What can you tell us about Sam & Max?

At this point we're still working with Steve [Purcell] to get the ideas together. We're definitely formulating what it's going to be, and exactly what we want it to be. One thing we learned from Bone is it doesn't have to be traditional. As an online product, there's a lot of different ways in which it can be released and there's a lot of ways you can make it come to life. We want that to be an ongoing process, with all the great people we have at our site and people who are really interested in it. We want to share with them, piece by piece, roll it out a little slower, and let it sink in and grow from there, versus throwing it into a big production right now.

Is it going to have a longer production cycle than Bone?

It's going to be a little bit longer. Sam & Max doesn't necessarily come with a book that's a game design. You don't get The Great Cow Race and just start working on it. You get two characters that can do anything in the world, and then you get the crazy mind of Steve Purcell, and things kind of grow from there. We want to give it the time to come up with the right design for it, and to let the characters come to life and put them in the right place before we start production.

How involved do you think Steve will be?

God, I hope we can get him a lot. He's a busy guy at Pixar, it takes a lot of creative juice, but we'd love to have as much as we can. We're tracking down other folks to be part of [Sam & Max] too.

People who were involved before?

Yeah, who were involved before. We'll see what we can do about getting those people on board.

Have you thought about voice acting, getting the same actors as the previous games?

We're looking into it. Those two voices are so distinct, you can pick up immediately that it's Sam and Max. I think if we got those guys going again, there would be some nice new bits for people to start quoting from Sam & Max. That would be fun. So we're looking into it. Obviously there are business issues around it.

You already had the 3D Sam and Max models at LucasArts—are they going to look the same?

The images are all Steve's, but I think we'll try to put our own slant on it. I know Steve has definite ideas for the direction he wants to go with it that's a little different, and I think Telltale's going to offer him a little more freedom than LucasArts would. That's something we want to be known for. There's a lot of creativity going on, and we're not afraid to take something on, to add character to something, to make it a little bit different and unique. We want to foster that.

What did Jeff Smith think of Out from Boneville?

Oh, he's so happy. He never played games, but of all the feedback we got, Jeff was certainly among the happiest. He falls into the non-adventure gamer group to begin with, so he just watches his wife play and laughs. I think it was very special for him to have the characters come along the way they did, and I think he knows how much care we put into making sure it was quality stuff, and true to what he envisioned for the characters. So he's always been pretty thrilled about it.

If you need anybody's approval, he's probably the guy you want.

Yeah, it's a good place to start, and we know we're on the right track. It's a big story, and the first book and the first game are really just the start. When I read the first book I was kind of like "Ehh…" because it has a pretty dramatic ending, but he brings you in slowly. It's like reading the first chapter of a book. So by the time The Great Cow Race comes along, you're totally sucked in. We're hoping the games are like that too for people.



I didn't read the book until after I played the game, and it was cool to see, like when Fone first meets Thorn, how you turned that into a dialogue puzzle. I liked how you took what was in the book and turned it into something the player could do.

Cool, I'm glad you appreciated it. There's the movie versus the book thing… I'm proud, because I've never seen a game responded to as well [as Out from Boneville has been], as far as "this is a playable version of the story." I'm really proud of that. Let's say someone turned Bone into a movie, and you get the inevitable, "Well, the movie was no way as good as the book." I think we're a lot closer. I think people that read the book and then play the Telltale game, they pick out some details that weren't there, but in general it's not like two completely different things and they're offended at the concept that Tom Cruise is playing the main character and it just doesn't work. Or that we're skipping over major portions of what's going on.

There were some things that you left out from the book. Players have talked the most about you leaving out Barrel Haven at the end. Why was that decision made?

Barrel Haven is definitely a pretty big world. On second thought, the ending would have worked better if we had extended it to Barrel Haven, because it would have given us a cool-down period. I think something that freaked people out was the drop-off. The game is smaller than any other game, certainly, but then it ends abruptly too. This really dramatic stuff happens… I remember the first time I played through the dinner, which I love, and then the dream sequence, which I was totally sucked into. Then I did the chase scene and I was like, "Whoa, this is awesome!" And then it was over. I think that happened to a lot of people. They learned about the world, they learned about the characters, and then we go real deep into the story—they're like, "This is crazy, tell me more about it!" And then it just kind of drops off the ledge. Barrel Haven could have given us a little cool-down period, which I think Jeff knew as a storyteller. We made decisions because of our situation that we'll think twice about next time. We made an assumption about storytelling when we should have listened to the master and followed his lead on it. And I think people would have responded differently, because the way it drops off so quickly at the end comes as such a surprise, people are like "What the…?"

The worst that can happen is you learn from that and do something differently with the second game, and it sounds like that's where you're going.

Oh yeah. We're just so happy to have shipped something and got it out to the world, and to have heard the feedback, and to be able to respond to the feedback. You get a lot of comments from people and certainly we're glad for that, but you can't let it diminish, personally, everything you know it took everybody involved to get to this point. To be criticized is kind of the nature of the beast, but a lot of people have told us that they've enjoyed it as well, so you get that benefit, too. If you want that reward—if you want people to like your work—you have to be able to listen to people's opinions about it.