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I don't think Telltale have lost it, rather, I don't think they ever had it to begin with. And have no intentions of acquiring it.

MusicallyInspired wrote:I don't think Telltale have lost it, rather, I don't think they ever had it to begin with. And have no intentions of acquiring it.

I suppose that depends just what you consider "it" to be in this case.

I'm going to say they had "it" all along because "it" is the reason I jump right out and pre-order each new season.

As far as what "it" is, I'm going to say it's the way they can make single episodes that more often than not have given me all the entertainment and satisfaction I used to get from full-length games (or even movies.) By working with more limited resources, they've shown me how much potential you can get out of adventure games. Heck, I've played full-length games that didn't have near as many puzzles as some of Telltale's. There's a really lot I could go on about. In any case, their re-invention of the genre has inspired me creatively to make the most out of my own games.

I assume by "reinvention" you mean "dumbing down."

No. I don't.

MusicallyInspired wrote:I assume by "reinvention" you mean "dumbing down."

You know Brandon,you talk like one of those stubborn Sonic fans that won't accept anything that isn't a 1:1 gameplay reproduction of the genesis games

I'm gonna hold judgement till i see the game in action.

My opinion is based entirely on Telltale's past works and what they've been working on lately. Back to the Future, for instance, is a horrible horrible game. I'm reserving final judgment as well, despite my vocal and seemingly "unfair" opinions, but I'm not hopeful. They'll probably make something in the style of KQ7 except easier. Which would be perfect for you! A nightmare for me.

I can't see them doing it like KQ7. That game carries too much stigma for anyone to use it as a stepping stone. At worst, it would be similarly separated into chapters, they'd probably have a few "cute" characters (but that's common in any King's Quest game.) Otherwise, they're probably scratching their heads as to how to do something in the style of KQ6 that's nothing like TSL.

I have a real love/hate thing with Telltale. It's nice to see a company making an effort to revive adventures, but I really do not like the episodic format. It seems to hamstring overall storytelling and lend the games a sort of "triviality". I played Sam & Max seasons 1 and 2 but unlike the Sierra and Lucasarts adventures of yesteryear, I don't consider them "classics" and I don't see myself ever replaying them.

Episodic format is a big negative for me, too. It does trivialize it, Besides the fact that the TSL vision does not match my idea of KQ, the episodic release has, in large part, diminished much of the interest I had in the game. Perhaps when the final episode is released I might put them together to play a full game, but until then I do not pay much attention to it.

I rather enjoy the episodic format. Much like with television against movies, breaking an adventure into episodes can allow for a longer story arc and opens up a lot of creative possibilities in the process. I'm either/or with the final outcome, of course. Episodic, full-length - it doesn't matter as long as I'm having fun. But looking at how well "Tales of Monkey Island" turned out, I'm inclined to call the whole thing the best game since the first - and that's partly due to how well it made use of episodic format.

I find the main downside to doing it episodically is that the game can't be as "open-world" as other adventures could be. Like in KQ6 - you can visit the islands in any order you want, and solve later puzzles now if you so desire. There's even side-missions where you can randomly gather ingredients for magic spells along the way. A lot of this is made impossible in episodic gaming because if you need to make a magic spell, all the ingredients have to be located in one area in one episode just to solve the puzzle. You can't go back to an earlier location to recover some missing ingredients.

But then, I find the main downside to full-length gaming is the actual length itself. I can beat even the longer games within ten hours easy ("Longest" Journey, my butt!) And because of their "put all our eggs in one basket" production budgets, they have to make a lot of cuts to puzzles and story-telling. Because Telltale sells their episodes in small digital downloads, even with cuts, a lot of their episodes can range from 2-3 hours each, leading up to 15 hour seasons with a lot more puzzles and story (not counting BTTF, of course, but that's the black sheep of the flock.)

I didn't BTTF was a bad game; not great, but it definitely grew on me. Perhaps a bit biased because I've always been a big fan of the movie trilogy. Hell, I could probably quote just about every line in the first movie itself!

I think TellTale might be able to do a good job with a new KQ. Do I know that for sure? Not at all, but I figure they can't do much worse than KQ8.

They did ask Roberta Williams if she wants to be involved, but she declined. To me, that's a good sign. It shows that they actually care about the game; after all, they didn't have to bother talking with her at all.

I went into BTTF as a BTTF fanboy hoping it'd be good and defending it against all criticism. To that end my fanboyism was somewhat satisfied and pretty much met most of my expectations, but my gamer side was INCREDIBLY let down. And when we're talking about games, the gamer argument wins out over franchise fanboyism.

MusicallyInspired wrote:I went into BTTF as a BTTF fanboy hoping it'd be good and defending it against all criticism. To that end my fanboyism was somewhat satisfied and pretty much met most of my expectations, but my gamer side was INCREDIBLY let down. And when we're talking about games, the gamer argument wins out over franchise fanboyism.

Fair enough, but I thought the game was decent itself. I've played much better games, but also seen ones far worse, too.

Yeah, much like everyone else, I can praise the storytelling and faithfulness to the franchise in BTTF. My main problem with it was that each episode had about half the length and puzzles than other TT episodes, and most of the puzzles involved just clicking on things until the story progressed. It would have worked better as three individual episodes rather than five.