Interview | Telltales of Monkey Island

By Mike Mason 11.08.2009 5

Telltale Games have been a driving force behind the revival of the adventure game genre in recent years. They have been responsible for the resurrection of Sam & Max, Strongbad's adventure game debut and claymation classics Wallace and Gromit's recent exploits. Now, though, they have struck up a deal with LucasArts to create an episodic game series of the much-loved Monkey Island. The first episode was recently released on WiiWare, and Cubed3 took the opportunity to talk to Telltale's Mark Darin, writer and designer on the series, and Joel Dreskin, the marketing director.

Image for Interview | Telltales of Monkey Island

Cubed3's Mike Mason: Rob Gilbert helped design the new episodes. How much involvement did he have; was he working out the story arcs and how they separated into episodes alongside Telltale, or did he take on more of a consulting role ensuring the characterisation was right?

Telltale's Mark Darin, writer and designer: Ron Gilbert was able to come by our office and spend a few days with brainstorming with us. We already had most of the general plot outlined and he seemed pleased with the direction we were taking it. He helped a lot with the development of the main characters, making sure that their general motivations were in line with the original ideas. Once the high level stuff was out of the way, he had some time to sit down and dig right in to some of the episode stories and puzzle designs!

MM: With Dave Grossman heading the project and Ron Gilbert involved, did you try to get Tim Schafer in on it as well?

MD: Tim really has his hands full ensuring that Brutal Legend is properly channelling the Metal Rock Gods of the underworld!

MM: Was there a larger sense of responsibility hanging over the team for Tales of Monkey Island given the magnitude of the series?

MD: Yep. We know all too well how important this series is to its fans and we feel confident that we have the people to do this right! Much of our team had previously worked or earlier Monkey Island games and we were able to get key players like Michael Land (for the music) and Dominic Armato (the voice of Guybrush). The stars just seemed to align for us!

Image for Interview | Telltales of Monkey Island

MM: How strict were LucasArts with the licence?

MD: They were very open, actually! They had final approval over the main character designs and the general story arc, but they pretty much let us have free reign with the design!

MM: How long did it take to reach the point where everybody was happy with the presentation and the modernised looks of the characters?

MD: There was a bit of back and forth between us and LucasArts in the beginning, but they generally offered up small detail changes and the process went very smoothly once we settled into a groove!

MM: Towards the start of the first episode at least, there's a disappointing tendency for dialogue options to mismatch what is actually said. Is this likely to change as the series continues?

MD: We have heard the feedback and are able to address these things in future episodes (one of the nice things about episodic games!). Sometimes having Guybrush say something different than the presented text is funny, but I agree it got bit overused in the first episode. I think what happened was that once the game was in a playable state, we realized that some of the intro conversations were actually quite long, perhaps too long to comfortably sit through, so we added breaks where the player could interact. These helped a lot to move the flow along! Unfortunately, these were added AFTER we had finished the voice recordings, so we couldn't get Guybrush to actually speak these dialogue choices.

MM: What was behind the decision to remove difficulty settings found in the last two Monkey Islands?

MD: Time! Putting out a game a month doesn't allow us the production time to create multiple puzzle paths, all the game assets associated with it, and be able to test multiple versions of the game.

MM: Has there been difficulty in getting the episodes within WiiWare's file size limit?

MD: There are challenges, but we knew from the start that Tales of Monkey Island would be a WiiWare game, so we specifically designed for that. It still amazes me how our technical wizards here can squeeze this massive game into a mere 40 megs!

MM: What element of Tales of Monkey Island are you most proud of?

MD: The story. By creating a single epic story, we were able to do a lot more character development and relationships than we have in the past. By having a screenplay that plays out more like a mini series than a sitcom, we can create these deeper relationships that players can really get invested in.

MM: When will the games be released in other European languages?

Telltale's Joel Dreskin, marketing director: There's no game localization info to announce right now.

Image for Interview | Telltales of Monkey Island

MM: What made you decide to take Monkey Island to Wii while games like Wallace and Gromit have gone to XBLA?

JD: As we've moved into console publishing, our approach has been to launch on PC along with a selected console system. For Tales of Monkey Island, we determined that WiiWare would be the lead console platform. For one thing, this is Monkey Island's first release on a Nintendo platform ever! And our experiences with Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People on WiiWare last year had been positive.

MM: What's your favourite swordfight insult?

MD: Stick with the classics: you fight like a cow!

MM: Thank you both for your time!

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Comments

Nice interview.
While a lot are critising them for their dumb iPhone remark, and their lack of engine-creation skill, they are still a wonderfull company really working to get lots of classic adventure games reserected, while pushing digital distribution as well.

\"MD: We have heard the feedback and are able to address these things in future episodes (one of the nice things about episodic games!) \"

Indeed, partly why I think the future of many genres is episodic.
(and by any-genre I really mean everything but Zelda-style games Smilie)


( Edited 12.08.2009 19:10 by Darkflame )

http://www.fanficmaker.com <-- Tells some truly terrible tales.
Last update; Mice,Plumbers,Animatronics and Airbenders. We also have the socials; Facebook & G+

Nice to hear how those dialogue options got into the game, luckily it was only at the start, and glad to see they won't be in the next installment (well once or twice is ok if it is in the interest of humor!)

There are challenges, but we knew from the start that Tales of Monkey Island would be a WiiWare game, so we specifically designed for that.

No you fucking didn't, you made it for PC and made an incredibly shit compressed port for wiiware.


^^Click for a wallpaper version^^

They made their -engine- for PC.
This is the same engine being developed since Sam and Max (or even Bone). Its also in many ways what makes these games possible...making an engine each time from scratch would be too costly for the returns.

They may well have designed this game with WiiWare in mind, even if there using a modified form of their PC engine.

http://www.fanficmaker.com <-- Tells some truly terrible tales.
Last update; Mice,Plumbers,Animatronics and Airbenders. We also have the socials; Facebook & G+

No what there saying is they made this episode in mind for wiiware, if that was the truth it shouldn\'t have had so much dialogue in the first place, why put it in when they knew about the 40MB limit?

Strongbad games worked well because there wasn\'t musch dialogue and the graphics where celshaded and didn\'t need much texture detail in them.

This really should have been a retail wii game or moved over to XBLA.
Most of the strongbad games on PC where around 80MB-90MB with one being around 110MB or so.

The first episode of Monkey Island was 190MB...



( Edited 12.08.2009 22:53 by Mario_0 )


^^Click for a wallpaper version^^

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