never seen the game in action, and this point even does hint at that. It does read as though the OP hasn't actually even launched the first episode, or done anything beyond look at screenshots, there's absolutely nothing to imply any experience with the game at all.
So let's cast aside the lack of experience with the game and go back to what the point is really saying: 2D is obviously better than 3D in any instance, and if a game is 3D then I'm going to brown-nose it no matter how good it looks, because it isn't my beloved 2D. Now that's the OP's prerogative, and I wouldn't deny him or her that. But what I am saying is that it shouldn't be seen as anything other than 2D elitism.
One thing to consider is for that the level of quality animation that's present in the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island, Telltale couldn't afford to have that done in 2D. For the incredible level of quality present, they had to use 3D. A question to the OP: Why do you think that so many animation companies, even Disney, are switching over to 3D? Because in a time of financial stress, quality 3D animation is many, many times cheaper.
And in my subjective opinion, 3D animation actually looks better, because the smoothness present in 3D animation isn't possible in 2D animation. Take any 2D animated film and play it back frame by frame and compare it with a 3D animated film, also played frame by frame, and the lack of smoothness is obvious. This is because when 2D was all the rage, a lower level of quality was acceptable.
To obtain the same level of animation quality from 2D, the costs involved would be utterly ludicrous, and certainly outside of the budget of a company like Telltale.
Considering what Telltale managed to do with their budget, this is absolutely amazing; but what you have to consider is that with 3D characters interacting in a 3D World, the backgrounds also need to be 3D, because combinations of 3D and 2D have pretty much always looked horrible, look at Dreamfall compared to The Longest Journey and this becomes rather obvious. So their easiest and cheapest option was simply to do everything in 3D.
However, when compared to Curse of Monkey Island, I don't see that it's much less detailed at all, and the animation's a hell of a lot better because Guybrush didn't move much in Curse outside of FMVs, and his expression barely ever changed, making him look like a bit of a zombie. Whereas the Tales Guybrush looks much more animated and alive.
Anyway, back to the backgrounds... here are some comparisons for you to view:
Sure, there isn't as much visual clutter in the foreground, but it doesn't look that much less detailed than Curse, especially when you consider that a lot of Curse's backgrounds were rather vague (even in that shot). So I'd hardly call Tales 'poor' by comparison. I think that's just gouging for the sake of gouging, and it seems more of a desire to dismiss 3D than an actual belief in regards of quality.
And this is exactly what I mean by providing a detailed view of one's opinion. I've just pretty much proved that any reasonable person could hardly call Tales poor, if the OP wants their original point to remain valid then they're going to have to provide something of worth with which to refute what I've covered here. I don't see that happening, because my gut still tells me that was a troll more than an honest opinion.
- last but not least: online activation sucks
O rly.
Okay, this I have to direct at the OP...
Do you use Steam for anything? Do you like Steam? If so, you're a hypocrite. This is a point that really annoys me, so many people operate on FUD and things they've pulled out of the air or out of their arse, and they'll hate one form of online activation whilst despising another.
Now back to generally speaking...
I have no reason to believe that the OP is any different than that, that they're any more educated than the average person who hates something without having any clue as to why they hate it, they're just going along with the crowd and believing what the crowd believes, without actually knowing why. Mob mentality and all that, it exists online too, you know?
If the OP had provided any reason for hating online activation, such as... ohhh... limited activations, then it would've given his point more weight. What it looks like is that he was browsing the web for things to use to troll about ToMI with, saw that it used online activation, and because he'd heard that was bad he simply threw in a line about how online activation sucks, without giving us even the most base idea as to why.
So I have no reason to believe that there's any intelligence behind the OP's complaint.
But I'm not done!
The OP doesn't even seem to know how Telltale works, because if they had then they would have realised that once Telltale has finished a season, they release their game on disc. If the OP doesn't want to deal with online activation, then they could install the disc version of the game, which to my knowledge and according to everything I've read online does not use online activation at all, but a form of disc-based security. A disc-check, per se.
The end result of this is that we have something that reads very much like a trolling effort, and the more it's examined, the more it looks like a trolling effort, and it probably shouldn't be seen as anything else. I know I have a particularly brusque attitude, I always have, and that might label my efforts as trolling. But I don't see that.
All I want to do is support how I feel about Telltale's efforts, and personally I think they did a damned good job, and if someone's going to criticise them, then at least respect the company enough to provide good, worthwhile, constructive criticism, instead of just scraping the barrel for vague points to post on a forum just to rile people for amusement.
Lena, i see your point. In this case tho, I think its hard to distinguish whether some of his statements are critique or opinion. Basically it doesnt really matter as its his own feeling/thoughts about the game he describes here, (altho quite direct and with a taunting finish) and I think thats allowed.
Yare, hmm..ok fair enough. I just seem to recall TTG claiming at the beginning when the company were created that they would bring back "the good ol adventure games" which to me and most other ppl included point-and-click. But its cool...i can perfectly understand if your engine is better and faster with other controls which means creating games quicker and easier. As you said, luckily there are other companies still making the good ol point-and-click adventures
Wolf...wow..long post..i gave up reading halfway...its 1am where i am now I will say one thing though...there ARE posts here on the forums with plenty of constructive criticism. Unfortunately some of those posts also seem to be regarded as "complaining posts" by some pro MI/TTG people.
I just seem to recall TTG claiming at the beginning when the company were created that they would bring back "the good ol adventure games" which to me and most other ppl included point-and-click.
This was before my time at the company, but the statement probably referred to intellectual properties and the overall revival of the genre rather than a specific control scheme.
It's possible if we change cinematography back to Sam & Max style, yes.
Don't.
But that begs an interesting question. Will Sam and Max run on TOMI's engine? (This has been asked in the Sam and Max forums as I noticed earlier so I thought I'd bring it up.)
I agree with Secret Fawful. Please please don't change the cinematography back.
If anything, SoMI:SE have really left a back taste in point-and-click with more realistic graphics. Clicking at the edge of the screen instead of the ability to move Guybrush just doesn't do it for me anymore. And having to press on hotkeys everytime with pointing and clicking is in my opinion much worse of a control than using keys to control movement, and mouse control for interaction. That's my personal opinion though...
All of our games run on different versions of the same engine, so you'll see depth of field and other new graphic effects in all products going forward. As for ToMI, the end user will probably not notice a difference as far as controls are concerned. Except right stick will hopefully let you select objects out of the box.
For me that issue has lost much of its importance (although I'd still prefer the traditional system, if possible) after I discovered the alternative inputs with double-drag and L/R drag.
At the beginning it was annoying because there was also a problem communicating the new input system. I knew WASD from W&G so I tried it and it worked. I didn't even know there were alternative inputs until I had already played through TOMIe1.
I agree, i was very annoyed by this game at first. The Demo really is TOO short. If i would have only seen the demo, i would have never bought this.
I purchased the Game now, as i was able to play the full version at a friends computer. I actually enjoyed it, despite it being in 3D. (Although i still prefer 2D). The printed Disc at the end of the Season will be a nice gift too.
Comments
Though I preffered the drag2move over the analog stick + mouse combo...
Yeah, there's also some keys getting carried over from Wallace&Gromit, for example it's still I for inventory if so you wish. Which makes me wonder if the "cycling through hotspots" keys are still in place too. I had mapped my gamepad to the keyboard/mouse and played the game with that.
Oh yeah, and I think I'm off to frying some French fries and draining them in some spicy sort of tomato ketchup.
W00t! You (and Telltale) rule! I know of no other company that listens as well as, or provides as fantastic a line of comunication between the developers and fans as Telltale.
Keep up the good work and is it August yet?
The analogy doesn't work because point&click was part of the adventures at TTG and it was selling before as well. Actually this was a happy place until Wallace&Gromit landed with no point&click steering anymore.
If you really would like to add a point&click steering then it's also possible. And let's just pretend it wouldn't be, then i still would favour a comfortable control and relaxed gaming experience over fancy camera angles because that's just not the primary reason why i'm playing adventure games. If we can have both, fine, but at the moment we're sacrificing the better for the worse.
Let's use the OP as an example...
- the control system is worse than in Monkey Island 4
This basically amounts to "The game has bad controls."
Firstly, whether a game's controls are good or bad is largely subjective. It can be objective if a peer review of the control system within the game is held and all those who engaged in such a review found the system to be bad, but we're actually seeing that here, and the peer review primarily says either 'good controls' or 'manageable and different'.
I've seen people say that the controls of games like Street Fighter II are crap, but a peer review shows that's not true, the truth of the mater is simply that the person making the claim is more than a bit crap at the game. However, one person being bad at utilising a control system does not make a control system bad, it just means that there's one person who can't wrap their mind around how to use it.
This does not show the control system in a bad light, it just means that a very small amount of skill and/or intelligence is equired to utilise the control system successfully. I believe the same applies to Tales of Monkey Island and its control system. I aired caution about it before I played it, but that was just my own worries and I made no claims, after I played the game though... well, all those worries melted away.
- I don't recognize the good old Monkey Island humor
The key words are here "I don't recognise", that's not the same as "It does not exist". In this case, I'd call a lack of observation on part of the user. The game had many parts which were true to different Monkey Island games, I saw parts that were similar to Secret of Monkey Island, Lechuck's Revenge, and even Curse of Monkey Island.
For example, de Singe's lab room was very similar to the humour used for when Shinetop tied an idol to Guybrush and tossed him off the pier in the first game.
In other words, I recognise the humour within the game, and a lot of the responses would seem to lean towards there being a strong presence of classic Monkey Island humour within the game. I'm glad that the OP was honest with this point, because there's plenty of true, classic Monkey Island humour in the game, but whatever incredibly specific element of it they were looking for apparently wasn't present.
Either that, or their memories of Monkey Island are inaccurate and perhaps the OP should play through the series again.
- the games environment looks very poor (they should have gone back to 2d)
This is a baseless statement, and it might as well not exist because it reads like an insult more than a valid point. For example, let me repurpose that sentence a little: "Your hair looks very poor, my hair looks better because I have a different hair style."
Now one could say that any game looks horrible, even if they've never seen the game in action, and this point even does hint at that. It does read as though the OP hasn't actually even launched the first episode, or done anything beyond look at screenshots, there's absolutely nothing to imply any experience with the game at all.
So let's cast aside the lack of experience with the game and go back to what the point is really saying: 2D is obviously better than 3D in any instance, and if a game is 3D then I'm going to brown-nose it no matter how good it looks, because it isn't my beloved 2D. Now that's the OP's prerogative, and I wouldn't deny him or her that. But what I am saying is that it shouldn't be seen as anything other than 2D elitism.
One thing to consider is for that the level of quality animation that's present in the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island, Telltale couldn't afford to have that done in 2D. For the incredible level of quality present, they had to use 3D. A question to the OP: Why do you think that so many animation companies, even Disney, are switching over to 3D? Because in a time of financial stress, quality 3D animation is many, many times cheaper.
And in my subjective opinion, 3D animation actually looks better, because the smoothness present in 3D animation isn't possible in 2D animation. Take any 2D animated film and play it back frame by frame and compare it with a 3D animated film, also played frame by frame, and the lack of smoothness is obvious. This is because when 2D was all the rage, a lower level of quality was acceptable.
To obtain the same level of animation quality from 2D, the costs involved would be utterly ludicrous, and certainly outside of the budget of a company like Telltale.
Considering what Telltale managed to do with their budget, this is absolutely amazing; but what you have to consider is that with 3D characters interacting in a 3D World, the backgrounds also need to be 3D, because combinations of 3D and 2D have pretty much always looked horrible, look at Dreamfall compared to The Longest Journey and this becomes rather obvious. So their easiest and cheapest option was simply to do everything in 3D.
However, when compared to Curse of Monkey Island, I don't see that it's much less detailed at all, and the animation's a hell of a lot better because Guybrush didn't move much in Curse outside of FMVs, and his expression barely ever changed, making him look like a bit of a zombie. Whereas the Tales Guybrush looks much more animated and alive.
Anyway, back to the backgrounds... here are some comparisons for you to view:
- Curse of Monkey Island
- Tales of Monkey Island
Sure, there isn't as much visual clutter in the foreground, but it doesn't look that much less detailed than Curse, especially when you consider that a lot of Curse's backgrounds were rather vague (even in that shot). So I'd hardly call Tales 'poor' by comparison. I think that's just gouging for the sake of gouging, and it seems more of a desire to dismiss 3D than an actual belief in regards of quality.
And this is exactly what I mean by providing a detailed view of one's opinion. I've just pretty much proved that any reasonable person could hardly call Tales poor, if the OP wants their original point to remain valid then they're going to have to provide something of worth with which to refute what I've covered here. I don't see that happening, because my gut still tells me that was a troll more than an honest opinion.
- last but not least: online activation sucks
O rly.
Okay, this I have to direct at the OP...
Do you use Steam for anything? Do you like Steam? If so, you're a hypocrite. This is a point that really annoys me, so many people operate on FUD and things they've pulled out of the air or out of their arse, and they'll hate one form of online activation whilst despising another.
Now back to generally speaking...
I have no reason to believe that the OP is any different than that, that they're any more educated than the average person who hates something without having any clue as to why they hate it, they're just going along with the crowd and believing what the crowd believes, without actually knowing why. Mob mentality and all that, it exists online too, you know?
If the OP had provided any reason for hating online activation, such as... ohhh... limited activations, then it would've given his point more weight. What it looks like is that he was browsing the web for things to use to troll about ToMI with, saw that it used online activation, and because he'd heard that was bad he simply threw in a line about how online activation sucks, without giving us even the most base idea as to why.
So I have no reason to believe that there's any intelligence behind the OP's complaint.
But I'm not done!
The OP doesn't even seem to know how Telltale works, because if they had then they would have realised that once Telltale has finished a season, they release their game on disc. If the OP doesn't want to deal with online activation, then they could install the disc version of the game, which to my knowledge and according to everything I've read online does not use online activation at all, but a form of disc-based security. A disc-check, per se.
The end result of this is that we have something that reads very much like a trolling effort, and the more it's examined, the more it looks like a trolling effort, and it probably shouldn't be seen as anything else. I know I have a particularly brusque attitude, I always have, and that might label my efforts as trolling. But I don't see that.
All I want to do is support how I feel about Telltale's efforts, and personally I think they did a damned good job, and if someone's going to criticise them, then at least respect the company enough to provide good, worthwhile, constructive criticism, instead of just scraping the barrel for vague points to post on a forum just to rile people for amusement.
Want to be my special friend?
Yare, hmm..ok fair enough. I just seem to recall TTG claiming at the beginning when the company were created that they would bring back "the good ol adventure games" which to me and most other ppl included point-and-click. But its cool...i can perfectly understand if your engine is better and faster with other controls which means creating games quicker and easier. As you said, luckily there are other companies still making the good ol point-and-click adventures
Wolf...wow..long post..i gave up reading halfway...its 1am where i am now
It's possible if we change cinematography back to Sam & Max style, yes.
This was before my time at the company, but the statement probably referred to intellectual properties and the overall revival of the genre rather than a specific control scheme.
Don't.
But that begs an interesting question. Will Sam and Max run on TOMI's engine? (This has been asked in the Sam and Max forums as I noticed earlier so I thought I'd bring it up.)
If anything, SoMI:SE have really left a back taste in point-and-click with more realistic graphics. Clicking at the edge of the screen instead of the ability to move Guybrush just doesn't do it for me anymore. And having to press on hotkeys everytime with pointing and clicking is in my opinion much worse of a control than using keys to control movement, and mouse control for interaction. That's my personal opinion though...
All of our games run on different versions of the same engine, so you'll see depth of field and other new graphic effects in all products going forward. As for ToMI, the end user will probably not notice a difference as far as controls are concerned. Except right stick will hopefully let you select objects out of the box.
At the beginning it was annoying because there was also a problem communicating the new input system. I knew WASD from W&G so I tried it and it worked. I didn't even know there were alternative inputs until I had already played through TOMIe1.
I purchased the Game now, as i was able to play the full version at a friends computer. I actually enjoyed it, despite it being in 3D. (Although i still prefer 2D). The printed Disc at the end of the Season will be a nice gift too.
Arr!