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Telltale

Started by Deloria, February 15, 2013, 05:32:44 PM

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KatieHal

Lamb, you can express your opinion better than that.

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!

Bad Asp

Yeah... but... it seems like a lot of people are mad at Telltale lately.  So, we can't help but vent!

Lambonius

Quote from: KatieHal on March 07, 2013, 05:46:46 PM
Lamb, you can express your opinion better than that.

Nope.  I think that was the most apt possible way of putting it.  haha

darthkiwi

I thought the voice acting for ToMI and Sam and Max episodes were pretty good. I'm especially glad they could get the original actors who voiced Sam and Max in Hit the Road; the thing I found weirdest about the cartoon (I think...) was that the voices didn't match.
Prince of the Aquitaine. Duke of York.

Knight errant and consort to Her Grace the Empress Deloria of the Holy Roman Empire, Queene of all Albion and Princess Palatine.

Lambonius

Quote from: darthkiwi on March 08, 2013, 10:37:00 AM
I'm especially glad they could get the original actors who voiced Sam and Max in Hit the Road; the thing I found weirdest about the cartoon (I think...) was that the voices didn't match.

Uh...they DIDN'T get them.  At no point did the original Hit the Road actors voice the Telltale Sam & Max games.  And the Telltale games suffer for it.  Play Hit the Road again and listen carefully.

darthkiwi

Oh. Silly me, I guess. I did play the Telltale ones a year or so after Hit the Road, so I guess my memory must have been a bit fuzzy.

Now I listen to Hit the Road again, the voices are really different. XD
Prince of the Aquitaine. Duke of York.

Knight errant and consort to Her Grace the Empress Deloria of the Holy Roman Empire, Queene of all Albion and Princess Palatine.

Lambonius

#46
I always thought the Telltale voices had more in common with the Saturday morning cartoon version of the characters than Hit the Road.  Sam in particular has this amazing Humphrey Bogart-esque characteristic to his voice in Hit the Road which just perfectly captures the feel of the character from the earlier comics.  Telltale's Sam actor, by comparison, has always felt like a flat and lifeless interpretation of the character.  The actor just doesn't have the dynamic range and comic timing that the guy from Hit the Road had.  Telltale's Max is a bit less awful, but only slightly.  He's much more manic and silly, and doesn't at all capture the feel of the street-wise character from Hit the Road and the comics.  Just overall a big miss for me.

HitBattousai

On a related note, I am looking forward to seeing what Telltale does with the Fables license, which is supposedly their next effort.  Fables is a pretty awesome mystery/drama/fantasy comic based on fairy tale characters for reference.

Lambonius


KatieHal

Speaking of which, they've announced the Fables game is coming this summer, and titled "The Wolf Among Us": http://www.telltalegames.com/community/blogs/id-1012

A prequel story to the comics, and we get to play Bigby Wolf, a very major character in the comics. :) I'm excited!

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!

Lambonius

And it's finally come out what we've been saying all along, that they lost the rights to King's Quest.  Though the source of that info, so far, is Paul "Dropped" Trowe.  So I guess we'll still have to wait for the OFFICIAL official word.

MikPal

Quote from: Lambonius on March 09, 2013, 10:37:21 AM
The actor just doesn't have the dynamic range and comic timing that the guy from Hit the Road had.

Bill Farmer, the guy who did the voice in Hit The Road, is the official voice for Goofy and has a background in stand up and impersonations, so no surprise there.

Bludshot

Quote from: Lambonius on April 02, 2013, 11:06:25 AM
And it's finally come out what we've been saying all along, that they lost the rights to King's Quest.  Though the source of that info, so far, is Paul "Dropped" Trowe.  So I guess we'll still have to wait for the OFFICIAL official word.

Pretty pleased about this.  It'll help me cope with the announcement that the original Star Wars cast is going to be in episode 7. 
Deep Thoughts with Connor Mac Lyrr
"Alack! The heads do not die!"

wilco64256

Quote from: Lambonius on April 02, 2013, 11:06:25 AM
And it's finally come out what we've been saying all along, that they lost the rights to King's Quest.  Though the source of that info, so far, is Paul "Dropped" Trowe.  So I guess we'll still have to wait for the OFFICIAL official word.

Come on now, everybody knows his information is always 100% accurate, reliable, and never exaggerated in any way.

Wait... April Fool's was yesterday. Nevermind.
Weldon Hathaway

Bludshot

Oh I thought the news came out today, but that is a good point.  I hate videogames and April Fool's, no one knows how to be funny so they just make up possibly true nonsense. >__>

They've had the license for a few years now though, and not a peep about the project in all that time.
Deep Thoughts with Connor Mac Lyrr
"Alack! The heads do not die!"

Lambonius

Quote from: wilco64256 on April 02, 2013, 07:46:01 PM
Wait... April Fool's was yesterday. Nevermind.

While I agree that Paul Trowe is a world class asshat, this news does predate April Fools by quite a bit.  This has been floating around behind the scenes in the Sierra-inspired dev community for some time now.  I heard the same news months ago from someone else--with exactly the same details.

Lambonius

#56
The Dan Connors interview is up.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/telltale-games-ceo-dan-connors-on-the-walking-dead-fables-and-building-a-television-studio-model-for-games/

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I HATE THIS MAN.  He must need a gallon of mouthwash for all of the horse-s*** that so freely flows from his gaping maw.  What a f***ing weasel.

Here's the relevant section of the interview, by the way:

QuoteLast year when we talked one thing that you really zeroed in is that Telltale games aren't so much adventure games as they are Telltale games. They have their own identity. I feel like that identity has evolved with The Walking Dead. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think The Walking Dead really separates us from the past. Whereas I think previous games were trying to do it, but weren't different enough [to] see that this is its own thing. I think we tried pretty aggressively with [Jurassic Park] to break the mold in many ways. In some ways that didn't resonate with people, but a lot of what did work in JP is a lot of what became The Walking Dead. That kind of transitionary period of Back to the Future, JP, and The Walking Dead I think is where we really found the unique Telltale voice. Where I think Monkey Island had its roots, its deep roots, in the types of LucasArts games that kept Telltale as the 'little LucasArts' that I think people used to call us. Even though it did great things with storytelling in cliffhangers and emotion and characters that you could love and care about, it didn't have the play experience that made it stand out from what came before – versus The Walking Dead, which I think did.

Now does that give you pause? When you look at Monkey Island, which is a very interesting case where you're working with a familiar IP in the realm of gaming. It's not a comic book or a TV series, it's a classic game. The news came out a few years ago that you had the license for King's Quest. Do you re-think how you approach that or whether or not you do something like that when it sort of represents... a step away from the Telltale voice?

I think there's an expectation that comes with the classic stuff that puts us in kind of a no-win position where we're going to disappoint on some level if we don't stay true to the roots there. Right now we're in a place where we're really pushing in a new direction. I think there's a possibility to be back in that space and modernize some of the older franchises still, but right now our focus is certainly The Walking Dead and Fables: The Wolf Among Us. They're taking up a lot of our mental bandwidth. What we do next is still something we're working on, but I think we're going to have some very cool, future-looking announcements. I think 'modern' is kind of the key word. Bringing stuff forward from the past, that's not a huge focus for us right now.

The good news is that if you read between the lines, he essentially just told us that they aren't doing King's Quest.  And THANK GOD.  Whew.  Bullet dodged.

snabbott

QuoteWhere I think Monkey Island had its roots, its deep roots, in the types of LucasArts games that kept Telltale as the 'little LucasArts' that I think people used to call us.
Not sure why this is a bad thing. I get that they want to have their own identity, but if you're going to be compared with a studio of the past, I think this is quite a compliment.

Steve Abbott | Beta Tester | The Silver Lining

Lambonius

Quote from: snabbott on April 03, 2013, 07:26:15 AM
QuoteWhere I think Monkey Island had its roots, its deep roots, in the types of LucasArts games that kept Telltale as the 'little LucasArts' that I think people used to call us.
Not sure why this is a bad thing. I get that they want to have their own identity, but if you're going to be compared with a studio of the past, I think this is quite a compliment.

The funny thing is that I don't think they have ever held a candle to the old Lucasarts adventures, which were always much smarter and better written.  Not to even mention the gameplay.  People who called them the "Little Lucasarts" apparently didn't actually play Lucasarts games.

KatieHal

And it's official: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/04/03/telltale-drops-kings-quest-plans/

QuoteTwo years ago, adventure game specialist house Telltale Games revealed plans to make an episodic game based on King's Quest, the classic Sierra adventure game series about accidentally walking into alligator-infested waters and/or dying in the desert. However, those plans have gone yonder.

"While we deeply love King's Quest here at Telltale, we can confirm that we are no longer working on the franchise," Telltale Senior VP of Publishing Steve Allison told Digital Trends. "There was a time last year that we investigated partnering with third party developers to produce the game as a partnership but decided against outsourcing. We are not privy to what plans Activision has for the franchise, if any."

Rights holder Activision has its own episodic King's Quest series. The Silver Lining was originally conceived as a tribute project by fans, but developer Phoenix Online Studios later gained non-commercial license permission from Activision.

Katie Hallahan
~Designer, PR Director~

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

I have a blog!