Looks like they’re keeping the same combination of adventure game puzzles and motorcycle action sequences. Not sure what they’re going to do about Ben’s voice though, whether they will have an imitator or one that is completely different.
Wait, why not use the original actor? (cringes and wait)
screenshots look cool. Man, I cannot wait. I loved the first one *)
Uh, Roy Conrad died last year.
Shit, I was afraid that would be the answer
(bows head in mourning)
Wow, 3D adds a whole new dimension to this game. A dimension of crap.
Looks fine to me. I am looking forward to Sam & Max 2 more, but Full Throttle’s still up on my “GIMME GIMME GIMME” list.
Have to say, the visuals look really dated. From speccing out the screenshots, it looks they’re still using the now almost 6 year old Jedi Knight/SCUMM engine combo (originating in Grim Fandango and last seen in Monkey Island 4).
[rant]
It’s a shame…a good chunk of Full Throttle’s appeal came from the great character design and beautiful art direction. Sadly, it seems like both of these have been sacrificed at the altar of piss poor technology. Why couldn’t Lucas have just pulled their frikkin’ thumbs out and done the whole thing cel-shaded, rather than using bland, flat texturing in a half-assed attempt at recreating the beautifully cartoonish look of the original.
[/rant]
Anyways, here’s hoping the (Schaffer-less) story is good, the animation is kickin’ and the gameplay is fun. Meanwhile, I’ll just sit back and fret about Lucas’ upcoming Sam n’ Max sequel. Screwing up Full Throttle is one thing, but to do harm to my favorite dog n’ psychobunny combo is to commit a grenade in the gullet-worthy offence.
Bah. I’m looking forward to the Sam 'n Max game, with the understanding that Steve Purcell has a hand in controlling the art direction. Not so excited about Full Throttle 2, if only because the 3D engine seems less than ideal. Take ‘Escape From Monkey Island’ for example. I much preferred ‘Curse of Monkey Island’ for its clean 2D visuals versus the muddled 3D block-world of EfMI. Props to Grim Fandango for making 3D work from a visual standpoint (aided by the highly stylized nature of the subject matter), but GF had its share of control problems. I guess part of the problem is trying to map a 2D interface into a 3D world.
Put me in the “3D for the sake of 3D is counter-productive” camp.
- Alan
I dunno, game looks fine to me. It may not be a TRUE technical wonder, but it seems competent in it’s visual design. Hopefully the puzzles and writing can elevate this one to a level more fitting of the Qt3 crowd.
I do agree that Monkey 3 was quite a bit more impressive than what Monkey 4 concocted, but considering Lucasarts played around with 3D with the original FT and it’s motorcycle stints, it doens’t surprise me that they may be going for a more congruent look. I do miss the mouse driven interfacing though the most. Monkey 4 just wasn’t quite the same having character relative control.
Hmm…it’s slated to release on Xbox and PS2 as well? Will Sam n Max 2 be making the same jump?
This always struck me as a puzzling design decision, too. The characters were 3D, but the world was 2D rendered backdrops and the game had a static camera. There was no reason why they could not have used the same point-and-click interface that they used in every other LucasArts adventure–they just wanted to do something different for the sake of being different. Bad choice, since they replaced an interface that was familiar and that worked just fine with one that was non-intuitive and needlessly cumbersome. Did we really need to make pixel-hunting into an even more laborious process, forcing players to physically walk their character around the screen to find all the hotspots? I’d say not.
Looks alright, it definaly has that “cartoonish feel” like the first one.
Hopefully this will be worthy of the name “Full Throttle”, unlike most sequels nowadays.
It’s obvious why they’d go that route; I mean, it’s not like Resident Evil wasn’t a big “control your 3D character with 2D backgrounds” adventure game. The point-and-click adventure is dead. It’s too passive for most players. (Myst was a slideshow? It had more hours of gameplay than most 3D shooters nowadays.) Games that give you direct control of the player character are considerably more popular both then and now.
It was also designed to be played with a Gamepad, which at the time looked like the emerging PC control standard. It would also make console ports that much easier.
Yeah, but that’s more of a marketing gimmick than a meaningful change in gameplay. Because it played exactly like a point and click adventure, it just had a more cumbersome interface.
I can understand the console port argument, though Grim Fandango was never released on any platform other than the PC (at least, not that I recall).
Well, it was a meaningful change when King’s Quest moved from text commands to point-and-click. So why isn’t it meaningful to move from indirect to direct control? (Though I do agree it’s more cumbersome.)
I can understand the console port argument, though Grim Fandango was never released on any platform other than the PC (at least, not that I recall).
I suspect that had more to do with its success, or lack thereof.
That was a meaningful change in that it streamlined the manner in which you interacted with the game, and paved the way for a more visual approach to adventure games. GF’s system less meaningful because there was no good reason for it–they gave you direct control of your character, but didn’t provide any gameplay that required or justified that manner of control. You still navigated around static environments looking for hotspots. You could have done the same thing (and had an easier time doing it) with a mouse cursor.
I’d honestly love to see adventure games go back to a text-based interface. You really had to observe your surroundings more… it wasn’t just a matter of mousing (or running) around the screen hoping to find something you could interact with. I just fired up Leisure Suit Larry again, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s super short if you know what you’re doing, and some of it’s pretty dumb, but it held my attention for as long as it needed to.
I don’t know, text parsers had the same equivalents to pixel-hunting - the grammar hunts, the object-hidden-inside-the-scenery hunt. You can’t light the candle, you can’t ignite the candle, you have to use the candle with the matches. Or they hide the useful part of an object, like the fact that it has a lever, in a roundabout description. At some point adventure games are really about using object a on thing b at location c; hiding it temporarily may make the game more fun, but probably even more frustrating.
I don’t miss the text parsers. I don’t miss the pixel hunts. I don’t miss the timed sequences. I do however miss the clever dialogue.
- Alan
Everybody misses the writing; I suppose they didn’t call it interactive fiction for nothing.
What I could get behind bringing back is the “unseen narrator” aspect. No reason why a point-and-click or gamepad-control-and-click game couldn’t have that kind of internal rapport with you. For some reason I’m hearing the Europa 1400: The Guild guy’s voice saying to me : “What? With your barehands?”
I think it’s pretty much replaced in modern adventures with the character you’re controlling stating that there’s no way in hell it’s going to happen. The transition from 1st to 3rd person, I suppose, but sometimes I miss the direct, friendly banter between you and the computer.