Adventure Gamers - Forums

Dag - 28 March 2013 07:57 AM

Could this be the first hand drawn 2D adventure from Telltale? After all, it’s based on a hand drawn franchise… but they’ll probably find some reason to present it in blocky 3D instead.

Telltale has come a long way, I wouldn’t call their last games blocky 3d, specially Walking Deada and that is also based in a comic book.

diego - 28 March 2013 08:32 AM

As for King’s Quest, perhaps Phoenix Online guys can continue with the series - they’ve sure come a long way since the first episode of the Silver Lining.

I admire them greatly, but felt their Silver Lining release was quite amateurish. Would VERY MUCH prefer another team continued the series.

My real fear is that the renewed interest in these Sierra IPs thanks to Kickstarter will have driven their price up. There aren’t a lot of established adventure game devs out there that can afford multi-million dollar licenses for these games, and even fewer that could expect to see a return on them if they did.

Telltale is probably at the top of that short list, but if they get priced out, then any hope of seeing a true adventure game in those series goes away.

Monolith - 28 March 2013 07:20 AM

I can confirm the KQ status hasn’t changed since its announcement and this is just by straight up asking a friend who works there. Its not a leak, nor is it an announcement. It just isn’t canceled.

Is KQ currently in production? What stage are they in? Please share all that he told you.

tomimt - 28 March 2013 08:58 AM

If Larry reloaded ends up being a smash hit Sierra licenses will get more expensive. I doubt Himalaya or Phoenix could afford them even now.

Phoenix barely has an operating budget as is.

Sometimes companies can work out a license deal where they pay off the license on the back end instead of up front. It’s not impossible. But it basically means they wouldn’t get any of the money from sales until that license is paid off, so you’d pretty much have to raise the budget on KS. No one would invest in such a venture, and you’d have to accept that you probably won’t make any money on the game.

And even then, I doubt Activision would be inclined to such a generous deal.

A.A - 28 March 2013 03:11 AM

I’m positive I read Dan Connors say in an interview that they’ll be incorporating a lot of stuff that worked in TWD into Fables. Now, what that stuff is exactly, I don’t know. Could be referring to anything.  But we’ll see, I guess. 

From an interview I did recently with Kevin Bruner:

I think we’ve always been trying to evolve what playing stories means, so I don’t think everything you see going forward from Telltale is going to be Walking Dead esque, but I think we’ll take the best of what we’ve learned from Walking Dead and all of the other projects that we’ve done, and continue to try to refine them.

So yeah, they’re not going to throw away everything that worked in TWD and start from scratch. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be a Walking Dead clone any more than TWD was a Jurassic Park clone (and in the same interview Kevin talked a lot about how JP influenced TWD).

(Plug: the article shows up in GamesTM issue 134, on sale in April! Check it out!)

Frogacuda - 28 March 2013 08:18 AM

Well Hector they only did a port of

Actually, Hector episodes 2 and 3 were developed in Telltale’s 3D engine. And their episode 1 “port” involved recreating the episode in their engine, too.

To the questions about hand drawn vs. 3D, ALL of Telltale’s games have been 3D. Even Strong Bad, even Puzzle Agent. The Wolf Among Us will be, too. The argument is kind of semantic, though - if something looks hand drawn and complements the source material, does it really matter?

fov - 28 March 2013 10:51 AM

Frogacuda - 28 March 2013 08:18 AM

Well Hector they only did a port of

Actually, Hector episodes 2 and 3 were developed in Telltale’s 3D engine. And their episode 1 “port” involved recreating the episode in their engine, too.

I did not know that. I still haven’t played the Hector games.

And to the questions about hand drawn vs. 3D, ALL of Telltale’s games have been 3D. Even Strong Bad, even Puzzle Agent. The Wolf Among Us will be, too. The argument about 3D vs. hand drawn is kind of semantic, though - if something looks hand drawn and complements the source material, does it really matter?

Regardless of whether or not it’s done in a 3D engine, I would still consider Puzzle Agent 2D, because it’s 2D assets.

Like, Broken Age is done in a 3D engine too, but I’d call that 2D as well.

I’m entirely unfamiliar with the comics, so I have a question for those who aren’t: supposing Telltale stay true to the tone and style of material (which is something they’re usually very good at), what should we expect in terms of atmosphere, tone, type of stories, potential gameplay, etc.?

How to describe Fables...

Well, the premise is that a bunch of fairy tale characters (“fables”) live secretly in New York City. The backstory is a bit complicated, so let me break it down:

-They come from fairy tale worlds (“the homelands”) which can be reached through magic portals.
-They had to flee their homelands when a dark lord called the Adversary conquered them.
-The refugees came to Earth (“the mundane world”) a few hundred years ago.
-They made an agreement (“the compact”) that included a general amnesty for any crimes committed in the homelands (e.g. by wicked witches, evil stepmothers, or the big bad wolf).
-They formed a self-governing community called Fabletown, which is now a neighborhood in NYC.
-Fables don’t age, but they can be killed. (Although popular fables tend to revive.)
-They use magic to disguise themselves and blend in with humans. Any fable that can’t blend in (e.g. talking animals) has to live on a farm upstate.

The big story for the first 100 issues or so is about their war against the Adversary, and their attempt to return to the homelands. But at the same time there’s a lot of stuff about the internal politics of Fabletown, and about the lives of particular fables. One of the main characters is Bigby, the big bad wolf (transformed into human shape), who is initially the Fabletown sheriff. Sometimes there are crimes for him to investigate. Seems like he’ll be the main character of the game.

The tone is very Vertigo Comics, though fantasy rather than horror. (Magic plays a BIG role.) “Sandman-light,” I guess. It has lot of that post-modern revisionism of fairy tales (e.g. characters who were good turn out to be bad and vice versa). Although it can be brutal on occasion, with beloved characters raped or murdered, it’s not a particularly dark or “grim’n'gritty” comic. (Not like The Walking Dead, certainly.) There’s generally a sense that whatever problem the fables face, it’s going to be resolved.

Thanks a lot. I’m still not completely clear on what the game’s going to be like, but I’m sure they’ll tell (and show) more as they get closer to releasing it.

To complement what After a brisk nap said above, I think the comics have a dark humor tone playing with the fable characters personality adapted in to a modern society.

The story starts with a typical contained detective story (that’s why I talked about Discworld Noir) with some horror elements, but it evolves into some an epic fantasy story. And yes, fantasy/magic always play a big part.

Just don’t think about that horrible tv series Once Upon a Time because it it nothing like it although it shares some similarities in the premise.

“I want to grow up, I want my balls to drop, and I want to get laid.” - Pinocchio, Fables

Maybe I should admit that I’m not wild about the comic. It’s fun enough, but it feels really lightweight compared to all the other prominent Vertigo titles (almost all of them now canceled). I think one of the big problems is that it’s not written with an endpoint in mind, so it has a bit of that superhero “never-ending serial” feel to it; and with a large cast, it can often become a bit soap opera-ish. And unlike a series like The Walking Dead, which might also be open-ended (and which I’m not a great fan of either), it doesn’t have a strong focus or distinct point of view. Story arcs don’t build on each other to some greater whole, but just sort of head off in different directions.

I’ve no idea of what the gameplay would be either. (But I haven’t played a Telltale game in a while, so I don’t really know their style anyway.)