Transcript
Speaker: It's Quest Quest. Hello, Benjamin. What the hell is It's me, Jareth, the Goblin King. why What are you doing? I live in a labyrinth with a baby. Did you just watch it? And some Muppets.
Speaker: Did he just watch I have a silver ball that I roll. a silver ball? a A crystal ball that I roll. for I watched half of Labyrinth for the first time ever right before the podcast, Ben.
Speaker: And let me tell you, I can see why Lucasfilms Games wanted to make an adaptation of this. ah What I saw of that movie looked really inspiring. Wait, have do you never seen it?
Speaker: I've never seen Labyrinth until today when I saw half of it. You see the rest of it. I don't know. I will spoil the game. So, Jake Rodkin, have you seen Labyrinth?
Speaker: Yeah. Yes. There you go.
Speaker: Did you think it was really David Bowie when I first started talking?
Speaker: Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Ben what ben wouldn't have wouldn't have supported me in that situation. we We like to have a third person to play off of to support our weak arguments. so thank you for being here.
Speaker: Yeah. Welcome. It's Quest Quest, the adventure game podcast, and we are joined by a special guest, Jake Rodkin. How's it going, Jake? it's It's going.
Speaker: I've forgotten how to talk. I've forgotten how to be on a podcast, but yeah, it's good to be here. Jake, I wrote an introduction. Do you want me to T you in?
Speaker: I wrote it. ah i've I looked at your Wikipedia and I wrote something. Do you want me Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's let's see. Usually I run this by the guest, but ah we were too busy talking about other shit. We were talking about Twin Peaks. ah So.
Speaker: Yes. All right. I'm happy to hear what you've got to say about me by way of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Yes. Jake Rodkin is a game designer and podcaster. It still credits you as a podcaster. Are you still doing much podcasting?
Speaker: I haven't done a pod... Not in quite some time. Yeah, yeah. I only guest on... I guest on Adventure Game podcasts once every... Ever. And that's about it.
Speaker: Cool. and Starting as a graphic designer at Telltale... Is that correct? Yeah. yeah right before Before moving to co-project leader on Tales of Monkey Island, as well as on The Walking Dead. There's later the director of... Semi-accurate.
Speaker: Semi-accurate. Oh, wow. You created The Walking Dead comic? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. No, I just, I was, whatever. Please continue. There's later the director of Firewatch.
Speaker: I guess. I don't think that's accurate either. said anyone can edit this. The names of the game are accurate, of are accurate but I don't know if those were really... Firewatch with me. And then recently, ah ah you've been involved with the Skunk Ape remastered of Xenomen Max, and most recently, the re-release of ah Poker Night at the Inventory.
Speaker: Yep, that's all true. All right, good. There you have it. We've covered it all. How many Pinocchios do you give that? What does that even mean? You know, like ah like the Washington Post, if they're doing like like a fact check.
Speaker: No, i think that' I think that's all reasonably accurate. I just never quite know what my job title is on any video game. And the things that Wikipedia says about any of that stuff is almost always completely off, but it's fine.
Speaker: Wikipedia likes to like puff me up, I guess. I'll take it. you've You've got shooters there. Don't worry. We'll we will make sure that all of this is updated with any information that you reveal over the course of this episode. We have a Wikipedia guy who will send in and most of your Wikipedia entry moving forward will be about the things you say on this episode. So really choose your words carefully. Yeah. That's good. I mean, there's a nice side effect that Quest Quest could then be sourced on numerous Wikipedia articles, which I'm sure is like an SEO tactic that someone has tried to employ. just like, we if we can be the Wikipedia source for what the time that you said something.
Speaker: Yeah. god I see Ben's wheels turning. I see it happening right now. How many controversy sections can you be the source of in people's bios? That's got to be traffic vector. ah you know traffic vector I gotta, like, yeah, we should have, like, every everyone we've had on ah you know. Yeah, get scandalous dirt out on the podcast. Yeah. we're We have ah another guest we're recording with soon. We'll we'll have to to start to, you know.
Speaker: Dig up some dirt. Yeah, yeah. Disgraced game designer. But, yeah, that's what we wanted to say at the top of the Wikipedia entry when we're done. Okay. and Remove podcaster and add disgraced. That seems fine. Yeah. It flows better.
Speaker: Yeah, sure. It's also, if, if we do disgraced podcaster, that's an easy YouTube cover. Like Jess and I could make that face.
Speaker: And then like, we could like Photoshop you to look sad, you know? Yeah. Jess and I could look really shocked. It will say disgraced podcaster. Then you'll have like, you know, like drawn on tears.
Speaker: I it'll work. and I think we got, I mean, hey, I could knock that out in no time. Yeah. the Good AI thumbnail. You gotta love them. Gotta love them. ah Who doesn't love an AI thumbnail? One that's even that tiny, tiny size. You can tell no human touched.
Speaker: Well, how do you eat one of those disturbing like AI restaurant, uh, like, you know, corn on the cob or a taco or Yeah, I need to eat like a burger made out of holes. And then then you guys can capture my face. With like a uniform sauce dripping down every single side equally. Yeah, I'm okay.
Speaker: Okay. So we're going to ask you the the important thing we ask every guest, which is, have you had any interesting meals lately? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Or ever. yeah or Yeah, we'll take it. Yeah. If not, we understand.
Speaker: and Not really, but I think that I'm... ah Let me think about this. I remember when I listened to the episode with Harrison Pink, I had opinions on his opinions, but now it's been so long that I've forgotten those. i feel like I feel like Harrison came out in favor of soul food, which I second, and I feel like maybe he talked about Michael's sourdough, which I also second, so I'm really just good here to say the food that people ate at Telltale all the damn time ah was good, actually, until...
Speaker: The studio got more successful and also the um amount of crunch went up. And also the production department had budget to pay for food for when people worked late.
Speaker: So the the best treat they could get everyone was buy soul food and have it catered in. ah Soul Food, S-O-L. It was like is spelled named after the woman who owned it It was Puerto Rican food. It was really great. But then what means what what what it was corrupted and cursed because ah we're working late and miserable trying to close an episode. The like aroma association and the food association became the good food that you liked to eat. And then a bunch of people just had to swear it off.
Speaker: um It was not Soul Food's fault. yeah and i actually I also don't think it was the fault of the producers who were trying to be nice, but it meant that you would be like, oh, can't do it anymore. But, you know, ah like a decade later, I went back to Soul Food Nade and it was still delicious. so you just You got Pavlov'd into like disliking very good food. Yes, it was a trick because it showed up in a trough when you were at the office at 11 p.m. Oh, man, I love a good trough.
Speaker: uh there's not enough of that i had some amazing soul food just uh just last week in uh in charlotte north carolina but not but not puerto rican this place is this place is called soul food but it's a weird pun because it's not actually soul food it's uh it's it's puerto rican food named soul food because it's also a lady named soul and it's also not like south korean food Oh, that would be fun. Another, another, and I'm sure it's open up next door. They were soul food expanded in, in San Rafael, California, and they opened up next to a different longstanding Puerto Rican restaurant. And then they somehow opened another one around the corner from them. That place was destroyed. um It was, it didn't go everywhere.
Speaker: It did not feel aggressive at the time, but in hindsight, that was actually an insane power play to be able to basically open up like three restaurants within a one and a half block radius surrounding a different restaurant of the same genre. Yes, we had. You don't survive that.
Speaker: In the tiny town in West Virginia where I work, um which maybe he doesn't have the most diverse food scene imaginable. A pho restaurant, Vietnamese pho shop opened up and was wonderful. And it was such a great treat to be able to to have that just whenever we wanted.
Speaker: And then wildly another one opened up literally next door to it like the next number the people the people like pho apparently so we got it and this is yeah it's becoming now the pho district i suppose and they basically drove each other out of business was like it was taken from us it was just i mean it was a tragedy yeah no i'm sorry i'm okay yeah okay you you made it through i'm all right i'm all right okay but i think about it a lot
Speaker: Yeah. so i Man, i now I want to go get Puerto Rican food. I haven't had a, like, I don't think I've had Puerto Rican since I was in Puerto Rico. Great place for it. They have some of the best there.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also some very good subways out here. They have amazing subways. The last time I was in Puerto Rico, I went to this great roadside barbecue joint and they had blood sausage, uh, which I love a good blood sausage. Um,
Speaker: But I thought I was ordering one blood sausage and accidentally ordered one full pound of blood sausage. And let me tell you, that's a little bit too much blood sausage. A little blood sausage goes a long way. a pound ah was deeply upsetting.
Speaker: I've never had a blood sausage, but I've been near a blood sausage event that really freaked me out. Yes. I went the the um the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater chain. They have a yearly film festival called Fantastic Fest. And I went for a few years in a row a few years back.
Speaker: And one of those years was the theme around the show was sort of like, vampiric in nature. Like it was, you know, they have, it's a genre film festival. So each year's themed around kind of various schlocky, tropey stuff.
Speaker: But the after party at that year's Fantastic Fest had two events that you could partake in, neither of which I partook in because they both freaked me out. You could be buried alive in a wood coffin that some guys had made just like on the lawn before the show. so They'll just put you in it, then bury you in dirt. And the other one, and they offered a thing they referred to as vegan blood sausage, which is they had a doctor there who would draw your blood and then they would cook you a blood sausage made from it.
Speaker: So, and you could eat it. I didn't do either of those things, but they both really scared me. Does run up against like some cannibalism, like auto cannibalism laws? I couldn't say. i did not ah really get near it enough to to really engage with it, but it exists. I I would have simply Uma Thurman to my way out of that coffin.
Speaker: Like that would you would have been a problem. Just strange from two feet away. Yeah. And then just climb up through the collapsing dirt, uh, from the grave. Yeah. That would have been an issue for me, but the, my own blood sausage, you would have been walked up to the, make your own blood sausage booth and died.
Speaker: yes that Yes. I, I think I would have, I think I would have reacted to being buried alive. in I think I will loved it really I would just be like leave me down there you could try it yourself at any time it's it seems easy to attempt well you guys need someone to marry you partner yeah you gotta have a spotter yeah the pallbearer something like you need like a dirt guy you gotta have the dirt guy you gotta have the dirt guy yeah maybe you can get that dirt guy from Gabriel Knight there's a dirt guy and Gabriel yeah there's the gravedigger the guy that works at the cemetery
Speaker: He's also in Space Quest 6. If you're a grave digger, you're not ah a dirt guy. That's part of your job. That's noble profession. I think that, I don't know. I think if someone said I got a dirt guy to bury someone and then they brought a grave digger, you'd be like, that's pretty good dirt guy, high-end professional. Hey, it's the dirt guy.
Speaker: Yeah, you know. It's me, the dirt guy you want to bury. I hear dirt guy and I think Home Depot. Like, I think, like, you know. Oh, like Phil Dirt. A person with dirt.
Speaker: not digging up dirt, but with a lot of dirt, you know, the guy who has dirt. Yeah. Like yeah he's dirt rich.
Speaker: And speaking of dirt, Jess and, and per Jake's special request, we're going to keep this, this music running.
Speaker: Thank you. Yeah. i want quest quest classic. so So fuck you if you didn't like it. Just FYI, neither of us heard the theme audio, and I'm not sure if that was able's supposed to be playing through, but i'm kind of I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't have said anything because it might have meant that only you heard the music the entire time. but now I heard it.
Speaker: Okay, we that on we heard it too, and we will hear the music you're about to play. All right, here we go. Speaking of what have you been playing, Jess, what have you been playing?
Speaker: Wow. Why have I been playing? This jaunty music I'm definitely hearing in my headphones right now yeah conjures to mind. I can't believe that it's not playing. Fucking Zencaster. I can hear it too. Don't worry. it's It sounds beautiful.
Speaker: ah Ben, you saw me streaming this last night on on Twitch, but I have just started a recently released narrative adventure game titled Forever Ago, which is in the, I would say, like, Life is Strange narrative adventure.
Speaker: you know, I hate to use a phrase like walking sim, but definitely that style of adventure. It's a story, a heartwarming tug at your heartstrings kind of story about a crotchety old man who's going on a road trip after his wife has passed away to revisit several of the places that were meaningful parts of their relationship throughout the years. It has some real up vibes to it, if you will.
Speaker: Hey, Jess, I know you want to say it. I don't want to say it, Ben. I don't have to say it. Say it, Jess. Come on You said it last night. You were so proud when you streamed it. It's an up-em-up. boy it and It is 100% an up-em-up. It's an Yeah, it's an up-em-up. And I can't believe that's not part of their marketing buzz. I'm going write to the to the team and ask if they need me to step in and help try to get the word out on this. That's just a review quote waiting to happen.
Speaker: play this great up them up. It's got old people. um But it's really old a sad old sad old crotchety man. Oh, he's so crotchety. He keeps encountering young people who are just doing their best to do their jobs. And he's just yelling at them because he doesn't have time for their crap and their cell phones and their. Yeah, it's in 89.
Speaker: It's in present. Oh, it is in present? The old old-timey him is in the present day. So, yeah, he's just like ah an old man who doesn't have time for this. He just wants to reminisce about the good old days with his wife, but those good old days are all gone. The the gas station that they fell in love with is now run by some snot-nosed kid.
Speaker: the The diner that they that they shared their engagement at is now ah some sort of terrible chain restaurant.
Speaker: you can't You can't go back again, seems to be the story. But it's really charming, it's a beautiful game. It has that nice sort of, what I would describe very, think very poorly as like a,
Speaker: indie adventure, cel-shaded aesthetic. I don't know what to call it exactly, but it's a gorgeous game. It's a very handsome title. It's a lot of fun. I'm enjoying it so far. I'm about a couple hours in. I'm looking forward to seeing where it turns out.
Speaker: Jake, what have you been playing?
Speaker: Oh, man. I've played barely enough Star Wars Zero Company to talk about it, so I don't think I'm going talk about it, although I'm enjoying it as as a person who likes the idea of XCOM games but is a baby who is bad at them. yeah I'm enjoying that this one has the feel of that mixed in with a bunch of pretty well-done Star Wars stuff, so I'm liking that. But the thing that i played as much of it as I could until I ran out of game recently that I really loved was the Telwinium, which is that sort of episodic point-and-click being made by a Power Hoof, the people who made ah The Drifter.
Speaker: yeah And Helwinium is awesome. I've got to think about how to describe it. ah Well, first, they've been releasing it episodically on their Itch page, but I think they've now announced that they're going to finish it up all five. They've released three chapters of it, and think they're releasing it as a five-part thing.
Speaker: on Steam and whatever other, you know, other yeah the places that you sell the video games as, I guess, their follow-up adventure game to The Drifter. But the three parts that I played were were awesome. It seems like, i mean, it's kind of a love letter to EGA adventure games, you know, like it looks...
Speaker: It looks like Sierra games, if they had the art talent of LucasArts. Take that! Uh, that's Whoa! Shots fired! Wow!
Speaker: This is the shit that would get you into big arguments on the Adventure Gamer forums. Yeah, I...
Speaker: Don't look up my post history on the adventure gamer forums. Uh, it's all gambling stuff now probably, right? it Or now it was just, which one it was at adventure game. Oh yeah, no, you're right. They bring in the best in narrative games and gambling or whatever happened to adventure gamers. Uh, a bunch of the adventure gamers forums actually got preserved by mix and mojo and you can go and see them on mix and mojo.com still. Uh, think it's only the really old stuff, which is where all the hottest takes live and then the newer stuff they're still working on.
Speaker: But, uh, No, I like the the art of it really does remind me of like, especially because it's, you know, it's all sort of, especially the first chapter of Tell William is very like lush fantasy forest spaces. It really looks almost like the backgrounds to Loom or The Secret of Monkey Island, but the flavor of it is so much more like
Speaker: fantasy fantasy that it ends up feeling like it's sort of touching into Sierra games or Kyrandia or something, you know, but ah it's good. It does the same things that the Drifter does where the game ah it kind of moved, the narrative moves at its own pace in a way that is always really satisfying and surprising where you'll halfway through a puzzle chain and the fact that you're halfway through a puzzle chain means that that's secretly under the hood is the inciting incident for some unexpected thing to change, which, you know, ah
Speaker: It's a thing that for some reason nobody does, and these guys are just extraordinarily good at doing. The Drifter did such a great job with that. Yeah. When we played that a while back in an episode, I mean, it it blew both of us away. Just the sense of pacing and, you know, for a genre that can sometimes slow down, just how it kept propelling forward with that sort of puzzle design. and Yeah, it's yeah so cool. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like, I don't know. no narrative games where the game sort of tells you that something is going to happen so you're bracing yourself for it to happen usually what that means is you just kind of push and push and push through and then eventually you get hit over the head by the thing that they tell you is going to happen but in the in both the drifter and telwinium you kind of just never know when anything is going to happen and it ends up turning back on itself and you like there's no clock in these games. There's no like NPC logic or anything, but you just it's still it just ends up feeling way more alive because of that. Like it just it's such a good trick that they pull over and over and over again and it just works forever. It's it's great. ah
Speaker: But yeah, the um' I'm super excited to see where the rest of that game goes. Having played three out of five chapters, I'm gonna just play it again when it comes out. But yeah, each chapter of course ends on an intense cliffhanger. good. So it's deeply rude that you get get through the third part and then they're like, oh no, we we're not releasing four or five until we finish all it and put it up as a complete retail game. But I i think it's a great choice. These people, they're episodic games, right? Who would do such a thing?
Speaker: I've been waiting on it because I do, i love the look of it. um e it The art style seems very reminiscent of Conquest of Camelot, but that seems like that's their point of reference. Yeah, that's the touchstone they always think of when I've seen screenshots of it.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those things where it's like it's always been on my list. And then when they said, all right, well, we're going to put out this complete thing. I was like, all right, I'll just I'm not even going to bother. I'll wait until the complete game's out.
Speaker: Yeah. I love the Drifter. I liked I think I might have mentioned this. The, like, they have this, like, four-player,
Speaker: uh, I forget what it's called, uh, like this four-player arcade game type thing that I've played a bunch with friends over here, like you're, like all, uh, dungeon crawling and the other ones are just- Is that their game that's just called Crawl? It's Crawl, yeah.
Speaker: I was gonna say, it's like it's called Dungeon, but it's not Dungeon. You're so close. Yeah, you were you were yeah completely wrong, but also half right somehow. yeah yeah they also They also made a game called Regular Human Basketball, which is a great title for a name, and I've never played it or looked into it. ah Yeah, good good name for video Well, I've been playing ah in Early Access, Car Park Capital.
Speaker: Oh, man. i haven't played that yet, but the the trailers for it look just, it looks delicious. i So as indicated, like with ah the Talwinium, like I usually like to wait until something's out of Early Access. I don't like to, but...
Speaker: The trailer, like the roller coaster tycoon one, two aesthetic, like transport tycoon. That look is just irresistible to me. Like I try to be someone that's very resistant to obvious nostalgia calls.
Speaker: And, but, but That aesthetic is just something that immediately just presses buttons in my brain that forced me to purchase it day one, early access.
Speaker: Sure. And yeah, it looks just like it fell off of a like CD spindle at a bookstore that otherwise doesn't sell video games. That's right. just land It landed 2026. It's great. Some of the some of the the graphics through like have that like three d VGA dithering. Yes. I just love so much. look like that like You see all over Hypnospace Outlaw, Gumshoe Gooper.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's like, it's got the roller coaster tycoon thing, but also like Little Big Adventure or something in that same sort of like the isometric. We're really pushing the limits of 256 colors. A little bit of that bullfrog kind of look to it too. It's got some that going on. Yeah, no, it's a very nice looking game. The vibes are immaculate.
Speaker: If so, and if, if you're listening and you're unfamiliar with the game, what it is, is it's a like a management sim, like a builder where, uh, you have to build, ah parking lots and you have to get people to buy more cars and you have to make them hostile to public transit.
Speaker: And you do that via propaganda and you do that by destroying public land and, a Like you build a car factory on the outskirts of the town and it immediately starts producing like enormous amounts of pollution and destroying all the trees around it.
Speaker: And that has the benefit to the player of making all the property value around the car factory drop to zero that you can get.
Speaker: ton of all the land for free after that. throw For your parking a lot expansions. Yeah. Yeah. And it is so like
Speaker: Uh, like Jess said earlier, Bullfrog, it really evokes, like, it has the aesthetics of, like, a rollercoaster tycoon and kind of the UI and kind of the gameplay of one, but it has the spirit, I think, of, like, a Bullfrog game, like, Dungeon Keeper, like... a theme hospital or theme park where like those games are kind of funny and they're kind of sly and they're also like build this many of this to move up so you can make more of this type of patient room or whatever yes and that's what car park capital does and it's also that like i mean it goes even further than a bullfrog game because it like it's
Speaker: deeply unsubtle with its politics. Yes. ah Which it like, you know, it has a type of like stridency about its anti-car, like it's jonathan Jonathan Swift style going as hard possible to be pro-car to make our anti-car argument.
Speaker: that like there's some of it that just feels like a screaming argument on Twitter. And we all need more of that.
Speaker: Because it's like it referred to, it's like you have to give people more car brain. And I don't know if that, like maybe someone will email us and be like, the etymology of car brain actually comes from this. That to me sounds like something from like Twitter arguments from 10 years ago.
Speaker: Like about bike lanes. Like, you know, since you put this game on my radar, you know, I'm currently teaching my politics and video games course. And I have a week on video game economies coming up. And I'm really tempted to introduce my students to Car Park Capital because I feel like...
Speaker: As you said, it's not particularly subtle, which, you know, for for a class that's maybe kind of first learning this sort of media critique kind of thing might be the perfect way to get them thinking about this. But no, it's, everything I've heard about it makes me think it's like I never buy anything in early access, and I've been kind of low-key tempted by this one too.
Speaker: It's the moment the first trailer for it came out. Also, the fact that it's published by Microprose gives it like oh yeah weird additional 90s energy. It's very, yeah, the moment the first trailer came out, I was like, what? exists?
Speaker: Yeah. is I appreciate that whoever it is that runs Microprose, like whoever got the trademark for Microprose, you know, uh,
Speaker: is keeping the general vibe of, like, because it I don't think that person, I mean, I really don't know, but i'm I'm pretty sure it's just someone that got the trademark. I don't think it's... Sure, but they seem to they seem to know what games should say Microprose in front us. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I think they also have published, like, a couple tank games, you know? Good. There you go. the people what they want on Microprose tank games.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, I don't know. i think it's kind of fun like because it's sometimes I get cynical about it's like, you know some people will dig up like a trademark or or something like that from like 20 years ago and just be like, huh, aren't you excited? Like we've brought back this brand name and it's, you know, yeah what does that mean?
Speaker: But yeah this one though, it feels like people, a lot of people learned that Microprose was back because their logo showed up in front of things like this. And you wonder like, is this a bit? And then you realize, oh no, no, no. It's actually the, the someone's back financing games under this name.
Speaker: And it's this. Yeah. And yeah, they're clearly someone that, you know, give me a ah good master of Orion. Oh, there you go. oh Oh, that'd be great. All right.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much for for joining us again, Jake. um Is the music still on? No, the music is over. Okay, I could hear it the whole time, but it just continues to loop in my brain one way or the other. It's not that i couldn't hear it or tell what you were doing with it.
Speaker: Well, I'll say that I heard it the end. i don't know i the the The podcast cloud software that we use, it's sometimes weird.
Speaker: Anyway, so Jess, recently you completed playing for the first time Tales of Monkey Island. That's correct. I've been streaming in recent weeks Tales of Monkey Island. um i I played the first three episodes upon release. I believe I played them as WiiWare back at the time. Oh, you played it but yeah the way it was meant to be played. The real way. I played it the authentic way of on WiiWare.
Speaker: And somewhere along the way, I got distracted. Maybe I just like boxed up my Wii or something like that. Your Wii could have run out of memory. I don't think it actually had enough on-device storage to hold five complete WiiWare games. That's amazing. as oh yeah I probably bricked it with too much Monkey Island.
Speaker: um But you know I played those and finally came back and finished the remainder of the series. um And was lucky enough, ah Jake, you you dropped by and hung out in the in the chat for several of those streams and were able to provide some behind-the-scenes trivia. And, you know, i think that there are a lot of adventure gamers who...
Speaker: Obviously, you're fascinated by the Monkey Island series and fascinated by Telltale as well. And yeah, we had some some fun conversations. Thank you so much for being there. I was never sure of the degree to which I should out you as ah as one of the developers. I figured half the people in chat probably knew you by your by your username.
Speaker: And I didn't want to put you on the spot because, you know, I don't want people like counting you for autographs and stuff like that. That has never happened and will never happen. Yeah. You haven't had a hard day's night situation where you're running down the street. People are like, it's the guy. It's the director of Firewatch. According to Wikipedia. got I didn't direct Firewatch. um <unk>ve I've got the Wikipedia right here. It says your name. Yeah. No, I mean, and, you know, I found tells Mike Allen to be just absolutely delightful. And it's such a, such a treat to have you here to, to pick your brain about it You know before, before you joined the call, Ben and i after we finished unloading all of our stresses of the day on each other, like we just yell at each other for about 15 minutes before we get started
Speaker: You know, I said something that has always fascinated me about about your story is, is in a lot of ways, I feel like you're you're living the dream for a lot of us who got our starts at places like, you know, the the Adventure Gamer forums and, you know, the sites like Mixonmojo. And, you know, I had my own Space Quest web website and forum back in the day, and I was cycling through a lot of those Sierra and LucasArts communities. I suspect we were haunting a lot of the same kinds of online spaces. we were on the same boards. It is what it is. Absolutely. There's only so many of them.
Speaker: Yeah. And, you know, I think there was a little part of me back then when I was like 18, 19 years old that thought, you know, if I make the perfect forum post someday, I'll just be plucked from obscurity. they'll be like, Jess, would you like to make a new space quest game? I didn't realize I'd actually have to do work.
Speaker: Like after I made those forum posts to put myself in a position to be, that's where I stopped. I was just like, I will be discovered for my genius. Now that I've talked about why Rogers boots change color. between Space Quest 2 and 3. And somehow that never turned into a career in game development for me. um But, but i mean, you parlay this sort of, yeah you're you're a form poster made good.
Speaker: Yeah. but Yeah. that's Every poster's dream. Every poster's dream is to become ah a game dev. ah that's true It is for a certain kind of forum nerd. It's true.
Speaker: I can become the guy who gets yelled at by the forum posters. This is awesome. Now you've... Well, I i mean, i you know that is kind of interesting. It's like... You...
Speaker: Like, especially with something that people feel as close to as Monkey Island, like, you you've been, like, you know, you were talking about hot takes, arguments, adventure game reform, and now, like, and now you're you're in the room.
Speaker: And you're like, did you ever have a moment where people are like, that's not how Guybrush is, where you're like, I understand these people. and Gosh, ah I have a ah couple of thoughts about that. But the first thing that I have to say in regards to all of this is I'm a Return to Monkey Island like lover. I think that game is awesome. But one of the things that I enjoy the most about it is Ron Gilbert has now had the pleasure of being a person who has to ship a sequel to Monkey Island 2.
Speaker: um and deal with the fans of Monkey Island post Monkey Island 2. I think that game is awesome, but I also ah was very entertained by the fact that even even that was not immune to the same old business.
Speaker: ah No, Tales of Monkey Island was an interesting game to work on because it you know it was made at Telltale and it was made...
Speaker: 2010, 16 years ago today. Seems impossible. Oh my God. Yeah, gross. um Because it was in 2010, which was, you know, at that point, nine years after Escape from Monkey Island, which now, given that everyone who likes point and click adventure games is an old person, Back then there were still young people who liked them, including me, who was in my 20s.
Speaker: And, you know, a bunch of people at Telltale, it was it was this this mix of ex-Lucasarts people who started the company, you know, the people who were working on Sam & Max Freelance Police, the Hit the Road sequel at Lucasarts in 2003.
Speaker: And ah so that was you know the the founders, Dan Connors and Kevin Bruner. And ah pretty early in the company's existence, Dave Grossman, ah who you know had long since long prior previous left LucasArts, but he came back to be the head of the writer department writing department.
Speaker: And by the time Tales of Monkey Island was in production, ah Mike Stemley had also joined the writing and designing team who was one of the leads on Sam and Max hit the road. And, um, speaking of car park capital, he made afterlife at Lucasarts, which is yes. Lucasarts is a game where you're man at the SIM game where you're managing both heaven and hell. And that game is completely in that aesthetic wheelhouse, but he was absolutely,
Speaker: ever He also was one of the two project leads on Escape from Monkey Island, and he was he was now at Telltale. Also, Chuck Jordan was working there, who he and Mike were the leads on the third Sam and Max game on The Devil's Playhouse. I think Chuck was kind of the project lead, and he and then he and Mike split up a lot of the writing duties on that.
Speaker: But Chuck also was at LucasArts, where he was a writer, designer, programmer on Curse of Monkey Island, and then he also was a programmer and designer on Grim Fandango. So there were those guys. We basically had people who worked on Monkey Island 1, 2, 3, and 4 who were those guys.
Speaker: And then all the people, then there were a ton of people for whom they were working at Telltale because they loved playing adventure games made by those people when they were kids.
Speaker: So, that you know, and on the writing and design and direction team, that was a ah lot of people, but including ah Mark Darren, who was the so the sort of project co-lead with Mike Stemley on Tales Monkey Island. Mark Darren was an indie adventure game developer who got hired at Telltale in its early days, and then he...
Speaker: He and Mike did that game. They did ah back to the future. mark also wrote, wrote ah He was the lead writer on the first Puzzle Agent game with ah with Sean Vanneman. And ah Mark also, basically, he was like an indie guy. And I think that Telltale didn't quite know what to do with him when he showed up. So they first were just like, we've got the CSI license from Ubisoft. They want us to crank out CD-ROM sequels to a different studio's old games made in Macromedia Director. Mark, can you just do CSI?
Speaker: So Mark also wrote like three or four or three CSI games. ah um But anyway, Tales of Monkey Island, it was ah it was an interesting thing because there were all these people in the writer slash designer room who had worked on basically the entire history of that series to date.
Speaker: And then there were people like me who felt like I had basically snuck in. Like Tales of Monkey Island was one of the first games where I was even... in game design meetings. i had I had worked a little bit with these same people with Mike, Chuck, and Dave Grossman on the Homestar Runner game that Telltale had made previous to that. The one that, um the WiiWare game that they made that actually sold copies on WiiWare, which is what tricked them into thinking that ah the WiiWare audience wants to play a Monkey Island game.
Speaker: But ah God, to get to the end of all of this, I'm going to split the story again. i can't stop talking about Tales of Muggy Island. I guess i'm one it's good that I'm on a podcast talk about it. ah I remember being, I think it was at PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, which is in Seattle. I think we were at dinner in the Space Needle when it still had a restaurant. I might be conflating things, but I remember being in a conversation where someone in either the marketing or management group sort of team at Telltale said, hey, we're talking to Lucas about doing a new Monkey Island game.
Speaker: And if memory serves, and ah Dave Grossman, if you ever hear this, and I'm lying right now, please feel free to yell it. Come on this podcast and set the record straight. That goes for everyone you've mentioned up to this point. Yeah. I remember both of us just said, no, we shouldn't do that as our first reaction to the fact that, that, uh, the idea of telltale doing a monkey Island game. And I don't really know Dave's reasons for it, but I, I was a person who was really proud of all the work that we did at telltale.
Speaker: Um, Although it in the early days, it was actually hard for me to sort of get my fan brain out of the way. where like we were shipping We were making the Sam and Max episodic games, which I love and think are great.
Speaker: And I think they've actually aged pretty well. aged extremely well. Check out the remasters from Skunk Ape Games available at your local online game retailer. But... um I also always like when we were working on the first season of Sam and Max was thinking, bet freelance police would have been better, which is such a touch of dog shit thing to think. But like I was, I was, you know, kind of still working in the community team and the marketing team and I wasn't doing a lot of game dev work. I still didn't really understand what making a video game was like. And I definitely had no idea what freelance police ever was. And the people who were there who worked on it were like, that's kind of the same as this game. Like the stories and puzzles and stuff are different, but like it's the same people.
Speaker: But the thought of doing a Monkey Island game on the schedule and budget of Telltale was just like actually terrifying to me as a person who...
Speaker: to your point, Jess, at the beginning of my 4,000 year ramble, had the career that I had because basically the first thing I typed into a search engine when I got access to the World Wide Web was Monkey Island and then found the Monkey Island scumbar on the forum.
Speaker: And to be like, you want to make one of these? we like Part of my voice was like, yeah, obviously the only, way like making a Monkey Island game is an incredible proposition, but also like, not like this. Like, I know it's going to be probably on WeWear. I know that it's going to be episodic. I know that we have,
Speaker: the resources that Telltale has, which, you know, I ultimately am really, really, really proud of the game. But my first reaction was kind of fear and rejection of the premise.
Speaker: Yeah. Done talking now. I did it. Oh, no. No, I mean, ah period. Yeah. you know and i will say compared to some of those other early telltale games it feels like tales of monkey island stretches that budget quite a bit i mean while there's revisiting of of locations and things like that like i didn't think it was as noticeable say as in the back to the future games you know feel like you got stretched that a little further maybe than those where there was a lot of that hill valley city, uh, city center, uh, kind of, I don't know if it's fair to accuse back to the future as a franchise of, uh, it just keeps repeating the same thing. I don't care. the Same location at different time periods. I keep thinking that one on square, Yeah. Have you noticed like, have you noticed like, like half the models, like so look just like Marty McFly. Now he's like in olden times with the mustache and stuff. How lazy is that? They only had like three actors play all the parts. Yeah. Oh, wow. It's a, it's another doc Brown. Wow. Come on.
Speaker: i wonder, I didn't really work on the back to the future game, but I wonder if people at telltale were like, there's asset reuse. It baked into the franchise. Yeah. That's true. They were flipping assets. Zemeckis was doing that long before in Game Studio. Back to the Future, the original asset flip. That was how they sold it as a trilogy to Universal, I think. You guys also had the Polar Express lined up as a telltale episodic, right? Polar Express was coming We were going to do the mocap Polar Express and strip only one one thousandth of the polygons from the film and then put that on the Nintendo Wii. Yes, that was... And get Tom Hanks, his brother that does all the voiceover that he doesn't want to do. The Zemeckis production studio was actually literally like down the street from our office. And we actually had at least one person from a couple of people leave Telltale to go do like lighting and production design stuff on those, which is weird.
Speaker: Marin County is where you, if you, there's there's a lot of stuff out there that is, I think probably just because George Lucas built a compound there, you know, And then everyone sort of kept kept getting shed off of it.
Speaker: Ben brought this up. yeah but Again, we were talking before the episode and I thought this was a a really good point. So I'm to steal it from Ben. ah copyright Ben just is just repeating my good point go ahead yeah that's right no Ben would you like to make your good point no no please I don't I don't know what you make so many good things I said yeah I mean for my good points filtered through someone else yeah that's right I do feel like I can improve a lot of Ben's good points like I'm not saying i like he's a he's the originator but i think I can put some polish on this one um my game's so good no no um that's the PhDs talking One of the things that we were talking about, and you know it's fascinating when you talk about this culture at Telltale that's a mix of a lot of the old pros from LucasArts and then yeah this or second generation that that you're a part of that's coming in that that grew up playing a lot of these games.
Speaker: Something that I think works really beautifully to... tells a monkey island's credit is that as Ben pointed out, it doesn't feel fan-ish.
Speaker: I think it'd be easy with, you know, that many years since escape from monkey island and, you know, a new company, even with some old faces taking up this, this franchise, I think it'd be really easy to to play the hits.
Speaker: And i really appreciate that tells a monkey island doesn't, overindulge in that when it does usually it's with a subversion or a twist that brings something new to it um i'm curious you know as you guys are working on this you know how was how are those sorts of conversations is that something that just came naturally from the makeup of the team or is it something you were consciously trying to to uh to avoid you know that fanish tone ah I honestly can't speak to all of it because so much of the like nuts and bolts work was done by Mark and Mike when they were like writing the first couple episodes and figuring out a lot of a lot of this. But we did have a good number of early conversations about just like, what is the tone of this game? What does a Monkey Island game need to have? what Where are the characters at? What's the state of everything?
Speaker: And because you're making a thing in real life with actual time and money constraints and your own um hopes and fears brought to bear, there is a kind of a combination of things, you know, like I would love like as far as personal fan service in a Monkey Island game, I would love to go back to Wood Tick on Scab Island for Monkey Island 2. Like, ah yeah, I'm one of the best locations in an adventure game. But I've used stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, it's amazing. But I think we we all thought to ourselves, there's kind of two reasons for why this is the case or why why we didn't want to go back to existing locations. One, we, I don't think, entirely knew...
Speaker: what our capabilities were going to be as a team and what the technical limitations of the game were going to be. And if we tried to bite off an old location, would we, if it didn't go well, would we run the risk of fans just running the comparison in their brain between what it was before and what it is again, like going back to melee Island in escape from a gallon is not like, it doesn't hit right in my opinion.
Speaker: um and But the other thing that we talked about a lot early on, which I think is the more positive version of this, is if you compare Monkey Island 1 to Monkey Island 2, Monkey Island 2 is an amazing example of a sequel that doesn't repeat a trick from the first game. you know like it has it is It doesn't have three-trial structure. It doesn't have you have to gather a crew. It doesn't have insult sword fighting. Even its structure breaks it from...
Speaker: it does it even like its structure breaks it from ah the first half is in one map and the second half is in another map to being like, nope, we're actually going to do this four, four um you know, four island or three I guess three island interconnected thing that then at the end sort of funnels you into the into the finale in Lechok's Fortress and Dinky Island or Inky Island.
Speaker: um And just realizing, oh, ah Monkey Island 2, which... I think for a lot like sorry Jess but for a lot of us it was the it was the like number one favorite game in the series. yeah um and i have wrong Monkey Island opinions. Look I'll stand by my wrong Monkey Island. ah I think I think that I used to be like a Monkey Island to ride or die and at this point basically what depending on the day you ask me it's it's one or two. I'm a I'm a one man.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm going to get one EGA for life is great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. What do you take me for? Good grief.
Speaker: There's Amiga defenders out there, but they're not from here. So that's different. Yeah. um ah yeah I don't want to Brown. There's so many kilometers away. Yeah. they Yeah. They're there. Yeah. um But that realization that, you know, like,
Speaker: Curse of Monkey Island for all of the things that it does that are amazing, it really also did kind of feel like ah structurally and in the way that it sort of, its version of what is a Monkey Island game is we're going to pay direct homage to the structure of the story where, you know, you start on one island, you end on another island, and then there's a little conclusion.
Speaker: And even the big the big sort of overarching puzzle structures are often very much a direct callback to Secret of Monkey Island. And And Escape kind of did its own thing, but it also...
Speaker: ah is a pretty schizophrenic game, but we we definitely felt like it was, it's one of those things where the first meeting someone sits down and is like, we've got to do insult sword fighting. And then everyone goes, man do we?
Speaker: And eventually insult sword fighting showed up in the game, but it was because, not out of a sense of obligation, but it was because I think Mark Darren had the idea for the insult slash compliment sequence where you're talking to Morgan in the crossroads in episode five. When he first said I'm putting insult sword fighting, was like, we said, said we aren't going to do it and then he you know pitched what it was like no it's good actually so that needs to be in the game it pays off there would have paid off the same if you had like trotted out regular insult sword fighting throughout the rest of the episodes you know there was also uh the the funny faces in uh the yes which i felt was like a cousin it's yeah it's in that same zone of sort of
Speaker: you collect something. Exactly. gets yeah It's like the lightest, lightest form of a, like, it's not even like RPG combat, but it almost is where it's like, you're the, the feeling of like, you're leveling up your, your inventory of tools to bring to this fight, but it's really just, you're solving a bunch of little, little puzzle bits. Yeah. Yeah. yeah that's And that's like,
Speaker: What I liked about that that puzzle, and and one thing, like, this is kind of building into the brilliant point I was making to Jess before we recorded, ah was that, like, that didn't feel... Like, that and also the compliments, which I loved.
Speaker: Yeah, fantastic. Great moment to bring that relationship full so circle. Sure. The... um What I liked about it was that it it was like, you know, you think about curse, which just brings back insult sword fighting.
Speaker: And it's just like, it rhymes now. Like yeah it's it's, it's little thing. That's go is extremely the return of the Jedi of the, of the original three Macallan games. Like it was thought of it that way, but it is. Yeah, it is. it's it It's the like all singing, all dancing,
Speaker: take on a bunch of like re-riff on a bunch of the ideas from the original. Regardless of your opinion of Return the Jedi or Curse a Monkey Island, I think Curse of Monkey Island is also great. Like looks amazing, super well-written. Introduces the clouds.
Speaker: The clouds become canonical to all of Monkey Island. The clouds are like the fifth most important character in Monkey Island. I mean the the clouds and Murray showed up from that. Also the entire voice cast for the series, which is just like iconic.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. i Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the the the other thing that we talked about a lot at the beginning of the game was the characterization of Guybrush, LeChuck, and Elaine, which was, that was the part that was like, is, are we going to, I, my memory of that, and even now, 15 years later, was like, worry about it because it was, i remember Mark felt similarly that,
Speaker: From Monkey Island 1 to 4, the characterization of the leads had all kind of slipped out from under them a little bit, where like, it's almost like in Star Wars terms where people are like, oh, the fun thing about Stormtroopers is they can't shoot straight. It's like what do thought? That's the meme. That's like the meme about them. The thing about Stormtroopers that's cool is in the first movie, they're actually kind of scary. yeah And I feel like LeChuck had kind of gone down that road where the stories eventually started hinging on the fact that people can't take him seriously.
Speaker: And ah the story started hinging on the fact that Guybrush was fuck up and that everyone assumes that he's, or that he actively is a fuck up. And ah Elaine got increasingly ah more defined by her kind of annoyance at being stuck in a relationship with Guybrush more than her being like a competent character who kind of hovers above the story. And one of our,
Speaker: we we described it as the sort of like backpacking rule of try to leave a campsite cleaner than the way you found it in terms of our taking on this series. or Like if we walk out of this and where Guybrush LeChuck and Elaine are is at least sort of pushed back towards what we all think about when you first experienced those characters in the first couple of games, we've probably done well by the series and by the fans, but it was still weird to be like,
Speaker: Wasn't they, they were kind of like goofy guys in the fourth game, but Stemley was like, yeah, they're whatever. I thought it was fun. I don't know. Stemley, Stemley and his, and his experience around the McAllen games, Mike Stemley, come on quest quest.
Speaker: Yeah. But yeah, Yeah, we we were pretty conscious with of that being a goal. Like, can we end this? I don't think you can ever get back to the point of the underground tunnels in Monkey Island 2, especially to the point of being like 11 years old and playing that at one in the morning. like they're terrifieding I'll never relive that. But can we at least get back to people going, oh, I don't like when i don't like the idea that I'm walking around a scene and LeChuck's going to show up and like that's actually going to...
Speaker: be a thing that I don't like as opposed to me like going, LOL, look at this goober. He's going to slip on a banana peel or whatever. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. And I think that, you Tails does a nice job of maybe walking back some of the, the jerk ass guy brush characterization that we started to get where guy brush just increasingly, you know, in those games, it becomes cruel at times in the way that he, sure. interacts with, I mean, that's part being adventure game protagonist. Everyone's just, you know, something you leverage to accomplish what you need. But I think that by the time you get to escape, you know, that's it's almost a trope as part of his character. I think that tells walk that back quite a bit. And, you know, think Elaine was particularly poorly served by curse and escape. And well, in curse, she's just the statue whole game, which is tough. Yes. That's right. That's right. But she does a great job at it, you know? Yeah. But I mean, I was early moves. Yeah, that's yeah. You have to watch really closely to even see her move.
Speaker: um Yeah. But no, I found that fascinating because I don't think it's something that I actively thought about as was playing it. But now that you mentioned it's like, OK, yeah, I can see that at work entails. Sure. I mean, I don't know how well we succeeded, but we definitely thought like, OK, Guybrush and Elaine are married and they have been since monkey island three. And if we don't think about how, what's, what's a story where it works, then the story has to be about how it doesn't work. And no one really wants to play that. And you know, yeah, the same thing with guy brush. Like he, in the first couple of games, he's obviously hyper competent given that he is the player character who in fact successfully beat monkey island one and two, but it seems like he should, he's better defined as like the guy everyone underestimates and he feels like,
Speaker: No, no, I can, you know, like, I feel like him being a grumpy piece of shit is maybe out of a desire to prove people wrong ah prove people wrong who underestimate him at the beginning of every Monkey Island game.
Speaker: I don't mind that he's a big jerk, but I don't i don't like it as much when... the entire premise is that he's actually incompetent. Like I just personally, that, that, that, that never fully like landed for me, given that in monkey Island one, especially he's such a player cipher. He's so, you know, he's naive, but he's not incompetent.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, also sometimes he's incompetent and completely overestimates his ability to do things. But like, because he's functionally you in a way that not every adventure game character is, it it felt, it started feeling, I mean, i don't know. It's a hard thing to square, especially once he starts getting voiced, he becomes a very specific guy. But yeah, there there was, there was a surprising amount of very conscious talk. And that was the stuff that as a lifelong Monkey Island dork was like,
Speaker: ah, hella satisfying. Like that was very, that was, that was very fun stuff to be like, eventually they're like, uh, wait, I'm in a room with all the guys who made all these games. And we're just talking about like the nuance of like, it was not, it was not, they changed his boot color.
Speaker: Although we did have to choose what outfit is he wearing? And it was like, oh, he's got the blue coat on, obviously. i had the blue coat And then LucasArts, this lead character designer was like, yeah, but he should have a big moon shaped goatee. And we're like, I guess he has to have that now. And that's why he has that. ah yeah.
Speaker: Yep. You know, when i you know, it's, it's, It's funny because i I think about, and I might have even said this on the the podcast, ah but I don't really think of the like the Monkey Island ah games, ah the the first three, as really plot games. Obviously, they have a plot, but it's like I don't really think of them as games where I'm really in-depth with the story.
Speaker: Sure. um And then, and and this is actually another thing Jess and I were talking about before, which was it's like... You guys did the whole podcast. We did the whole podcast before. rehearsed it. I did a voice as you. Yeah. It was very flattering.
Speaker: it was It was very flattering. it Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. <unk> speed the The director of feedback is there like an echo? I think I've got a mic. I don't even know. I can't, I'm sorry. I can't, I can't. and inch but um where Where I think one of the the reasons that, like, I don't particularly like Escape is that I think that it is, it swerves in a way in that it is very plot heavy. Like there's this, like this story, there's this land developer and there's like LeChucks in this disguise and this and the other, like all sorts of stuff happens.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. And i remember playing like I remember revisiting it ah recently and being like, there's just too much it's just too much shit on me playing this. And then Tales, I think, kind of ah threads the the needle on it because it does have more plot. And I think part of that is because of the episodic format. ah by But also, like, but it never...
Speaker: it It never feels like you're you're putting on way too much like shit onto it. like It doesn't feel like a bunch of weird right turns. Sure. Yeah. That's good to know.
Speaker: No, I would agree. I mean, I do think that just by necessity of it being an episodic game. I mean, it I think if every episode was just serving the overarching plot that there wouldn't feel like there was enough there there. So there's a necessity for a little bit more ah story just to give every episode of the game, middle and end, obviously.
Speaker: But yeah, it doesn't feel weighed down by it. I think that. You know, having things like La Sponga Grande, like stretch out over a few episodes in terms of how you're going to get to it and then eventually retrieve it and do something with it gives it enough of that forward momentum that you don't get dragged down. i I would agree when I replayed Escape a couple of years ago, there were just so many elements of it that.
Speaker: just felt bogged down. I'm actually, i'm kind of an escape defender. I think the escape is better than most people give it credit for, but I would still say it's probably the worst game in the series. I mean, I don't know if that's a controversial take, but...
Speaker: i i feel I mean, yeah, it's it's the one I would put at the bottom of the list personally, but I also like, i probably laughed out loud more during Escape from Monkey Island than a bunch of the other ones. yeah The worst Monkey Island game isn't a terrible insult to level against something, right? I mean, it's like, oh, yeah, worst Monkey Island game is still better than a good chunk of adventure games that have been made. Yes.
Speaker: but yeah What's her name? Oh, go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. Whatever you're going to say. The voice of Bobby Hill in it. So it can't be all bad. That's true. He's the the voice of the...
Speaker: What is it on the ship? The masthead? Masthead, yeah. Oh, sure, yeah. The figurehead? Is it a masthead? It's on the mast of the ship, right? No, it's not on the mast, yeah. with all that The ship lady? The ship lady, I think. Yeah, ship lady.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I came from a Space Quest fan site. I don't know about boats. That's true. Oh, I don't remember what I was going to say. Just Telltale making episodic games. And it was just that it was that I think i think the the longer that Telltale kept at it, the more serialized the games became like Tales of Monkey Island and Sam and Max, the Devil's Playhouse especially are basically like they have a big A plot. yeah the And the and the previous games like the Strong Bad games and the first two Sam and Max games, those sort of previous point and clicks they did.
Speaker: they were more about like each episode has a gimmick and I think they got better and better over time uh, at making those gimmicks good. Um, and, and like stand on their own as a thing.
Speaker: And then, ah sorry, someone just, uh, my wife just came Um, but I think, they got better or once, once an a story got introduced, I don't think they really forgot how to do each sort of chapter thing. So then doing a monkey Island game, which by nature is, is supposed to actually be split into parts. Even when it's not episodic, it ended up working out really well in that way.
Speaker: I, you know, and that's something I was kind of wondering about because it's like, you know, to your point, uh, by then, ah a whole bunch of episodic, uh, like telltale point and clicks had already come out.
Speaker: Yeah. Um, and so like, uh, Like, yes, this had more plot, like, yeah, especially against, like, the first two so Sams and Maxes. Yes.
Speaker: And Homestar Runner. But, like, it does feel like, you know, I just played Strong Dad's awesome game for cool people. cool game for attractive people?
Speaker: Yeah. Come on, Ben. Come let's get that again. You know what? I didn't play it. I just watched a of these two. He likes the attention. He just wants the attention. You poser. Yeah. Yeah. Man, I've been seeing the web cartoons.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I didn't even i like I I read the children's book that Homestar Runner comes from. And you didn't like anything after that. You're like, they ruined this this great children's book.
Speaker: Yeah, Homestar is a terrific athlete, and that's it. yeah Yeah. I don't know where you're getting the rest of this. I'm a Homestar runner purist to specifically the children's book and, like, the first animation where it's, like, not that funny. It's just him running around like the globe. That's, like, the only one you want. yeah Only the ones that involve Craig Zobel.
Speaker: He was the the creator of Mayor of Easttown, the TV show. He was he was the a third creator of Homestar Runner. he was His name's on the book. Whoa. i am What? most Homestar Facts.
Speaker: Ben, you aren't even a real grognard when it comes to Homestar. I heard about that too. Look, Ben, we got to get to the bomb of this.
Speaker: He was ah the the third, like, so wait, there there there was a, is he the Pete Best of Homestar Runner? If Pete Best then also went on to be a wildly successful TV showrunner, yes.
Speaker: He did. yeah know he did which he did doctor who as we all know yes as as as pete best purists or whatever it's like his suggestion was still making episodes of doctor who like last year yeah that's why for the first several doctors they all were drummers uh which seemed weird at the time if you knew this the origin of the series like it's like of course one weird fact about doctor who
Speaker: but But anyway, like at that point, the, ah like the kind of the formula of each episode, it it feels was was pretty well defined, right? Like it, like usually it feels to me anyway, it's like each episode had like kind of ah like a little intro section into like kind of a,
Speaker: middle part that's a little more open and then like a, like a tiny little wrap up, uh, section at the end. Usually that, that center part usually has three things got to do. Yeah. Usually.
Speaker: um yeah. I mean, the the, the telltale formula was generally we get, for the Sam Max teams, it was like you get two and a half new environments per episode or something was the production budget for that. So it's like you build the whole street and the office and then you're like, we get the toy mafia casino main floor. We get the toy factory but in the back and then you get the little room where the mafia guy is that basically doesn't have a fourth wall. And that's, and that's,
Speaker: make a whole episode out of that. And then they, I think they got better and better and better at figuring out, especially in the second season of salmon max, how can you take that stuff? And then you think there's only three things to do, but secretly there are six things to do because right when you're about to get the final third thing done, the story twists and suddenly you're on the lamb or whatever. And then there's a complete ah sort of bonus act they inserted in.
Speaker: I feel like they got pretty good at that really economic structure. But then once we started doing more serialized games, I think that there were still usually only two and a half to three new environments per episode, but the ones that were the repeat environments ended up being way less formulaic because you're like oh, then we're going to go back to two places from episode two and we're going to go back to a couple places from episode one and one place from episode four where it's like we get a total of eight or 10 that can fit on the disc for any individual thing.
Speaker: you are You're able to sort of hide your tracks better. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember it all kind of felt the same at the time, though. you're making them Like I was playing Sam and Max on GameTap.
Speaker: Like I got GameTap as God intended yeah for Sam and Max because i was like, oh, my God. Yeah. and And two weeks earlier than everyone else. i'm sure to Watch weird, undocumented episodes of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. where Where he interviews like Lord British. Yes. Finally. Yes, if you see, like, there is lost media, I think. I think there's, like, two of those are gone. Yeah, I think some of those Space Ghost episodes never got recorded or ripped by anyone, so they're just gone.
Speaker: But some of them are are out there, and so it's, like, you have, like, I think it's, like, Lord British and, like, Trip Hawkins and, like, a bunch of, like, de people. Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, hold on. Now I got a game tap space goes. Yes, I have to. Let's let's see here. space Game tab space ghost wiki.
Speaker: Not gonna give me a list. I'd love to see Roberta Williams on space guests. They had Billy Mitchell. Oh, wow. I usually do some great work these days. Yeah, what's he have to don't don't answer actually.
Speaker: ah ah They had ah Rand Miller. Okay. That's that's because Uru was on GameTap.
Speaker: Oh, yeah mother yell that's right. GameTap brought back Sam and Max and they brought back Myst Online, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker: Yes. Let's see here. i don't know Who's Kenny Wayne Shepard? Why is that name super familiar? Never heard of this person. Kenny Wayne. Steve Wozniak.
Speaker: Cool. Oh, Kenny Wayne Shepard's a blues guitarist. ah So i can only assume he worked on Guitar Hero. Anyway, but yeah, like they did have Lord British on a space coast.
Speaker: That had to be amazing. Do you think Lord British was in the Lord British gear? Do you think he like had like the medieval like get up for it?
Speaker: Or was he just Richard Garriott? I bet Zorak would have had some pretty funny things to say if he was dressed up as Lord British. I hope he was. i don't know if Zorak, because similar, like they were also, like those were not full fat episodes of Space Ghost.
Speaker: They probably you can get Zorak. I don't think they even bothered getting Zorak for them. But ah anyway, yeah. It doesn't get out of bed for less than like 10K.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Famously, all the people that worked on Space Ghost got a lot of money. yeah Famously treated very well. Yeah. and But what i remember is playing ah season two when that came out and being like, holy shit, how'd they get all this into an episode? Like being very impressed like at the time because like, you know, playing season one, I was like, okay, I understand. I understand what this is. Like we're in the neighborhood and then there's like, and now we're going to go to another place that, yeah, yeah essentially two and a half.
Speaker: uh we'll go to the white house etc um and ah like and in the the the second season it starts out that you're on the island you're not immediately don't start the office i was like what the hell you can do this is crazy that was yeah but Oh, right. That's the episode. The first, the first episode season two is i that's the North Pole one. It's the North Pole. And then it's the tropical island with the babies. is a second Oh, am I mixing them up? I thought the first one was the, the whatever. i bet as i like those in They also had David Crane.
Speaker: Space Ghost Coast to Ghost. I loved his Ghostbusters game. Yeah. and Pitfall. yeah Yeah, that's all right. think he's best known for his Ghostbusters.
Speaker: it Where were we? Yeah, like when you were like, what was what was that process like, I guess? what Which episodes were you more involved with, I guess, actually? i think that I co-directed the third and the fifth episode. So the third episode was the one with the the yeah the giant manatee. Yeah, first of all, don't think Ben's played this game either. I'm really starting to wonder. to every No, I... ah i've
Speaker: um I like where that all ended up, but it was one of those times when you realize if you say a thing kind of as a joke, it can become ah what it is.
Speaker: and it was always sort of slated since the season arc was figured out that the third episode would be the one where the characters get eaten by a giant sea monster and live inside of it and find Dakava and his crew. And what if it's a big manatee, I think was said by me, think.
Speaker: joke that I immediately regretted when everyone started riffing on it and going absolutely crazy. Like there's a bunch of really fun concept art by Derek Sakai, one of the, uh, the art director on the game that is like, it's an angler fish with a like little lantern that kind looks like a ship and it's a big spooky monster. And then it ended up being a very goofy guy, but, um, it turned out really well because, uh, Sean Vanneman, who was the writer on it and Joe Penny, who were the designer ended up doing so much really good stuff with it being a manatee like all of the ah very very silly ah like manatee dating game thing which almost has a little bit of insult sword fighting not exactly to it but that feeling that you're sort of
Speaker: that That game has a lot of, like, can you use the verbs of an adventure game to make a little tiny mini slice of a game that is not explicitly just the lock and key puzzles and dialogue? Like, I think that's sort of true to all of all of Monkey Island. But that that one was like, okay, we can do we do the thing where you're you just have the um give the pocket translator. So you're sort of trying to build phrases that that'll get you by in a conversation.
Speaker: But like, yeah, I thought all that stuff ended up really, really good. We got to have ray Murray. Yeah, we also got to have Murray in that episode, which is another thing that I think we were all scared of, but then got pretty excited by the just finding him in the treasure chest was... ah was ah
Speaker: It was just good. It's just Murray. when When Sean and Joe pitched that the ultimate goal for them with Murray was that he gets a body and then believes that he's become significantly more powerful because of that, it's like okay, I think we're we're we're doing well here because Murray comes back and it's inevitably like,
Speaker: will Murray be in the game is like somehow just the number one fan question about every monkey island sequel now, which like, i i mean, it makes sense given that he showed up in three and was such a crazy standout, like one scene guy.
Speaker: Stole the show. i Yeah, he I mean, he's in like the first, he's in like the second room of Curse, but he's immediately good. Like he's he's what sold me on that PC Gamer demo disc demo of Curse of McGowan. ah but um But yeah, just knowing that he was in the game, but we were actually using him for stuff other than he just sort of walks in has a joke. But like the fact that,
Speaker: he what's the storyline that he becomes, he becomes Santino, the missing member of their crew so that you can get the, the tie breaking, you can, you can break a tie or something like that. Like, yeah.
Speaker: And then you decapitate him later. Good. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. No, I think that, you know, Ben, uh, in talking a bit about tales, You know, the the manatee episode, I think, is the one that of the five really stands out most for me. I feel like it's such a fun environment to set it in. i feel like, you meeting Decava's crew is a lot of fun. It is, ah I think it's a real standout um in the tales sequence.
Speaker: Nice. Yeah, I mean, it's it's definitely a combo breaker episode in the structure of the season because the first episode you sort of, you're on Flotsam Island and you're doing all the the sort of interwoven series of puzzles around the number of rooms in that space. And then the second episode is in the, with the mermaid.
Speaker: A crazy thing to, we could talk about the mermaid sometime, but ah it's it's a very similar structure again. and then the third episode being you're stuck in the belly of a fish.
Speaker: i I don't know. i think it's cool. I think, I think the structure that Sean and Joe came up with for it is really good. And it is kind of the classic telltale structure of their, of their games of that era where, you start the episode and you think maybe is this all it is? Like, is it literally two rooms? Because there's basically the above ground area with your ship and um Coronado de Cava.
Speaker: And then there's the area below with the crew, which is a pretty big environment, but it's still basically just two rooms. And then the game finally was like, no, no, no, no. We're going to, we're going to barf you out. And there's, and then there's the, the sea floor and a few other bits and bobs. But um yeah, I,
Speaker: The ah one one thing I liked about that episode is that like it does have like you go outside of the manatee. Yeah. And it has like the the section and ah like above where your ship is. oh sure. yeah A lot of the ah but ah a lot of the the action is kind of contained on that one. Yeah.
Speaker: Screen. I really enjoy That's kind of a like. to your point it's kind of a combo breaker it's very kind of different i i don't even know if i could think of another telltale uh episode that like maybe the battle of the bands kind of like but even then those are all kind of separate screens um Yeah, like the final episode of The Devil's Playhouse is one that takes place entirely inside of Max, but that's basically four rooms. So it is it is big. It just feels like you're contained inside of... That's the other episode where you're inside of a creature with swirly guts in the background is why I guess I thought of it.
Speaker: you know when the telltale game you know we've talked before about telltale games you know when the magic of the later like post walking dead games is really working you know the the magic of your choice is mattering and and you know this this character will remember that and everything uh can be so immersive even if deep down you kind of know there are certain beats of the story that are going to have to happen and you know when it's when it's clicking it's really on fire when that's working. and I think that you see that in a lot of Telltale's best games to where you have something like the third episode of ah of Tales, where even with a limited number of environments or that final episode of Devil's Playhouse, ah you know, when the when the story and the characters and the puzzles are really all clicking for that,
Speaker: you don't notice that, you know, that you're ultimately kind of walking around the same space quite a bit. You know, it works really beautifully. Yeah. Yeah. also bewaying If it was multiple screens and you had to run back and forth between these like four guys. and Yeah. the A lot, a lot of the episodes that we were excited about at the time, because they were able to be bigger in hindsight now actually feel super backtracky in a way that is kind of annoying. ah And the ones that are a lot more about,
Speaker: the character interactions being the thing that just propels the movement of the game, they, I think, often hold up better. it's It's also kind of funny thinking about, like, i that the episodic structure, certainly, like, in, you know, and that felt like you were getting less game. but Now, when I go back and revisit Telltale games, I'm like, Jesus Christ, sometimes these get pretty fucking long. Like, yeah, when we were when we were remastering the Sam and Max games, we realized like, oh, when you actually stack these all up as one game, ah longer longer than freelance police way longer than each Sam and Max season is actually Yeah, it is like,
Speaker: 15, 20 hours of game, which is actually a good amount for a point and click. Oh yeah. what Again, when you're not 10 years old and have not played them before and whatever else, but like even on replay, those games are not always even the case half for the further but good adventure. it's But yeah, it, they always seem small when you get them, when you're waiting a month and then it finally shows up and you're like, I got Yeah. like it's But it's different than coming back to it now and being like, oh man, this is like, I'm going to be playing this every evening for a week.
Speaker: Yeah, like I remember finishing, you know, now I'm doubting my memory here. Is the is your television studio episode of Sam and Max two or three? I thought it was two. That's episode two of the first season. Yeah, yeah, that's what, okay.
Speaker: I remember finishing that, like G-Tap. Sam is the dog. It...
Speaker: Oh, fuck. um I remember finishing that like really quickly, like at the time and being like, oh man, what the hell? And now when I've gone back and I revisited when it was re-released, I was like, I really enjoyed it. This is so nice and breezy. there um Yeah, I deeply appreciate the episodic format of Telltale Games as, you know, an older crotchety-er man now. it's just like, sure thank you for respecting my time. so so now they so They were ahead of their time that all the people our age were not yet old enough and sort of sad and slow enough to appreciate just getting a little sort of spoonful slowly put into our mouths.
Speaker: yeah like i was what i'm looking for i had nothing but fair time yeah like you needed to give me like a 40 hour adventure game to really just chew on and to think it just yeah it just took years of never-ending crunch to deliver those tiny little episodic bat-sized morsels right Yeah, it it is weird to think about the fact, I mean, like by by some game industry standards, I don't think Telltale Crunch was like top of the list, but it was still real. Like I think there was a multi-year run where every month I spent like two plus nights without sleeping. so ah That was sometimes self-inflicted because I'm ah bad at getting my tasks complete on time. And I also like sneaking a bunch of stuff into the end of a project when no one is looking. And those those two things combine equal a bad time when you have no real like self-regulation and when people kind of tacitly allow you to just keep working.
Speaker: um You said we'll revisit the merpeople, so let's revisit the merpeople. Oh, we don't have to talk about it very much. It's just weird that there's merpeople in Monkey Island. That's all. I thought you were going defend it. I also thought that was weird. Yeah, I mean, it is totally odd. Like, yeah.
Speaker: but That was, I think, Mark Darin just thought it would be cool. I mean, I think thematically or whatever, ah there was an idea early on that Tales of Monkey Island with the name Tales of Monkey Island would be that it gets a little more into the sea story, fish story. I think it's, we meet merpeople, we live inside a whale. you know like It has the sort of like, you're way off the edge of the map and you're living with all the weird little drawings of things on the edge. I don't think the story concretely delivered on that premise in any sort of thematic or literal way other than like,
Speaker: oh, it's weird that there's merpeople. And it's kind of strange that we got eaten by a manatee immediately afterwards because the other chapters are just kind of Monkey Island stuff. um But yeah, no, I don't have a whole lot to say about merpeople. I really like how they're written and voiced and designed, though. I think that they're actually like really good, interesting, fun, really, really funny characters. But it is strange that the bun the Monkey Island universe is now one in which there are merpeople.
Speaker: Never to be spoken of again. yeah it's usually just like people. yeah like yeah there's like it's a guy it already has ghosts you know it already has ghosts and does zombies but now it also has murby a little um a little sort of feature creep on the on the lore i'm so curious go ahead so you were you were watching and occasionally chatting during uh jess's stream yeah how how recently had you revisited tales monkey island I replayed it all a couple of years ago when we were doing the when we were starting to do the Skunk Ape remasters. I got like nostalgic for old telltale stuff. So I decided in addition to those I replayed, you know, in addition to the three Sam and Max seasons, I replayed the strong Strong Bad games and the Monkey Island games, which all kind of were like nested or nestled together in that era of studio, which was most of what I spent my time on up until Walking Dead came out.
Speaker: what What was it like? ah what I mean, what was it like revisiting ah like for the the remaster, those Sam and Max? like It was mostly really yeah exciting, honestly, because I was kind of, um like I said, like I alluded to or directly stated, I was kind of like, I had a little bit of like...
Speaker: guzzy fan brain about some of the early stuff that there were Hey, I appreciated getting to work on it. And I was really like proud of the work that all of my coworkers were doing. But at the same time I had like shitty online fan voice in the back of my head. It was like, is this good? Do people are, is this actually like, are we making a thing that like it all and, uh, coming back to it later after, you know, after telltale itself changed a bunch and the, um,
Speaker: breadth of adventure games that are offered has gone way wider than it was. Like when we were publishing the first MMS game, I realize now like the only people who were publishing point and click adventure games were us and like Dave Gilbert just published The Shiva right then. Like, that's it. There was nothing. so Oh, there the Adventures of Fat Man had come out within the last couple of months.
Speaker: There was a tiny NBC. Like, the the German company, weren't they putting out, like, Deponia? Oh, sure. You're right. There were there were sort of the the, like, Euro adventure games that I've never fully gelled with that feel like sort of it always felt like the longest journey and Siberia sort of like kept evolving and became their own other entire thing that just had an audience that didn't include me. But I guess you're right. That stuff, that stuff was also well there. Yeah. I mean, it ah I recently rewatched, ah you know, perhaps for podcast reasons, ah ah the original
Speaker: ah Kickstarter pitch video the deporter for Broken Age. Yes. Because i was I was very curious. I was like, huh, this is so interesting.
Speaker: And... ah you know, if there' he has a joke in it i where he's like, yeah, no no publishers are are interested in these, except in Germany or something like that. Sure, yes. But no, I mean, I guess at the time, like, I think the Runaway series might have still existed. There were still various sequels coming out, but it felt like that stuff all, I guess I mentioned Dave because I think we were some of the people that were...
Speaker: trying to put an adventure game on the internet and sort of trying to start over and not, not, they weren't series that existed previously and it sort of continued into that time.
Speaker: But yeah. ah As someone who came up through the fandom, yeah were you watching the online reaction to Tales as these, as these games were coming out or were you trying to,
Speaker: insulate yourself from that as possible. You're like, i know that they're going to hate it regardless because nothing will ever be what they want. When I got hired at Telltale, I was the ah community and content coordinator or something that, which means that I did a lot of early web design for Telltale and then I also...
Speaker: ran their forums uh me and emily morganzi who's uh she's ah another writer at adventure gamers and she also does game pr for basically every indie game that exists this point it seems like but the she was also hired there we were hired on the same day um and she did all the outward facing pr and i did all the sort of like inward facing community stuff but that was a pretty fuzzy definition but yeah no my my life was to basically live on the forums entirely digesting what people were saying and sort of wrangling and sort of, you know, and trying my best to keep that a positive place to be talking about Telltale Games. And then also, yeah, I was still like on the Adventure Gamers forums and stuff even when i was working at Telltale.
Speaker: yeah Was there time in the development cycle with Tales to incorporate feedback into the later episodes, or was it moving too quickly to really make that happen? Not really. There was never that much feedback other than like maybe at the in the earliest Telltale games. I feel like between the like somewhere halfway into the first season of Sam and Max, people are like, damn, they really hate that we have the same look at lines on every single object from episode to episode. And I remember like Dave...
Speaker: grossman being like well no one cared in in a regular adventure game when the look at lines for like an old environment don't change but i think people are like yeah but this is the only one that i have to play this month so i want the new joke when i click on the lava lamp that's fantastic that's fascinating though because it's like i get where those people are coming from yeah it's like yeah that makes sense But I generally know, I mean, like, I think there's like little callbacks and references to what the community was doing, because it's easy to, you know, get a pickup line on a later episode and put it into into the most recent one.
Speaker: And like, I think we ran a contest for Tales of Monkey the Island where you could get your own joke or puzzle into a game, which is why the character in the trial and execution of Guyverse 3-Port says, one of your crimes is he dug up my perfectly good ex. And there's like a one dialogue line. ah think you say, no, I didn't. And he's like, oh, you're right. And that case is dismissed. And that was a contest winning crime Guybrush committed from the forums, which we knew was sort of like- It's a pretty joke. It's not bad. It was good. And it was always known that it was going to be like the gimme puzzle in the courtroom. Jess, I think you didn't get that one until like last, which was-
Speaker: ah That was the hard one for me. um now yeah and I knew that you were just watching me judging me the whole time. me There's a judge in the game. Just staring you. It felt a lot more like we couldn't really control the community and they really couldn't control what the game was going to be. So a lot of that job ended up being closer to keeping an eye on where the sentiment was going, what people were liking and weren't liking, and then kind of using how we talk about the games in a way that is like, oh, if you like that thing, you're going to be excited about this, you know, more than, ah more than any boy there. They really hope those characters don't kiss. So we better make sure they don't like that. but That never really. that So you're saying you didn't see my Morgan guy brush fanfic. by slash fake this Okay. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah analysi as Yeah. People should check that out.
Speaker: that's It's actually, you're saying it's canon? ah Yeah, yeah, yeah. They should check it out before Monkey Island 7 comes out because it's definitely going to be a dress.
Speaker: Ben and I were also talking before the stream about how much we enjoyed... This was a 12-hour conversation. Yeah, we were on here for a long time before the episode started recording, but we talked about how much we enjoyed Morgan LeFleur's role in these games, and particularly how nicely that was paid off by the final episode. I remember thinking when I first played this on WiiWare that... I can't resist. You're, you're, you're giving it a Dave Letterman read. I can't, I can't not, I can't not at this point when I was playing on WiiWare.
Speaker: i remember at the end of the first episode thinking it's like, I think I'll do like a love triangle thing. And I'm so glad that it swerved in the other direction from that. And, and created a what I found to be a remarkably endearing character in Morgan.
Speaker: I mean, I think her being in the story was meant to, at part, make you think, are they going to do that? Is that the direction this is going? But it was always, you know, that was never the plan. We're also teasing like Elaine is maybe falling for good guy LeChuck. You know, i mean, clearly there's that yeah effort to create that ambiguity.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think Tales of Monkey Island is kind of the, like, melodrama genre Monkey Island game in terms of, like, it's, in hindsight, like, especially after after playing Return, which has honestly a lot of, in my opinion, like, pretty intense, not exactly thematic echoes to Tales, but it's chasing some similar stuff of, like, these are characters that have been around a long time. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: But that game, in my opinion at least, is a lot more subtle about it, whereas Tales of Mugatland is just like, it's a cliffhanger-filled melodrama where Guybrush looks through a spyglass and sees Elaine being handed a flower by LeChuck, and then someone holds a sword to his throat, and then it cuts to to see what will happen next time. What will happen next time is ah um a mysterious lady is on his ship who knows everything about it. It's like,
Speaker: It's fun. it's dead But ah yeah, it definitely definitely leans into the fact that it's serialized and it's it is pretty melodramatic. But i I'm glad that you that you think it it all kind of levels out by the end.
Speaker: the The melodrama is actually one thing I really enjoy about it because it actually, it gives Dominic Armato some of the most interesting, like kind of,
Speaker: Like he always does a really wonderful performance. I love him in all those games. Um, flo I think he actually has some of my favorite bits of performance in tales because i agree he has to, like, he has like moments of anguish. He has moments of excitement. Like he has a much more varied emotional terrain.
Speaker: Self doubt. Like he has in every other game. Yeah. Yeah. i think I think when the Telltale writers wrote the were like writing at their best, they were writing adventure game back and forth dialogue that played like little cinematic conversations. And part of that is because they had faith that when the cinematic people were doing their best work, it would look like that as well. And because of that, I think people got pretty comfortable having conversations, like even though it is just a traditional point and click dialogue tree conversation that actually have like a dramatic arc to them. Or like in this conversation that happens, i guess this is also part of... like
Speaker: It's serialized and it's episodic. And because of that, in it can be a weakness. The things can't happen out of order. Like in Monkey Island 2 or Return to Monkey Island, there are things that you could easily do before or after a different, completely unrelated event had happened because the games are so nonlinear. And again, know for better or worse, the Telltale stuff's really linear.
Speaker: And once you embrace that, I think that does mean that you can... like be like, we could really push the characters into weird places in this because like the only time this conversation will ever happen is within this like half hour band of story where only three or four things are possible and everyone is in this really specific emotional state.
Speaker: And because of that, I think everyone was able to like, ah yeah, I think, I think the performance is, of guy brush and elaine are both probably my favorite in the series from from both those actors it's uh it's cool and i think that's just like they have really specific things to do in really specific scenarios a lot of the time as opposed to sort of being like i'm in the middle of a very open non-linear game experience and i'm trying to solve four puzzles and it's then it's a lot more just sort of about uh how do I mind like I'm interacting with this funny character and I'm mining jokes and I'm sort of mining information out of them, but it's less like I'm under, uh, I'm under, uh, I'm on trial for murder or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah. did Did you get to, have you ever been able to go to any of the voice recording sessions or any of that? Uh, I went to, I've only been to like one because I don't i don't write a lot of this stuff. yeah And because of that, I don't end up directing it. But on, i only got to go to one and it was for...
Speaker: Sam and Max, the devil's playhouse. Chuck Jordan had left the company after that game to go do other things, but there were like two voice sessions left. So I had to go and record the last bits of Sam dialogue for Sam and Max, the devil's playhouse. And it was really fun. Although most of my memories are of the guy, not always knowing how to pronounce stuff and just sort of having to give him notes on enunciation, which is like, I think what most like, that's a lot, that's lot of it but no I never got to go to one with with Dominic um Yeah, I know. Like the guys who did the Back to the Future game were like, we got to go direct Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown. That sounds incredible. ah I i got to got to go to a couple to to fill in because the writer couldn't make it. that's, you know, that's how that's where I rate.
Speaker: I would assume like by the end, like if it's like the final record session for the Devil's Playhouse, like that the the guys voicing like Sam and Max pretty much know know what they got to do other than yeah like they're probably like I got it like there was a reference to like some sort of hot dog thing, or it was like Max loves some sort of mega chump brats and he called them brats. And i remember telling Chuck that later, it's like, oh it's funny that he said that wrong. So just don't worry about it. ah
Speaker: I just, I only remember that. I remember, well, yeah, no, that, that guy, ah the guy who played Sam in those games ended up like by the third season, he was going, he was crushing it. And I think for similar reasons to Tales of Monkey Island, that third Sam and Max game was,
Speaker: It's structurally really similar to Tales of Monkey Island and it was made by a lot of the same team right afterwards and it has that same feeling of every episode kind of, it's in service of the A-plot, but it has its own really specific vibe and the character gets put through all sort like each episode, there's a different w ringer that we put the characters through and then make the actors who are like, we signed up to play funny dog and rabbit detectives instead have to deal with like, your partner is dead. Yeah.
Speaker: ah
Speaker: yeah well uh yes you have any any last uh things on uh tails i just talk on i just want to you just do two hours on tails of monkey island holy that's not bad yeah okay that's not bad i just wanted to thank jake for uh for being here thank you for dropping by my stream it was really fascinating to get hear your insights uh along the way i mean I love the Monkey Island series dearly. And, you know, Tales was just ah a joy to revisit. And, yeah, having to go along for the ride there and here has been been a real treat.
Speaker: Yeah, it was it was fun really fun to check out your stream. I think that there's a it's impossible for me to fully extricate a Telltale content and community coordinator from my brain. So if I'm like, oh, there's a guy I follow on social media who's playing Tales of my Gowd, I'll just show up in the stream and talk in chat. I can't, I can't not. Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I do that with like, i mean, I made my little fan game StairQuest, which, you know, apes some of the old Sierra games. And if I see it streaming, I cannot resist going in. but Why would you not? Yeah, especially because people are going so mad at the game the whole time. Like that's a game they're supposed to hate.
Speaker: And there's something wonderful about seeing somebody hate the game that you designed to make them hate. ah So I can only imagine if I'd ever created something people loved, how rewarding that would probably be Remember, Jess, when we were streaming ah the Expanse adventure games?
Speaker: Yes. And ah and i believe those were designed by Deck Nine, but published by that iteration of Telltale. Yeah, they're published by the current the current Telltale. Yeah.
Speaker: and By new new Telltale. Yeah. who whoever ah the the you was whoever the community that like TTG underscore name popped into the chat a couple of the nights. Telltale real appeared in your chat.
Speaker: yeah Yes. So that that legacy lived on at least for the expanse. Yes. That's good. That reminds me, this is the most stupid and esoteric thing ever, but for some reason I'm going to talk about it on this podcast. perfect Telltale was ah you know started around the same time as YouTube. And when we started uploading things to YouTube, it was just Emily uploaded them to her account, which was Emily underscore TTG. And then we wrote someone at YouTube and said, wow.
Speaker: we really screwed this up. Could we get our account renamed to Telltale Games? And I was like oh, i don't worry about it. I'll just modify the database to redirect Telltale Games to emily underscore TTG.
Speaker: And then I think that that like really, really fucked up Telltale's account inside of the YouTube system when like, You know, two years later, that guy extremely wasn't there. And there just being like a raw link in the database between two user accounts didn't exist. Anyway, for for for very a very long time, you could still go to Emily TTG on YouTube and it would just sort of go to a really corrupted and oh broken version of the Telltale account.
Speaker: It makes me nostalgic for the time in the internet when you could write a guy at YouTube be like, oh yeah, I'll just modify the SQL database to fix your user account issue. That's like... not only can you never speak to a human, but they definitely, anyone who has the authority to modify the database is now probably like ah on the ISS or of the private shadow ISS that you get to go to when you've been ah YouTube for long enough. Yeah. we say That was, that was before Google like owned it. That was think that was when YouTube was just an office in San Francisco with guys who thought that a flash video player was the future.
Speaker: They were right. Look at us now on Zencastr classic. Yeah. All right. Well, ah once again, thank you so much. We've loved having this conversation, but I've loved talking like both Jess and I really enjoyed ah Tales of Monkey Island and both of us have also really enjoyed ah the Skunk Cape oh man remasters. Gorgeous. man We didn't even talk about that. That's okay. We don't need to do any more time on this podcast, but they were really fun to make. It was really fun to get back in the Telltale game engine after having been away for basically a decade.
Speaker: Boy, wouldn't it be fun if Skunk Ape got an opportunity to do the same thing with Tales of Monkey Island? Dude, it would rule. Tales of Monkey Island is owned by Telltale and Disney. And if they're ever interested, call me. Come on, Quest Quest. Disney, come on, Quest Quest. Yeah, Michael Eisner, I understand you're still president of Disney. Please come come on, Quest Quest. We would love to talk to you about this. Yeah, talk Tales of Monkey Island. He's like, what is that?
Speaker: ah but um And, ah like, wait what was this? Like, ah why were you, like, poker night at the inventory? We got to bring it back. Like, um now that it's up, now we brought it up, I got to ask.
Speaker: It's funny, Poker Night, like, ah I was one of the four people who did the original version of Poker Night. There were there were a bunch of other people at Telltale who helped out. Like, there was ah the animation department basically chipped in on making that game in what seems like in between other games, but there was, it was me, Sean Vanneman, Nick Herman, who most recently was the director of Dispatch, and put the programmer, Telltale programmer, Tully Rafferty, who, like, I think he was the lead programmer on Tales from the Borderlands at Telltale, but... um the four of us got told by the company, hey, we want to make a celebrity poker game that's kind of the sequel to the... Telltale got started with a poker game. Telltale Texas Hold'em was just like their engine tech demo.
Speaker: Anyway, why did we think it was a good thing to make at Skunk Ape? Because i fooled myself into thinking that it would be a quick project where we were, we, we finished, um, we finished the devil's playhouse remaster, which is the third summer max game. And we were trying to figure out what do we do next as the studio? And we're like, well, we, we, we'd been talking with, uh, telltale about it. Um, and they were interested in us doing it. And we're like, yeah, that seems like a six month project that we could, that we could just knock out and it would work. Okay. And then it ended up taking, I think over a year because it turns out that, um,
Speaker: We built the original in, I think, 80 work days. And that's cool that we shipped Poker Night in 80 days, but then trying to make a version of that whose goal is to remove all the animation, pops the jank, fix all of the bugs, make it actually locked down and reliable, and also do that on code base that is over a decade old.
Speaker: And also none of the like poker playing code is supported by the engine anymore, because why would Telltale maintain that part of the Telltale tool? ah It took... It just took ah infinity time to get done. So it was really like, oh that should be quick and easy.
Speaker: er But then it um people were so excited about it. we um We got permission to reactivate the Team Fortress 2 items, which did get people really hyped. Like, obviously, the TF2 people were really excited about it. Yeah. But... um That's, you know, we were worried, is it just going to be people who buy it to grind TF2 items? But statistically, that has not been the case either. People just think it's funny. ah So, okay, actually, this is the the real answer, which is like marketing guy answer, but it's kind of fun, is that when we um were when we were looking to remaster the Sam and Max games,
Speaker: we found that there was a surprising younger Sam & Max audience who found Sam & Max entirely through their sort of like existing in the cracks of YouTube and therefore of the rest of social media. And a bunch of those people are people who came in through, I'm watching funniest moments of the heavy from TF2.
Speaker: And then they end up going into a all heavy conversations in poker night video. And then they hit an algorithmic switch track and leave through a salmon max, gay moments or whatever. They just leave through like salmon max being hilarious for three hours. And they're like, what the hell is salmon max? Oh wait, there's a whole Fox kids cartoon show. There's a, there's like three video games starting these guys. And then they end up diving down Basically, what to them seems like a lost media rabbit hole of Sam and Max.
Speaker: So we we learned that Poker Night at the time, think, was an aspiration in cross-media synergy. And it ended up instead just being a kind of funny poker game.
Speaker: But its existence inside of modern algorithmic video is totally crazy because it is this weird cross-franchise switch track where you come in on TF or Homestar Runner or Salmon Max or I guess Penny Arcade, but probably not a lot of Penny Arcade video. Or with Poker Night 2, you come in through Venture Brothers Portal, Army of Darkness or Borderlands and you come out the other end and both Poker Night 1 and 2 sent people out the Salmon Max shoot a lot of the time.
Speaker: But it made us realize, oh, there's there's way more people than we than you would expect that have nostalgia for Poker Night because it's a game whose jokes are on social media, but you can't play it anymore. So ah we were like, maybe people will play it. And then like people, a ton of people were really happy that it was back because they're like finally, I can play this game that I saw. I saw the heavy making the joke about finding the dead sparrow in the snow when he was in school in Eastern Europe and I can play the game. Like, OK, that's yeah wild.
Speaker: I didn't know any. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, so that's totally, totally weird. And that was, that was kind of a weird meta hunch. And it turned out to be more true than we thought. Like when we put the trailer up saying, oh, we're remastering Poker Night. It's kind of like thing we did to have something to do. People were like, what, what, Poker Night's back. I was like, okay, sick. Please enjoy. Please buy our new Poker Night.
Speaker: Yeah, like I remember being like, wow, they're bringing back Poker Night. And I was like, why am I excited about this? But I'm excited that they're bringing back Poker Night. No, I mean, I have a ton of fond memories about Poker Night. I mean, I think that I shot out... ah into discovering venture brothers through poker night too, like, which was like media had no, i had no point of reference for who Brock Sampson was. And so like the, the poker night games are also a graveyard of telltale projects that never were like the reason that poker night one exists, like has Tycho in it is because before it, um Sean Vanneman and I, who ended up being ah co-leads on walking dead. And then we, we made firewatch together.
Speaker: we We met on Tales Monkey Island on episode three, and we really got on really well. And ah we ended up kind of turning into a pair that ended up in sort of the Telltale production rota. And the thing that came up that they asked if we were interested in is doing a Penny Arcade game.
Speaker: because the Penny Arcade guys had been doing those episodic RPG games with yeah Hothead, the they the same company that Ron Gilbert worked at. Rain Slick. Rain Slick, Precipice of Darkness. Yeah. So we were working on basically an adventure game comedy series starring the Penny Arcade guys that we we we wanted it to be We wanted to so do like, can we reinvent Penny Arcade where it has Canon? We were comparing it to like the Marvel, like ultimate universe where they would take the big mess of garbage and then try to turn it into lore that we were doing. We're coming up with a story that was like Gabe and Tycho's favorite fantasy author.
Speaker: gets a Q&A question wrong at their local comic store and they realize it's a body double. And then they go on. it was like said in the late 90s. And then they have to take a road trip down the West Coast to go to E3.
Speaker: And that was the the game was going to end at E3, which is kind of an homage to the net, which ends in Macworld Expo. But yeah, anyway we we really wanted to do a sort of... We really wanted to do a sort of like the Penny Arcade guys get in a hard-boiled mystery way over their heads, kind of like the Big Lebowski, except that it's also like the PlayStation is coming out and their their fantasy author has been kidnapped to type into a Lovecraftian typewriter with spikes for keys that makes words real that only he has the power to... It was a crazy thing. Anyway, Penny Arcade... ah
Speaker: canceled their third range, like precipice of darkness game. They got a lot of blowback from their fans and we're like, Oh, wait we got it. We, we, we have to make that right before we do any new game endeavors. So that was canceled.
Speaker: But, um, Tycho, we were like, Oh, Tycho would be a fun character to have in poker. Oh, we, we then, uh, they were like, well, you guys don't have anything to do. You wanna to do the poker game. So, um,
Speaker: that's what And then we're like, okay, yeah, let's we could probably get Tycho in it really easily. and we could get ah But Brock Sampson in Poker Night 2, there was, for about five seconds, there was a Venture Brothers game in pre-production at Telltale. That was going to be led by Chuck Jordan, who did The Devil's Playhouse with Mike Stemley. And it was a little bit it was before that, I think.
Speaker: I remember they did a sort of straw pool poll internally of like, what what IP, they did this reasonably often at Telltale. Like, what's a thing that people would love to work on? And Venture Brothers internally was like,
Speaker: know well above everything else. Like it was, that was probably like around season three or four, which is anywhere in a 30 year window that they're making that show. But we, we, we only had a few meetings, um, trying to figure out what that was and check out a bunch of pretty good ideas for it. And then our marketing guy finally was like, wait, I actually checked the audience numbers for venture brothers.
Speaker: And you guys might be the only people who are watching the show. We can't make the game. And then it was just immediately deleted. But we had, we had already started talking to, um, I guess we had a contact at Cartoon Network because of that starting to happen. So then like, what if Brock Sampson is in Poker Night 2? It was a lot of those sort of like, well, we knew that ended up being the, and then, I mean, i obviously Claptrap was in it because we made a Borderlands game. yeah And I think Ash Army of Darkness was just like, people were trying to figure out who else it was and everyone liked the Evil Dead.
Speaker: I think that was supposed to be Bruce Campbell. And then he dropped out right before VO o happened, which is why it's insane there's, Anyway, whatever. Poker Night. Weird game series. Yeah. ah The nexus of way too many things, it turns out.
Speaker: Yeah, that's crazy. um Well, once again, thank you so much for joining us. You can send us an email at questquestpodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: ah Jake, is there anything that you'd like to plug? Anything that you'd like to... The Skunk Cape games were... Yeah. if you if you If you are a person who has affinity for Telltale, which now is an old adventure game company, which is totally weird. Retro games.
Speaker: And yeah, retro games, I guess. WeWare, and you don't know ah me and a handful of other ex-Telltale employees who were sort of there in the first few years of the studio,
Speaker: We now own, ah like we ourselves own the original Sam and Max trilogy that they made and we've remastered them and put them out on a bunch of modern systems, including PC, but also you can play it on your Switch or Xbox or PlayStation.
Speaker: And I think they turned out really well. It was a really fun project where it was, Me, Randy Tudor, who is Telltale's lead gameplay programmer, John Scrow, who is the studio, like technical and technical art director and Dan Connors, who was the founding CEO of the company. It's the four of us.
Speaker: But then also we brought back, ah we got Jared Emerson Johnson, who is the Telltale's like studio composer for its entire life to write a bunch of new music for it and a bunch of artists. tool programmers, graphics programmers, and cinematic artists all, and like lighting people, ended up chipping but lighting is great. It's cool. Lighting is by a guy named Brett Rogstad, who was ah not at Telltale at the same time as me, but he was the lighting artist, or one of the lighting artists on a bunch of their later stuff that just also looks fantastic to a degree that the early Telltale stuff could never get to. He's like one of the only people on Earth who understands how the Telltale engine's lighting system works.
Speaker: So... It was great to have him come back. The war, what is it good for sequence yeah with the new lighting just looks yeah so good. we We really believed that the underlying art direction in those games was actually pretty good. And it was kind of buried under the fact that like the lighting engine, the lighting, like the lighting model that the Telltale engine used in 2005 was kind of even already then behind the times. The light baking, like the actual light map textures were super low res. All the textures were really low res.
Speaker: It was from the era when people were like, do we ship this on the Yahoo Games portal? Oh, no, no, no. We don't do that. We ship it on WeWear. So like getting to sort of excavate all the source assets and put them through out and with a just a little bit of like the original trailer is basically how I feel about it, which is it starts with the old game and then Max sort of wipes his hand across the screen. It goes, what, what, what?
Speaker: And then the remaster is underneath, which is like, it's it was really us being like, this is kind of what our minds. I saw the games looking like at the time. And we're going to try and make that be what they are. So that's my plug. My own other video games, junk ape games.com. Check them out.
Speaker: Great. Yeah. ah Thanks for having me on this podcast. Sorry that every answer is somehow itself like an entire podcast episode worth of me just barfing. It was amazing. no I'm sorry for barfing.
Speaker: Oh, yeah the one thing that I do want to plug is Harrison Pink is right. You should play Riven. It's good. As a lifelong Myst hater who finally played Riven, Riven good actually. Great. But you know like you still don't like Myst.
Speaker: No, Myst is good. Okay. Riven though. You were a lifelong hater. Oh, I'm a lifelong... i'm ah So what I eventually realized is that I was ah a Myst reputation hater, but both Myst and Riven are actually very good. That's what Ben and I discovered as well. like i think I think if you found from playing Myst, like, oh wait, this is a game that actually has like...
Speaker: ah like vibes and like i feel I'm having like emotional reactions to even just sort of the pressure of like the space has tension and weirdness to it. Riven is like that stuff, but way better. Riven is like you, you just, it's, I always thought that it was just kind of walking around an island, filling out slider puzzles so that a quick movie of a guy in a book would get mad at me. But like, no, it's actually like,
Speaker: Riven feels like a suspense thriller, even though it's actually still you walking around an island filling out slider puzzles while a guy in a book gets mad at you. But like it's the good for the good version of it, like really good. It's really good. The best version of that.
Speaker: Yeah. Like imagine the best version of that, which maybe you can't do, or that's because you haven't played Riven yet. You know. Harrison Pink is right. I don't know if when Ben and I launched this podcast, we ever imagined it would exist to launder the reputation Riven.
Speaker: Myst among this certain group of specific adventure games. For us specifically, but also people like us. It's like, I'm sorry, Myst wasn't made by Sierra or LucasArts. It's a first-person hypercard stack without a story quote, but like it has It has a, yeah. I'm just going to say like me and Harrison worked, we worked together on walking dead at telltale. So maybe it seems like we're the same guy, but Harrison has like a ribbon tattoo on his body and did before he, oh he he i I don't know if that was on the pod or if it was in, when we were chatting, but yes.
Speaker: but On the other hand, I'm, I'm, uh, as I said, a self-professed lifelong mist hater who now has has come back on everything. This isn't all Harrison's fault, is it? Did he he corrupt all of us?
Speaker: No, it was, i mean, it was really like I had friends who were huge into this when I was kid and they were people with good taste, but I didn't really believe them. And then my college girlfriend made me play Riven and I kind of appreciated what it was going for, but it didn't really click. And it was just, it was actually the trailer that was released for the Riven remaster.
Speaker: Um, was just really fucking good and like made it look like actual trailer. That trailer is so good. Yeah. And I was like, wait, is this what's going on And then the mood of that trailer actually is somehow like pervasive throughout the game, even though you're just sort of snooping around weird multimedia Island.
Speaker: who Whoever is working on trailers over there, ah is like right now... That trailer was cut by Derek Liu, who's a trailer editor who's just out in the world making really good trailers for games. He made the... um He made the trailers for Firewatch. He was our, he was our trailer editor on Firewatch. good trailer It's a good trailer.
Speaker: He, uh, uh, uh, came in and edited the release trailer for half-life Alex at valve, or he, I guess he was one of like 20 people who worked on that, but like, uh, he's, he's great. um we Derek and I worked on the trailer for quadrilateral cowboy together. The cha hacking game. Yeah. he's just He makes good trailers. I made the, he made the story trailer for psychonauts too, which is also an incredible. He's really, he's really good at cutting together game stuff that like he acts on the analog sticks and moves the camera around in a way that feels like a performance. And then he just makes it all feel.
Speaker: Do you know if he's Derek Liu, come on quest quest. Sure. Yes, absolutely. ah ah Do you know if he's the person that cut the trailer for that, like, missed project that didn't happen?
Speaker: Yes, he also cut the Anglerfish trailer. That trailer was exactly what I was thinking. That trailer, like... guess What a trailer for like, especially like to really make you go like, fuck, I wish that game came. out Yeah, that that that trailer I think was cut for publisher pitching for that game. Like that trailer predates their announcement. I think that was the sort of like, we're going to take you into the pitch room and show you the, then show you this. then we're going to show you the game.
Speaker: I got to play test that game. It was good. It sucks that it's not coming out. Yeah, that's, thanks. But you guys wouldn't know, you guys wouldn't know whether or not that game is good or not because you haven't played Riven yet. The sequel to Myst? Yeah, the sequel to Myst. Did you see that they put out brief, they briefly put out a series of merchandise that said the prequel to Riven.
Speaker: did see that. And it was just when Claire Hummel and Harrison were there, they somehow got permission to put out a bunch of really high-end shitposty Myst merchandise. And it was really good. Anyway, I need to leave this podcast. We gotta have Harrison back.
Speaker: Yes, you need Harrison too. Harrison's great. If you get Harrison back on before you've played Riven, though, that's just embarrassing for everyone. and we had harrison on before we played mist yeah he wait like he's talking about mist i'm like what do you mean island what do you mean brother they're brothers i don't even know what you're saying we had harrison on to talk about a bunch of games we hadn't played and tales of borderlands which he did we did talk about that you know what yeah it was a delightful episode it was a good episode
Speaker: All right. Thank you. Bringing this train him Bring this train in for a landing, Ben. Okay. Jess, you have any plugs? All right. Thank you so much, everybody. And we'll see you next week when we discuss Space Quest 4. Is that like the good Space Quest?
Speaker: All right. So...
Speaker: like the good space quest all right so Okay, that kind of answers answers the the question I was going to ask, Jake. ah You know, as as someone that so stridently was a Sierra hater right at the top of this podcast...
Speaker: i'm a so I'm a Sierra ignorant. The first thing that I played by Sierra was the Black Cauldron because someone told me they just handed that to me and I didn't understand it and bounced off it. And then the second Sierra thing that I ever played was King's Quest V and I never really went back. so Wow. So you've never played Space Quest four No.
Speaker: It's crazy. I've got the whole world ahead of me. think We should tune in next week because we're going to a whole episode about it. i don't want to get spoiled on Space Quest
