First Look at Tales of Monkey Island with Complimentary Rant

Anyone who enjoyed the Golden Age of Adventure Games in the 90s got a little nostalgic when LucasArts announced the remake of Secret of Monkey Island at E3. But any true fan of the Monkey Island series should be more excited about the announcement from Telltale Games about their brand new series of adventure games featuring our old friend Guybrush Threepwood.



I got to sit down with Dave Grossman, one of the geniuses behind Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, and Mike Stemmle, designer of Escape from Monkey Island, both of whom are behind the design and writing of Tales of Monkey Island.

ToMI will follow our hero, Guybrush Threepwood, as his plans to defeat LeChuck with an enchanted cutlass backfire, actually they blow up, turning LeChuck human and Guybrush's hand into a zombie. We follow Guybrush as he washes up on an island and must find a ship and rescue Elaine.



I also got to see the game in action, as they showed me Guybrush traveling around a seashore town and talking to the denizens. While the look of the game is certainly different, this time around it's CG graphics instead of animation, the essence of the original Monkey Island series is still there, and that's what fans are concerned about. While the graphics look pretty low-end compared to contemporary games, players will be coming for the humor and the story, not the pixels (as they should be, see my rant on this at the end of the post).

The dialog trees are all there as well, keeping the game open to all the classic verbal exchanges that made Monkey Island games so enjoyable. I was disappointed to find out that insult swordfighting would not feature in this game. But Dave Grossman defended the decision, saying that insult swordfighting had basically run its course, and they wanted Tales of Monkey Island to explore the Monkely Island-verse without being bogged down by old gags and being constrained by old conventions. After a while, I realized I agree with him. If I want insult swordfighting, I'll get Lucasarts remake of the first game. So now I'm excited to see what kind of great new material these guys have come up with for ToMI.

ToMI is actually a five-part series, episodic games being a favorite convention of Telltale Games because they focus more on story than most other studios (as they should, see rant below again). Episodes will come out monthly and will advance the story further, eventually culminating in a big finale. The first episode will be available for PC on July 7, and a Wiiware version will follow shortly. You can pre-order all five episodes for $34.95, which will also get you a collectors DVD and artwork by the original Monkey Island artist Steve Purcell. Seems like a pretty good deal for 5 games.

While I wasn't able to see enough of the game to make a final verdict on the game, it certainly looks like they've got all the classic hallmarks of a Monkey Island game going on here, so I'm excited to see this story in action. And speaking of story, that seems like the perfect place to segue into my rant, check out the links below if you don't care.

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After seeing all the upcoming games in one place at E3, I'm actually really ashamed of where gaming is heading. I guess I've always known this, but the magnitude of crappiness displayed by games at E3 really brought it to the forefront of my thoughts.

An integral part of gaming industry since the advent of computer graphics has been the graphics race, the frantic pace of one-upmanship that tries to sell games based on how awesome they look or what kind of crazy spectacle they have which you've never seen before. Sure, this graphics race has given us some pretty good looking games, but the trend isn't sustainable. As we get closer and closer to the uncanny valley, the games start to look the same, and if game designers continue to worry about good graphics and more titillating kill moves instead of enjoyable stories and fascinating characters, then we'll slowly descend into a miasma of worthless games.

And E3 showed me just how far into that vortex of rubbish we've descended. One game demoed for us featured amazingly detailed toxic diarrhea issuing forth from a carefully rendered obese abomination. Sure the splatters looked incredibly realistic, but why should anybody except for 6^th grade boys think that's cool?

When I asked about the story arc of the character, I was dismissed with something along the lines of oh, he's got to rescue his love from evil and stuff like that, but look at how the light glints so realistically off his weapon as he dismembers enemies!

Yeah, because I play games for the glinting lights. Sure.

What we need is a little less emphasis on shimmering graphics; we must take a clue from the golden age of adventure games when story was more important. I mean, think back to text adventure games when there were no graphics, all you had to rely on was story. I realize that may be simplifying things to much since there was still a lot of grinding and dungeon exploration in the old text adventures in between the story progression.

But the bottom line remains the same: the current trend of gaming is unsustainable. Almost every game studio out there is ignoring the fact that games actually have a more powerful ability to tell stories than movies do; bet you never thought about that before, but let it sink in. Games are more powerful because they allow the player to either feel like they are creating the story or at least discovering it by their own actions, which is more than movies can say. But right now a large majority of games wouldn't even be given the B-movie rating if they had been put on film. They have all the explosions and scintillating visuals of a Michael Bay movie, but even less story. Yes, I know that's quite an insult toward gaming, but unfortunately it's true.

There's a silver lining: There are still a few studios who get this right, and they're primarily the ones that make adventure and RPG games. But there's no reason the principles can't be applied to other genres.

It's time for gaming to grow up. It's time for gaming to aim higher than eye candy. Leave behind the frantic dash to outshow other games' graphics, give up the sophomoric obsession with finding ever more disgusting ways to kill people and stop trying to overwhelm our senses at the expense of story and character development.

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For more tech news, without all the rantiness, check the blog:

The E3 2009 Top 10 List

Ubisoft's R.U.S.E. is Touchscreen Ready, Cool Looking

New Character Class Revealed for Star Wars: The Old Republic

PSP Go! Pricing and UMD Info

Playing New Super Mario Bros. for Wii at E3